LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365 • Hacker News Board

Re: LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365

#121

Post by davidgerard » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 9:05 PM UTC

downtide wrote: post #15

ucaetano wrote: post #2

It's a bit sad to see LibreOffice struggling to maintain relevance when the market it tried to address suddenly became [nearly nonexistent] irrelevant. It reminds me of all those hundreds of early 20th century battleships that suddenly became completely irrelevant when the Dreadnought came by. [Edit: replaced nearly nonexistent with irrelevant to make my point clearer]

Which market are you referring to? I still crave for a really nice word processor, spreadsheet, and easy database app (in the style of Access). I've always found *Office a bit rough around the edges. My partner recently brought home an iPad from work. Word failed to play well with other (MS Word) Office documents, so file exchange and formats are still a complete pain in the neck. I will be using plain text until som…

We use Google Docs at work.

The word processor and spreadsheet are rudimentary and the OOXML compatibility is terrible.

My favourite new feature in LibreOffice is the Google Drive integration (a first-class feature in LO 5.1). Because sometimes I need a proper bloody word processor or to read an OOXML doc someone's sent me.

LO Online will be proper LO at the back end, so will be that word processor etc.

Re: LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365

#122

Post by chris_wot » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 9:07 PM UTC

pidg wrote: post #16

DiabloD3 wrote: post #12

To those claiming that Office 365 somehow promotes web apps as your real apps... that isn't entirely true. My company (the one I started, hi) uses Office 365, and all three of us use Office 365's full office suite, the actual real desktop app one. What we use Office 365's cloud stuff for is their Exchange cluster (oh God, so delicious), and for OneDrive for Business (ie, what used to be Sharepoint). Browsers just are…

+1 for Office 365. I wasn't convinced until I actually started working at a company that uses it properly. The collaboration features in the native desktop apps work beautifully. Not having to endure emailed-round documents with multiple competing versions like "Report-Dec2015 Draft v5(FP,PL,KM) (2).doc" is worth the price of entry alone. I feel sorry for those like the UK government who've been successfully lobbied…

You are... uninformed. It's not a proprietary fork, it's all in a public git repo on TDF servers.

I feel sorry you are so ignorant.

Re: LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365

#123

Post by chris_wot » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 9:14 PM UTC

douche wrote: post #83

dorfsmay wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Skype using SIP? I thought they were using their own proprietary protocol?

That's the confusion... Consumer Skype is still, to my knowledge, what it has always been. However, Lync has been rebranded as Skype for Business. It's still Lync, and uses all of the same SIP-based protocols that it always has, since it was called Office Communicator. I still haven't quite figured how they are going to mash the two together, or if they actually are going to. It is confusing having two completely dif…

It honestly makes no sense whatsoever. It caused massive confusion in the business I last worked in as users constantly opened Skype, and not Skype for Business.

Re: LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365

#124

Post by scholia » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 10:22 PM UTC

workitout wrote: post #60

scholia wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true. However, the cloud is part of Office 365's ecosystem play. You get the full-strength Office programs installed locally (Windows and Mac), plus the ability to work in the cloud, plus the mobile apps for Windows, iOS and Android. Even if "99% of office workers in enterprise/businesses/governments etc" do their work on the desktop, there's still some appeal to being able to get what you want where you want…

>> there's still some appeal to being able to get what you want where you want it That implies most companies are willing to trust their business secrets to the cloud. That isn't what I see happening, not in medium sized business or enterprises.

Agreed, up to a point. But a lot of companies are already using hosted email, and a lot have signed up for Office 365 and/or Google Docs....

https://cloud.google.com/customers/ https://products.office.com/en-us/business/office-365-custom...

Quite a lot use salesforce.com and other services. It isn't the majority, but the cloud business is big and it's growing fast.

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2974016/enterprise-appl...

Re: LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365

#125

Post by scholia » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 10:31 PM UTC

downtide wrote: post #47

scholia wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I will be using plain text until something better comes along. Didn't RTF coma along a couple of decades ago?

I should rephrase that then. The plain text is very portable. And easier to edit and read than RTF. That's not to say that there aren't good RTF editors out there. Even HTML is more readable.

Depends what you want to do. RTF can handle the presentation needs of most simple documents, and most word processors can edit RTF files, including WordPad and TextEdit. It's also very easy to convert RTF to plain text.....

Re: LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365

#126

Post by scholia » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 10:59 PM UTC

SwellJoe wrote: post #94

coldtea wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oh yeah, there will always be a place. But that's not what really matters, but the size of that place. Cloud-based productivity systems can replace native apps for over 90% of all corporate functions (marketing, HR, sales, etc.). Or that's what those that built them think. Then they found out performance and latency make it a non starter, and those "10% of features" that people use from Word, Powerpoint etc, are no…

I haven't used a desktop document or spreadsheet in years. The argument that a couple of missing features, or ones that are somewhat sluggish over a bad network connection, will prevent widespread adoption of cloud-based products is completely ignoring the huge benefits of cloud-based systems. In short: Calling Google docs a "non-starter" seems like a difficult position to defend. It's already in use by millions of p…

> Sure, there are plenty of situations where that doesn't work, but as the "web as a platform" advances, and as office products on the web advance, the reasons for sticking with installed apps will continue to decline.

