[libreoffice-users] Re: LibreOffice VS MS Office

> > A business that receives profits from customers that demand to use M$
> software should simply pay the licences to meet their customers'
> demands and consider it a cost of doing business.
>
> I can't tell which of the following statements you mean:
> * If a company is Microsoft only, it should pay all of the Microsoft
> licenses for their vendors;
> * If a company is Microsoft only, it should pay all of the Microsoft
> licenses for their customers;
> * If a company is Microsoft only, it should pay all of the Microsoft
> licenses for their suppliers;
> * If a company is FLOSS only, it should abolish that position, and use
> Microsoft products;

None, the example scenario is a customer (in any business, not
necessarily IT) sends a document in m$ word and the recipient decides
to use LO but finds that there is (minor?) loss of formatting (e.g. a
table width greater than the body text margin), then writes to LO
mailing list to complain that LO writer is not good enough for their
needs. In this scenario, the business using LO should pay for an m$
licence to use m$ software in their business and not use LO at all.

LO should concentrate on the scenario that both a business customer
and supplier are _both_ using LO software and when documents are
exchanged, the documents produced and received using LO software are
found to be of good quality (i.e. no bugs).

It is not fair for LO to be expected to be an exact clone of m$ products.

> > Any business using open source software to generate a private profit should put their money 
> > where their mouth is;
>
> a) Do you know how many employees the "average" business in the united
> states has?

Don't understand the significance.

> b) Do you have any idea how difficult it was for non-Sun clients to get
> features and functions added to OOo?

No, but presumably this justifies the creation of LO.

> c) Do you have any idea what the learning curve involved in knowing how
> to code for OOo was/is?

No, not qualified to comment.

> Those three factors mitigated against organizations that were not in the
> IT industry from even considering customizations of OOo, much less
> paying for them.

Is it not true that organisations are not able to get customisations
of m$o unless they pay m$ and/or m$ partners to make such changes?

> Once two or three organizations offer Level 4 Support for LibO, you'll
> see organizations that are willing to pay for the features that they
> want/need/desire. That is also when you'll start seeing non-IT
> organizations sending their customizations back upstream.

Sounds good; time will tell...

> > LO programmers should concentrate on making a good software product;
> that should be the priority.
>
> One of the major criteria that businesses use in selecting software, is
> compatibility with their existing work-product. In terms of office
> suites, that usually means the ability to read, write, and edit
> documents in a Microsoft file format as well as, if not better than MSO
> can read, write, and edit those documents.

True, as well as the cost of training personnel to use either new
software or the latest version (the ribbon!) of existing software.
Businesses demanding LO (and all others) to be better than m$, without
having paying a penny towards development of these alternatives are
asking for too much. There must have been a time when people kept
copies of documents on floppy disks, but then new hardware became
available. How many businesses have demanded that the new computers
they buy must have a floppy drive in order to be compatible with
existing procedure to keep copies on floppy disks? Instead, new
procedures (e.g. use CD-ROM) were developed.

> Different organizations define the compatibility line differently.
>
> Personally, I consider microsoft file formats to be "never twice same
> output" formats, and hence best discarded.
>
> jonathon
>
> > community since higher profits may have been obtained by using OSS)
>
> Just what makes you think that either net profit, or gross profit is
> necessarily higher using FLOSS, than using non-FLOSS?

There is no evidence of this, was stated merely as an example scenario.

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