OpenOffice and its offshoots have made a lot of progress over the last few years, and while it has saved some businesses and governments a lot of money, one city council in Freiburg, Germany is not happy about the open source suite.
Alright, so that's really not that big of a deal, you're saying - after all, how many of you have ever been to Freiburg, or care what kind of software its city council is using? What is a big deal is the hilarious takedown they delivered, pretty much summing up 90% of criticism directed at the suite. Here's a literal translation of their statement:
"In the specific case of the use of OpenOffice, the hopes and expectations of the year 2007 are not fulfilled.”
There you have it: a stodgy city council bashing OpenOffice for being outdated. Why aren't American city councils this fun?
To be fair, the ancient version of OpenOffice the council is using - their report says that it is an outdated Oracle version - probably is getting a bit long in the tooth. But the software really hasn't advanced very much since its inception, either.
Still, the Freiburg Council says that the suite is most pitiful when it comes to spreadsheets and presentations, blaming the worst deficiencies on infighting in the open source community. Long story short, they want their Microsoft Office back.
In a nutshell, this story pretty much summarizes the alleged problems with open source software, and while we're sure that it gets the job done for some folks, there are still a lot of holes in the concept, and OpenOffice in general. We'd still love to see Apache, OpenOffice's new stewards, or The Document Foundation, muster up and deliver a new suite that really can stand up against Microsoft, though.
So, is Open Office stuck in the past, or is it ‘good enough?' Are there some specific improvements you'd like to see, or do you just want it to die faster? Sound off in the comments section below!
Source: ARN | Via Softpedia
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