Mayor of Munich: "EU laptops should have LibreOffice or OpenOffice"

http://joinup.ec.europa.eu/news/mayor-munich-eu-laptops-should-have-libreoffice-or-openoffice

by Tsiolkovsky • 15 years ago

72 53 15 years ago

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Derbasti3• 15 years ago

You know, I don't get that.

I can see how the feature set of OpenOffice or LibreOffice would be sufficient for just about anyone. However, I strongly feel that both Microsoft Office and Apple iWork do offer some real benefits in terms of usability over (Libre|Open)Office.

Seriously, I tried this for real: My mom got a new computer. It was a Mac. We installed OpenOffice, then NeoOffice, then LibreOffice for her. Over the course of several months she never got the hang of it. She was always asking how to do stuff and could never figure out how to do simple things.

Then we installed iWork and she got along fine. There is this inspector thing, and if you want to do something, you will probably find it in there. She was happy with that and even discovered some features on her own.

Later we installed Microsoft Office for Mac for her (for *.doc compatibility reasons). Again, she got along fine. There is that ribbon/palette thing, and if you want to do something, you will probably find it in there. She was happy with that and even discovered some features on her own.

I mean, I very much hope that a wider adoption of (Open|Libre)Office with European Officials would make the European Union invest some money in porting (Open|Libre)Office into the 21 century. But until they do, I can not recommend it to anyone with a straight face.

tehayj• 15 years ago

The majority of government computers in Munich already run on Linux and they run well. It does work for them. Munich rocks by the way.

jimbobimbo4• 15 years ago

And if anyone's interested - "majority" is ~65%* in _eight_ years into the project:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux

* 9000 of 14000 as of December 2011. However, "LiMux is a project by the city council of Munich to migrate their software systems, including 14,000", so, probably the total count is actually more than 14000, which makes the percentage even less.

HotKFreshSwag• 15 years ago

I would imagine that employees would get training for the software they use so the benefits of the software being easier to learn on your own isn't an issue for government workers or really any place where they train their employees.

Duff3• 15 years ago

The Mayor of Munich didn't talk about the feature set available to public employees.

He did talk about making "public knowledge accessible in the future". Public institutions have a moral and legal obligation to preserve certain items for posterity.

The problem with a proprietary application like iWork is that it uses a closed file format that may or may not stand the test of time. I've worked with archivists in government institutions, and they are already struggling to preserve digital documents produced as late as the 1980s.

As a citizen, I have the ability to learn from the primary sources that are hundreds of years old. One of my college friends spent a semester examining the papers of colonial New York State governors and looking at maps and treaties produced with Indian nations.

Unfortunately, the chances are very high that our children will not be able to read many of the important papers produced from the 1980's through today. How accessible will WordStar documents be in 2060? Or Excel XP spreadsheets in 2100?

There are different approaches to improving the current situation. The State of Washington chose to convert everything from native format to TIFF or PDF images. South Africa and cities like Munich are choosing to mandate the use of free and open native formats. There are ups and downs to each approach.

pyre• 15 years ago

But the free market says that the private sector will save us!

kiloaper• 15 years ago

I completely agree. I have documents I wrote in the late 1990s I can no longer open easily. As an example of how quickly technology can change this is a perfect example of digital obsolence (storage medium, not software): https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/BBC_Domesday_...

CWuestefeld• 15 years ago

He did talk about making "public knowledge accessible in the future".

Yes, but the conclusion does not follow from this goal.

There's no reason that an open format will be readable in the future. If I define some document format, build an application that reads/writes it, and publish it to github with GPL licensing, then in all likelihood it will be forgotten completely in a decade. My inability to gain users will ensure that it withers.

On the other hand, even if the .DOC and .XLS files made by Microsoft are proprietary, they've been reverse-engineered and are well-understood; the .DOCX and .XLSX file formats are even documented. Because they're so universally used, out of necessity, someone in the future will be thinking about how to read those old files.

So being open might make it more likely that something obscure will be readable in the future. But I don't think it's nearly so strong a likelihood as what demand from an army of users of proprietary software will lead to.

sandGorgon• 15 years ago

There's a bigger problem than usability - I say this because each of the places that adopts any kind of workplace software usually has IT/helpdesks/consultants to handhold this kind of stuff.

The biggest problem is really the spreadsheet - people can live with even Google Docs for documents and even presentations. But Excel has managed to be irreplaceable.

When billion dollar termsheets (and all its macros) come bundled in the XLS format, there is no way we can get away with anything less than 100% Excel compatibility. I speak of this from experience in a failed attempt to port an accounting office to Linux - Excel was the only roadblock ... and I tried everything including Softmaker.

I am willing to wager real money that if LibreOffice Calc becomes 100% compatible with XLS 2000 and XLSX formats, we would see the adoption of Linux just explode. Word and Powerpoint dont matter as much - web based offerings like Prezi are increasingly compelling alternatives.

dhs• 15 years ago

Let me offer a counterpoint: I started out with Word 3.0 for DOS, in 1987. From there, I went through lots of office software for PC, Mac, and Atari. A good ten years ago, I installed OpenOffice, which I have been using ever since. I never had any .doc compatibility problems.

Today, I'm working for a small retail company in Madrid, Spain: Ten people, running Windows, Linux, and Mac OS. All of us are using OpenOffice. It already was that way when I came here a year ago. Until now, I heard nobody even mentioning our office software. And these people are not "computer geeks" by any measure; we sell clothes.

