EDIT: Some company should create a bounty for developing and implementing a process for achieving and maintaining 100% Microsoft Word compatibility for year. You'd have to put up a million dollars for something like that, but it would be worth it.
Integrating with Active Directory to some extent, for example, shouldn't be incredibly difficult - and you would have thought that full integration with the new Office XML-based formats should be possible. But I suspect there isn't much appetite to actually do the work without substantial commercial incentive. I agree that a million dollar bounty would do the job, but then you'd have to do it again the next time a version of Office came out, and again and again. When it's so difficult to actually make money through an open source project (see LibreOffice's recent plea for 50,000 euros), that's difficult to justify.
Despite what many people who run projects say, the open source business model problem is anything but solved. I know from experience that running an open source project as a business can occasionally be a soul-destroying experience (although, particularly if you're socially orientated, the good times far outweigh that). When there's a reliable way to make payroll and grow companies through producing open sourcing software, as opposed to packaging it or selling customization services, all of these problems will go away. Until then, we're - as ever - reliant on developers and teams within companies scratching an itch.
I get confused on this one. I am trying to implement some simple software at work, and the software (not Open Source) is supposed to be LDAP compliant. The Unix admin in charge of the LDAP Directory insists that Active Directory itself isn't LDAP compliant, and that when people gear their software towards Active Directory they "break LDAP."
So far, his comment is correct. The product keeps trying to pull in windows AD objects just because the server is running Windows. Frustrating.
Sorry, I guess my point is, that for some of us, it gets really difficult to figure out who is breaking what in terms of compatibility.
"For most people, computing isn't a political stance or a way of life; it's just another thing they need to use to do their job."
100% agreed.
Welcome to life as a software professional dealing with Microsoft.
Way ahead of you. Note I said the bounty would be for establishing a process and demonstrating currency for a year. The goal would be to take the project over and keep it going (for much less than a million a year).
Increasing indifference, maybe ...
Disclosure: I work at Tungle
People don't understand that they have to manage their calendars and that meeting requests are a convenience feature. They think there's a central calendar and everything gets updated automatically.
Have fun when the CEO misses an important call or meeting from his calendar. This stuff is like crack, it makes people think it's easy and magical, but it's a support nightmare.
http://blogs.technet.com/b/outlooking/archive/2010/03/29/som...
Obviously your mileage varied.
Not mentioned by name, but it's hard to imagine anything else being the number one complaint.
This usually surprises the Windows users, who were telling me, "Oh, you're going to have figure out where the CD is, and install some software, and you may have problems with <X>..."
Now, I'm sure that there are other printers and network configurations where Ubuntu will fail. But for the most part, they've done a great job.
On the other hand, I do need to keep MS Office around for marking up contracts. Open Office doesn't support Microsoft's Track Changes feature, which is a dealbreaker.
Even in 2005, configuring printers in Linux was painful. And a big government bureaucracy cannot be deploying every distro-du-jour to keep up with improvements... most comparable Windows shops are still running XP.
One thing that I think a lot of tech folks don't appreciate is how much business generally craves reports and printing. Its just reality, utopian dreams of a "paperless office" notwithstanding.
I worked at a company that built a web-based system for a government agency. One thing we did, with EVERY release and EVERY new feature was include new or updated reporting (Crystal Reports) that paralleled the new features. Developers hated working with Crystal and hated doing report work in general. But the customer LOVED it.
The issue is that if you save a doc in open office and email to a customer who uses word if you've used anything beyond the basic text features there is a good chance when they open it there will be something wrong. The reverse applies too.
Almost everyone I've tried open office with has eventually given up and migrated back to word primarily because they couldn't open files other people were sending them.
Honestly OpenOffice users give me the fewest problems, because they seem to be able to at least open anything I send them, even if the formatting is a bit mangled, while a significant percentage of Word users report back with "I couldn't open your file" or "your file seemed corrupt" or something.
This tells me that Microsoft is actually in a vulnerable position here. If they start ramping up their rate of change to maintain lock-in they're going to inconvenience their customers even more. OpenOffice will start looking like the better alternative.
Honestly OpenOffice users give me the fewest problems, because they seem to be able to at least open anything I send them, even if the formatting is a bit mangled, while a significant percentage of Word users report back with "I couldn't open your file" or "your file seemed corrupt" or something.
It's not good to get egg on your face because the formatting is messed up. That looks like your fault. A corrupt file is seen as something like traffic. "Computers are tricky and stuff happens" is the usual reaction I see.
"Honestly OpenOffice users give me the fewest problems"
Just a guess, but perhaps that's because the OO users that have actually stuck with it are the more technical ones who look for their own solutions first. I use OO primarily at home and when I get files I can't open I try Google docs, Office live apps, or the Word viewer.