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Why OpenOffice.org Failed - and What to Do About It (ComputerWorld UK)
Glyn Moody has an
article in ComputerWorld UK which is, in essence, a summary of a
lengthy study in First Monday on why a Belgian agency chose not to
switch to OpenOffice.org. "In other words, the principal reason
OpenOffice.org was not adopted was Microsoft lock-in. The difficulty of
converting macros, and the use of customised apps in Microsoft Access, were
the two biggest obstacles... Open source effectively has one hand tied
behind its back by the legacy code that its tightly wedded to Microsoft's
products. The only way to create a level playing field is to insist on
completely open standards, where Microsoft cannot simply fall back on the
need for backward compatibility with its proprietary formats." On
the other hand, forcing people to change might not be the best way to build
good will.
(Log in to post comments)
Lock In? Posted Oct 22, 2008 14:15 UTC (Wed) by Xanadu (guest, #1215) [Link]
I don't understand how this is "lock in". They can insist on Open Standards all they want, but they would then have to port over all their "apps" to those new open standards, would they not? They still would have to re-invent their wheel no matter what they chose.
Am I missing something here?
Missing the point Posted Oct 22, 2008 14:24 UTC (Wed) by dwheeler (guest, #1216) [Link]
Yes, the key point is that by using proprietary formats/interfaces, EVERY time you want to switch to another program, you pay huge costs. In contrast, using open standards, the switching cost is tiny (ideally zero). Which is why proprietary formats and interfaces subvert the usual role of competition: Normally, competition would force suppliers to continuously lower costs and improve quality, because customers would otherwise switch, but if they cannot effectively switch, suppliers can have high rents and low quality with near impunity.
Missing the point Posted Oct 22, 2008 14:29 UTC (Wed) by frankie (subscriber, #13593) [Link]
That also motivates 3000 pages of standard description for OpenXML and many obfuscated details: a huge ramp for a truly OXML compatible third party product, resulting in an another lock-in format but blessed as a standard one.
Missing the point Posted Oct 23, 2008 12:56 UTC (Thu) by hmh (subscriber, #3838) [Link]
And, when that fails EVEN after it did become an standard, take over the other one (ODF) which is not of stellar quality either. I shudder to think of what the already hideous ODF will become in five years.
The more I see of it, the more I am convinced that SGML or a human-usable restricted set of it (say, Docbook, and nowadays DocBook XML and XHTML strict) is the only thing we can really trust to endure for 20+ years.
That, and TeX (and LaTeX) documents without too many obscure extra modules. Go figure!
Lock In? Posted Oct 22, 2008 14:39 UTC (Wed) by chaneau (guest, #6674) [Link]
In this particular case, there was no technical reasons not to switch, after all they did it in France, and I don't imagine it was any simpler.
The truth is that Microsoft spent "huge" sums of money to prevent that kind of migration, in fact the guy who is in charge of free software in the federal government is a friend of mine and you would not believe what he can tell you about those tactics. Were we in Africa that would be called corruption, but as we are an advanced democracy it is disguised as lobbying and interoperability :-)
Not so long ago, I was responsible for the IT in a small town (~20.000 inhabitants), we had no budget te renew our Microsoft Office licences in the schools, so I decided to give OO.org a try, eventually everybody was convinced that it was possible to switch, then the guy from Microsoft came in, offered free licences (Office, Windows...), added a few free PC and invited the mayor for a short family vacation disguised as a "Seminary".
To make a long story short, the schools are still using Microsoft products.
Lock In? Posted Oct 22, 2008 17:59 UTC (Wed) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]
> In this particular case, there was no technical reasons not to switch,
> after all they did it in France, and I don't imagine it was any simpler.
You're wrong. The study states plainly that the entity trialing the switch used extensively access, visual basic macros, "office applications" (applications developed within office), sharepoint, etc
You should not underestimate the drag capability of the "advanced" facilities software vendors propose (and MS is pretty good at it). A well-managed IT organisation that religiously hunted down activeX, refused to deploy sharepoint, made its people deploy business code in backend servers instead of using access+vba shortcuts will have no difficulty switching vendors when the cost is right (and it is now). It will have used a standard browser as the information system access tool when MS tries to trick you in using Office instead.
