Danish Ministry switching from Microsoft Office/365 to LibreOffice
Danish Ministry switching from Microsoft Office/365 to LibreOffice - The Document Foundation Blog
This is what is needed to push back on Microsoft.
It seems like they are doing this to push back on mono-culture. Probably just to save money really. Using 365 saved our small office a lot of time, but it is pretty expensive since it is a constant subscription. I already switched away from Adobe at to Wondershare for PDF editing since we can get a single purchase from Wondershare and have to pay a subscription to Adobe. I would be tempted to do the same thing with 365 but we do a lot of traveling and the integrated sharepoint files is pretty useful.
Nextcloud has a similar file storage like SharePoint/OneDrive minus the content types and taxonomy trees, but I doubt you need those. If you use Only Office as online Office App in Nextcloud, you have a comparable UI to Microsoft and it uses Office Open XML (docx, pptx, xlsx) as standard file system.
I don’t know what a paid hosting for your team would cost, but it could be worth it.
Probably just to save money really.
That always helps. It also helps politically that M$ is based in a country that's outraging the Danish people on a fairly regular basis...
same thing with 365 but we do a lot of traveling
Back in 1990-something, I got our office using Ami Pro - it was a vastly superior word processor to anything else available at the time. Then, a couple of years later, we started sharing documents back and forth with business partners via dial-up internet and that was the end of Ami Pro, all our partners used M$ and file format translation / import / export was nigh impossible in those days.
Push back against what? All of these countries’ governments moving away from MS are doing it for digital sovereignty, nothing else. They want to be in control of their data.
Of course, but it sets an example, proves to people that Linux can be mainstream and usable well beyond the corners where that mindset already exists.
It’s excellent advertising and promotion.
The dream here, in FOSS terms, is that governments see the massive potential value in using FOSS, and start actively contributing to it.
Imagine if the German or Danish government puts the people on their IT payroll (who are now maintaining Microsoft systems) to maintain FOSS systems. This would be a huge benefit for everyone, if enough big actors do it, it may be what pushes stuff like Microsoft into being a niche service.
I did this in my personal usage 20 years ago. I even was demonstrating to colleagues at work in 2005 how Open Office was better at integrating large numbers of digital photos into documents than Word was.
They could spend 1~2% of the cost of their microsoft licenses to create their own plugins/development to make the UI more usable for their applications and workers, rather than relying on Microsoft themselves or creating plugins on outdated and proprietary frameworks.
Wouldn't it be easier to strike a support deal with the libre office developers and just give them the money to do it?
The Document Foundation doesn't actually employ developers. They just oversee and manage the development and direction of LibreOffice.
Man... every time I use LibreOffice I curse. I'm dyed in the wool pro open source, but LibreOffice has just never cut it for me. I suppose if I had a job to do and that's what I was given it would work.
Same. I have to tinker with it a lot to make it less frustrating to use. I like how customisable it is but man I don't really want to customise everything anymore.
I want a UX that is great out of the box in terms of theming, functionality, and ease of use. I want sane defaults.
Yeah same. I respect the huge amount of work it takes to make a suite like that, but... I'm lucky I've worked with Blender a lot to give me a good impression of open source software. If Libre was my first thing I experimented with in the open source world (and I think for many, many people it probably is), I would probably think "wow open source software is a joke, I guess you get what you pay for after all". It really makes a horrible impression. I wonder why LibreOffice has so many usability pains vs Blender, despite the fact that both applications have very high demand. Maybe it's just that LibreOffice seems really dull to contribute to?
The best thing about all these organisations moving away from Microsoft is it incentivizes further development and QA. Or at least I hope all these governments switching to OSS are also funding people to keep a close eye on all the PRs coming in from state-sponsored hackers...
I love the idea of LibreOffice but it really needs to get collaborative features sorted via cloud storage providers or even network shares.
Please No.
With love and respect.
Why not? Collaborative editing is extremely useful. I've done it at work, with friends, and with my gf.
There's no reason the government couldn't own its providers via NextCloud or something.
EDIT: I guess the big, mean old collaborative editing features are out to get us and take away our freedoms and steal our puppies. Collab editing must be Satan's work and there's no way any moral person should find it helpful.
In my line of work we’re constantly changing shared documents, often at the same time. The desktop vanilla version can’t do this yet, so while I can use it happily for personal stuff I haven’t been able to get it to fit in with my job’s workflow yet.
I very much want to get off Office!
This already exists, look up "Collabora". It integrates very nicely with Nextcloud.
Why libreoffice instead of OnlyOffice or NextCloud?
Maybe they don't want to move to a cloud-based system.
I don't want a cloud-based office package, and I can imagine that the same might apply to them.
Libre is the GOAT
Yeah, OnlyOffice is a lot closer to the MS experience which would make it easier for people to transition.
I use both and usually prefer OnlyOffice.
Nextcloud Office is just Libre Office via Collabora though...
Personally, I missed the shortcut Ctrl + D too much in OnlyOffice sheets, but does it really matter?
