German city says OpenOffice shortcomings are forcing it back to Microsoft

More at http://www.arnnet.com.au/article/44...ffice_shortcomings_forcing_it_back_microsoft/

 

As well as using the present up-to-date OO I have a portable OpenOffice 3.2.1 (PortableApps) version. They both work fine for me. Although I only use Writer & Impress.

 

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/libreoffice-vs-microsoft-office.html

 

"Since Oracle is despised in the open-source community, and most of the time for a good reason, OpenOffice stopped being a program of choice for people who wanted a free office suite ... " ~ op cit

Until now ... Apache OpenOffice

 

No surprise there.

 

I thought that OO was originally developed in Germany anyway. Which, if true, is a tad ironic.

 

True:

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

http://www.crn.com/news/channel-programs/18804525/sun-microsystems-buys-star-division.htm

 

The Open Document Business Alliance and other open source groups have responded by pointing out that other German cities had adopted OpenOffice without any of these problems:

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meld...ch-gegen-Migration-auf-MS-Office-1751399.html

https://freiburg.more-rubin1.de/anlagen.php?anz=be&vid=2700609100235&sid=2011-GR-90&status=1

 

Cheers Pinga, I was trying to remember 'Star Office'.

 

Its a very superficial report, does not cover any useful details, very little fact.

Could they work around any of the issues ?
Did they try and fix them by upgrading, or even paying someone to write fixes ?
Would these of been better/worse value options ?

To simply state we had problems with X so buying Y is essential, does hint a coercion into buying MS Office new MS office licenses (what were the requirements ?)
Not even a mention of how the New MS Office would be better than what they already have, for example are there going to be any compatibility issues with documents generated in Office 2000 being used in Office 2010 (we are having huge problems with ODBC in office 2007/2010 and an old access database at the moment). What about costs of training/support of the updated Office 2010 interface (compared to OO/Office 2000 there was no mention of usability problems between products).

 

What about LibreOffice?
Is it problematic?

 

Well, in my experience, LibO has more bugs than a rainforest.

 

I don't know about bugs, but I found that quite often docs created in Word with elaborate formatting didn't load and display or print properly in OO or LO. So for that reason, I stick with MS Office because I get docs created in Word from business sources, etc...

 

Update: They're doing it.

http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Freiburg-to-switch-back-to-MS-Office-1753898.html

 

During the world economic crisis, Budgets are very tight...
Several German and French authorities decided to use OpenOffice and Linux.
Freeware has been particularly useful, because money saved is spent elsewhere...
With problems coming up, I don't know how many will still use OpenOffice and Linux...

 

I've noticed that as well. Although for what I need OO for it isn't such a huge problem (thankfully).

 

The Portuguese government has published a listing of open standards to be used within the country's public bodies and has decided on ODF (Open Document Format) as the sole editable document format according to a report from the Portugese Open Source Business Association.

http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Portuguese-government-goes-ODF-only-1753597.html

 

I find it strange that Freiburg has had problems where there is no hint of problems with Munich migrating to Libre Office (and Linux).

I wonder how much of it is down to different attitudes to technology and approach to overcoming problems than the specific weaknesses of the technology used ?

 

Yes, something is fishy here.

 

ot posts removed

 

I use LibreOffice, almost the same as OpenOffice (LibreOffice is better in my opinion). I'm the secretary for an organization I belong to. I get MS Office documents (Word, Excel, Power Point) all the time from headquarters. I edit or fill in a form and return it, they have no idea I use LibreOffice. Of course I am keeping with the MS Office file types.

I see this quite to opposite of some posters here. I see MS Office as the "buggy" product. Internally I like to stick to ODF because there a many features that do not translate well in to MS Office.

A lot ff the Writer / Word formating problems are user generated. I still find it incredible how many folks do not know how to use tabs or how to make a decent form. Making a document way to complex, or not properly utilizing the features. More of a play around till I get what I want then save it.

Frequently those documents do not play well even with the original program. As an example I recently received a "docx" document single page form. It loaded in to Writer no problem, I filled in the form and saved it. Since most of the fill-in information was static I used the saved form as the model for the next three I need to complete. On opening I noticed that some graphic lines that were part of the form had increased in size knocking the tail end of the form of the page. Since I also have MS Office 2010, I decided to do this from windows. The exact same behavior occurs in Word. So who's as fault here? I bet most would blame LibreOffice. I blame the creator of that form.

With Calc / Excel, I have run in to a few date formulas that don't work in Excel. Sometimes an Excel spreadsheet with cell lines will open with some lines larger than the rest. So far nothing has been a show stopper.

 

I normally save my OpenOffice documents in an MS format anyway, unless I specifically know that the file will never be used on MS Word or Powerpoint. I really have very few problems. I used LibO for several months, but it was buggy (back then, I assume they've fixed it now) what do you reckon are its specific advantages over OO? Especially now that Apache are distributing OO. I really need a word processor for work & I prefer either over MS Office. Apparently, due to the file paths, it isn't a good idea to have both LibO & OO installed on the same machine.

 

IMHO Libre Office is far better maintained and developed (from a technical view point, not feature view point), more effort into removing obsolete code (over 5000 unused methods existed when forked, now down to less than 2000), more/better tests, more developer contributions in Libre Office. Less dependencies on Java, merged the Go-oo project (and the enhancements it brought to Open Office) into Libre Office.

More generally IMHO Libre Office has better community support, and more rapid releases/roll out of new features/fixes.

 

OK, I'm keeping an eye on LibO. I really do need a reliable office suite (well, Impress/Powerpoint & Word/Writer) for work, but so far LibO has proved too buggy for me. I've been using OO for over four years & have come to rely on it.

 

I basically flew the coup when Oracle grabbed OpenOffice, I went with LibreOffice. I see no compelling reason to switch back. It will be interesting to see how things go. I tend to agree with Nick Rhodes assessment. Right now I'd say LibreOffice has the advantage. One project I am keeping an eye on is Calligra (formally KOffice)' which handles MS documents too; however, you can only save to OpenDocument formats. A major draw back in my case. Calegra has a lot of things going for it otherwise. At least that is my opinion.