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LibreOffice is right about Microsoft, and it matters more than you think.
(www.xda-developers.com)
this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2025
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This hits it right on the money. As nice as open source and open standards are, at the end of the day none of that matters to the 99% that want/need to do X as fast and painlessly as possible.
To people like my wife MS Office/LibreOffice/Google Docs are all the same thing in the category of productivity suite. And one of those does not meet her where she lives in day to day life. And it doesn't because there is no money in doing so for LibreOffice. And there is no benefit to her to seek out LibreOffice for her uses.
Hell, just take a look around at the number of people that preach about the evils of Microsoft, Google, or whoever but love them an iPhone and Macbook. As bad as Microsoft and Google can be for screwing over the user with vendor lock-in they don't hold a candle to Apple. But they get the money despite there being "better" options technically and philosophically for nearly everything they make, but Apple knows all of that pales in importance to 99% of potential customers compared to being convenient.
The piece on using the tech is a bit much. We cannot get by without a smartphone in modern life and they essentially do not exist outside of apple and google.
Sure they do, but all of the alternatives are not nearly as convenient. But you can absolutely get by without an iPhone or Android phone with Play services.
The example actually proves the point more strongly than LibreOffice vs MS Office does by the increased level of effort it requires of the user to go out of their way to not actively support the bad things Apple and Google do.
Ok show me a phone that is readily available that has the ability to log into banking apps etc.
Are you being dense on purpose? I said you could absolutely do it, but it was far more inconvenient.
So you repkied to me qualifying that it is an effective duopoly by saying that there are other companies which is what is implied in what I said?
Who is dense when you can't understand the practicalities of real life and how business interact with our lives. You can get a linux phone, which is probably below .5% of market share and then sandbox android to use these apps...which is in itself necessitating the use of a google product.
I could walk into the bank also or not talk to people but effectively there are two manufacturers with a duopoly on consumer mobile communications enviromments.
"There are ways" is some cop out bullshit.
Effectively, for most people, they don't.
Most people make a new phone purchase impulsively when involved with negotiating a phone plan at a store or in a rush after they break their old phone and need a new one for life and work almost immediately, the cost benefit analysis for most people simply doesn't make sense unless they are naturally interested in tech as a hobby or it is related to their career (or are surrounded by friendly people who are).
afaik our digital identification system does not work well outside of iOS or Android (most of the time, not at all - since it breaks on updates and they update basically daily). so we're stuck with their duopoly. because digital id is mandatory.
Once upon a time they did support linux on desktop but then ubuntu went and decided to make a phone and linux support was mysteriously discontinued a week after.
which one?
BankID
Yes, but money is a pain point. Free software eliminated that pain.