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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

#31

Post by cbm-vic-20 »

austincheney wrote: post #13
hirundo wrote: 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.

LibreOffice offers their suite under the MPL[1], which doesn't restrict usage by corporations as long as they comply with the terms of the license (just like any other individual). And if the corporation allows this software to be used on their hardware, that seems to be "properly licensed".

[1] https://www.libreoffice.org/about-us/licenses

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

#32

Post by gabereiser »

mgbmtl wrote: post #10
gabereiser wrote: post #6

Why would a business get off community edition with LibreOffice? If they wanted to pay for office, wouldn’t they just go Microsoft? I get that they want funds to develop LibreOffice but it’s not like the money is being spent on development at all.

Don't partners like Collabora hire devs? "TDF highlights that 73% of commits are from developers employed by these partners, including Collabora, Red Hat and CIB/allotropia, which are made in the course of supporting their enterprise customers."

Red Hat pays Red Hat devs from Red Hat subscriptions, not from LibreOffice donations. If TDF wants to prove the money is going to devs they are going to have to do better than a statement that their partners are the contributors.

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

#33

Post by jshevek »

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #25
himujjal wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This can be hard to predict, but the following is sometimes helpful:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#34

Post by Hammered »

elliotpage wrote: post #18
hirundo wrote: 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.

> Your employer should be providing the tools for you to do the job

Why? Skilled tradesmen frequently own their own tools, and many wouldn't have it any other way. You can bet your ass many of them have spent an order of magnitude more on their tools than a few measly software licenses ($20 for a text editor? Extortionist! But a cheap cordless drill costs several times that...) In California, employers are only required to provide the tools necessary for a job if they're paying you less than twice minimum wage, a bar you surely clear.

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

#35

Post by ropeladder »

Newer versions of libreoffice have been almost unusably buggy for me: constant crashes, and track changes + undo has all kinds of weird quirks and sometimes makes entire paragraphs disappear. I would not recommend it in a business context even if interoperability with Word wasn't an issue.

I hate to sound harsh, particularly when I've been benefiting from their work for years, but it's hard to imagine a workplace that would put up with those bugs.

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

#36

Post by jrh206 »

nprateem wrote: post #20

Well it's hardly surprising given the design of their web site. I've used libreoffice for years and have never noticed the 'for business' link before. Add to that that if you go to download Libre Office and end up on some site trying to flog you something like collabra or whatever, it sounds like you've gone to the wrong place. Even if you get past that barrier, the most obvious button is 'try collabra office' which…

Prompted by this comment, I tried to search for the 'for business' link. I couldn't find it. I looked around the blog, the document foundation website, and the LibreOffice website.

I eventually search for 'business' on the LibreOffice website, and found this article: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-in-business...

Now I see that this article is linked in the 'Download' menu.

Even being on this page, it's not clear what they want me to do (unless I read the whole page, but c'mon).

I'm with you, if they want more people to use the Enterprise edition they need to do a better job of educating people that it exists.

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

#37

Post by wccrawford »

https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/frequently-asked-questi...

Their own page says otherwise, too.

And when attempting to find this "enterprise" version, you have to go to one of their companies to get it... None of which provide prices, and only 1 of which I could find a "request" button to get a price.

This was a really dumb message.

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

#38

Post by Closi »

nprateem wrote: post #20

Well it's hardly surprising given the design of their web site. I've used libreoffice for years and have never noticed the 'for business' link before. Add to that that if you go to download Libre Office and end up on some site trying to flog you something like collabra or whatever, it sounds like you've gone to the wrong place. Even if you get past that barrier, the most obvious button is 'try collabra office' which…

Absolutely - the collabora office site is terrible! They seem to have some sort of cloud version too but then don’t mention the price of it at all. The whole site looks sketchy and unofficial. No support as standard, without paying thousands of pounds a year (Microsoft offers great SMB support in my experience).

Maybe they should look introspectively at why nobody wants to sign up rather than blaming the users. Users will sign up if there is enough value and it’s clearly communicated.

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

#39

Post by detaro »

gabereiser wrote: post #32
mgbmtl wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't partners like Collabora hire devs? "TDF highlights that 73% of commits are from developers employed by these partners, including Collabora, Red Hat and CIB/allotropia, which are made in the course of supporting their enterprise customers."

Red Hat pays Red Hat devs from Red Hat subscriptions, not from LibreOffice donations. If TDF wants to prove the money is going to devs they are going to have to do better than a statement that their partners are the contributors.

Why are you talking about donations? TDF is saying that businesses shouldn't use the community version and instead buy a supported version from their partners. Unsurprisingly, if you do that, their partners get money.

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

#40

Post by AnonC »

It’s really bizarre that the release notes for the community edition version 7.1 spends a lot of space not to talk about it what’s in the release but to tell businesses not to use the community edition and how the avoidance of the enterprise edition is causing issues. Is this a cultural thing? I would’ve thought that someone who wanted to convey this message could’ve stated in one sentence that this is not meant for businesses and provided a link to a knowledge base article on the differences between the community edition and enterprise edition (which could include explanations about volunteer efforts and compromises).

If someone wants to know why businesses should prefer a non-community edition, are we supposed to link to a point-in-time relevant release notes blog post?

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