Brief: Apparently, Open Source alternatives to Microsoft Office is not good enough for Brazil and thus they are reverting to proprietary Microsoft Office and other Microsoft tools.
The latest trend in Europe and developing countries was to ditch proprietary Microsoft Office and adopt an Open Source solution such as OpenOffice or LibreOffice. The move was more concerned with cost saving than for the love of Open Source. Whatever may be the reason, at least several government organizations have started to look beyond Microsoft.
But perhaps the euphoria died for some of them. Brazil that had opted for an open source policy is now reverting to Microsoft in an attempt to “generate cost efficiencies and standardize the IT applications portfolio across departments”, reported ZDNet.
Yes, you read that right. Brazil is opting for Microsoft for ‘cost efficiency’. It’s actually a deal with Microsoft that will allow the Brazilian government to buy Microsoft product licenses as per their requirement in the next 12 months, at a previously negotiated price.
And it’s not just Microsoft Office that they are getting. The deal includes Windows 10 and Windows Server (huh!!).
With this massive deal, Brazil departs from their Open Source policy put in place in the year 2003. The idea behind the open source switch was to reduce licensing costs and allow local IT companies to develop products for the government but apparent ‘lack of skills and interest’ led to the demise of this policy as the government struggled to get quality software.
Not just Brazil
It’s not just Brazil that is going back into the arms of Microsoft. Remember Italian region Emilia-Romagna switching to OpenOffice? Well, they are also going back to Microsoft Office, though, it’s not specified to be Microsoft but a proprietary cloud-based solution.
The open source move was already criticized by some of our readers and I had my suspicion as well. OpenOffice has not been in active development mode for last few years. In fact, OpenOffice has started indicating that it might be discontinued.
LibreOffice would have been the better choice here to replace MS Office. But the governments being the government, opted for the wrong Open Source solution. I do believe that had they opted for LibreOffice, things would have been better, specially considering that LibreOffice has worked a lot on its cloud solution.
These are not good news for us Open Source enthusiasts but I am rooting for the further success of LibreOffice so that it becomes the de facto alternative to MS Office and a ‘better one’ than that.
Here in Brazil still there are many people who contribute and uses Free Software, the plutocracy influences a lot, but in the end we keep making freedom worth it.
[…] Brazil Is Ditching Open Source For Microsoft […]
because microsoft has so many people paid and embedded in government and standard organizations they will make any attempt to move away from them fail till they can get their own people in the government that is trying to move away from mickey soft.
piss off microsoft – you need paid shills to survive – your end will come and your products are junk – you only survive because of politics and paid shills.
i’m not surprised with this decision, Linux is awesome and it’s the best solution to develop customized applications but if I have to choose between libreoffice and M$Office, I’d choose the second because it is a best product. The interface is better, make complex documents is easier, the menu is organized and you can find everything with a few of clicks, etc. I tried to use Libreoffice many times, I see improvements but it cannot compite with M$Office yet. The users need productivity. I’d to see the Libreoffice’s developers working on these kind of things to improve LibreOffice to compete M$Office. This is the best way to avoid failing as OpenOffice did.
Have you tried WPS Office (formerly Kingsoft Office)? In my opinion, closer to MS Office than either of OpenOffice and LibreOffice. It has become my office suite of choice.
The toolbar “Ribbon” in MS Office products is a marvel of ease of use. It simply can’t be compared with yet. Also, MS Sharepoint is a content management system that’s hard to beat for ease of use. Drupal doesn’t even come close.
These are the three main apps Linux & FOSS need to play catch-up with. So, roll-up your sleeves and go to work!
Well, I use Linux + LO and find both very stable and in position to compete, unless you have very specific needs. I did my entire thesis on Writer and found it much more easy and configurable then Word (2013). For instance, try to make a section with mirror margins in a Word document, it is a mess, or the entire document has mirrored margins or nothing has. But, in my case I need statistical analysis also, which are not available in any free/open source solution (I tried so many I can’t even remember all of them).
This is unsurprising really, when Microsoft made a big hullabaloo about how they”love Linux” they where distracting people away from their true purpose. learn from the Linux code base. re engineer the code in proprietary format, make deals with governments bit by bit. Microsoft HAVE NOT ABANDONED THEIR ORIGINAL PLAN. TO KILL THE LINUX PLATFORM!!, the code they shared with Brazil most likely was NOT the same code that goes into their products.