A badly managed organization OTOH will have used all those features because is was "easy" and "free/already paid for" and will blame its unability to switch products on "uncertain TCO/ROI" when in fact the huge sums they continue to pay to the historical provider are the actual bill of all this "free" "easy" automation. And it will end up with huge citrix farms of vista+office 200x and wonder why others are not in the same license pit hell.
When all's said, the biggest functional difference between ODF and OOXML is all the business automation/sharepoint sugar present in the second and not in the first one. In other words, ODF lacked all the gadgets MS uses to install rampant lock-in. That's why MS fought it to the death.
Lock In? Posted Oct 23, 2008 6:03 UTC (Thu) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link]
Are you so sure France didn't have any of these issues?
Lock In? Posted Oct 23, 2008 8:25 UTC (Thu) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]
I'm fairly sure a police force (like in France) is less VBA, sharepoint and access happy than a financial institution.
Lock In? Posted Oct 26, 2008 7:54 UTC (Sun) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]
Exactly, that's what I've seen as well. Especially the 'already paid for'
thing is big - I was at a government organization which switched to using Activedirectory and Sharepoint because it was essentially free - MS had given them a deal when they bought Office & Windows - any other services would be 'free'... Sounds pretty anti-competitive to me, but hey, I'm no Neely Kroes.
Lock In? Posted Oct 23, 2008 16:42 UTC (Thu) by freemars (subscriber, #4235) [Link] To make a long story short, the schools are still using Microsoft products. -- and the mayor has scheduled another OO.org evaluation for early next year. ;-)
Moody's article is spot-on Posted Oct 22, 2008 14:35 UTC (Wed) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link] I think Moody's article is spot-on accurate--in particular, his quote from the European Commission report citing "software tenders' implicit or explicit bias for software brands or specific applications". I especially like his dismissal of OOXML as a "fairy-tail 'open' standard" (with scare quotes around "open"). Proprietary software vendors can only force their hand in the market place so far. Open standards may have lost the Belgian Federal Public Service Economy battle, but the war against proprietary vendor lock-in presses on...
Why OpenOffice.org Failed - and What to Do About It (ComputerWorld UK) Posted Oct 22, 2008 20:15 UTC (Wed) by Tar (subscriber, #2456) [Link]
For me the OOo has failed because its startup time is too long (mostly due to its excessive IO usage). And that's about the only reason.
On a 1.84 GHz Athlon XP it takes whole 22 seconds for OOo 3.0 to cold start the Writer or Calc, it takes 8 seconds before the OOo startup logo even appears. Once it has been started and cache is hot it takes ~2 seconds.
And no, I don't want no friggin' Quick Launch to waste memory when I don't need the office apps!
Office 2000 apps - 1 second to cold start Word/Excel and maybe 100 ms for hot start.
Office 2003 apps are bit slower but coldstart fits in few seconds, hot start also instantaneous.
Office 2007 apps compared to previous versions are total slowware, not to mention the braindead UI.
It may be not so braindead Posted Oct 22, 2008 20:56 UTC (Wed) by khim (guest, #9252) [Link] I've paritcipated in a study where people were confronted with the need to switch. Either to MS Office 2007 or to OpenOffice.org 2.2 (it was year ago). At first glance most people liked OpenOffice 2.2 "look and feel" and hoped they will be comfortable in no time - and they hated "innovative" ribbon in MS Office 2007. But after trying to do some 20 tasks (average success rate was 87% for MS Office 2007 and 75% for OpenOffice 2.2) they switched positions totally. Of course they still felt MS Office 2003 was better...
OpenOffice vs. Office 2007 Posted Oct 23, 2008 9:12 UTC (Thu) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link]
I'm surprised by this, and it would be interesting to know who designed this study, as OpenOffice 2.x is far more like Office 2003 than is Office 2007. I mainly have used Office 2003 but recently was switched at work to 2007, yet I found it far quicker and easier to do certain tasks in OpenOffice, because the toolbar layout and commands are almost identical to Office 2003. The main difference is that the icons are not the same but their designs are very similar.
