For the past 23 years I have only very occasionally had the need to use Office-type applications. Today the typical uses of Office applications implies an outdated way of working.
For example, my company lives and breathes through its internal wiki -- which is quite an accomplishment since we are owned by a company that still lives in the dark ages: mailing Office attachments to each other.
Sure, the wiki software could have been a lot better. For one it needs an order of magnitude better performance. And it would be nice if the install wasn't such a messy affair. But it beats the alternative hands down. It beats mailing documents. It beats juggling multiple versions of documents. It beats overflowing mailserver quotas.
Most of all it beats not having to run Windows XP because the people who came before you were stupid fuckups who decided to tie everything so closely to a single platform that they can only afford to move the company to a new OS version every 10 years. And then only after a herculean effort. Inbetween everyone runs on outdated software. For a whole decade.
Real change doesn't come from offering marginal compatibility. Real change comes from not having stupid problems.
LibreOffice is a solution to a problem you should not be having.
I agree. Office apps are modeled after paper workflow. We live in a day of wikis, github, world-wide social networks and cloud storage with universal accessibility over all devices.
Writing paper formatted documents is bad on many levels. It uses dead tree as a medium. It does not have the web of links that exist in a wiki, nor the tags and classifications that exist in a blog or on twitter. Documents can't be live updated for everyone. There is no versioning and no easy way for a whole group of people to edit on the same project.
Information needs to be connected, searchable, instantly accessible and social.
For example, my company lives and breathes through its internal wiki -- which is quite an accomplishment since we are owned by a company that still lives in the dark ages: mailing Office attachments to each other.
Sure, the wiki software could have been a lot better. For one it needs an order of magnitude better performance. And it would be nice if the install wasn't such a messy affair. But it beats the alternative hands down. It beats mailing documents. It beats juggling multiple versions of documents. It beats overflowing mailserver quotas.
Most of all it beats not having to run Windows XP because the people who came before you were stupid fuckups who decided to tie everything so closely to a single platform that they can only afford to move the company to a new OS version every 10 years. And then only after a herculean effort. Inbetween everyone runs on outdated software. For a whole decade.
Real change doesn't come from offering marginal compatibility. Real change comes from not having stupid problems.
LibreOffice is a solution to a problem you should not be having.