Enterprise open source Toolkit

Story: French opt for laissez-faire Linux

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I installed OpenOffice on production systems the morning I heard about the 1.0 release. I had to hunt the world over to find a server not loaded down with the demand. There were a few problems, but it worked. Today, there are still a few problems, not least of which is that OO is not ported to AMD64 and I use an AMD64 terminal server. Using a 32bit chroot is a minor problem. OO works well for us and we can generate PDFs which helps with interagency communication. Microsoft is not an innovator. Its barbaric EULA (End-User Licence Agreement), endless changes of file format, useless features, broken features, incompatibilities with previous versions, very high licence fee and the fact that they still do not do PDF two years after OO are all the reasons anyone needs to switch. Ray Ozzie had it right when he stated, "Complexity kills. It sucks the life out of developers, it makes products difficult to plan, build and test, it introduces security challenges, and it causes end-user and administrator frustrations.". Microsoft knows its own problems and refuses to fix them. It deserves to be abandoned.

The question to ask is why anyone should stay with Microsoft. Those who are solidly locked in made a mistake with their last acquisition. The longer the switch is delayed, the more the pain.

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