You are looking from the perspective of a user of the software - sure, these have enough feature parity to "compete".

But that's the butt end of the equation. The real issue is enterprise administration. A user never thinks about this problem, because they do not ever encounter it as a problem in their private lives.

How does permission work? How does a new hire get an account? How does account/permission revoking work? How does audit work? And that's just the surface.

Needs for large enterprises, where you cannot just have John from HR make a new account for the new hire, are often not met by the opensource world.

Large enterprises were doing this stuff with Unix and mainframes long before Microsoft figured out what preemptive multitasking was.

And decided that it was cheaper and easier to just outsource it to Microsoft. Because doing it in today's environment - different work computers, backend servers, mobile devices, etc - is much more complicated than just managing permissions on a mainframe.

Distributed databases are a solved problem (besides maybe performance). Offloading account management to arbitrary databases too. Why everyone is using Microsoft is, because then they have someone to blame, instead of needing to point at themselves.

ActiveDirectory is million times better than any other solution on the market.

You do you. Last time I needed it, setting up libpam-mysql was fairly quick.

And setting up things like rsync to replace dropbox is also "fairly quick"!

The point isn't that but the fact that like a normal user, a normal business don't want to have to tinker with low level components to get the functionality they want. They desire to pay and get a working piece of infrastructure with low hassle (tho i get saying active directory being low hassle is weird).

But a normal user isn't going to setup AD either. This will be done by sysadmins anyway, so stuff like being able to put the configuration into version control is actually useful for them. The "normal business" has lots of employee databases anyways and integration is actually a feature instead of needing to sync it with bespoke Microsoft internals.

So you can hook up all those internal employee databases to your new created libpam-mysql and hook it up all to slack or just use what Microsoft sells you.

> your new created libpam-mysql

I do not need to create it, it already exists. Yes, you can write your own pam module, but in general you do not need to.

> just use what Microsoft sells you.

Which means now your employees need to manually sync the MS and your internal databases. Depends on how much your employees time is worth for you. I mean a lot of companies do exactly that, but it is certainly not the cheaper option.

Also using what MS sells is also illegal. Not that anyone cares, as whole Europe ignores that, but when you meet a civil servant on the wrong foot, your company is toast.

Ilegal? Lol, nice joke.

As chiii already pointed out, you are looking at the wrong end of the spectrum.

Decision in Enterprise organizations are not done by the end user and non of your options, not even Google Docs, offers the equality of features.

M365 is far more than just Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams (apart from some apps depending on the M365 tier you are in like Access, Project, Visio etc.), you buy a whole workspace. Users can seamlessly share and work together on documents, not only in their organization but also with others. It's easy to process information from one app to the other etc.

Yes, Google Docs might be the closest thing when it comes to features (but no match), however, looking at local restrictions and laws, Microsoft is one of the few companies that can host you M365 solution in an environment that, for example, matches european laws.

And that is the big problem, there are no alternatives for companies that are already on M365 and using the features of it.

"Seamless" may be irrationally exuberant but it's better than the others _at scale_.

LibreOffice, etc. may see similar from the UI end but if you're scaling across multiple sites/archetypes/employee models/regulatory environments, -and- want access to a wide and deep pool of administrative labor, M365 is seamless by comparison.

You are arguing the Oracle strategy, raise prices until it hurts, throw up roadblocks to switching and raise them some more.

Yeah, capitalism. Our sense of fairness hate it but our portfolios love it.

Every now and then I forget why the common man hates our industry nowadays, but luckily this forum always reminds me

They're working on it.

Starting with the ads. Windows 11 was launched for precisely this purpose. Because what better way to milk daily revenue from existing millions of Windows PCs than to show desktop-level ads. The actual product price increases are an added boost to the M$ coffers. Microsoft thinks that most students/home users will not run away instead to Linux and OpenOffice/LibreOffice, and maybe it's right, since they had decades to do so.

They are right, but they're too slow in realizing this. I of course switched to Linux decades ago, but for ages now, I've constantly heard people swearing "this is the last straw Microsoft! I'm going to switch to Linux!" because of some transgression and then they never do.

A few people might convert, but tightening the screws on the rest of them will by far more than make up for the ones they lose. MS needs to make the most of this and raise prices enormously, 10-100 times what they are now. Even if 5% of users defect, a 10x price increase will still mean a 9.5x increase in profits.

