Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Microsoft: government switch to open source will cause "dissatisfaction"

On 02/21/2014 09:30 AM, Jay Lozier wrote:
> On 02/21/2014 06:04 AM, Marc Paré wrote:
> > Article title says it all. You can find it here:
> >
> > http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/387199/microsoft-government-switch-to-open-source-will-cause-dissatisfaction 
> >
> >
> > Not sure if we need to post a rebuttal argument in the response 
> > section or retaliate with an article disputing MS arguments.
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Marc
> When I read the article I got the sense of MS FUD claiming that people 
> "need" proprietary MS formats to be efficient. Reading between the 
> lines I also sensed that MS is very concerned about losing the 
> European market to FOSS and open standards/formats. If national 
> governments move away from MS, those doing business with the 
> government are likely to follow and this will percolate country wide. 
> If European governments and businesses are hostile to MS this will 
> have an effect on international businesses.
>
> Ultimately MS faces two choices: adopt open standards/formats and open 
> source their products or face resistance due to people, companies, and 
> governments believing they are doing the bidding of the US NSA.

I do not think making MS Office open source will be done, but the true 
support of the open document formats [ODF] will be a good step for them 
to take, and it should have been done when ODF became THE International 
Office file format standard.  They did not like the fact that their 
OOXML format did not become it.

MS and its public relations with European countries and businesses seems 
to extend back over 10 years.  It seemed to me that MS thought their 
"control" over the office suite market gave them the right to force the 
users to do and except anything that MS tells them to do, buy, and 
accept, what an office package can be use for and needed for in the 
users businesses and homes.

At one point, after MSO 2007 came out, our Library of Congress started 
publishing documents in the .docx format.  Since their mandate was to 
allow these files and documents be freely accessible to the public.  
They had to republish those documents to .doc since there was a cry 
saying that to get the freely accessible files you had to buy a new 
office package, and that makes it not free and places money into MS's 
pocket as "ransom" to get our government's documents.  Europe seems not 
to be as easy going with MS's antics as the US is.

So MS may be feeling the loss of money from Europe as a threat to their 
company's core business.  So they attack the FOSS movement for open 
formats in office suites.  The insist that if you do not use our 
proprietary formats then you cannot do proper business with each other.  
Well, business is getting along with ODF just fine.  If the businesses 
need to use an MS format, then they may go back to pre-OOXML ones, which 
most FOSS office suites seem to work with very well.  But, since more 
and more International businesses are moving away from proprietary 
formats and using the International Standard - ODF - then MS should just 
do the right thing and fully support ODF as well.  Then the file format 
issue will not be an issue in the fight to keep their office suite 
market share.

YES, FUD is a weapon that MS loves to use.  But the real problem for MS 
will not go away if they do not act like all their "suggestions" are a 
"commandment from the god of the computer world".  The US NSA is not as 
bad as MS in trying to force people to do what they want, but the NSA is 
more covert in their efforts.  But NSA vs. MSO is like comparing apples 
and oranges.  So, it should not be part of the description of what MS is 
doing in the office suite market.





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