Re: Crossover / Wine cannot install Office

From: Joe (joe_at_jretrading.com)
Date: 05/16/04 

Date: Sun, 16 May 2004 21:41:39 +0100

In message <slrncaf675.7av.postmaster@cardinal.haucks.org>, Bob Hauck
<postmaster@localhost.localdomain> writes
>On Sun, 16 May 2004 12:38:38 +0100, Joe <joe@jretrading.com> wrote:
>>>
>> I'm in business. I have customers. They use MS. How will avoiding MS
>> products help me do business?
>
>How does using Access have anything to do with what your customers use?
>You made a decision to use Access to store some data. That had nothing
>whatever to do with what your customers use. So you can't blame this
>"show stopper" on them.

As it happens, I do use Access for some purposes because it does produce
very quick solutions to some problems. But I use it because I have it,
and I have it because I develop applications for clients using it. My
main client has a large investment in a service management system in
Access. OK, the other way to put that is that they're not likely to pay
someone to rewrite it from scratch in another medium when it works for
them now.
>
>As for how avoiding MS products will help your business, I assume that
>you know the answer to this or you wouldn't be here looking for an
>alternative.

Again, I'm not looking for an alternative. I'm pointing out that there
is an investment in custom Access-based software and to service that
market it is necessary to use Access. There is not, and never will be, a
functional equivalent under Linux.
>
>
>
>Fear, uncertainty, and doubt has American business by the balls.
>
I'm in the UK.
>
>>> Yet you want us to take seriously the argument that since OpenOffice.org
>>> might not correctly format every random Word document you throw at it
>>> this is a terrible problem that must be solved?
>>
>> No. The issue is whether 'Word' documents created by OO will open
>> *intelligibly* in a recent MS Word.
>
>That will virtually always be the case if you simply adjust your
>existing list of workarounds to the new software. But you are afraid
>that you will be ostracized, unable to buy or sell, without Microsoft
>software. Microsoft has made sure of that.
>
>
>> Nobody's bothered about exact formatting, but if someone who hopes to
>> sell you something sends you a document that doesn't work at all, are
>> you likely to buy from him?
>
>That's exactly why Adobe made PDF. So your document will really and
>truly look like you intended it to look. Purists will complain that PDF
>isn't a "real" standard, but it is a hell of a lot closer than Office
>and almost as widespread.
>
>
>>>> I am aware of PDF and make use of it, but it is often necessary to
>>>> exchange working documents, not just visual images.
>
>>> Of course, you could just give OpenOffice.org to everybody. It is,
>>> after all, *free* as in beer.
>
>> So you work for A. Multinational Corp and one of your smaller
>> contractors asks you to switch from MS Office to OOo so he can send
>> you documents accurately.
>
>Did I say that he had to switch all operations to OOo? No. I said that
>if he and you are collaboratively working on a document then you have to
>agree on how that will be done. Since OOo is free, and runs on Windows,
>it does not cost him anything to use it for this one job.
>
>Now, if your customers are assholes who won't accomodate anybody, well
>then I guess you're stuck. There certainly are plenty of those. There
>isn't anything that can be done in that case. You're going to have to
>buy the specified suite of software and live with it, at least for those
>people who are doing this kind of thing on a regular basis. I hope you
>bid that into the contract price.
>
>
>> While a company will accept the occasional non-working document
>> internally, and sort things out eventually, this is not an acceptable
>> working method between companies where one is a buyer and the other a
>> seller.
>
>Which is exactly why you should not be sending around Word or Excel docs
>unless it is absolutely necessary. You don't want to give your business
>partners a virus and you do want things to look right. Sending around
>Office docs does not meet either goal.
>
>The fact is that MS-Office produces non-working documents all the time
>and you all just live with it. But bring in a non-MS program and
>suddenly you want to blame the new program. I'd say this is a symptom
>of being brainwashed by marketing.
>
OK, I'll be more specific. Some of what I do is to create Excel and Word
documents for clients to send to their suppliers and customers, and
their other offices. My current major client is a small subsidiary of a
household-name Japanese company. The parent company is not going to use
OS software. The subsidiary uses Linux without knowing or caring, in
their Internet server, but they need document compatibility with their
parent and others. It's already hairy because Japanese Office is not
quite the same, and the last thing I want to do is to try to talk them
into using something else and then to solve the various problems that
will, beyond any doubt, occur. Life's too short.
>
>>>> I would also be dubious about arbitrary PDF documents created under
>>>> Linux opening correctly in the current Acrobat Reader.
>>>
>>> That's just your own paranoia.
>
>> No, I haven't seen a problem yet, but I expect to.
>
>Of course you do. And you _don't_ expect there to be a problem with
>Adobe's software even though critical thinking says the probabilities
>are about the same. There are how many versions of Acrobat and
>Distiller in the wild? They aren't all identical or written by the same
>people. Adobe programmers aren't any smarter than the rest of us just
>because they have a brand name.
>
>More brainwashing.

