Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Obstacles to ODF adoption

On Thu, 2010-10-28 at 10:59 -0500, Anthony Papillion wrote:
> On 10/28/2010 09:39 AM, Frank Esposito wrote:
> > We should also include government as well, that seems to be where adoption
> > is currently high. how about religious organizations?
> >
> >
> > So we have:
> > Government (local and National)
> > Business
> > Non profit organizations
> > Education (all grades)
> > Personal users
>
> Last year, I pushed hard to get a few of my area rural municipal
> governments to adopt OpenOffice. I met with representatives of about 15
> small Oklahoma towns and did a few presentations (all designed in
> OpenOffice - eat the dog food!) In the end, none of them really saw any
> value in migrating.
>
> Their points were:
>
> 1. Microsoft provided us the software through a grant, we didn't have to
> pay anything so money isn't an issue.

I would say these are precisely the folks that we need to emphasis using
to - to be honest though I would de-emphasis working to try to change
these folks - meaning not all organizations get grants, if one does I
would say something like.

By all means use the software but consider switching to the supported an
open standard, ODF, so they can not only take advantage of Microsofts
generorsity but gurantee themselves easy access to move to other
platforms down the road, so that future budgetary concerns are freed
from counting on future actions of the donor.

If at that point all you did was get some new users of ODF it is still a
win, IMO.

Then I would move on...

> 2. Document conversion isn't 100% accurate in many cases and we have
> regulations we have to follow that require that they be accurate.
>
> 3. Retraining costs would be extremely high. Everyone knows MS Office,
> nobody knows OpenOffice. We're a small government and can't afford
> retraining.

In this last ooocon there were two speakers, both from IT departments at
municipal govs. in Hungary - shops of a few 100 users each, IIRC - they
both put it quite plainly - We didn't pay to train anyone on MSO, why
would we do it for OO.o. 


> 4. There will be massive pushback because the skills aren't transferable
> and make people effectively useless in other jobs that use MS Office.

> I think we should address a few of these points in whatever evangelism
> we do towards local or national governments. Federal government in the
> USA has historically been suspicious and wary of open source software.
> That's dramatically changed over the last few years but, in some
> agencies, it's still there to a degree.
>
> Religious organizations are another are where costs and document
> portability might not be a major concern because everyone is using the
> same thing so there are no problems and, in many cases, Microsoft has
> donated the software or provided it under a grant for no out of pocket
> expense.

Yes, I have met many people from small congregations in the forums and
on the mailing lists, OO.o has a strong usage in this part of the
population in the US and Aus, NZ or at least so it seems from my
personal experiences.


> We're dealing with a very savvy competitior in Microsoft that is willing
> to do whatever it takes to win. Whatever we come up with is going to
> have to be just as savvy and beat them at their own game.
>
> Anthony



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