Does the "You get what you pay for" saying always hold true? Also, some FUD.

Microsoft recently started a campaign as Microsoft Office vs. OpenOffice.org . It's filled with propaganda and FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt). Since OO.o is free and is increasingly gaining market-share, Microsoft is obviously getting scared that now less people are using their overpriced office suite.

With that out of the way, on to the video.


Check out that thumbs down to thumbs up ratio! That's obviously why they disabled comments, but the real views still show through those ratings. Also, the video is available on this page, but comments are enabled here.

Well, on to the dissection. I hope nobody reading this is afraid of biology class.

First off, I just want to point out that I'm obviously not the first person to write about this. You can easily find other articles about this by searching for "openoffice fud" or "openoffice propoganda" or something like that.

Propaganda #1 - Lack of support.
The first quote in the video says "We originally installed linux-based PCs running OpenOffice to save money in the short term. But we quickly found that the exorbitant cost and limited availability of support left us worse off.". Well, looking on the OpenOffice.org website would be a good start to finding commercial support. Oracle offers support for Oracle Open Office, and they also have a list of consultants offering support for OpenOffice.org .

Propaganda #2 - Lack of compatibility with Microsoft Office file formats.
There were quite a few quotes related to this. One in particular says "With OpenOffice.org there was total uncertainty about the formatting of documents and also about their inconsistency when shared outside our production group.". First off, OpenOffice 3.2's default file format is one called the OpenDocument Format. It is an open format with its specifications freely available. OO.o is also able to read and write both the Microsoft Office XP and 2003 file formats, and the Office Open XML formats used in Microsoft Office 2007 and 2010. Now, conversion between ODF and one of the Microsoft Office Formats aren't perfect. I'm not sure about the entire situation, but I think the MS Office 2003 format was a closed format until recently (about 2 years ago). The OOXML formats used in MS Office 2007 and 2010 are supposedly an open format, but I'm not entirely sure what the details regarding that and OpenOffice's compatibility are. Funny that, Microsoft tattling about someone else's errors that are caused by their own self.

There's more, but I think those 2 points are some of the major ones.

Sure, OpenOffice.org is a bit on the slow side, but it's slowly getting faster with each release. If you don't deal with macros or complex tables in word and stuff like that, then I'm sure OpenOffice.org works great. And now that LibreOffice forked from OpenOffice (as described in the previous post), hopefully it improves even more.

Oh, by the way, I think Microsoft may have forgotten when they recently said they love open source.