In continuing to use the Office 2007 interface, I think it's good for access to a wide range of functions, but if you simply want a smaller range of functions (text formatting, bullets, headings, fonts, etc), it's much quicker to use the old style Office 2003 / OpenOffice toolbars, as they are available with a single click. In 2007, the unlearning required is really quite enormous.
I also know someone at work who is on Office 2007 and actually uses OpenOffice on the same Windows PC, without company approval, because it's quicker and easier for some documents to use this.
OpenOffice vs. Office 2007 Posted Oct 23, 2008 11:19 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link] I'm surprised by this, and it would be interesting to know who designed this study, as OpenOffice 2.x is far more like Office 2003 than is Office 2007. Maybe that's the problem? It might be easier to switch to a UI which is so visibly different that you know you need to relearn it than to one which is similar at first glance but just different enough to be frustrating...
UI != placement of buttons Posted Oct 23, 2008 14:38 UTC (Thu) by khim (guest, #9252) [Link] Not really. As I've said: first impression was quite positive for OpenOffice.org and VERY negative for MS Office 2007. But after some time expression changed. Sure, buttons are grouped differently in MS Office 2007. And it's a problem for a people who are familiar with MS Office 2003 or MS Office XP. But! Underlaying logic is the same. The fact that knobs are moved in MS Office 2007 is irritating, the fact that knobs are different in OpenOffice.org is disastrous. P.S. Note: these were experienced MS Office 2003 users, not "fresh" users - but it's the situation with most companies, right?
Similarity is skin-deep, differences are deeper Posted Oct 23, 2008 14:32 UTC (Thu) by khim (guest, #9252) [Link] I'm surprised by this, and it would be interesting to know who designed this study I don't want to talk about names on public (it was testing for one medium-sized firm which wanted to decide migration path, not something for magazine). But I can show you one example where failure rate for MS Office was 0% and 50% (sic!) for OpenOffice.org The task was simple: add page numbers to existing document. In MS Office you go and insert Page Numbers. MS Office will ask if you want them on top or on the bottom - and you are done. Sure it took some time to find the new position for this operation in MS Office 2007 - but in OpenOffice.org there are no such function at all! The function which DOES exist there just puts the page number in the middle of the document - why will you need THIS? Actually OpenOffice.org's approach is more logical: it does what it's asked to do! MS Office tries to "help" you. That's what makes it so unbearable to me and apparently that's exactly what makes it so attractive to "normal" users... I also know someone at work who is on Office 2007 and actually uses OpenOffice on the same Windows PC, without company approval, because it's quicker and easier for some documents to use this. Is s/he programmer or the a secretary? In my experience programmers actually prefer OpenOffice.org (not all but a lot of them do), but target group for Office applications are not programmers...
Why OpenOffice.org Failed - and What to Do About It (ComputerWorld UK) Posted Oct 22, 2008 22:48 UTC (Wed) by Xanadu (guest, #1215) [Link] And no, I don't want no friggin' Quick Launch to waste memory when I don't need the office apps!What do you think Windows does? Have you looked in C:\Windows\Prefetch lately?
Why OpenOffice.org Failed - and What to Do About It (ComputerWorld UK) Posted Oct 23, 2008 1:04 UTC (Thu) by adams (guest, #52497) [Link]
I've used both OpenOffice 2.x/3.x and MS Office 2007 extensively. I Prefer MS Office 2007 for it's lower resource utilization (memory and CPU), and better font rasterization (clear type support, I have one of those new-fangled LCD displays). I also personally love the ribon interface (after unlearning the old interface) and can't wait until Visio is updated to use it as well ;p
Why OpenOffice.org Failed - and What to Do About It (ComputerWorld UK) Posted Oct 23, 2008 9:18 UTC (Thu) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link]
I have two PCs that are fairly similar in hardware - both are Core 2 Duo with SATA disks, 2GB+ of RAM, 2 GHz or more. One runs Linux and OpenOffice, the other Windows XP and Office 2007.
