this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2024
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I've been using LibreOffice for a number of years without issue. Literally takes care of all my word processing and spreadsheet needs. I don't miss MS Office at all, which I use daily at work.
Why not use LO at work?
Because most employees can't just install random software on their machines and because compatibility between Libre Office and Microsoft Office is nowhere near perfect. You don't want to send your boss a file that ends up looking mangled on their screen.
Send them a PDF... unless explicitly required otherwise.
Company computing assets are managed. One normally doesn't get to override IT policy without business justification.
Its not hard to justify giving everyone free cross-platform office suite at work lol
It is when your business relies on Microsoft services which are inherently incompatible with LO
That's a huge bill for a business, and businesses are always looking to cut expenses. Again, its an easy sell
What happens when you need to collaborate with other businesses who use O365? The business would also have to spend time updating any legacy documents, templates, spreadsheets and so on. Then you have the IT teams, who will need extensive training so that they can field the inevitable flurry of support tickets and calls. And that's not getting into the support side of things - who do I go to if something breaks in LibreOffice?
I am an advocate for OSS, but there is a bigger picture here, and unfortunately it's not always as simple as just switching over. I wish it was, believe me!
Tell the other business to use LO. Shouldn't be an issue because its free and runs on every platform.
Y'know, this conversation doesn't seem to be going anywhere, so I will leave it here: if it's such an easy sell, every business in the world would have done it by now.
It became the default in every business I ever worked at. If that's not the case where you are, perhaps you should look into a mirror and ask why?
If that's your view of it, then you truly do not understand how businesses operate (especially larger companies). "Hey this is free, let's switch to this!" isn't a pitch. There are so many factors to consider: service, support, contracts, deployment, on and on and on. It would be great if every business adopted OSS, but they're not going to. And that's not a failure of one employee to convince a Fortune 500 company, for example, that LO would be a cost-saving measure.
Call Microsoft about a bug and tell me how well their support works for you. Theres zero benefits to going with MS and a thousand for going with libre
The point is that those "thousand" benefits for LO do not matter. That's simply not how businesses run. It would be great if it were, but it isn't. And your experience as an individual user with MS support is completely irrelevant with regard to business support.
Lol
Pretty well, actually.
I reported a SharePoint bug to Microsoft yesterday afternoon, and it was fixed by the time I logged in this morning.
Microsoft has some of the best technical support I've ever dealt with TBH. Meanwhile with LibreOffice your technical support is mostly forum diving yourself. If you have a big, competent, it department, maybe that's a feasible thing, but I've never worked anywhere with that kind of capacity
No, you can pay for support if you want. And you'll have transparent ticketing systems
Who from?
Not when you're already on an annual contract with Microsoft and the majority of your company's employees are nontechnical
Yes. We're talking about Libre Office here. Its a very mature and accessible app. Not something that requires technical knowledge.
And, yes, if you're on an annual contract then its even easier to convince management to cancel it for all users by default (with some exceptions as needed). Lots of money to be saved.