[wellylug] FW: Building Bridges to community

[Tony Booth]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Rob Giltrap [mailto:rob at ubietygroup.com]
> Sent: Friday, 7 February 2003 18:10
> To: wellylug at yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Re: [wellylug] FW: Building Bridges to community
> 
> 
> This provides a completely different angle in which to get OpenOffice
> adoption. The problem with OpenOffice adoption is not funtional, but
> purely that no-one wants to go away from the 'standard' file format of
> MS. Imagine showing the value proposition to the unions.
> 

Agree with the second point Rob -- people like the 'standard' format, even
though it is screwed up.  Don't agree with the first though -- I've used
both office suites, and shifting from MS to OOO would break functionality
for many corporate and small-business users.  Examples: VBA modules offer
more built-in features than StarBasic and porting would be extremely
difficult without loss of features or paying a Wizard coder to program it
using the OOO API; Microsoft Excel charts offer more features and easier
editing than OOO charts; Microsoft Excel inter-workbook links sometimes
don't work properly when imported into OOO, especially atop Linux (these are
all features you would find used somewhere in most government departments
and any decent sized company). Also, OOO on Linux is helluva slow on my
Celeron P433 and not that stable compared to Office 97 on Win 95.

Could I stop using MS Office and switch to OOO tomorrow?  Yes, but it would
make me less productive because of the lack of features and polish.  Save
100s on software?  Yes, at a greater cost in revenue though -- the average
NZ employee brings in $100k+ a year for their bosses, so productivity is
precious.  I'm not saying I like this state of affairs, but if you are going
to present a lobbying case, you should at least be aware of the reality.
OOO is fine for people who want to 'just write a letter' or 'just balance my
chequebook', but business power-users with an existing base of code and
documents are going to face some problems.  

OOO has all sorts of other advantages -- open source (no lock-in), open and
sensible document format, near-compatibility with MS Word and reasonable
compatibility with MS Excel, platform neutral.  Publicising those is good.
Giving existing Office users an easy way to shift apps and docs to OOO --
without having to do without some functions, or upgrade their hardware --
will do far more to win the business market though.  Kinda highlights the
point that making the alternative software good is a better use of energy
than lobbying for or against any particular product/company/movement.

Oh, and step one would be to get the unions using non-MS software on the
desktop themselves!  I can think of at least one big one that was an
MS-exclusive shop the last time I checked (okay, a couple of years back,
might have changed now etc. etc. but I doubt it).

Cheers
Tony 
(Once upon a time OOO user, till the sluggishness and bugs drove me mad)
(Now use Word and Excel at work, AbiWord and Vim at home)

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