Why open source software will not appeal to "joe blow"

[LuckyTaxi]

Today I was asked by the librarian to help her with a paper. She had to write a huge paper outlining her plans for putting the technology together for a library. We both work for a school, so she just used our school as an example. First and foremost, she set her budget and went about telling me what she wanted. We chose not to use the current setup since it's not something I would prefer to use. Anyways, to make the long story short, she wanted to know about productivity software (i.e. Microsoft office). I said licenses are ridiculously high and she said fine, are there alternatives. I said sure, there's openoffice.

She was ok with it at first and thought it would be cool to show her professor that she actually did some research with openoffice. Anyways, later in the day she called and told me "I dont think I'll go with OpenOffice since it's not what everyone else uses." I said, "You don't have to follow everyone else. Besides, with your budget and OpenOffice is compatible with MS Office to a certain extent, why would you want to pay money for MS Office?

Now, I know this is just a paper and it's ficticious, but it just killed me for 2 reasons.

1 - You ask me for help and I gave my input. So you were cool with it and then you changed your mind? Dont ask me for advice!

2 - It's like, everyone I know drives a Honda so I'll buy a Honda, but I chose not to. I want to be different and if there are cheap alternative solutions, then I'm all for it. I run FreeBSD w/ Postfix/courier for our mailserver while a majority of other people may be using Exchange or Qmail. Besides, it works so there's no need for me to switch to what another school may be using.

SIGH ... next time I'll decline to help ppl since they wont bother to take my advice anyways.

 

[n0cmonkey]

The best part about advice is that it isn't an order. You can choose to take it or not. Don't be offended, it's her loss.

 

[ValuedCustomer]

Originally posted by: lilcam
OpenOffice is compatible with MS Office to a certain extent

Well it sounds like you know a thing or 2 (or 3) about computers and your friend is somewhat of an average user. Keeping that in mind, all the average user needs to hear to scare them straight to Redmond is the above quote. Are you gonna support this suite that nobody but you and a relative handful of others in the world have used? Prolly not and I'd bet she doesn't wanna deal w/ the hassle herself. - new things typically scare people whether you're talkin' about food or music or travelling or computers.. that's just the way it is. She's heard of Microsoft but is clueless as to what you're referring to by OpenOffice; her opting to go w/ M$ should be expected. - it's sorta like tryin' to talk someone into voting 3rd party rather than Rep or Dem.. I think it's a great idea but to the average voter/user it's ?foreign? and people don't like ?foreign?.

 

[P0ldy]

That's indicative of most people. They don't know a thing about computers and don't care to. "Will it show me what I'm used to and not make me learn anything new?" That's the only concern.

And let's not even discuss how beneficial it would be for small private colleges who are constantly increasing tuition to move to a free as in beer solution (and what better place, right?).

 

[cubby1223]

It's similar to all schools using Apples & Macs when I was younger. ~99% of the business world at that time used IBM compatible machines, so why the heck were we being taught on Apples & Macs? Isn't that just a waste of time & money? Then could you not use the same reasoning with OpenOffice?

And besides, were you expecting here to take your word as almighty law that must be followed at all times? Why are you so upset that she did not go with your idea?

Originally posted by: P0ldy
That's indicative of most people. They don't know a thing about computers and don't care to. "Will it show me what I'm used to and not make me learn anything new?" That's the only concern.

I've grown up with everything computers, and that's how I make my living. Even I do not like learning new things when it achieves the exact same results in the same amount of time. Your comment, while almost accurrate, does leave out this point. It's why I used Netscape 4.7 for way longer than I should have, and it's why I still use Mozilla instead of switching to FireFox/Thunderbird. Doesn't make me a bad person, I would just rather devote my time to other things.

 

[P0ldy]

Originally posted by: cubby1223
I've grown up with everything computers, and that's how I make my living. Even I do not like learning new things when it achieves the exact same results in the same amount of time. Your comment, while almost accurrate, does leave out this point. It's why I used Netscape 4.7 for way longer than I should have, and it's why I still use Mozilla instead of switching to FireFox/Thunderbird. Doesn't make me a bad person, I would just rather devote my time to other things.

