[H-GEN] OpenOffice being pushed in the sub-$1000 PC market

[Tony Nugent]

[ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and     ]
[ Unix-related topics. Posts from non-subscribed addresses will vanish. ]

On Wed Sep 10 2003 at 13:07, "Andrew Duncan" wrote:

> Also, in composition openoffice is lacking.  When MSoffice is only $250,
> why bother with openoffice at all?

Granted that ooo is lacking, but it generally works and will no
doubt become much more solid and functional as development goes
on... the sorts of issues you are complaining about will eventually
no longer be there.

  (Open standards for all document formats such as .doc files,
  including their possible encryption and drm control mechanisms
  etc, should be mandatory by law, but that's another story... see
  the linux australia mailing list for recent discussions of these
  issues).

$250 isn't so trivial especially for a student, not all of us are
students who can qualify for the "academic" edition, the full
"normal" price for m$o is totally outrageous -- and for a product
that is full of security holes.

And beware: DRM management is going to be embedded into the
forthcoming m$o2003 so that very soon using m$o means no backwards
compatability (or "sideways" compatability with other editors such
as ooo), and it also mean that m$ is ultimately in almost total
control of your access to all sorts of information.  Whoever
controls information (and access to it) has a hell of a lot of power
(especially on a global level)... do you trust m$ with this? - with
no outside auditing, no regulation, no accountability?  That's what
is happening.

And generally I'm not very happy about contributing to the Billy
Gates retirement fund, nor happy about him and his cronies being in
ultimate control of what I can do and can't do with my computer...

Cheers
Tony

--
* This is list (humbug) general handled by majordomo at lists.humbug.org.au .
* Postings to this list are only accepted from subscribed addresses of
* lists 'general' or 'general-post'.  See http://www.humbug.org.au/