Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Engaging Users in the LibreOffice Project

On 11/03/2013 04:32 PM, Ken Springer wrote:

> Using a feature by feature comparison, there is no way LO or Kingsoft is serious competition for 
> Office Pro.

A point you are missing, is that even in a corporate environment, all of
the parts offered by MSO Pro are not needed by all of the employees who
use the office suite.

If it was cheaper for the company to buy three quarters of the staff MSO
home edition, and a quarter MSO business edition, and a quarter MSO Pro,
they would do that.

Microsoft's cheapest business license is for MSO Pro.
Assuming it is still offered, the most expensive license is for MSO
Enterprise edition.

If you want to compare office suite with office suite, MSO Enterprise
Edition is the only thing on the market, that offers all of the
programs, from the same software maker.  All of the other, similar
solutions, use packages form several different software vendors.

( I don't know if Microsoft still offers MSO Enterprise Edition. Back
when the business I was working at looked at it, it was not listed on
the Microsoft Product Page alongside the other MSO offerings.)

> > > If you want to entice people to switch from Product X to LO, you not
> > > only have to be as good as Product X, you have to be a Helluva lot better.
> > To be serious competition, you just have to be roughly as good.

> Those are standards I do not accept.  You should aspire to be the best
> you can be, not just "good enough".  Yugos were "good enough".

"Good enough" is the mortal enemy of "superior".

> Au contraire, my friend, as I just pointed out with the charts above, LO is competition to the 
> mid-level version of Office only.

For 80% of the MSO user base, MSO Pro is overkill, which is why LO is a
more appropriate option that MSO Pro.

> Ford doesn't just compete with Chevy, they compete with Honda, Toyota, BMW, Volkswagen, 
> Mini-Cooper, ET. AL.

At least you didn't put Lamborghini in that list.

> As noted above, I've listed why LO is not serious competition except for a single version of 
> Office.

You do realize that Microsoft has stated several times, in public, that
OOo was the direct cause of their lower earnings, and reduced
profitability, don't you.

As such, even if it was only one version of MSO that you consider it
competitive with, it took enough marketshare away from Microsoft, that
they decided it was better to offer their product gratis, with embedded
advertising, than to compete on the basis of features within the product.

jonathon

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