And they might as well bake some more ads and other malware into Windows and Office too, while they're at it, to increase profits even more. They're missing out on a lot of profit by not putting more ads into their corporate products especially. Sure, people will complain, but so what? The users don't make the purchasing decisions at companies anyway, so who cares about pissing them off?

Oracle did the same cheap dirty trick for profits, when it is bundled adware/spyware (Ask toolbar) by default on its JRE (Java Runtime Installer) used on millions of corporate and student/home PCs, because it knew Java/JRE would already be whitelisted on those machines (Java gets updates, so IT admins tend to whitelist its EXEcutable and its installer (JRE installer), since it is necessary for corporate work (many legacy software depend on Java)).

Suddenly, many IT admins were in a tough spot explaining to many internal customers (including senior management; even CxO's have Java on their office laptops) why their PCs were suddenly flooded with popup ads and even ads on intranet sites (because Ask toolbar integrated into the browser)).

Google used to have a motto/policy of "Do Not Evil", but it silently dropped that approach. It had to do so, because its biggest rivals had already adopted and profited from the evil attitudes, so it too simply followed the evil tide.

The world has always been ruled by the oligarchs (the richest and most powerful people), but in modern era, it is the biggest corporates (especially trillion dollar valuation companies) that call the shots. And they continue do as they please, bending even powerful nations to their will.

Suggesting libreoffice as an alternative to Office 365 is crazy.

Why? What feature does office 365 have that is so difficult to replace? I'm guessing support but... is there something more obvious?

Full disclosure, I haven't used microsoft office in a few decades.

Office 365 these days is SSO (Include Enterprise cloud apps in the bargain),Cloud Documents, Email, Teams(Telephony and Chat) . Word, Excel and Outlook, what outsiders think of as "office" client side apps, are just a gimme. Heck thats just in brief, most of my customers are in deeper than that. Throw in Cloud Compute, and VDI as experiences that are just that much easier using Azure and 365 than other providers.

Not to mention, the data guarantees around Copilot are super enterprise compatible. Its not that companies want copilot, its that they know if they don't provide a solution, users will desire path into something with dodgy data security. So they provide "The Best" in the IBM sense of protecting the business and their jobs, which is Copilot.

It takes a bit of doing but your end state is, user logs into PC, signs in SSO, they get all their apps (remote and local), their emails, their documents, their collab and neither they or you need to think about it.

Oh and to continue, theres the whole Purview suite which is purpose built to integrate into large business data security incidents. I know of MSPs who wont be seen without Exchanges litigation hold / related tools because they have been saved from prosecution. Defender has not just grown more tentacles its like 3 different complete octopi at this point. Defender for Endpoint is particularly difficult to get away from because it does so damn much in the way of logging and monitoring for very little standup cost.

If you sat down most large orgs and created a list of what they may need to replace if they were getting rid of Office365 + supporting/supported features you would probably find its a lot more work. They are everywhere. Theres a turnkey(ish) microsoft solution that grows out the side of 365s head for every big business problem.

Intune. Hello. Man it just keeps going on.

This was the key point I tried to make at the start of this thread: "It's not just using a different version of Excel and Word - that's the least of the issues."

Libre office can mostly replace Word, Excel, PowerPoint. But Office 365 or M365 (or whatever the brand name is today) is a huge suite of cloud collaboration and administration tools, including personal and corporate-level cloud storage, app delivery, integration with enterprise accounts and other corporate tools, email, and many other more niche/obscure things. At this point, Microsoft could probably discontinue Word, Excel, and PowerPoint and still not lose many M365 customers.

> At this point, Microsoft could probably discontinue Word, Excel, and PowerPoint and still not lose many M365 customers.

Yeah, just as we forgot about the "paperless office" metric we seemingly forgot about MS Office file formats. "But can I open that file someone sends me?" hasn't been the central driver in quite a while.

But I guess it's a bit of a moat nonetheless: IT departments just not considering any other cloud solution that would (in addition to the pains of the cloud migration) also require weening employees off Excel/Word/Powerpoint. People don't even ask themselves wether that would (still) be hard or not, it feels like a safe assumption that it will.

And what if that is actually useful ? I guess email ?

In enterprise? All of it.

The office you are talking about is not what it used to be a few decades ago. I am not into this world but what I know of it is like you are comparing a tool to the whole workshop. No, the tool does not replace the workshop, the tool is a very small part of the workshop.

There are alternatives but when you have bought into the full ecosystem of MS, it will take a lot of work to move.

