[odf-discuss] Re: Member of EU Parliament asks if Microsoft should be excluded from public procurement

[marbux]

On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 8:57 AM, Lars Noodén <lars at umich.edu> wrote:
> Rui Miguel Silva Seabra wrote:
>  > ...
>
> > To me it seems like a microturf ad-news-report
>
>  That was my assessment, too.  Though I seem to recall a nearly identical
>  story a long time ago.  As far as I am concerned that product line
>  imploded miserably back around 2000 and the file format lock-in seems to
>  be what is holding many businesses back from leaving it.
>

That's hitting the nail on the head. That and the fact that FOSS
hasn't yet delivered a full line of vertical market apps. E.g., if you
want to practice law, you either use MS Office or WordPerfect Office
or forego most benefits of law office automation because there aren't
yet FOSS equivalents of a host of profession-specific MS/Corel
off-the-shelf add-ons.

E.g., if I'm creating a table of authorities in OOo, it's a 2-3 hour
process. But if I use the free West Citelink tool, it takes about 3
minutes total and in the process all citations are linked to the
corresponding entries in the Westlaw database, the table of
authorities entries are automatically hyperlinked to their occurrences
in the text, incorrect citation forms are corrected, I can
simultaneously create a MSIE flavor of HTML version, etc. See
<http://west.thomson.com/westcitelink/>. With most court documents in
the U.S. now required to be filed electronically, judges and their
staff appreciate this kind of service so they can rapidly compare your
citations and what you said about them with what the cited sources
actually say, a necessary step in deciding between warring legal
positions.

That's only one example; there are many other law profession-specific
apps and if you're not using several of them, you really are at a
competitive disadvantage. And this is in the only remaining vertical
market where the three major MS Office apps still face a competitor
with measureable market share. Microsoft had to pipe $130 million into
Corel a few years ago to maintain even that facade of competition.

FOSS is getting there in terms of general purpose apps. But it has a
long way to go in the vertical markets.

 Best regards,

Paul






>  -Lars
>
>
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