Bring on the downvotes, but: When it comes to tools like computers, convenience is synonymous with productivity. People aren’t unreasonably demanding to have their hands held, they want to get stuff done. We need to stop acting like convenience productivity is just one of many concerns. It is the primary concern.
Freedom is nice but to most people it’s only important if it helps us do the things we want to do.
I find dealing with Micros~1 a giant pain in the ass. It’s always getting in the way of productivity with pointless rearranging of menus all the time, constantly trying to get me to use One Drive, shoving AI into every corner of everything.
I’m trying to make a spreadsheet to figure out and share budgets, instead I’m spending my time hunting for that menu that disappeared and figuring out how to disable copilot because I’m legally not allowed to share client data with third parties.
This an incredibly tech-brained answer. “Sure, lots of OSS is difficult to install, breaks frequently, and lacks key features, but did you know Microsoft sometimes moves a menu item?”
I love OSS and I want it to succeed but “an item moved” isn’t in the same ballpark as the barriers to OSS adoption.
Yes, exactly that! That convenience == productivity connection is exactly why I am a Linux Mint fan!
Convenience has value, so a lot of people will give their “free” information, attention, and control to commercial entities in exchange for it. Enshittification ensues and many of us are conditioned to beware of things that are simple to use because it REALLY just means you’ve been locked out of 95% of the options.
When a good FOSS project can bring convenience and productivity to more people around the world with NO strings attached, that is an incredibly good thing. It’s like, humanity actually working together just for the sake of the greater good, but doing it on the internet because governments can suck at it.
Damn, I need to find a good open source project to help out this winter when I’m forced to stop my oudoor “engineer turned farmer” hobbies for the season.
Edit: probably something Jellyfin related. Can’t believe I forgot to mention that!
No, what you say makes sense, and I think it’s part of the reason why linux usage (as a daily driver) is starting to increase now versus 20 years ago. It’s just easier to install and use linux distros nowadays.
And most folks who want office for free are going to go with google docs, for the convenience factor.
In addition to that, with great respect to the hard working developers on LibreOffice, at least some of what seems like “unnecessary complexity” in Microsoft’s format is most likely just requirements LibreOffice isn’t solving or haven’t even encountered yet. You don’t get to Office’s size without having to deal with the most insane batshit crazy backcompat or compatibility issues.
They are intentionally obfuscating their file formats. It has nothing to do with complexity or “backwards compatibility” Microsoft has a LONG history of stuff like this.
That may be but without sources that say “let’s make the format more obscure” this is just opinion. Your opinion, OpenOffice opinion, IBM opinion etc.
Look for example at the 1904 dating system that Microsoft still has to support. Real customers still use this shit.
I’m not saying Microsoft has always exhibited good behaviour. But their crappy approach tends to be on the go to market side.
Office still has to support a leap year bug to allow banks to run their crappy Lotus based record keeping. Lotus for Darwin’s sake!! There is so much history in these files and what office has to do with them.
Bring on the downvotes, but: When it comes to tools like computers, convenience is synonymous with productivity. People aren’t unreasonably demanding to have their hands held, they want to get stuff done. We need to stop acting like
convenienceproductivity is just one of many concerns. It is the primary concern.Freedom is nice but to most people it’s only important if it helps us do the things we want to do.
I find dealing with Micros~1 a giant pain in the ass. It’s always getting in the way of productivity with pointless rearranging of menus all the time, constantly trying to get me to use One Drive, shoving AI into every corner of everything.
I’m trying to make a spreadsheet to figure out and share budgets, instead I’m spending my time hunting for that menu that disappeared and figuring out how to disable copilot because I’m legally not allowed to share client data with third parties.
This an incredibly tech-brained answer. “Sure, lots of OSS is difficult to install, breaks frequently, and lacks key features, but did you know Microsoft sometimes moves a menu item?”
I love OSS and I want it to succeed but “an item moved” isn’t in the same ballpark as the barriers to OSS adoption.
I see what you did there. 😆
Yes, exactly that! That convenience == productivity connection is exactly why I am a Linux Mint fan!
Convenience has value, so a lot of people will give their “free” information, attention, and control to commercial entities in exchange for it. Enshittification ensues and many of us are conditioned to beware of things that are simple to use because it REALLY just means you’ve been locked out of 95% of the options.
When a good FOSS project can bring convenience and productivity to more people around the world with NO strings attached, that is an incredibly good thing. It’s like, humanity actually working together just for the sake of the greater good, but doing it on the internet because governments can suck at it.
Damn, I need to find a good open source project to help out this winter when I’m forced to stop my oudoor “engineer turned farmer” hobbies for the season.
Edit: probably something Jellyfin related. Can’t believe I forgot to mention that!
No, what you say makes sense, and I think it’s part of the reason why linux usage (as a daily driver) is starting to increase now versus 20 years ago. It’s just easier to install and use linux distros nowadays.
And most folks who want office for free are going to go with google docs, for the convenience factor.
In addition to that, with great respect to the hard working developers on LibreOffice, at least some of what seems like “unnecessary complexity” in Microsoft’s format is most likely just requirements LibreOffice isn’t solving or haven’t even encountered yet. You don’t get to Office’s size without having to deal with the most insane batshit crazy backcompat or compatibility issues.
They are intentionally obfuscating their file formats. It has nothing to do with complexity or “backwards compatibility” Microsoft has a LONG history of stuff like this.
That may be but without sources that say “let’s make the format more obscure” this is just opinion. Your opinion, OpenOffice opinion, IBM opinion etc.
Look for example at the 1904 dating system that Microsoft still has to support. Real customers still use this shit.
I’m not saying Microsoft has always exhibited good behaviour. But their crappy approach tends to be on the go to market side.
Office still has to support a leap year bug to allow banks to run their crappy Lotus based record keeping. Lotus for Darwin’s sake!! There is so much history in these files and what office has to do with them.