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LibreOffice tells businesses: Get off Community version, you are hurting devs

zdnet.com

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Re: LibreOffice tells businesses: Get off Community version, you are hurting devs

#22
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the hardware paid for by you or the business? If the hardware is paid for by the business then everything on that hardware is essentially business property, unless that business declares otherwise, and thus the business should be providing you with properly licensed software.

No employee hardware is payed for by the business. We all use our own machines, and all three major operating systems are well represented. So in your opinion we're all ethically in the clear?

You're an employee in an enterprise, so I bet the following applies to you: "TDF stressed that LibreOffice 7.1 "Community" is meant for individuals and that means specifically not enterprise organizations."

Re: LibreOffice tells businesses: Get off Community version, you are hurting devs

#23
post #12

Most of my coworkers in the enterprise I work for use LibreOffice, but the business itself has made no such decision. We're all remote workers, and the business provides none of us with locally run software, or any hardware, just lots of SaaS apps. So a spreadsheet file gets passed around, usually from a client, and we're just expected to figure out how to read it. Those of us without MS Office already installed for…

Is the hardware paid for by you or the business? If the hardware is paid for by the business then everything on that hardware is essentially business property, unless that business declares otherwise, and thus the business should be providing you with properly licensed software.

Does it matter who pays for the hardware? I don't think that distinction is made by The Document Foundation.

Re: LibreOffice tells businesses: Get off Community version, you are hurting devs

#24
I looked for ZDNet's source to see where it was getting such tone-deaf and counter-productive messaging. It's from the actual release announcement discussed earlier this week!

https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2021/02/03/libreoff...

Open source sustainability is a real problem, but spending the first seven paragraphs of a release announcement berating a bunch of your users as freeloaders is a really bad look.

Re: LibreOffice tells businesses: Get off Community version, you are hurting devs

#25
post #3

This was bound to happen and I feel sad. I contributed my inputs to the discussion threat that raised the issue of "community" branding. What I said was: keep the current libreoffice as is because that is what it is. Additionally, go and create another "business office" or whatever you care about but leave libreoffice as is. The businesses behind this move, collabora et al see libreoffice as another "market" they nee…

I got off LibreOffice myself to OnlyOffice. Docx support wasnt that impressive. One thing I wanted to ask to you since you seem very experienced with LibreOffice is how much effort and money is spent on ODT and other formats. Why not simply use and improve docx like we do with pdf? Second, Is Libreoffice's goal is to be MS Office's OSS clone? If not why? MS Office is quite good and the potential office apps users are…

i am at -2 votes right now... did i say something bad? i'm still trying to understand what makes HN crowd mad

Re: LibreOffice tells businesses: Get off Community version, you are hurting devs

#27
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the hardware paid for by you or the business? If the hardware is paid for by the business then everything on that hardware is essentially business property, unless that business declares otherwise, and thus the business should be providing you with properly licensed software.

No employee hardware is payed for by the business. We all use our own machines, and all three major operating systems are well represented. So in your opinion we're all ethically in the clear?

Computers are semi cheap but this is still quite crazy to require employees to come with their own tools to be able to work. I'm happy to live in a country were employers have an obligation to provide that.

Re: LibreOffice tells businesses: Get off Community version, you are hurting devs

#29
post #12

Most of my coworkers in the enterprise I work for use LibreOffice, but the business itself has made no such decision. We're all remote workers, and the business provides none of us with locally run software, or any hardware, just lots of SaaS apps. So a spreadsheet file gets passed around, usually from a client, and we're just expected to figure out how to read it. Those of us without MS Office already installed for…

Your employer should be providing the tools for you to do the job, including locally run software. So yes, they should be providing an office suite whether that be Office365/ Libre Office / etc.

It's been a great benefit to have full control over my own hardware and local software. I'd hate to lose it. In particular I'd hate to have to use something other than Linux, but in practice I'd be forced onto an Apple box, which is dominant in the company.

It's much the same as using my own home to work in. If they were required to provide me with an office, and I had to use it, whatever benefit there is would not go to me.

Re: LibreOffice tells businesses: Get off Community version, you are hurting devs

#30
post #22
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No employee hardware is payed for by the business. We all use our own machines, and all three major operating systems are well represented. So in your opinion we're all ethically in the clear?

You're an employee in an enterprise, so I bet the following applies to you: "TDF stressed that LibreOffice 7.1 "Community" is meant for individuals and that means specifically not enterprise organizations."

The license is free software and it would be suicide for TDF to switch the whole project to proprietary software. Therefore companies are in the clear and will likely remain so for a long time if not forever.
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