I guess it is the reliance on Excel macros, which are not compatible with OpenOffice Calc, that prevents lots of companies from switching. If you don't depend on any of those, I honestly see no advantages in using MS Office.

Derbasti3• 15 years ago

I can only tell you that my mom regularly had issues with people sending her .doc files, which she edited in OpenOffice and they came back somewhat garbled.

jamesbritt• 15 years ago

I wish I had your good fortune. I do almost all my development on Linux, and clients would routinely send me Word documents. Most of the time OOo was good enough for reading the content, but formatting was always in some way wonky. I could have lived with that except there was always the occasional document with table formatting OOo could not handle. In these cases the file was essentially unreadable.

I would often fire up Windows, load the office docs I had been sent, and save them out as PDFs so that I could at least have reliably readable files on my development machine.

I had zero confidence that OOo could correctly generate any complex document that would render identically in Office so I either sent clients PDF files created in OOo or authored the documents in Office on Windows. In fact, I much prefer using Word for anything moderately complex simply because document manipulation is just so much easier. (E.g. resizing all text in a document.)

I've seen a number of testimonials from people saying OOo has worked out perfectly fine for them, and I've no doubt it's true for their circumstances. But it does not have the degree of Office interchangeability needed to make it a complete stand-in when you have to exchange Office docs that go beyond simple formatting.

melling3• 15 years ago

I gave up on the project after the split. Why can't there be a concerted effort behind OpenOffice or LibreOffice? Two half-baked open source projects don't equal one good commercial project. I'd rather give my money to Apple and hope that they eventually build a better product.

Free is great, but I'll take reasonably priced quality commercial software. That reminds me, it's time to upgrade to IntelliJ 11.

nextparadigms• 15 years ago

Unless there's really a huge difference in productivity between each other, I don't think think it's worth paying tens or even hundreds of dollars for each and every license when you're using taxpayer money.

It's probably why they've chosen Linux over Windows, and I assume the security/lack of viruses has something to do with it, too. Buying Macs for the Government because they're pretty would make even less sense.

melling3• 15 years ago

The cost difference should only be less than the productivity gain, right? Developers get paid well, so the $1/day that IntelliJ costs, for example, can easily be justified.

Where the cut-off is, we could debate. However, I like to lavish myself with the best tools. Sometimes, they're free (e.g. emacs), sometimes they cost money.

You're most precious asset is time, not money.

rbanffy8• 15 years ago

There is no split. LibreOffice is clearly the successor and OpenOffice is clearly the legacy project. Oracle abandoned it long before donating it to the Apache Foundation.

melling3• 15 years ago

So there is no redundant effort being donee at Apache? No wasted effort?

loftsy• 15 years ago

Surely he/she should have said "German laptops should have LibreOffice or OpenOffice". It seems built into the German mindset that policy should be enforced at a federal level.

Whilst I agree with a more integrated monetary policy in the Eurozone the continual assimilation of power in Brussels is the wrong way for Europe to go.

sgift• 15 years ago

If you've taken the time to actually read the article you would've noticed that he talks about laptops used by EU officials not all laptops in Europe. This aside: Yes, laptops of german officials should use LibreOffice/OpenOffice too.

lispm• 15 years ago

Germany is a federal republic and some politics are centralized and others not. Compared to some other countries in, say, Europe, Germany is pretty decentralized. That the city Munich experiments with Linux is exactly because of this.

This has nothing to do with assimilation of power in Brussels, but getting rid of Microsoft office and get more public money spend on 'free' and or 'open source' software.

It is our money which keeps cities, states, countries and the EU budgets going.

Craiggybear2• 15 years ago

He's right. All computers should come with a fully functional word processor and spreadsheet and these should be free.

This is simply common-sense. Let Microsoft compete for a change.

protomyth3• 15 years ago

If Microsoft gave Office away with Windows there would be a bit of litigation showing up at their door.

Craiggybear2• 15 years ago

Simply suggesting if Microsoft want to sell Office they should make it an attractive proposition to part with cash.

Derbasti3• 15 years ago

To be fair, WordPad (Windows) and TextEdit (Mac) do come bundled with the OS and are perfectly usable as word processors (RTF style).

I'm not saying that they approach the feature set of MS Office, OpenOffice, LibreOffice or iWork, but for writing a letter or two they are perfectly reasonable.

jpkeisala• 15 years ago

I am a bit sceptic if LibreOffice or OpenOffice would be well received. There has been companies who have tried it but in the end returned back to MS Office. I think tools like Google Docs have brighter further.

However, As a tax payer. I would love to hear € savings on licenses over next 10 years if they would do it.

protomyth3• 15 years ago

Beware that you actually see the savings and someone else isn't getting the money for "consulting" or "premium training". I have seen a few budgets that saved money on the software only to get hammered on the back-end.

// this is really, really common with Point-of-Sale solutions

hippich• 15 years ago

With open source software money usually spent on adaptation. And this adaptation often done by local companies. So in this particular case instead of paying microsoft and usa goverment, munich government will pay local german company of trainers who will explain how to use particular open source software. Another local company will develop custom integration with whatever CRM government have and hopefuly part of this code either as patches or modules will be contributed back to community.

I totally sure their decision is right in long term.

babarock• 15 years ago

More important than the software suite they use, I wish they would impose the use of open formats. After that, they (and generations of people to come) can use which ever reader software they like.

rbanffy8• 15 years ago

This seems the cheapest way to ensure the use of open formats.

Mayor of Munich: "EU laptops should have LibreOffice or OpenOffice"

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