Not a bad person at all. But what you've bolded is important: if a new thing doesn't do something better allowing you to achieve the exact same results in less time, why use it? I wouldn't. At least for me, things like Firefox do do that. When it achieves the exact same results in the same amount of time without doing anything better, there's no point in learning it.

 

[jaykleg]

One thing about open source software that should appeal to any librarian is the basic premise for the existence of the software. By nature real librarians (not those who just do the job for a living, but those who are really into the idea of sharing knowledge) should be able to grasp the concept that, in a very real sense, software itself is information -- as is the data which it handles. It should be important to any thinking librarian that data will always be stored in a form which is retrievable and useable by the great wash of humanity.

I've been saying since I started working with computers in the 60s that I didn't give a rat's ass about the platform or software as long as the data (which is the only reason you have the computer in the first place) can be made safe and can be transported onto other systems and used effectively there. A librarian should be irked by the idea of using proprietary data formats, I think.

Of course it appears that MS is loosening up quite a bit now with respect to MS Office file formats. But the software is still closed.

Now I forget why I was writing this message in the first place. Other than to say that it just seems like a librarian would be more comfortable with the idea of open source software. But then I'm not a librarian, so what do I know. The librarians I know are kind of strange and scary people.

 

[TGS]

Originally posted by: lilcam
I run FreeBSD w/ Postfix/courier for our mailserver while a majority of other people may be using Exchange or Qmail. Besides, it works so there's no need for me to switch to what another school may be using.

I'll jump in for geek points, but Qmail is an MTA, not a fully fledged mail system.

Honestly I feel that is why people go with Microsoft products. If she runs into an issue with OO, she'll most likely have to ask you or do research on the workaround/fix. With MS Office, she can ask a group of people that use the software.

Seeing as how she is asking on productivity software, it doesn't sound like she is very techinically inclinded to begin with. It's probably intimitated to go against the flow.

 

[LuckyTaxi]

And besides, were you expecting here to take your word as almighty law that must be followed at all times? Why are you so upset that she did not go with your idea?

Nah, not upset that she didnt go with my idea, but more like why ask me for my advice and then take it, only to change your mind. I spent about an hour speaking with her. I dont care, I could've told her MS Office from the beginning but she wanted her paper to be special.

Besides, I forgot to mention, her professor stated that StarOffice would be a good candidate. The ONLY reason why I mentioned OpenOffice was that her profesor knew of StarOffice, so I took it a step further for her.

 

[Seeruk]

To be frank it sounds like she would have made the correct decision. On her budget she would not have been able to support Linux and thats where the real costs in OSS are.

Believe me I know - I have dealt with a quite a few big companies (like global blue chip) who have had long and ultimately failed OSS projects. Their eyes light up at the sound of free software, but once the cost of employing twice as many support staff, who are not even that knowlegable in the field, the EXTENSIVE test and dev rollout needed just to find a stable and consistent fully featured platform, the retraining costs, etc..... is added up, its typically 3 times as expensive as buying the next MS OS/Office suite, where support is ten a penny, hardware support guaranteed, and nowhere near the rollout length.

 

[nweaver]

except that you have the same costs (might be somewhat lower, but still there) to roll MS Office versions. Take a look at office 97 and 2k3, and tell me they are more similer than an office 97/Open Office comparison.

 

[TGS]

Originally posted by: Seeruk
To be frank it sounds like she would have made the correct decision. On her budget she would not have been able to support Linux and thats where the real costs in OSS are.

Believe me I know - I have dealt with a quite a few big companies (like global blue chip) who have had long and ultimately failed OSS projects. Their eyes light up at the sound of free software, but once the cost of employing twice as many support staff, who are not even that knowlegable in the field, the EXTENSIVE test and dev rollout needed just to find a stable and consistent fully featured platform, the retraining costs, etc..... is added up, its typically 3 times as expensive as buying the next MS OS/Office suite, where support is ten a penny, hardware support guaranteed, and nowhere near the rollout length.

