Microsoft’s specification has previously caused problems for other vendors like LibreOffice’s The Document Foundation (TDF) too. There is some controversial history behind this feud between the two formats
No, there was no feud. What happened is that when Microsoft had to create an open document format that everyone could use, they purposefully made their format impossible to implement by anyone. IIRC, The open doc forma spec does it all and is 1500 pages large, whereas the Microsoft format doc is well over 6000 pages long and contains closed parts still anyways.
This is just standard Microsoft strategy and it worked again and dumb fucks again decided to stay married to Microsoft Microsoft because at apparently they love being abused
This is borderline fake news. This pilot project was launched poorly by the ministry responsible for digitisation because the minister wanted his own project running so he could bash other ministries for not doing anything. It’s ironic, like rain on your wedding day.
There are multiple pilot projects across the Danish range of ministries. Many are in much better shape because they’ve actually been thought through: example
Yeah, this is how monopolistic digital companies operate. Every time you try and pivot from their bullshit “ecosystem” you encounter “technical difficulties” because they’ve surreptitiously extended their tentacles beyond their products. Getting off of these systems will take a concentrated effort and it’s unfortunate that governments just aren’t willing to do it.
100% it was a hot dumpster fire of a Sharepoint deployment that made it impossible to migrate.
Has anyone discovered exactly what SharePoint does yet? /s
So TDF has a fascinating article on their blog discussing how the Austrian military made the switch. It took a lot of planning and there was a huge amount of work to help move people along.
I suspect this may not have been the case here. But I’m sure we’ll find out the gory details soon enough
I swear I have been reading this article for 20 years. Some gov org balks at Microsoft cost and pitches free alternative. They dont plan on spending extra to complete the transition and then dont adequately train or build out the infrastructure.
Replacing an intrenched system with a free software alternative successfully will require more money in the first few years, not less.
Did MS offer them a huge deal?
Only some vacations for deciders.
Satya Nadella pets a white cat.
How big was the bribe?
I could easily believe that it was more work than they expected and so they decided that it wasn’t worth it after all, but man. Do it anyway.
EU leaders are lying to you. This is a global class war.
I genuinely, genuinely don’t understand the need for microsoft office. A text editor has sufficed for everything I have ever wanted to do.
Excel spreadsheets bigger than databases. And the userbase doesn’t know any other options because of monopoly.
It’s actually amazing that Microsoft has been able to keep their users inside their walled garden for so many decades. When I was a teenager in the 90s, the same argument was used… That their users don’t care to look for other options. And it’s as true now as then.
It’s not really a walled garden; it’s just complacency and incentives.
This is not particularly surprising since Collabora leverages the Open Document Format (ODF) rather than Microsoft’s proprietary OOXML specification. Microsoft’s specification has previously caused problems for other vendors like LibreOffice’s The Document Foundation (TDF) too.
While it seems elections killed this initiative, the above is why I recommended EuroOffice or OnlyOffice for converts. It has a more MS feel and much, much better support for conversions.
I’m still confused why TDF hasn’t put more time into opening other formats.
What, did they try Win+E and it wouldn’t open a file browser on linux? 🤣
edit: Oh my bad, i read that as Microsoft, not Microsoft office.
You can be sure Microsoft was working its utmost hardest to make this not work, and make it look bad. All the more reason to get away from them as fast as possible.
The best way is to stop using office documents altogether. It’s legacy computing that at shouldn’t be needed any more.
Yo be fair, alternatives to office suck… Office is by far the superior choice.
People using alternatives usually say “this is enought for my knowledge/use”
Libre office is at least on par. In my experience it has far fewer bugs and is far less frustrating to use.
It’s fine if you don’t want to do complex stuff and most importantly are the only one using it, offline. Good luck if you want to start sharing over a network for multi user editing, viewing, reviewing etc which is what any org needs
Libre office certainly exceeds the web edition of office in functionality. I’m not aware of a gap to the desktop version, but I’m not a power user for sure. That lack of multi-user editing is almost a feature for me given how often other people have screwed up my spreadsheets in Excel.
What i think really happens is that people compare whilst trying to swap documents back and fore with MS office. When judged on that level it comes off poorly, but that’s not a fair metric. MS has intentionally worked against compatibility.
