M. Fioretti wrote:
On Tue, Jun 19, 2007 00:17:51 AM -0500, Robert Derman
([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
I know that this lack of a suitable Outlook replacement is the last
major thing standing in the way of many Fortune 500 companies
adopting OOo.
While do I agree that the current FLOSS alternatives are not really a
suitable Outlook replacement (**), THE reason #1 why "many Fortune 500
companies don't adopt OOo yet" is the simple fact that they still have
to keep, modify and exchange millions of legacy files in proprietary
MS Office formats. This is not going to change until governments
demand the usage of Opendocument for storage and in all transactions
between them and citizens or companies (something which has already
started to happen, by the way).
It's a bit more complicated, IMHO. The people in the govt. and also in
most of the companies does not aware about the OOo, nor the FLOSS. For
them the PC is equal to MS, there is no PC without Windows and MSO. One
of the reason is in the aggressive and corrupting way of the MS products
dealing. E.g. here on Slovakia for EVERY employee in the state
administration and state institutions at all the ECDL (European Computer
Driving Licence) certificate is required. I don't know what is the
situation in other EU countries, but here the ECDL is equal to training
in the MS products using, what is scandal in fact. Moreover, anybody who
is experienced network administrator, programmer or other IT expert,
from the viewpoint of the Slovak state administration is an IT
analphabet while he can not prepare an MS Powerpoint presentation with
nice colors as it is prescribed in the ECDL textbook (full of stupid
mistakes, BTW).
Another big reason why "many Fortune 500 companies don't adopt OOo
yet" is that they simply don't adopt any _specific_ software. They
simply buy "ICT services and solution" from third parties (HP, IBM,
EDS...), that is they lease pre-configured computers for a monthly fee
which includes system administration, updates and so on without caring
**at all** of what those computers run. As long as it opens their
pre-existing files, of course, macros and all. And the third parties
put Microsoft software because of a mix of the partnerships they have
with Microsoft and the simple reality of reason #1.
I know a company operator who says "what is for free it cannot be good
for me" and this is the reason why he will never consider using OOo in
his company. Strange ...
(**) I don't think OOo should provide such a replacement, but that's
not the point as the main reason to not use OOo in large organizations
is not Outlook.
Maybe.
Tomas
Marco
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