I just tested Word 2007 'cold startup' (i.e. first time since boot) and it took 11 seconds. I'm fairly sure this is no faster than OO Writer 2.4 on Ubuntu Gutsy, and it feels slower, but I can't test it right now. Office 2003 was a bit faster than 2007 I think, and generally 2007 feels quite a bit slower
The Windows PC as a whole pauses several times a day, refusing to echo typing or even move the mouse for a few seconds. Generally applications on Linux such as Firefox feel much snappier, and I almost never get pauses in echo/mouse movement.
Why OpenOffice.org Failed - and What to Do About It (ComputerWorld UK) Posted Oct 24, 2008 15:02 UTC (Fri) by jpmcc (guest, #2452) [Link] For me the OOo has failed because its startup time is too long (mostly due to its excessive IO usage). And that's about the only reason. I'm writing this on an Asus Eee PC - the original 701 model. With other stuff (e.g. Firefox) running, the PC starts up OpenOffice.org 3.0 in around 10 seconds first time, about 6 seconds thereafter. Maybe you're blaming OOo when you should be blaming a broken o/s on your PC? John
Why OpenOffice.org Failed - and What to Do About It (ComputerWorld UK) Posted Oct 23, 2008 6:13 UTC (Thu) by PO8 (guest, #41661) [Link] The thing nobody ever seems to comment on in these studies is the base issue. What Belgium's FPSE has is what a lot of organizations have: a software development organization dispersed in and disguised as an administrative department. The failure to take spreadsheets and macros as software and manage it appropriately is a classic risky strategy common in government and finance. If these were taken seriously by the sponsoring organization, there would be several positive effects.
Etc, etc. The point is that arguably the least of the problems at FPSE and places like it is lock-in to Microsoft. If they solved their real problem—lock-in to a broken methodology—the rest would take care of itself. It also seems from previous comments that the authors may have had some real naïveté about the political workings of the project. This guess is supported by the almost complete lack of discussion of political and personal factors in the FPSE project. This was in some ways an informative study. However, I do not regard it as particularly indicative of the general situation.
Why OpenOffice.org Failed - and What to Do About It (ComputerWorld UK) Posted Nov 3, 2008 19:55 UTC (Mon) by Lifewish (guest, #55026) [Link]
I've just signed up to LWN entirely for the purpose of responding to this post. It is an incredibly insightful post. It should be read out loud to anyone who even *thinks* of touching VBA. Heavy weaponry and attack dogs should be extensively used to ensure the wannabe developer's mind is focused on the subject at hand.
However, I would question one of the claims here, that this development model is broken. From the point of view of programmers, even of amateurs like myself, this is clearly the case. A world where version control consists of thinking up a new cute name for your spreadsheet every few weeks is not a world in which I wish to live.
But, from the point of view of the managers in (e.g.) the pensions industry, the model works fine. It limits expenditure. It avoids hassle and political intrusions. It stops the IT dept stepping in and turning a two-hour job into a two-month fiasco. It prevents their employees being snaffled by real software companies.
Fundamentally, this is because the ten-year event horizon of a competent programmer is greater than the six-month event horizon of a competent manager. They're not worried about long-term maintainability; they're worried about whether adding in a market value adjustment can be done *yesterday*. They're not worried about verification; they're worried about spelling errors in the Most Holy Standard Wording. They're not worried about separation of concerns; financial professionals are used to being concerned about *everything*, all the time...
The only real silver lining I can see is that a sort of software middle class is emerging. People who separate their concerns, who know that code commenting is important, who are aware that GOTOs are bad... and who talk to each other, sharing best practices. More, they are able to explain the motivation behind these practices to managers.
As this element hits critical mass, I predict we'll see a gradual shift from the alchemy of the traditional VBA guru to the science of these new practitioners. Most of this science will be reinventing stuff that real developers already know, but eventually the two communities will reach feature parity.
One big part of this process will, of course, be developing better Office tools - proper spreadsheet/programming hybrids and the like. The main reason no-one does proper source control on spreadsheets is because you *can't*, not really. I'm hoping this will become a visible issue over the next few years.
Why OpenOffice.org Failed - and What to Do About It (ComputerWorld UK) Posted Nov 3, 2008 23:18 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
I nominate that comment and its parent as the two best comments on LWN in
the last six months. Don't leave, we need more insight.
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