I have forwarded this to the marketing team for them to discuss because
there are a lot of the BoD on that list. However i am far more unpopular
there than i am on this list so they will probably just ignore it as
"trolling" or some-such.
If, like me, you want to see LO succeed and believe some of these issue
may indeed be "holding LO back" or setting up bigger problems for the
future then feel free to take up the discussion there or even better
forwards it to the "discuss" list.
I think the original op of this thread wanted to avoid getting bogged down
in all this and just wanted practical comments on issues arising from
trying to share with the 90% (or thereabouts, depending on geography) of
computer users that still use MSO. Perhaps just a few pointers on how to
get better results from sharing.
Regards from
Tom :)
From: Jay Lozier <jslozier@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Do You Share ODF Documents With MS Office
Users?
To: users@global.libreoffice.org
Date: Wednesday, 8 August, 2012, 3:26
On 08/07/2012 08:24 PM, rob wood wrote:
>From my experience of working in the IT department of a very large
college
with over 10 000 computers, it has nothing to do with functionality.
99.9%
of employees use office to type letters and send emails. For the .1% that
would use advanced features, policy probably disallows them anyway. Plus,
it is fairly trivial to have different images for those that need/want
them.
The reason they don't migrate is because it would create more work for
the
IT department, it is that simple. Plus there is no benefit as far as the
IT
department is concerned. Office 2003 works, and whoever approves the
budget
is just going to accept however much is put in there for it, that is if
it
is actually a separate item and not bundled in with the other microsoft
licences.
Office = safe.
LO = risky + more work.
I would second that most users do not use advanced features of any the
MSO parts. Very few can actually program/write a macro and macro
execution should normally be turned off for security reasons.
The reasons for not updating MSO version or using another office suite
(LO, AOO, etc) are roll out costs, roll out time, inertia (no real
business reason to change), and perceptions about users finding the new
suite difficult to use.
On 8 August 2012 00:11, Steve Morris <samorris@netspace.net.au> wrote:
Just my 2 cents worth. Businesses with a heavy investment in office
can't
migrate to LO, as LO is not a functional replacement for office 2002,
let
alone 2010. A lot of business functionality that is used from day to day
and is critical to the organisation in order for their various business
units to operate, from say excel, that libreoffice does not provide,
even
in 3.6, and features that excel allows that Calc disallows (as far as I
can
see for no good reason). Another reason for not migrating is also the
steep
learning curve, both with front end functionality and macros, that
business
cannot afford to undertake due to the loss of time and resources.
regards,
Steve
--
Jay Lozier
jslozier@gmail.com