Author Topic: Open Office: is it poo?  (Read 15953 times)

Woofage

  • Tofu-eating Wokerati
  • Ain't no hooves on my bike.
Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #75 on: 25 February, 2009, 09:57:39 am »
how not to retain market share

eg Vista.
Pen Pusher

ian

Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #76 on: 25 February, 2009, 09:58:05 am »

Standards have nothing to do with it.


Standards have everything to do with it. With closed formats and APIs not ISO recognised or approved  open formats it is almost impossible to produce an IT product that is compatible with MS software without their approval, which is anti competitive which is why they  were fined last year $1.4 bn by the EU and  are now under further investigation.  Document formats and Web standards are the obvious ones but there are others. The problem for MS is having tried to block competitors unfairly the quality of the opposition needs to be better and is gaining ground, such as Apache, by far the biggest server and  running non MS software, Firefox, now with 20% of the browser market, Open Office is making inroads into Government, Education and SOHO where the realisation that archived documents may well end up being irretrievable because of closed document formats. MS's biggest competitors IBM, Sun and Novell are spending millions developing Open Office for the corporate desktop and then there is the biggest threat of all Google and cloud computing although personally I think they will struggle with that. I am not bashing MS just stating the facts they will probably be a good study case for business schools in the future of how not to retain market share just like the previous giant to fall IBM who thought there was no future for the desktop PC.

So, effectively MS is being anti-competitive by encouraging and handing an advantage to their competition. MS can lever their format through whatever standards body they wish, if the result isn't popular users and organizations will take their business elsewhere. That seems a reasonable outcome, and a good example of how corporate conservatism in one place encourages innovation elsewhere.

ian

Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #77 on: 25 February, 2009, 10:43:13 am »
Linux has either forgotten its less IT literate possible user base or just doesn't bother to correct information about itself.

I'm not an IT phobe, while by no means trained I do look after the computers & network at work.  I'm happy that with the application of google and enough time I can fix pretty much any problem.  Everything runs on either xp or server 2003 and all seems pretty stable.

That said, I love the idea open source and not filling Bill's pockets and use OO and am trying to get in introduced at work.  But as soon as I googled installing Linux I saw lots of references to some sort on command line inputs and long series of switches, which might have retro chic.  And then you have to install all the bits you might need one by one...

Sorry but even the evil Microsoft wins out on being customer friendly compared to Linux.

(P.S. all the Linux evangalists who criticise when people express similar views to this on Linux forums need to realise they are part of the problem, not the solution)

It's terminal that holds Linux back. You're always a moment away from having to type some arcane and cryptic Unix command. It's 2009, we've had a decade plus of GUI, the command line should remain the preserve of the IT weenies.

MS and Apple have realised this. I doubt most users know there is a command prompt or terminal. That's how it should be (and no editing the registry, please).

Ubuntu and a couple of distros seem cognisant of this - but as, ever, what happened when I couldn't get wireless to work on Ubuntu? Directions to reams of terminal fun. And it was terminal.

And while we are at it, can we all kill the concept of file directories, folders, drives etc. Again, it's 2009, let's stop pretending we're still in a 1970 office. There are far better, more flexible, file management schema that don't rely on cryptic terminology and pretending that there's a filing cabinet hidden under my keyboard. I checked and there isn't.

Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #78 on: 25 February, 2009, 11:04:54 am »
I don't think I have ever typed any kind of command line with Ubuntu Desk top since I started using it.

Of course Ubuntu is Debian based. Does that make a difference? I have no idea and can't be bothered to  compare it with the other Linux jobbies!.
"100% PURE FREAKING AWESOME"

Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #79 on: 25 February, 2009, 11:37:50 am »
Standards have everything to do with it. With closed formats and APIs not ISO recognised or approved  open formats it is almost impossible to produce an IT product that is compatible with MS software without their approval, which is anti competitive which is why they  were fined last year $1.4 bn by the EU and  are now under further investigation.

That wasn't about standards. That started with Novell whinging about how they couldn't compete in the server market because MS wouldn't let them use some of their *private* API calls. It then snowballed into this bizarre thing about releasing a version of Windows without Windows Media Player. Hardly tricky to workaround given that you just need to install Winamp, RealPlayer, Quicktime or whatever else you want.

The current EU investigation is about being able to disable IE and for other browsers to be used. Right now it's possible to use whatever browser you like (all you have to do is install it) and this has absolutely no bearing on standards or document formats either.

The anti-competitive thing is interesting. In any other industry doing something well and capturing top market share is considered good. Keeping your trade secrets and other proprietary information to yourself is fundamental to this. Do it too well, or just have little/crap opposition and you're punished.

In software people get annoyed that one company has cornered the market and tell them to spill the beans (which would, eventually, be cause the downfall of the company) or impose punitive fines which serve no purpose except eat into shareholders1 money, halt any fall in software prices and the make boat loads for the EU (what they did with it I have no idea. Anyone?).

