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Lock In?Lock In?Posted Oct 22, 2008 14:39 UTC (Wed) by chaneau (guest, #6674)In reply to: Lock In? by Xanadu Parent article: Why OpenOffice.org Failed - and What to Do About It (ComputerWorld UK)
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.
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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. ;-)
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