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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

#41

Post by chiefalchemist »

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…

I'm surprised privacy and security isn't more of a concern. Howcan they effectively say, "Do whatever you want. It doesn't matter to HQ."?

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

#43

Post by stu2b50 »

bartvk wrote: post #22
hirundo wrote: 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."

That's more aggressive begging than a mandate. They have a license for a reason, and that license clearly allows OP's use case. If they do not need the "business" level features Libre's partners offer I see no reason to upgrade.

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

#44

Post by lumost »

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #2

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…

out of curiosity, why do you use an open source office product when a variety of free & high quality web based document editors exist? I chafe when I need to use the microsoft office suite at this point, and premium editors look more like grammarly than word.

In the corporate/business use case there are both open source and cheap licensed/self-hosted versions of web based editors.

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

#45

Post by indymike »

SloopJon wrote: post #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.

A couple of thoughts:

Many enterprises are moving away from thick client office software and moving to browser based office software with cloud backends. Google apps, Zoho, OnlyOffice, Bitrix, and Microsoft all have very usable cloud offerings. Collabora is trying to build an LibreOffice based cloud offering, but LibreOfice remains old-style "thick client" software.

Apache OpenOffice is still available and free. LibreOffice is a fork of OpenOffice, and gained marketshare by building goodwill with users who did not trust Oracle or (to a much lesser extent) the Apache Foundation.

Having three "enterprise" partners to buy from makes it hard. I don't have a business relationship with CIB, Collabora, or Adfinis SyGroup, and honestly, I don't know why packaged office software would require one.

In short, I think there's a deep marketing problem here, and a misunderstanding of something fundamentally different about free software (using the Stallman meaning): it is possible to have widely used software that is critical to a user, but where that user is not willing to pay for it. This is because the user selected it because it was free (as in freedom) and the user knows they do not have to cooperate with a market capture by a developer.

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

#48

Post by indymike »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #41
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…

I'm surprised privacy and security isn't more of a concern. Howcan they effectively say, "Do whatever you want. It doesn't matter to HQ."?

Why should it matter to HQ? The result of the work probably matters (i.e. a document), but the software used to create it? Doesn't really matter so long as it can be read. There are so many ways to do IT than the old central control of all the things model from the 90s.

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

#49

Post by ksec »

indymike wrote: post #45
SloopJon wrote: post #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.

A couple of thoughts: Many enterprises are moving away from thick client office software and moving to browser based office software with cloud backends. Google apps, Zoho, OnlyOffice, Bitrix, and Microsoft all have very usable cloud offerings. Collabora is trying to build an LibreOffice based cloud offering, but LibreOfice remains old-style "thick client" software. Apache OpenOffice is still available and free. Libr…

>Apache Foundation

I can understand Oracle, but why Apache?

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

#50

Post by indymike »

howfoss wrote: post #17
austincheney wrote: post #13

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.

It is "properly licensed." That's the issue, and it's why LibreOffice has to beg instead of being able to sue. If LibreOffice doesn't like this use, they can change to a less libre license. That's the point of proprietary and mixed licenses.

If LibreOffice does this, then the entire fork from Apache OpenOffice is fraudulent.
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