Maybe Microsoft failed by just not being just a little bit crap. Maybe they should have let Lotus carry on flogging SmartSuite and let it keep a 10% market share. I dunno.

Document formats and Web standards are the obvious ones but there are others. The problem for MS is having tried to block competitors unfairly the quality of the opposition needs to be better and is gaining ground, such as Apache, by far the biggest server and  running non MS software, Firefox, now with 20% of the browser market,

How exactly are MS "blocking" Apache, Mozilla and the like?

Open Office is making inroads into Government, Education and SOHO where the realisation that archived documents may well end up being irretrievable because of closed document formats. MS's biggest competitors IBM, Sun and Novell are spending millions developing Open Office for the corporate desktop and then there is the biggest threat of all Google and cloud computing although personally I think they will struggle with that.

Word/Excel/etc document formats will never be lost. The majority has already been reverse engineered. I'll bet within 3 years MS will release a free converter from their proprietary format to some open format, but it won't change much because the majority will continue to use the proprietary format, just as they always have. It's much harder to change user behaviour.

Millions is peanuts in this industry. Anyone can bundle up OpenOffice with a few other bits of software to follow the crowd and look like they're doing their part. IBM/Sun/Novell don't really care about OpenOffice because they can't make any real money out of it.

As each day passes MSFT, Novell, Sun and IBM become less competitive with each other. They're all settling for their little (or should I say huge) niches and avoiding conflict where possible. Novell is starting to smell odd. IBM and Sun don't have a viable OS for x86. MSFT isn't interested in Sparc or Power6. Competition means more platforms to support, more software and more problems.

Quote
I am not bashing MS just stating the facts they will probably be a good study case for business schools in the future of how not to retain market share just like the previous giant to fall IBM who thought there was no future for the desktop PC.

IBM got out of the hardware game a while back when it spun off the PC/laptop stuff to Lenovo. It kept various bits (AIX boxes, AS/400 and mainframe stuff). But now the company is a partly a software company, but primarily a services and consulting company.

I'd be hard pushed to describe IBM as "fallen" given that it posted strong 2008 financial results (unlike almost every other sector during the beginning of the recession) and had a total revenue greater than that of Microsoft, Novell, Oracle and Google combined.

1. I'm not an MSFT shareholder but I may have some connection to big blue...

[EDIT] I'm not knocking OpenOffice's efforts at all. I use it, plus some other Open tools like OpenProj. But it is never going to take hold whilst MS is around, and forcing MS out is definitely cutting off the nose to spite the face.
"Yes please" said Squirrel "biscuits are our favourite things."

Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #80 on: 25 February, 2009, 11:55:34 am »
I don't think I have ever typed any kind of command line with Ubuntu Desk top since I started using it.

Of course Ubuntu is Debian based. Does that make a difference?

Not really. They're all GUIs shoved on top of the same core command line based OS.

This does show that Gnome and KDE (the two main competing GUIs) have come along quite a bit in the last few years but I'm guessing that your in a pretty small minority of Linux users that have never had to touch the command line at all.
"Yes please" said Squirrel "biscuits are our favourite things."

inc

Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #81 on: 25 February, 2009, 12:07:28 pm »


The problem for MS is having tried to block competitors unfairly the quality of the opposition needs to be better and is gaining ground, such as Apache, by far the biggest server and  running non MS software, Firefox, now with 20% of the browser market,

How exactly are MS "blocking" Apache, Mozilla and the like?

Could have been better worded , read it again.

Quote
I'd be hard pushed to describe IBM as "fallen"


I was talking historically, well the 90's
After two consecutive years of reporting losses in excess of $1 billion, on January 19, 1993, IBM announced a US$8.10 billion loss for the 1992 financial year, which was then the largest single-year corporate loss in U.S. history.

Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #82 on: 25 February, 2009, 12:37:29 pm »
The problem for MS is having tried to block competitors unfairly the quality of the opposition needs to be better and is gaining ground, such as Apache, by far the biggest server and  running non MS software, Firefox, now with 20% of the browser market,

How exactly are MS "blocking" Apache, Mozilla and the like?

Could have been better worded , read it again.

Fair enough, my mistake. Still, the point still stands. The competitiveness of Apache and Mozilla is not stifled by lack of open standards as the products of these companies work on open standards. This is the "bundling" issue that the EU seems preoccupied with. Browsers and webserver market share has no effect on the ubiquity of Word.

Quote
I'd be hard pushed to describe IBM as "fallen"
I was talking historically, well the 90's
After two consecutive years of reporting losses in excess of $1 billion, on January 19, 1993, IBM announced a US$8.10 billion loss for the 1992 financial year, which was then the largest single-year corporate loss in U.S. history.

1992 wasn't a good year for lots of businesses. Latest results would tend to hint they've turned it around. They made $10.4bn in 2007, up from $9.4bn in 2006 and $7.9bn in 2005.

Who owns the record for the largest single year corporate loss now, and how much was it?