The problem would be higher people who are not subject matter experts. Do you call up cisco for a Windows related problem?

so why would you,

cost of employing twice as many support staff, who are not even that knowlegable in the field

?

I don't see any MS SQL people rolling in the door when someone is rolling out a new Oracle project. Nor would I expect an MS SQL expert to be knowledgable in Oracle, or vice versa. If a job requires extensive Unix (not linux) experience do you think a MS certified resource could walk in a do the job expected of a real Unix expert, heck no.

Have you ever done a switch from a non-microsoft product to a equivalent MS product? I can tell you from experience it is not a painless process. People feel more comfortable running an MS solution because they believe the support base they have is paramount to all else.

Typically most MS problems have to be filtered up through the Tier 1 and 2 hacks to begin with. Why in dear gods name do I have to be escalated through the lower rungs to deal with real problems. In a site of over 13000 users, I wouldn't expect a company being paid that much money to run me through the circus hoops on an enterprise level contract.

To say things like,

To be frank it sounds like she would have made the correct decision. On her budget she would not have been able to support Linux and thats where the real costs in OSS are.

Is being disingenuous in the respect that MS products require a lesser amount of support. If anything MS boxes that I've administrated required a greater deal of attention with the various security patches and bug fixes than any other systems(namely solaris, RH variants, and a few HP-UX boxes).

 

[doornail]

Originally posted by: Seeruk
Their eyes light up at the sound of free software, but once the cost of employing twice as many support staff, who are not even that knowlegable in the field, the EXTENSIVE test and dev rollout needed just to find a stable and consistent fully featured platform, the retraining costs, etc..... is added up, its typically 3 times as expensive as buying the next MS OS/Office suite, where support is ten a penny, hardware support guaranteed, and nowhere near the rollout length.

Uh huh. You forgot to mention that switching is a one-time cost. Every year thereafter represents accumulated savings from freed of licensing fees.

With regards to the painful transition -- we have about 60 odd desktops here and what I've seen is:

In all the years we ran Corel Office, we NEVER placed a tech support call to the company.
In all the years we've run MS Office, we NEVER placed a tech support call to the company.

A couple month ago, I installed a couple machines and for an experiment I loaded OpenOffice instead under a desktop icon labeled "Word Processor".

That afternoon, my phone rang and was told someone was having trouble using the "Word Processor". I inform them that I was on my way down to have a look. Before I made it out the door the phone rang again. It was the user to tell me to nevermind and they had figured it out by themselves.

That's the last complaint I've heard from my OpenOffice users.

 

[Griffinhart]

Originally posted by: lilcam
Nah, not upset that she didnt go with my idea, but more like why ask me for my advice and then take it, only to change your mind. I spent about an hour speaking with her. I dont care, I could've told her MS Office from the beginning but she wanted her paper to be special.

She was asking advice, you gave it, it sounds like she considered what you had to say strongly but ultimately made an other decision. That's all advice is really, she wasn't asking you to make the decision for her, but to give your opinion.

 

[ShaneDOTM]

Places like schools and other organizations that are extremely price sensitive will eventually lead the OpenSource revolution. It's just a matter of the Microsoft and other companies raising their prices enough and the OpenSource Software becoming closer and closer to the Paid stuff.

 

[anarchyreigns]

Originally posted by: Griffinhart

Originally posted by: lilcam
Nah, not upset that she didnt go with my idea, but more like why ask me for my advice and then take it, only to change your mind. I spent about an hour speaking with her. I dont care, I could've told her MS Office from the beginning but she wanted her paper to be special.

She was asking advice, you gave it, it sounds like she considered what you had to say strongly but ultimately made an other decision. That's all advice is really, she wasn't asking you to make the decision for her, but to give your opinion.

