Why can't governments fund LibreOffice as part of their effort to wean themselves away from Microsoft? This seems like such an obvious thing for governments to fund for their own use and bequeath as a gift to their citizenry.

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forinti 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

1. A lot of people aren't even aware of the alternatives;

2. There is a lot of backlash from people afraid to learn new things;

3. Even in IT departments, people who are used to administering MS networks will fight against it;

4. Does LibreOffice have a marketing department?

I wholeheartedly agree that governments should not only use Linux/LibreOffice in their bureaucracies, but that they should also finance and promote it, especially in peripheral economies.

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nickserv 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I think OP's point is that certain government agencies have already transitioned or are in the process of transitioning. As such it would make sense for them to fund LibreOffice, given that they now depend on it.

	▲	forinti 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		In my country, the government would have to get something in return (support would be the most obvious channel). LibreOffice has some obvious disadvantages: it does not have an office in my country, it does not offer support, and it does not lobby the government. Previous efforts to push more OSS into government were obliterated by right-wing governments. You can guess why.

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bee_rider 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Anyway, most people don’t want to interact with office type documents, right? The only reason I have it installed is to deal with a problem usually generated by some big organization: documents that aren’t available in an accessible format like Tex, markdown, or html. Let the people generating the problem pay for it.

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ForHackernews 5 hours ago | parent [-]

You are in a bubble. Most office workers want Word documents and Excel spreadsheets (or something equivalent) not markdown and numpy.

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aucisson_masque an hour ago | parent | next [-]

People been running libreoffice just fine in french administration.

They even prefer it to office because they are used to it now.

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bee_rider 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I don’t think they really want these document formats, usually the requirement is imposed by management.

	▲	roetlich 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		"Managment" usually are office workers.