[OT] Migrating from non-free programs to LibreOffice (was: "More About Unicode in Python 2 and 3")

[Ben Finney]

Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> writes:

> Maybe it's the better way, but like trying to get people to switch
> from MS Word onto an open system, it's far easier to push for Open
> Office than for LaTeX.

If you're going to be pushing people to a free software system,
OpenOffice is no longer the one to choose; its owners several years ago
shunted it to a dead end where very little active development can
happen, and its development community have moved to more productive
ground.

Rather, the same code base has since 2010 been actively developed as
LibreOffice <URL:http://libreoffice.org/>, and it is now showing far
more improvement and document compatibility as a result.

In short: Everything that was good about OpenOffice is now called
LibreOffice, which had to change its name only because the owners of
that name refused to let it go.

> Getting your head around a whole new way of thinking about your data
> is work, and people want to be lazy. (That's not a bad thing, by the
> way. Laziness means schedules get met.)

Right. I think shifting people to LibreOffice is an excellent and
realistic step toward imcreasing people's software and data freedom.

-- 
 \     “It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to |
  `\    persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.” —Carl |
_o__)                                                            Sagan |
Ben Finney