I am unashamedly an advocate for Open Source software. I run a small business that offers custom built, inexpensive computers with Open Source software preinstalled. I urge my clients to move to Open Source software whenever it makes sense for them to do so. This includes full systems such as Linux distributions and cross-platform software such as OpenOffice.org Office Suite. However, recently I have been disappointed by a test install of OpenOffice.org for a charitable organization client of ours.
You see, this client is trying to find ways to reduce costs. One method of cost reduction I always recommend is to evaluate free, Open Source software as replacement for expensive, proprietary, Closed Source software. This client, like many others stuck in the proprietary software upgrade loop, is going to have to move off of Microsoft XP Professional sometime before 2014 when it will no longer be supported. Their computers will almost all have to be replaced to be able to run Windows 7 well if they decide to stick with Microsoft. Of course I am asking them to evaluate Open Source, and they are. One of the decision makers has been running a Linux distribution on his new home PC with a VirtualBox install of Microsoft Vista for about two months now. He volunteered to do this so he could be well informed for making a decision about the future direction of the charity's software needs.
During a recent reinstall of one of the charity's office PC systems following a bad Microsoft Patch Day that only affected that PC it was decided to install OpenOffice.org on the XP Professional system rather than the expensive, proprietary, Closed Source software that had been on there. I gladly did this and put on the latest release of OpenOffice.org at the time, which was version 3.1. There were some complaints from the user as it did not do what her previous office suite did. She had taught herself to use key bindings in that other software to do things faster. She did not know how to do these in OpenOffice.org and of course the similar functions are not bound to the same keystrokes. However, this is merely a retraining problem that can be solved easily with some hands-on training time.
One problem that did crop up though was one I had never seen before while using OpenOffice.org on Linux. When this user tried to save some of her Calc spreadsheet documents she was getting an error:
Error saving the document filename-goes-here:
Write Error.
The file could not be written.
This had never happened with her other office suite. I thought perhaps this was a problem writing to a network share. I suggested saving to the local drive. Nope, the error persisted. The only thing she could do was close the document without saving it. She was able to copy the spreadsheet information to the clip-board first, then a subsequent Calc document did save it. So the data was not lost, but this was a regularly occurring problem. When OpenOffice.org 3.2 came out the user downloaded and installed it on my suggestion that bugs would be fixed and new functions would be available. I was correct about new functions, but this bug was still there.
This was now a serious concern and a broadside against my recommendation of OpenOffice.org for this client. I know Microsoft has deliberately made competitor software not work well in the past. I began to suspect this was an attempt by Microsoft to kill OpenOffice.org on the Microsoft desktop because we all know Microsoft is very concerned that its cash cow will be killed by OpenOffice.org. With some research I discovered I was wrong, this problem is not Microsoft perfidy. It is unconscionable, but none the less true, that this is perhaps a long standing bug in OpenOffice.org itself:
http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=69993
http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=88318
I actually found references in the bug Issue 69993 to this exact error message going back to 2006(!). Now, I am aware that this error message may be triggered for several different conditions. One suggestion in the OpenOffice.org forums is a full temporary directory is the problem. But the temporary directory is not full in some of the cases. However, the fact remains that some people cannot on the first try save files to perfectly good file systems with a temporary directory that is NOT full. The fact also remains that these exact conditions have persisted for more than two years through several versions of OpenOffice.org. This problem does not just show up on Microsoft systems. It also rears its ugly head on Apple OS X and I saw at least one reference to this on a Linux system.
Understandably, we advocates for Open Source cannot have this type of long standing bug and expect to be taken seriously. A company that was relying on its software sales to make money and pay employees from those sales would have to fix a problem like this or go out of business. In Open Source we are not relying on sales to make money so some things that would be a software killer in expensive, proprietary, Closed Source software is allowed to continue under Open Source software. The voluntary nature of Open Source development means that in some cases unless someone cares enough to solve a bug then that bug will languish in the source code unfixed. It is not like one has to worry about being fired if one does not fix bugs in OpenOffice.org or most other Open Source software.
Yes, I know that much of Open Source development is now done by folks in paid positions in companies like IBM, Intel, Novell, Red Hat and so on. However, these paid programmers are working for the interests of their company, not the interest of free, Open Source software itself nor the Open Source community of users. While we should appreciate the efforts to develop Open Source by these companies we should also be aware they they do this work out of self-interest for their own benefit. Our benefits from their work in the Open Source community are just side benefits. It is still up to those of us that are voluntary programmers to take charge of bugs, own them and fix them as quickly as possible.
No, I am not a programmer and I do not have time to become one, so suggestions that I fix it myself are not welcome. This is true of the greater majority of software end-users.
