I remember when Microsoft first attempted to prevent the standardisation of Open Document Format (used by LibreOffice and others) and then bullied its way into getting approval for own OOXML standard. Already back then, supporters of FOSS warned that Microsoft would use the overly complicated OOXML to maintain its stranglehold on users of Office-like software.:
Whenever applicable and possible, standards should build upon previous standardisation efforts and not depend on proprietary, vendor-specific technologies. Albeit, MS-OOXML neglects various standards and uses its own vendor-specific formats instead. This puts a substantial burden on all vendors to fully implement MS-OOXML. It seems questionable how any third party could ever implement them equally well, especially when a standard comes with 6000 pages of specifications without serving its minimalistic purpose.
Yeah, the issue is not “Microsoft’s usage of the XML format”. The issue is that they blatantly bought their format’s standardization, and then intentionally released an implementation that substantially deviated from the specs, making sure that MSO was the only “compatible” implementation.
Shit, I’ve been right about microsoft for thirty-plus years and it doesn’t make a damned bit of difference.
They are. A. MONOPOLY. They have never “fought fair”, and it wouldn’t ever occur to them to do so. Their heart is all BOGU.
Wasn’t there even a Simpsons episode about it?
“Buy him out, boys.”
Das Bus
Season 9 / Episode 14 (19:10)
“You don’t think we got rich by writing checks?!? Ahahahaha”
The only reason Apple still exists is because Microsoft didn’t want to get broken up, so they invested in Apple to stay competitive for 150 million in 1997.
I dunno. I mean that’s true, but it’s also the case that Gates stole a lot from Jobs and they knew each other pretty well so it was also like a friendly loan.
Tbf Gates took the boos he got at AppleWorld or whatever it was then pretty well.
That’s not entirely true. It’s true that Microsoft invested in Apple, but it’s not true that they were about to get broken up and that Microsoft money saved them.
My only issue with Libre Office is that they are not available on mobile phones. I want to use spread sheets to make calculations and projections on my finances if I can’t use my computer at a given moment.
I understand your desire, but I’ll be damned if I’m gonna use any spreadsheet software on my phone. I can think of few worse platforms for excel. Even my iPad Pro is a nightmare if I don’t have my Magic Keyboard and a mouse. I’ll crack out a laptop or talk through it with gpt.
The problem: our desire for convenience
Bring on the downvotes, but: When it comes to tools like computers, convenience is synonymous with productivity. People aren’t unreasonably demanding to have their hands held, they want to get stuff done. We need to stop acting like
convenienceproductivity is just one of many concerns. It is the primary concern.Freedom is nice but to most people it’s only important if it helps us do the things we want to do.
Yes, exactly that! That convenience == productivity connection is exactly why I am a Linux Mint fan!
Convenience has value, so a lot of people will give their “free” information, attention, and control to commercial entities in exchange for it. Enshittification ensues and many of us are conditioned to beware of things that are simple to use because it REALLY just means you’ve been locked out of 95% of the options.
When a good FOSS project can bring convenience and productivity to more people around the world with NO strings attached, that is an incredibly good thing. It’s like, humanity actually working together just for the sake of the greater good, but doing it on the internet because governments can suck at it.
Damn, I need to find a good open source project to help out this winter when I’m forced to stop my oudoor “engineer turned farmer” hobbies for the season.
Edit: probably something Jellyfin related. Can’t believe I forgot to mention that!
Moved to LibreOffice. No regrets. Thank you, Microsoft!
does libre office do scripting? (like VBA?)
LibreOffice Basic, JavaScript, Python. But the macros wouldn’t necessarily be compatible with Excel.
The problem: our desire for convenience
This hits it right on the money. As nice as open source and open standards are, at the end of the day none of that matters to the 99% that want/need to do X as fast and painlessly as possible.
To people like my wife MS Office/LibreOffice/Google Docs are all the same thing in the category of productivity suite. And one of those does not meet her where she lives in day to day life. And it doesn’t because there is no money in doing so for LibreOffice. And there is no benefit to her to seek out LibreOffice for her uses.
Hell, just take a look around at the number of people that preach about the evils of Microsoft, Google, or whoever but love them an iPhone and Macbook. As bad as Microsoft and Google can be for screwing over the user with vendor lock-in they don’t hold a candle to Apple. But they get the money despite there being “better” options technically and philosophically for nearly everything they make, but Apple knows all of that pales in importance to 99% of potential customers compared to being convenient.
The piece on using the tech is a bit much. We cannot get by without a smartphone in modern life and they essentially do not exist outside of apple and google.
Sure they do, but all of the alternatives are not nearly as convenient. But you can absolutely get by without an iPhone or Android phone with Play services.
The example actually proves the point more strongly than LibreOffice vs MS Office does by the increased level of effort it requires of the user to go out of their way to not actively support the bad things Apple and Google do.
Ok show me a phone that is readily available that has the ability to log into banking apps etc.
Are you being dense on purpose? I said you could absolutely do it, but it was far more inconvenient.
So you repkied to me qualifying that it is an effective duopoly by saying that there are other companies which is what is implied in what I said?
Who is dense when you can’t understand the practicalities of real life and how business interact with our lives. You can get a linux phone, which is probably below .5% of market share and then sandbox android to use these apps…which is in itself necessitating the use of a google product.
I could walk into the bank also or not talk to people but effectively there are two manufacturers with a duopoly on consumer mobile communications enviromments.