Hit the nail on the head!

 

[sourceninja]

Originally posted by: ShaneDOTM
Places like schools and other organizations that are extremely price sensitive will eventually lead the OpenSource revolution. It's just a matter of the Microsoft and other companies raising their prices enough and the OpenSource Software becoming closer and closer to the Paid stuff.

I wish it was true for schools. But we get software and hardware at rates you wouldn't belive.

My last pc upgrade at the college (i'm a programer) was a dell 3ghz with a ati x300 dell 2001fp 2 gigs of ram and 80 gig hard drive. It was under a grand.

Plus, our buisness teachers swear by excel and would kill us if we ever moved to OO, even though most of our IT people use OO.

I think MS knows enough to keep our stuff cheap, so it really wont ever happen.

 

[SGtheArtist]

It sounds like the Original Poster maybe upset because they feel used by her to get some quick information on OO just to make her proposal look better to her boss.

If she really cared about the topic of her proposal she would spend more time researching it before coming to a decision.

I agree though that its really not worth too much more of your time in thought. She got what she wanted you generously provided the information and that's that.

 

[superkdogg]

What's this talk of "supporting" open office? You want me to come in and spell check your docs for you-it's an office suite for heaven's sake!

Second, if she were more budget-conscious she would use it. She could learn how to support it herself and save ~$200+/machine for other needs.

Third, giant companies have thousands of users that would need to acclimate to Linux at huge up-front cost in productivity as they learn. One library in a school is the perfect Linux project. The majority of users just need to know how to type a document and access the web anyway.

I've been using Windows 99% of the time I've owned a computer, but I am trying to teach myself Linux for exactly the reason of not contributing to the M$ monopoly. SimplyMEPIS seems to be my favorite distro since it's really easy for the Linewb to still operate while learning the ins and outs of the OS.

 

[NewBlackDak]

Originally posted by: doornail

Originally posted by: Seeruk
Their eyes light up at the sound of free software, but once the cost of employing twice as many support staff, who are not even that knowlegable in the field, the EXTENSIVE test and dev rollout needed just to find a stable and consistent fully featured platform, the retraining costs, etc..... is added up, its typically 3 times as expensive as buying the next MS OS/Office suite, where support is ten a penny, hardware support guaranteed, and nowhere near the rollout length.

Uh huh. You forgot to mention that switching is a one-time cost. Every year thereafter represents accumulated savings from freed of licensing fees.

With regards to the painful transition -- we have about 60 odd desktops here and what I've seen is:

In all the years we ran Corel Office, we NEVER placed a tech support call to the company.
In all the years we've run MS Office, we NEVER placed a tech support call to the company.

A couple month ago, I installed a couple machines and for an experiment I loaded OpenOffice instead under a desktop icon labeled "Word Processor".

That afternoon, my phone rang and was told someone was having trouble using the "Word Processor". I inform them that I was on my way down to have a look. Before I made it out the door the phone rang again. It was the user to tell me to nevermind and they had figured it out by themselves.

That's the last complaint I've heard from my OpenOffice users.

Same thing here. We got fscked by the Dell/Office no media deal a while back. I just installed OO on ALL of those machines, and the only complaint I ever heard was one hold-over who still refuses to like anything besides that junk Wordperfect stuff. A word-processor is a word-processor. There isn't any huge learning curve for it. If you can use Word then you can use OOWriter, Works, or even AppleWorks.

 

[Varun]

I don't mind open source, I've used Linux etc, however Open Office is not the best office suite.

Sure a word processor is a word processor, however there is more to an office suite than just the word processor.

The spreadsheet program is terrible. Try to do some graphing on it and watch it bring your computer to its knees. This is a pretty important point for a lot of buisnesses.

The Draw program is one thing I really like though. It is pretty powerful.

I'm kind of partial to Corel Office, and they have some great licensing for buisnesses. MS Office is a pretty nice suite too, if only people could look past the "M$ sucks" attitude.