Where am I going with this? What is my goal? Actually, I wrote this article as I thought it out. I did not outline it nor come up with an end-game goal for it. I simply wanted to air out what I see as a problem with "free" software development and perhaps get some people motivated to take action in cases where the software bugs are persistent but difficult to reproduce. In this case with OpenOffice.org, perhaps there is finally a resolution for this bug:
http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=108374
But we will have to wait for OpenOffice.org 3.3 to find out. It cannot get here soon enough in my opinion. If OpenOffice.org 3.3 does still have this bug then my client will likely see that as a reason to stop considering Open Source. That will be tragic because they really do need to cut costs and free, Open Source software can definitely help with that. But should the bug persist a "No" will be unavoidable in this case.
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Edit Mon May 10 18:34:12 CDT 2010: Clarify the sentence about temporary directories by splitting it into two sentences with more detail.
This whole topic sure brings up some raw emotions. It also brings up an old issue – paid programmers.
Why not start a “hot” issue squad of programmers who can be paid by donations to resolve problem issues? This probably wouldn’t work too well for OO.O because it’s so complex, but it could go a long way toward addressing long-standing bugs and the fact that many volunteer programmers cannot volunteer all of their time without starving to death.
Open Office works for me, never had any problems with it. However, it is Java based and Java has a long list of known glitches, my favorite being the inability to run “java -version” in a folder that does not have write permission on Windows.
Now, how can you expect, more so, pass this to clients, that there is or can ever be some free software for them? Free software emerges as a cooperative effort. So, if there is a hard to reproduce bug and you cannot make a debug build and find out what does not work using a debugger, just to show that to developers, you are out of luck.
Your best hope is to get something free with strings attached. I guess you must inform your users that there are free alternatives to proprietary software but the debugger is part of the learning curve.
As I see it, there can be no peaceful coexistence. The “users” either change or we ALL pay monopoly tax for EVERYTHING. Right now, while you are whining, Microsoft is SUCCESSFULLY introducing the Android tax.
Why dont u try the novell version of openoffice.. http://go-oo.org/
I very much appreciate all the work done by all of you: Users who support Linux and FOSS; IBM (invests $1 Billion per year!); other corporations who invest; the many who offer it all up for FREE on their expensive server space on the WWW;
all the fine folks on all the help forums; and the millions of folks who talk and promote the spread of FOSS, GNU/Linux, and the BSDs!
Special thanks go out to Microsoft for several fantastic contributions:
1. Microsoft runs 15,000 leased Akamai Linux Servers;
2. Microsoft pushes customers to FOSS, GNU/Linux, and the *BSDs, through lock-in, update failures, the Million Microsoft Virus programs, and, by being the ONLY OS on Planet Earth that is NOT a parallel processing, concurrent multi-processing, multi-user, stable, fast Operating System!
3. Continuing to run Hotmail/MSN.com on 13,500 GNU/Linux and BSD servers.
4. Running all the corporate internal networks on 400 Linux routers.
5. Continuing efforts (in advertising, in media placement stories, at court trials) by
Microsoft Corporation to show by comparison that Microsoft’s corporate psyche is
inferior to the passion of 500 million Linux, BSD, and FOSS, programmers,
and users, in 184 nations!
Your discourse also did remind me, and enlighten me, about my duty and responsibility to continue to work to maintain all that FREE stuff, that came with no guarantee, no warranty, yet has performed so flawlessly for me since 1996!
In 1996, tired of the many disgusting issues and traits of a proprietary world of locked-in corporate greed, that caused me so much labor to maintain the computers of many hundreds of friends, family, schools and businesses, we ALL switched to Linux or BSD and FOSS! I convert more than 400 folks each year, to FOSS, in schools, businesses, and homes.
I couldn’t do it without all of YOU! We all thank you profusely, for cutting off our shackles, and freeing us from drudgery and extended hours of slavery to the MS monster!
BTW, yes, had a file in OO on Linux Mint 8, that would NOT save, though others since that one, on that system, save just fine!
If you are looking for something free and just as good as OpenOffice, you should rather have a look at SSuite Office for a free office suite.
Their software also doesn’t need to run on Java or .NET, like MS Office and so many open source office suites, so it makes their software very small, efficient, and very easy to use.
http://www.ssuitesoft.com/index.htm
George (comment #76) thanks for the suggestion.
That software is for Microsoft Windows only. The requirement is that the software must be cross-platform capable. The client in this case is considering a switch to Linux on their desktops for all office tasks. The exception will be their existing charity management software with payroll which is only available for Microsoft. That will be run in a virtual machine until the time it either works on Linux or can be replaced with FOSS/CSS software that works on Linux.
All,
The management at this client instructed us to put Microsoft Office back on the user’s PC. Unfortunately they do not have the financial resources to pay us to troubleshoot bugs in OpenOffice.org software. Neither do we have the ability to troubleshoot this for free since client support and troubleshooting is how our business makes its income. This is a tragic end to what I had hoped would be a positive experiment for this client.
The good news is they are not going to just give up on FOSS based on this. But this is delaying their decision and putting off any other experiments until sometime in the nebulous future..