18 to 28% is not a minor percentage of users. I'm a fan of LibreOffice, and was an extremely early adopter and contributor to the project, being one of the people that pushed for and created the community council at the time. Brushing these kind of numbers away isn't going to help, and they will be hit hard on that point by the opposition. The better approach will be to adress the mismatch head on, with an actionable plan on how to solve these issues.
I worked hard, in a professional capacity, for the adoption of LO and Desktop Linux in various government departments around the EU, and the agression of commercial players against this kind of push is phenomenal. Eventually I moved on professionally but the scars are still with me. One powerful message this whole thing left me with is that you cannot do this kind of thing, and hope to have a career in professional services. I was forced to drop out of public participation with OSS projects, and never really went back.
Although they word it poorly, I think the point is that those numbers should be compared to similar software issues experienced on Windows platforms, in which case the benefit of switching back is a lot slimmer. As noted a bit later:
> Incidentally, 15% of users acknowledged severe issues related to MS Office.
You have a point in that it's very easy to interpret these statistics in totally contradictory ways, but without further details we are just speculating.
I was contributing for some time to OpenOffice, and at one point starting working for a systems integrator, specialising in Linux and Open Source solutions. At this time, OSS was just coming out of academia, and enterprise had no interest in all this hippy bullshit. They needed a techie in a suit to come and tell them the how, why, and how much OSS would help and cost. As soon as a client would mention anything related to Linux or OSS to the salesdrone, I would be dragged into the discussion. This was a pretty cool job: lots of very large clients and projects which suited my background (designing and implementing very large scale infrastructure) and interests (Linux, Open Source). I was an active and vocal contributor within the OpenOffice project, recognising it as one of the key enablers for a possible Linux Desktop. Sun sent me increasingly strongly worded requests to "tone things down" - I was pushing hard for the idea of a community council, and Sun didn't like the idea of giving up control. One of the results of this was that I set up OOoForums.org, since we didn't really have a space to freely interact with end-users on the "official" site.
One not-so-fine-day I'm called into HR. VP's present. Heavy meeting. No warning. My employer had a strong and profitable relationship/partnership with Sun, we were selling big Sun iron into enterprise to the tune of millions per year, and Sun complained about my behaviour to my employer. I was told in no uncertain terms that if I wanted to stay happy at my job, I would do as I was told by Sun via backchannels. If not, I'd lose my job. Having a family to take care of, I dropped out of the whole scene the same day. (this is now about 12 or 13 years ago)
I left this company not long after, and did a project to deploy Linux Desktops with OpenOffice not long after. A Government dept, about 100 seats if I remember correctly. New building, new pc's for everyone, and we sold it as "A new version of windows". We spent a long time making KDE look like windows, and made sure everything worked. It was awesome, it cost a fraction, and the users loved it. I was hired by a sympathetic client who specifically wanted this. There were upper management changes during the project, and the new head let me know that my services were no longer required, since he was flown to Seattle by MS (from Europe) and they "explained" to him that MS was the way to go. I pointed to my (extremely solid) contract, and let him know he could do what he wanted after delivery. I was subjected to significant pressures for the duration of the project, and it really wasn't a lot of fun. A week after operational delivery, IBM and MS waltzed in, blitzed everything, and that was that.
Thank you for posting such a long explanation. It's very valuable to both realize the power of open source (by indirect means of the fear it created) and how hard it is to sell it when it has to fight against an up hill opponent... I am not surprised by these facts but I'm quite surprised by the power of the forces at play. Thanks again !
My employer had a strong and profitable relationship/partnership with Sun, we were selling big Sun iron into enterprise to the tune of millions per year,
Wonder if your ex boss ever thinks about this now? I suspect there is less demand for Sun or Oracle big irons now.
They are a very large EU-wide integrator, and have partnerships with pretty much all the boxbuilders. The whole saga with Sun hardware was likely just another profit opportunity.
I am not. But you can run MS Office with Wine, if need be. I do this on occasion since it is the only reliable way to make sure the document will look the same at your client.
I worked hard, in a professional capacity, for the adoption of LO and Desktop Linux in various government departments around the EU, and the agression of commercial players against this kind of push is phenomenal. Eventually I moved on professionally but the scars are still with me. One powerful message this whole thing left me with is that you cannot do this kind of thing, and hope to have a career in professional services. I was forced to drop out of public participation with OSS projects, and never really went back.