this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2025
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It's disgusting how many businesses have been herded into wasting money on products they can be using for free, then convincing customers they "need more money."
LibreOffice is pretty far from Microsoft Office. Even Google's suite is more polished. Like it or not, funding behind a project helps build a stronger product.
Probably better to think of spending their money on an open ecosystem, instead of just using something for "free". If software products have sufficient funding they can better improve the products and can continue to exist - without some form of monetisation most wouldn't still be around.
I believe it's a chicken and an egg problem.
If free software projects had more users, those users would improve the software further with donations, patches, and bug reports.
I think both can be true. I just mean if we're talking about a company paying for Microsoft Office vs LibreOffice.
Wow, do I have some stories for you.
But in short, there's a lot of FOSS software that people use every day without knowing about it.
And it gets no funding, because why it should.
Companies making 9+ figures have issues sending even a $1000 to an open project that they depend heavily on.
But Microsoft/Oracle/VMWare/Google licenses? That money just shoots out like from a cannon.
Even if those products are not 100% needed and can be replaced.
No.
There is enough LibreOffice users to realize that the curve of the donations over users isn't proportional.
When was the last time you donated?
Exactly.
Dealing with people like you is exhausting.
Easy ignore, though.
I'm fully in support of LibreOffice and the fact that it can do a lot for free. However it is far from an enterprise product.
I'm still waiting for anybody to make a true competitor to Excel. There's some decrnt spreadsheet software but there's really no comparison to the functionality of Excel. Even Google sheets is a distant second.
My point is, when there are power users involved LibreOffice just won't cut it.
Libreoffice is not 100% Microsoft word though dawg