This is true, but it doesn't have to be one or the other. Office 365 lets you have full-strength desktop programs as well as web apps and smartphone apps, at one low price.

This may be why Office 365 seems to be growing faster than Google Docs, and why it has overtaken it, according to one survey. (1)

Of course, there are other considerations. First, most real businesses need something much more powerful than today's web apps. Second, Microsoft Office is a programmable platform with a huge range of third-party add-ons. Third, a lot of big companies have two decades of Office programming and Office documents. Even if they really want to move everything to the cloud, they're going to run hybrid and in-house cloud systems for a long time....

(1) http://www.computerworld.com/article/2974016/enterprise-appl...

Re: LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365

#127

Post by unixhero » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 11:02 PM UTC

lentil_soup wrote: post #104

function_seven wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The preferred nomenclature is developing countries. This term has always reeked of over-euphamism to me. I'm not arguing that "third-world" is any better, but what do I call countries that aren't developing? Right now, "developing countries" is used both to refer to countries that are actually developing (Kenya, for example) and as a polite way of saying "poor countries" (e.g. Somalia). Seems like we should have a…

also, "developing countries" tries to establish an absolute rank and a division between countries. What are you taking into account when you say "developed", money? health? happiness? depending on what you use you'll get way different groups of countries

I would be happy to deep dive on this one, as I several of my 1000-level poltical science courses covered what we think of and how we classify and rank countries.

The most basic thought is to begin at the lowest common denominator. What is it that all countries will agree to when placed into comparison. That is the United Nations Human Development Index (HDI). It contains Life expectancy at birth. Education index: Mean years of schooling and Expected years of schooling. A decent standard of living: GNI per capita (PPP US$).

Now from here you could rank GROSS DOMESTIC HAPPINESS, but that is a garbage index if you ask me as a political scientist and a champion of the free world. The top grossing country on that list is a country that imprisons and tortures.

But I gather it makes sense to triangulate the facts from the CIA World Factbook, Heritage Foundation Freedom Index which covers press freedom and the extent of freedom of speech, and a sprinkle of transparency thus the Corruptions Perception Index from Transparency International. Now whether you're east thinking or west thinking you might also want to include another sprinkle of Amnesty International and quantify or qualitatively add its reportings to the mix.

What you will find that the initial HDI gives a pretty darn clear and precise estimate of where you would want to live and where in the world could be deemed as "developing" as in not yet reached the top-end of the list.

This is a scientific endavour, and it is not meant to hurt anybody's feelings.

Also: You can downvote me or upvote me as much as you want. This is how the real world approached this problem.

Re: LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365

#128

Post by bkjelden » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 11:13 PM UTC

DiabloD3 wrote: post #12

To those claiming that Office 365 somehow promotes web apps as your real apps... that isn't entirely true. My company (the one I started, hi) uses Office 365, and all three of us use Office 365's full office suite, the actual real desktop app one. What we use Office 365's cloud stuff for is their Exchange cluster (oh God, so delicious), and for OneDrive for Business (ie, what used to be Sharepoint). Browsers just are…

If you're running Windows 10 I would suggest checking out the Office "mobile" apps in the Windows Store. They remind me of the clean simplicity of google doc's webapps quite a bit.

Re: LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365

#129

Post by cwyers » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 11:31 PM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #117

throwawaykf05 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The standard should be seeking the best solution to a problem, not the one best aligned with any particular party's best interests. 1. That is a rather idealistic view of the world. Standards are typically set by committees comprised of multiple parties, and all entities have an agenda. Sometimes its self-interest, sometimes it's just something like "all things being equal, we prefer doing things this way", but it…

> 1. That is a rather idealistic view of the world. Standards are typically set by committees comprised of multiple parties, and all entities have an agenda. Sometimes its self-interest, sometimes it's just something like "all things being equal, we prefer doing things this way", but it undoubtedly influences the outcome. Certainly; however, making any such change needs to come with arguments that convince others and…

The ODF standard was based off the StarOffice file format. If anyone involved wanted Microsoft to participate, that seems like a rather poor starting point.

Re: LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365

#130

Post by hunvreus » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 11:48 PM UTC

I quit using Microsoft Office over a decade ago. The last few years, I relied on LibreOffice but couldn't stand the regular crashes, bugs and overall frustrating user experience.

I gave Google Docs another go and I must say I was surprised at how much better it was from 3 or 4 years ago. It was good enough for me to consider using Google Drive; me and my team are now using it for everything and couldn't be happier. We actually ditched Dropbox in the process.

Box, Dropbox, Microsoft and other players in this segment of enterprise productivity software should be worried. I'm happy to pay for it and wouldn't run a company without it.

I think a LibreOffice SaaS would have a hard time competing on features with Google Docs, let alone price.