> We've been seeing variations of the same article every week.

Time has come. Over the last few years there is more and more interest from goverments and private organizations to have relieable software that does not depend of foreign entities. Software sovereignty is becoming a necesity rather than a nice to have for both nations and enterprises.

> Excel, in particular, hasn't been unseated despite billions in investments from competitors over the years.

Excel, like many other technologies in the past can be disrupted. Like mane other commenters say, it won't come cheap. Saving costs shouldn't be the the goal here.

> Parity will happen someday, but it's at least a decade away.

Challenge accepted!

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glimshe a day ago | parent [-]

This is the year of LibreOffice on the government? I'd love if you were right, but I doubt it. The chasm is enormous, and maybe you don't use Excel enough to realize it.

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d3Xt3r a day ago | parent | next [-]

The chasm is enormous, but Calc doesn't need to implement 100% of Excel's functionality when most people - even business/power users - don't use all of its features.

What major commonly used features do you reckon Excel has that hasn't been implemented in LO Calc yet, that would be a deal-breaker for most businesses?

To my knowledge, Calc has implemented most of Excel's formulae (well over 500 in total count), so at least for typical spreadsheet functionality you wouldn't missing anything.

The biggest limitation I can think of is the limited support for VBA, but Microsoft have already announced VBA's deprecation[1], so no one should be relying on it even in MS World.

And whilst LO's own Basic scripting is... basic, it also supports rich scripting and full automation via Python and Javascript. It even has a full-fledged SDK for developing addins/extensions using a high-level language like C++/Java etc[2], so businesses who're dependent on some random proprietary excel COM addin or something could invest in development effort to port it over.

Heck, if businesses are so inclined, they could modify the LO source itself and build a custom version to add the features they want - that's the beauty of FOSS.

[1] https://devblogs.microsoft.com/microsoft365dev/how-to-prepar...

[2] https://api.libreoffice.org/

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tracker1 a day ago | parent [-]

You don't use all it's feature, but if you need part of the 10% of features that Calc doesn't support, then your in a world of hurt.

When Calc gets the other 90% of the features Excel has, you also need to contend with word, Outlook, Visio and all the rest that Libre Office has a 0% solution for.

I support FLOSS... But pretending that anything else does enough for many orgs is delusional. There is work and pain to get through to even have a workable solution... And it won't be as good for a long while.

Massive cost savings are one of the bigger motivators... But that will be offset by the need for more internal staff.

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d3Xt3r a day ago | parent [-]

I don't see why you would automatically be in "a world of hurt". Yes, you might be if you were to suddenly roll it out organisation wide without any testing, but no sane IT department would do that. This is why you have internal test groups and pilot groups. Once you identify the limitations, you scope out the missing features/issues, engage developers if need be, or look for alternate solutions. No one needs to get hurt.

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tracker1 a day ago | parent [-]

Will you, personally, volunteer to resolve all the issues when trying to convert the older Excel based workflows?

What's your approach to getting out of Access, Visio and Outlook integrations?

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d3Xt3r 21 hours ago | parent [-]

No, but that's only because I hate Excel. But I'm sure developers who don't hate it but also appreciate FOSS solutions might be interested, if the pay is good.

Access = LibreOffice Base

Visio = LibreOffice Impress

Outlook = Schleswig-Holstein already switched successfully to Open-Xchange and Thunderbird, I've not heard of them running into any major issues with this setup.

	▲	tracker1 41 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		And if the cost of (re)developing all the existing solutions exceeds the costs of MS licensing for a decade?

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nhatcher a day ago | parent | prev [-]

No, I don't think LibreOffice is the answer. And I am with you here, I would love to be wrong. One issue is that it doesn't really work well online. The folks from Collabora[1] have done an amazing job at wrapping LibreOffice for the web and maybe that is a way to go?

As a sibling comment says you don't need to implement absolutely everything Excel does to _disrupt_ Excel. But you do need to provide a fantastic tool that is easy to use and solves 99% of the problems. If governments start putting their money were their mouth is I am very convinced we can create tools that supersede Excel, Word,...

[1]: https://www.collaboraonline.com/