No, that's the point I was making. I expect new software to start out
with lots of bugs, and for most to be found before reaching the market.
I believe Adobe to be good at this. I expect the remaining bugs to be
obscure ones, not easily found by anyone using Adobe's own creation
software because that's how all the earlier bugs were found. But it's
unreasonable to expect OS software to do things in exactly the same way
as Adobe, and I would expect further bugs to be revealed that way, bugs
not found using Adobe's software.

For example, a recent Mandrake killed a particular model of CD writer
because the hardware designer goofed. Windows didn't kill it because
Windows didn't use the particular command that did it, because the
Windows driver was written by the hardware company. It was the CD writer
manufacturer's fault, but OS software which exposed it.

Similarly, I would expect MS bugs in Office which have not been exposed
by Office itself to be found using OS-created documents. And I don't
think MS is particularly good at finding bugs, nor at fixing bugs which
arise from using other people's software.
>
>
>>> I've heard all of these arguments before. You whine that Bill Gates is
>>> evil and hate him but just can't do anything about it.
>
>> I'm not keen on paying the oil empires for petrol for my car, either,
>> but I accept that it won't run on anything else.
>
>You only get to whine if you don't drive an SUV. You only get to whine
>if you are actually trying to do something about Bill's death grip on
>your business.
>
>
>>> I know your kind. Go the hell away until you grow a backbone, and in
>>> the meantime quit asking me to fix your screwed-up Windows computers.
>
>> There's no need to be offensive, this isn't an advocacy group.
>
>Sorry, I've just been hearing this same argument over and over and over
>for what seems like forever. We're trapped and we have no choice! Yes,
>you do have a choice but you are too fearful to take it.
>
>I go to my company's IT department meetings. There I hear the usual
>litany of complaints about MS. Complaints about cost, about viruses and
>malware, about forced upgrades. All the usual stuff. But don't you
>dare bring up an actual solution to those problems! That's not what the
>meetings are for! No, we _must_ use Outlook, we have no choice! But we
>hate virusues, yes we do!
>
>The last one was about incompatibilities between Office versions and
>which one should we standardize on and how much is it going to cost.
>The big issue was that Big Customer A had one version of Office and Big
>Customers B and C had another while we had a mixture of several. Oh,
>the horror! The formats may not be perfect! Oh the cost of two
>versions for everyone! Oh the risk that we aren't properly licensed!
>
>So I suggested that we could standardize on OOo for Windows internally.
>We could buy a support contract from Sun for a lot less than the MS
>upgrade pricing. Then we could give only the program managers who dealt
>with Big Customers the correct version of Office for their customers.
>We'd save a ton of money not having to upgrade 50 copies of Office and
>would still be compatible with our Big Customers.
>
>Blank stares all around. Then they started bringing up all the same
>stuff you've been talking about *even though* the compatibility issue is
>in fact limited to maybe a half-dozen people out of more than 50 and the
>reality of *that* is that cooperative editing with ousiders is in fact a
>very rare thing.
>
>Normally there is some back and forth where we write a thing and send it
>for comment and then re-write it when we get the comments. Hardly ever
>does the customer directly make changes to our document and say "this is
>how I want it". PDF's would work fine for how things are really done.
>The only reason they aren't used more is because it isn't convenient and
>because of the cost of Distiller licensing to make it convenient. It is
>very convenient and cost-free to use PDF with OOo.
>
>Businesspeople don't want to be ratonal about this. They want to escape
>from Windows but they don't want to have to actually do anything to
>accomplish that. They want the code fairy to come and wave a magic wand
>over their systems.

No, actually. Remember 'nobody got fired for buying IBM'? Now it's
Microsoft. Most of the business world *doesn't* want to get away from
MS, because most of the business world doesn't see an alternative. They
accept the prices and bugs in the way they accept taxes.

This will change, it is changing, but it's a slow process. The world
isn't going to switch to OOo or Linux overnight. What will happen is
that over a long period, more and more individual companies will switch,
but only if they can do so without penalty i.e. if they can maintain
file compatibility.

Of course Bill knows this, and will bend 95% of Microsoft's development
effort to ensuring future incompatibility. But he's not going to win in
the long run. He knows this as well, but he only needs to win for
another decade or two, after that he won't care.
>
>It is kind of like one of my kids. He wanted a car. But he wasn't
>willing to bring his grades up, quit ditching school, save any money, or
>really to do anything at all to get one. And yet he professed to
>*really* want a car a whole lot, really for sure he did. I guess he
>thought that if he wished hard enough it would happen. He figured it
>out a few years later. I think Corporate America will too, eventually.
>
>
Bill is already leaning too hard on his captive customers. When the cost
gets too high, we'll be here ready to help people move. But it's not up
to us to try to force this. Not if we want to go on eating, anyway. 

-- 
Joe