(Full disclosure: I work with both Linux and Windows at a small company where Office means what you mean with office. They are all using libreoffice but call it office)

One word. Cloud.

Sharepoint, onedrive, teams. Everything is integrated and collaborating is trivial. You can’t replicate that with open source.

Ok, but surely google docs does that just as well or even better? I have never even heard of sharepoint and onedrive!

I can believe you not hearing about Sharepoint. But not hearing about Onedrive is basically impossible if you have used a Windows machine in the last decade.

Yeah, one may not use it but it's hard to ignore when Office apps suggest you save the document to the cloud as a default. I do avoid it and don't really need any collaboration but I understand that I'm minority. On my home workstation (which is mainly used for video editing) I have only local account so I don't get sucked into more MS services. But at this point you have to actively try to get around the default setup with online account and cloud apps, so it's indeed hard to ignore.

I have never used windows machines for anything but gaming, but I get your point readily. If I had used the windows finder I would have encountered onedrive.

You’re obviously very far from the intended target audience.

Google Docs is not the comparison here. Google Workspace is.

Nope.

Collaboration

> Full disclosure, I haven't used microsoft office in a few decades.

That explains it I suppose.

It’s akin to being in the AWS ecosystem and having to switch to Oracle. It’s less so MS Office but rather the SAAS and enterprise security stuff in 365

You are many levels deep in a thread that answers the very question you are asking. From the OP:

> It's not just using a different version of Excel and Word - that's the least of the issues.

It goes on!

"Full disclosure, I haven't used microsoft office in a few decades."

and thats the problem, the fair comparison would be like You replace AWS with hetzner vps

So its a good idea :)

Yeah the problem is hetzner actually good, office alternative is all sucks

HarmonyOS is gaining a lot of traction in China and has WPS pre-installed

https://www.wps.com

I've never used it but apparently it comes with ingame purchases.

Which is perfectly fine for China, but no western government or company who hopes to do business with them will consider this, and for good reason.

hah, my comment appears much more naive than I thought possible.

WPS apparently has 80% market share in Chinese government and state owned enterprise. They used MS from 2000-2005, In 2006 they released Uniform Office Format (UOF) which MS doesn't support(!?) UOF works better with Chinese fonts. 2012 Kingsoft offered Enterprise WPS and became the standard.

Governments in Europe are increasingly ditching Microsoft, goaded by souring relations between the continents.

Ditching for what?

This is what can end Microsoft domination. The US is becoming a hostile power.

Don't underestimate the rage from citizens who receive important documents and sheets in formats they can't open. Or you can open them but with a warning that some functionality might be lost. (reads like: you might go to prison)

I can't think of any official documents I'd be getting in Office file formats. Forms are mostly web ones or in some cases PDF, read-only documents are PDF. Maybe you can submit some documents or attachments in the Word format as a citizen but I wouldn't be surprised if PDF is already required anyway, or an image format for scans.

I'd be more worried about document interoperability between government agencies and other organizations such as companies that do work for the government. The government could of course mandate contractors to use an open source office suite which would extend the need for training to those companies.

Also, I've seen some orgs make heavy use of Office formats in terms of e.g. surprisingly elaborate formatting, document history and comments, and although I haven't tried to use those in LibreOffice, I wouldn't be sure it supports all of those in the same extent some people have learned to use them in Office.

My gov is moving 100% of documents, forms, official stuff to web based without browser plugins. Of course unfortunately if you want to download/print (...) it will be pdf, but outside that, all filling in, editing, reading etc of all citizen facing materials must be possible with a modern web browser. If PDF is only the export for the final doc, I am ok with it; I can fill ut with whatever browser on whatever device. This should be the mandatory basics imho.

That's a Microsoft problem, not a FOSS problem though.

Don't over-estimate that neither.

Things can be done in such ways that there is nothing visibly incompatible (ie scripting behind some forms), you can always just print and fill the document if needed, and anyway most documents are static pdfs with optional plus for filling some fields in computer.

For us it isn't a very big deal. We will dig out the data points with our bare hands if we have to. (in ways that would make a data analyst scream) For normal users the experience is more like ransomware.

I really hope that happens but I see those announcement as negotiating tactics. Switching will cost a lot (in training, unavoidable delays and mistakes etc.) and both parties will have incentives to go back to good old days.

I hope I am wrong on this. I hate that public infrastructure and bureaucracy runs on Microsoft.