[vox] Reasons you might not want to use OpenOffice

[Will Marshall]

On Monday, October 25, 2010 12:28:56 pm Joseph Arruda wrote:
> If the sole selling point is cost, then you've 'lost' the functional
> argument.  I figured that out a dozen years ago, and that has not changed
> since.

I find I get more people using Linux, OO, etc.  when they're constantly griping 
about this or that (about Windows especially), and they see how everything 
"just works" on my Kubuntu laptop.  That selling point works for Apple, and it 
also works for Linux, and doesn't require changing hardware/hackintoshing.
They care more about user experience than anything else.  That Office 2007 
ribbon alone helped me convert a couple dozen people to OO, even if they're 
still on Win/OS X

And IME, most people who aren't die-hard FOSS advocates don't care about the 
freedom to inspect/alter code.  I use mostly OSS, but even with Adobe's 
suckage, there's almost nothing that will pull me away from Photoshop and 
Illustrator (as well as a few other proprietary apps).  
> 
> The trick is discerning whether what the person wants to do is achievable
> with FOSS; if so, you have a potential convert.  If not, then you have a
> bug/feature to file with whatever project/OS you want to promote, and do
> some impromptu product management to help the cause along.
> 
Sadly, there seems to always be one thing that pushes people back to 
Win/Apple.  A former cow-orker of mine went from knowing nothing about 
computers to building her own boxes and becoming a serious linux-head, even 
setting up home servers.  But she went back to Win 7 on her desktop, just she 
can't stream Netflix on her *buntu box.  I have similar issues.  I actually 
*prefer* Linux, but I spend most of my time in OS X, cursing all the while
because of things like this.  

Okay, that's all tl;dr for my first post to this list, but I just wanted to 
offer the perspective of a fence-sitter.  I just think that FOSS at this point 
is probably better served by trying to get commercial desktop software vendors 
to make Linux ports.  

Regards,
Will

--
"Gee, sure would be nice if we had some grenades right now, don'tcha 
think?!" -- Serenity
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