I recommended Open Office to a teacher friend of mine though, I'm sure he sleeps better knowing his students don't need to pirate software to hand in assingments. I believe Open Office has its place in the world, but it will be a while before it can replace MS Office or Corel Office. MS Office switching to XML in the next version will allow Open Office to be used a lot more. No more conversions from .doc!

 

[drag]

The problem with Org vs MS Office is when you have a entrentched workflow proccess built around databases, Exchange, and custom apps and you have a lot of advanced users that like to use macros and such.

For those type of transitions it can be very painfull for users and administrators. Lots of stuff you do in Windows and a Microsoft enviroment there is simply no direct replacement with Linux or even Open Source software on Windows, thus in order to change over you'd have to change how some of your employees do their job and all that.

However if your starting a new company or your setting up a new workflow for a company then it's not much difference in cost and difficulty starting with open source vs. Microsoft and all that. Many companies that traditionally used Unix and such will actually have a much easier and cheaper transition running Linux then going to Windows and such.

But if you just want a word proccessor then Org works just fine, even if it's a pig.

Also keep in mind that Org isn't the only thing out their. You have weird things like LyX and there are dedicated (and very fast) word proccessors aviable like Abiword and KDE and Gnome have their own 'office suites' that don't have anything to do with Org.

Also many people end up using open source applications and don't even know it. Google is built on OSS tools for instance.

Firefox browser, Org, Gimp, VLC (video lan client) and a few others are commonly found on people's computers and are completely free software.

 

[Seeruk]

Guy guys guys, don't get the wrong end of the stick here, I use Linux myself and would reccomend it to anyone with a reasonable level of technical competence (but I do mean TECHNICAL like knowing about partitioning hard drives, understanding PCI buses and know the difference between an i386 and an x64 chip).
You make valid points about it being a one time cost (as far as transition goes) and that office suites don't need much support (although retraining IS MANDATORY for the average joe user).

But still this lady has a limited budget, I assume wants some new PC's and generally spruce things up a bit. I dunno about stateside but if you want a Linux or Unix consultant that actually knows what he/she is doing you are looking at almost double the price of your average MS techy. Likewise for trainers. If you pay a similar rate you end up with someone who is using your cash to learn on the job.

I'm in the business of recommending the best solution for the customer, not evangalising, and as such I think she made the right decision.

 

[drag]

haha.

His original comment was about Org.. A word proccessor that runs perfectly well on Windows.

PLUS it's at a library. I realy realy doubt that MS Office's ability to integrate tightly into a Windows OS, Exchange, databases, and Active directory are realy going to be a very high priority.

Org is specificly designed to be similar in look and feel to MS Office so that a average person using the program to perform simple word proccessing tasks would feel perfectly fine irregardless what machines they plan on using.

Plus Org offers significant advantages over MS Office. For instance the library can loan out Org installation cds to it's users so that people that don't have a word proccessor or are unable to afford MS Office at home can have something that does the job reasonably well.

Plus in the future when it comes time to upgrade the software they can simply download new copies for the library without having to renew any licenses.

If it turns out later they need some features of MS Office that are lacking, they can always spend the money on it. If they start off the bat buying copies of MS Office were Org works well then that's a lot of money that gets wasted.

Personally I'd say buy a couple copies of MS Office for the ability to have 100% compatability with all the recent variations in Microsoft formats and for people that may have to use the computer to do work for a class or simply prefer MS Office for whatever reason.

Each copy of MS Office costs around 300 dollars, retail. The licensing costs for a library with a few dozen computers for patrons to use would take a huge chunk out of the budget of the place.

Now each situation is definately different. A not for profit, a school, a small business, a medium business, and a large business enviroments all have different demands and pressures. Org will defiantely not replace MS Office for many places, but it can be perfectly fine for others.

 

[Seeruk]

I think a library in an educational institution will actually get all MS licenses at about 30% of normal cost. Thats the way it works here in the UK anyway