“There are ways” is some cop out bullshit.
The “windows just works” claim is stupid. Especially the statement the author makes on how you just double click an icon and it just works everytime and if ever there is an issue, someone else will eventually fix it.
If the XML standard is overly complex, does that mean it’ll be a bigger pain for MS employees to maintain? Sounds like cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face.
Iirc the openXML standard was open sourced due to some anti trust stuff brewing. They then expanded on the standard with proprietary addons that give LibreOffice/Google Docs trouble.
I’mma just going to sit over here in the corner with my AbbiWord and Gnumeric…
microsoft is a dirty bastard
I honestly don’t understand why I would ever write up or share a Microsoft document.
As for word, it’s just fucking rich text format. It’s obvious they’re manipulating the format to lock down users with less computer knowledge. Otherwise, why is it so fucking complicated?
Markdown accomplishes 90% of what a word doc does and it is legible with or without rendering.
EDIT: If I want data in or out of a spreadsheet program, I’m using CSV.
All of the “special features” of office docs wind up being security nightmares, unusable junk, or both.
When in save for myself I like rtf or markdown. But when I need on my work it’s normally something from a template or something already on the server that is using Microsoft format, when your employer decide this for you, there isn’t any choice.
No, there’s not often a choice.
But I include and discuss a 4% penalty when making wage calculations in an interview.
Even though Office, OneDrive, Teams, Ansible, Jira and Confluence are different toxic apps/websites, it’s still the same “shit tool stack” penalty, one hit.
My understanding is that Proton Docs web editor is a markdown editor and I’ve seen people complain about the limitations there but I’m not a power user to compare with. Don’t know how well collaborative annotation/suggestions/replace would work with markdown. Fully out of my knowledge base but interested in learning what office text document abilities can’t be done in markdown. There’s still ODF for whatever markdown can’t do
Disappointing Fox news version of Windows’ take of something somebody at Libre once said about Windows’ domination of markets.
This read like basics. Was hoping for more info on how unusable XML was fot LibreOffice or if it wasn’t (unusable to OSS versions). Obviously, OSS is better for enough reasons that a few in the EU are switching government computers from Windows to Linux.
Yes, corporate & proprietary schtick is lame & crippling. Old news. Guess it needs to be yelled until we research start taking about (marketing) FOSS Solutions.
There’s a phrase that gets passed around the tech scene: “Linux is only free if your time has no value.” Because, yes, Linux and other open-source apps are free to download and use. In a world driven by money, you’d expect the free version to overtake the paid one. The problem is, the paid option…just works.
Sure, until the paid option does something anti-competitive or gets too expensive or shuts down entirely, and you have to switch to a different paid option, sometimes burning dozens of hours in switching time (and/or hundreds of hours of work through lost or corrupted data) in the process. Not to mention the transition costs of just figuring out the new thing. Why not just switch to something that won’t go away, or be changed under your feet?
The problem is that it needs that initial time investment to get it working the way you want it.
Maybe I’m just enough of a tinkerer in any situation that I’ve put pretty much the same amount of time into fiddling with my Linux settings as I did with my last Windows computer.
If your hardware isn’t working properly, you have to find drivers that run on Linux; if the developer never made Linux-compatible drivers, you have to figure something else out.
People have been talking about this for my entire life, but in the past year of my switch to Linux, it has literally never happened once. I downloaded a new, open-source driver for my drawing tablet because it had some extra features that I wanted, but even it worked out of the box. I’ve never experienced this incompatibility. Honestly I’ve never even had trouble with software I wanted not being available for my distro.
Am I doing Linux wrong?
Windows doesn’t have this problem.
LOL.
Installers made for Windows don’t need any special TLC;
ROFL!
you double-click them and they work.
OH wait they’re serious?!
Once they’re installed, they work. If you need to install a driver, it works. You open a document in Office, it works.
Sure, if you don’t run into a permissions issue. And if the system registry doesn’t get corrupted. And if you’re not on an ARM machine. And if your TPM is the right version. And if you’re on the right subversion of Windows. And if a previous install didn’t leave some remnant of itself behind. And if you don’t want to do anything with an Apple device at all. And if sometimes you have the right fonts installed?
Honestly, I think I’ve had fewer problems installing Linux applications than Windows applications, but I can’t attest to that. I think I can be pretty confident in saying that they’re mostly equivalent. Both of them are pretty mature platforms with fairly minimal hiccups, in my experience.
And if something doesn’t work, we can yell at Microsoft until they publish a fix that makes it work again.
That’s a weird way of spelling “until they ignore it for six months and then lock the support thread for inactivity.”
Microsoft has gotten us into a state where we don’t need to think, tinker, or troubleshoot our software. We just double-click the icon and wait for it to “just work.” If it doesn’t, it’s someone else’s issue to solve, and we flood social media and support emails until the issue is resolved.
Here I have to agree with the article, because whatever the reality of installing applications on Windows, this is the fiction they’ve sold us. Apple, too. All operating systems have troubles, and all vendors try to downplay them and fix the stuff that causes problems for most of their users. Linux is just honest about the fact that they can’t make everything a perfectly smooth experience for everyone.
hey LibreOffice when are you gonna make the keyboard shortcuts in LibreOffice Calc match the keyboard shortcuts in Microsoft Excel?
Probably never
There are people for whom this is news? Cheesus chroist