Time Warner managed to lose $54bn in one quarter in 2002. AIG pipped them with $60bn. Again, a single quarter.
"Yes please" said Squirrel "biscuits are our favourite things."

inc

Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #83 on: 25 February, 2009, 01:48:00 pm »

 The competitiveness of Apache and Mozilla is not stifled by lack of open standards as the products of these companies work on open standards. This is the "bundling" issue that the EU seems preoccupied with. Browsers and webserver market share has no effect on the ubiquity of Word.

I agree the issue with the bundled browser seems  odd but I think MS are trying it on with the EU and they are not the US courts who also found their anti-competitive practices illegal but the courts penalties were so watered down by the govenment to be virtually ineffective, who would kill the golden goose.

My personal view is that there should be international open document formats, it makes sense. Then if anyone wants to create an office suite or any application that handles documents they use that standard, including MS knowing it can be read anywhere by any suitable application The fact MS bought out or killed off just about every other WP application years ago was probably a good thing in standardising document formats but times move on and the demand is now for open document formats and MS was late to the party as ODF was already approved and gaining useage. They used open corruption to committee stuff to get the required votes to fast track the incomplete  OOXML standard which has still not been released a year later and may have some patent issues anyway. I think they should have just included ODF into word as another format and kept a low profile but they wanted things their way and got a lot of bad publicity which made more people who were previously unaware or indifferent take notice and see the future problems with storing all their data in closed proprietary formats.

Jaded

  • The Codfather
  • Formerly known as Jaded
Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #84 on: 25 February, 2009, 03:34:33 pm »
With regard to Word's ubiquity: Selling Office at £120ish with a PC but £500ish without?
It is simpler than it looks.

Woofage

  • Tofu-eating Wokerati
  • Ain't no hooves on my bike.
Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #85 on: 25 February, 2009, 03:53:40 pm »
With regard to Word's ubiquity: Selling Office at £120ish with a PC but £500ish without?

Businesses get massive volume discounts. Home users can buy a legal copy (for non-commercial use) for a fraction of this. Business users can legally install on a home computer on the basis that the person cannnot be in 2 places at once. That's what has driven M$O popularity.
Pen Pusher

rae

Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #86 on: 25 February, 2009, 05:56:40 pm »
vi or emacs?

Woofage

  • Tofu-eating Wokerati
  • Ain't no hooves on my bike.
Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #87 on: 25 February, 2009, 06:56:54 pm »
vi or emacs?

Oi, wash your mouth out! ;D
Pen Pusher

Zipperhead

  • The cyclist formerly known as Big Helga
Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #88 on: 25 February, 2009, 09:32:45 pm »
vi, emacs is for perves.

Oh, I am a perve, still vi though.
Won't somebody think of the hamsters!

David Martin

  • Thats Dr Oi You thankyouverymuch
Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #89 on: 25 February, 2009, 09:42:31 pm »
vi or emacs?
pico

..d

(only joking)
"By creating we think. By living we learn" - Patrick Geddes

simonp

Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #90 on: 25 February, 2009, 09:47:29 pm »
Until Ubuntu came along ditching Windows at home only seemed like a hypothetical idea.

Now it's seeming like it's just a matter of time.  I will go Ubuntu when I replace my laptop.  The Windows desktop hardly ever gets used now.

I do use the cli on Ubuntu.  I use it for installing stuff sometimes.  It's generally quicker to type

sudo apt-get install clamav

than it is to navigate a gui to do the same thing.

Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #91 on: 25 February, 2009, 10:00:35 pm »
vi

Emacs is good but it's missing a good text editor.
"Yes please" said Squirrel "biscuits are our favourite things."

chris

  • (aka chris)
Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #92 on: 25 February, 2009, 10:46:07 pm »
vi

Emacs is good but it's missing a good text editor.

vi eh. Haven't used that for ooh 18 years. Does it still have the same old intuative interface?

!wq

Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #93 on: 25 February, 2009, 11:11:55 pm »
vi eh. Haven't used that for ooh 18 years. Does it still have the same old intuative interface?

!wq
Ah, vi - I wonder how much effort it took to make absolutely everything completely counter-intuitive? I hate it.
"A woman on a bicycle has all the world before her where to choose; she can go where she will, no man hindering." The Type-Writer Girl, 1897

simonp

Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #94 on: 26 February, 2009, 12:26:29 am »
xemacs

I find ctrl-x r k and ctrl-x r y particularly useful for editing dual vliw assembly language.

Tempted to write my own mode for it one day.

Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #95 on: 26 February, 2009, 08:06:55 am »
<OT>ctrl-k b then ctrl-k k then ctrl-k v sticks in the mind, even though I haven't used it for years. Hey, we could have a "spot the keystrokes" game...</OT>

Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #96 on: 26 February, 2009, 09:21:14 am »
:%s/^M$//g                           (The ^M means Ctrl+V then Ctrl+M)
:%s/^\s*//
:g//d
"Yes please" said Squirrel "biscuits are our favourite things."

Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #97 on: 26 February, 2009, 04:14:27 pm »
Pardon???
"100% PURE FREAKING AWESOME"