Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Free & Libre are bad "selling points"

In my country this is what people think of when they hear the word "free".  

Anyone that hears the words "free software" will find that indistinguishable 
from freeware which is much more widely known but only as something that has 
caused a lot of problems.

I am beginning to accept that maybe my country is possibly a little different 
from other European countries but i really thought this was part of the human 
condition.  


I didn't start using OpenOffice because it was free.  I only moved away from 
MicroSquish Office because i had no choice when i moved to linux.  I did try to 
install it inside Linux but it wasn't easy and that was nearly a blocker for me 
so i kept re-booting back into Windows to do stuff with linux just being for 
fun.

However when i did finally try OpenOffice (by mistake) i found it was superior 
to MicroSquish Office because it didn't keep changing styles, formatting, 
language, tab-stops;
1.  I didn't need to sort all the formatting after finishing the document
2.  Numbered lists were easier, numbers didn't get randomly missed out
3.  Numbered and bulleted lists lined up within themselves
4.  Bullet-points didn't randomly change size
5.  Spell-checker stayed in my non-american language throughout
Also no pop-ups stole the focus while i was typing so i didn't have to deal with 
other stuff in the middle of writing and i didn't have to re-key anything.  This 
last point is an advantage of linux rather than OpenOffice/LibreOffice.

So at the end i didn't need to spend ages sorting technical formatting problems 
and was able to use the time purely proof-reading and shortening things.  The 
whole thing was completed in less than half the time i had expected!

However i would never have used it if i had any choice.

Do other people here "settle for" LibreOffice purely because of it's price?  If 
it cost more would you really all run back to MicroSquish's "superior product"?

Regards from
Tom :)




Am 01.01.2011 16:44, schrieb Tom Davies:

> Free means "has no value", "is worthless", "cheaper than "cheap and nasty"", 
> "so bad it can't be sold", "not worth having", "about the same value as 
> garbage".  

If this is your understanding of the meaning of free software, then
why do you engage yourself in a free software project?

LibreOffice by its definition is free software (not freeware). IMO
freedom is a good selling point, maybe the main point at all.

Stefan
-- 
LibreOffice - Die Freiheit nehm' ich mir!

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