Comments on: LibreOffice: An Idea Whose Time Has Come (and Gone)

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 15:11:03 +0000

What really surprises me is that Matt obviously uses Mac OS X, when he’s working for Canonical (used to, anyway). In other posts he also makes it clear.

Shouldn’t the COO of Canonical use Ubuntu? It’s like if Ford’s COO drove a Toyota.

By: DrAcid

DrAcid — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 23:14:51 +0000

@Marco:
Agreed. I’ve been using Ubuntu for quite a several months now.
I’ve seen some bugs, some problems in the system… Sometimes I would come across some really strange decisions. Some of them were made behind closed doors. Thad made me sad, as those decisions were really BAD. . .
I honestly do not understand why Canonical keeps making these kind of mistakes…
And yeah – the fact that this guy is an executive @ Canonical and instead of working he “texts, IMs and Facebooks”… well – sickens me. I will probably switch to some other distro some time in the future…

P.S.(Matt, You gotta go!)

By: Alexander

Alexander — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 22:55:56 +0000

This entire article, and really the entire “cloud” phenomena, stem completely from a fundamental misunderstanding of computer technology.

There is no cloud.

It is snake oil, plain and simple. There is no cloud; only computers. And on those computers run applications (like web browsers or office suites or video editors). When you edit documents “on the cloud”, you are still using computer programs: as in your web browser, and the server which holds that online office suite. Servers, by the way, are computers — in case you haven’t noticed — and to be a “client application” is only a matter of perspective.

Never-mind the inherent lack of privacy in remote accessed applications (which is a much more accurate term than the marketing-laden “cloud”), the simple fact is that it is a physical necessity that latency over the internet will almost always be greater than when accessing locally stored information. This is less noticeable with editing office documents, but professional image and video editing would be completely impractical via remote accessed applications; the details involved are such that network latency would immediately trump any perceived “benefits” of storing YOUR information on SOMEONE ELSE’S computer. Moreover, many of those same benefits (i.e., safety) are irrelevant, as a much better solution would simply be to use remote backups. Which, by the way, are nothing new.

By: frodowiz

frodowiz — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 23:30:39 +0000

all i hear from the author is microsoft. note to author- the reason it is noteworthy is because those who use linux don’t give a hoot about microsoft. in my world i have a great choice of word processors, spreadsheets and databases but i would like something in a suite.
oracle is known to gut the open source projects it inherets and developers of oo knew that. just like oracle gutted open solaris, they were simply looking for a suite they could add to their own package and the heck with everyone else. hence the move to the Document Foundation. this is big news, not small. think world, not tiny cubicles forced by licensing to keep using the same old crap.

the sun doesn’t rise and set on microsoft.

By: Joao Batista

Joao Batista — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 12:18:58 +0000

Since years we are waiting for a suite with a simplified single editor for office documents.
I hope this is the moment to implement the concept!
Long life to opensource!!!!!

By: Rev

Rev — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 18:10:38 +0000

Have fun handing over all your data to The Cloud. Enjoy doing the data striptease for Facebook and Google. Your choice. Just stop using the word “we” and stick to “I”. Thank you.

By: Aidan Karley

Aidan Karley — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 12:42:01 +0000

Can someone take a baseball bat to the assumptions of these authors. Not all of us live, or work, in an environment where there is connection to the Internet. So we have no choice but to prepare our documents on a stand-alone machine.
Don’t tell us we can use a wireless telephone connection to the ‘Net : firstly it’s a contract violation ; secondly, we’re searched for such equipment and it’s confiscated before we leave the airport ; thirdly, even if we did get any equipment out to the work site, we’d be several hundred kilometres beyond the limit of the last terrestrial wireless network ; and fourthly, since we’re working in areas with an explosive atmosphere present as a normal condition, then rigging up a satellite phone would plausibly kill us and our colleagues.
WTF is this thing about assuming that people will have communications? Very often, you don’t. By design. If there is only communications back to authorised people, then it’s difficult for sensitive data to leak out. (That includes personal phone calls being listened to by your Boss ; not wiretaps – they just sit there in the radio room with you. If you don’t like it, resign and go home.)

By: Rudolf Rassendyll

Rudolf Rassendyll — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 00:48:43 +0000

Sorry old sport, but you see, lots of people are still desktop-centric. We leave the clouds to, well, Aristophanes and other comic authors…. There are good reasons for this, which I doubt you’d get.

By: Afterburne

Afterburne — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 05:21:16 +0000

The portions of this article describing what people use these days is so far from reality from a business perspective it is downright scary. How long would the CIO at a hospital who started moving patient information “to the cloud” keep their job? Not very. The lack of understanding displayed in this article on how 90% (or more) of businesses use software is simply stunning.

I would use OO but honestly, it is simply not compatible enough for most business that communicate with very many outside partners. It just isn’t. I wish that were not true. I gave up trying a long time ago. For home use or small businesses it is just fine though.

By: James A. Ritchie

James A. Ritchie — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 21:11:06 +0000

“We email. We SMS. We Facebook. We IM. Or perhaps we crop photos in iPhoto”

I don’t know who the “we” is in your statement, but while I, and everyone I know, does these things WE also use an office suite. and definitely a word processor, pretty much every last day, and probably will for decades to come.

Evry business I deal with uses an office suite, and a word processor, mor enow than ever before. I think you’re cofusing simple communication with actual business.

Google Apps is nice, Zoho is fine, but both are still a tiny, tiny blip on teh radar screen of bussines, and I see no signs they’re growing. MS Office live, on teh other hand, is making serious inroads into business in my area.

Innovation is usually a very good thing, but too many seem to think that innovation is everything. It isn’t. Millions of people, hundreds of thousands of businesses, still use an office suite as part and parcel, as a key piece of software, and a cheap, open source, usable, friendly office suite is as needed and as necessary today as it ever way, and, as I said, will remain incredibly important for decade sto come.

Don’t confuse the web with business. The web is just another tool most of us use to help support oput business.