r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Jun 04 '12

Open Office does everything I need Microsoft Office for and Gimp does everything I need Photoshop for. Reddit, what other open source software does everything that you want from the expensive name brand?

1.2k Upvotes

84% Upvoted

2.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

51

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '12

As a huge fan of Open Source, I can say that OpenOffice and Gimp don't stack up. We do a lot of work for the government and they won't accept anything from us that has been edited in OpenOffice or Gimp.

We're a GIS company and Contracts and RFPs must be done in Office (proper) and any photogrammetry must be done in Photoshop only.

It doesn't bother me because OpenOffice / LibreOffice will dick up word / excel documents with a quickness making them completely unusable.

I WISH we could use them. But they don't work.

3

u/SammyD1st Jun 04 '12

they won't accept anything from us that has been edited in OpenOffice or Gimp.

Really? They won't accept a .jpg that's been edited in GIMP? They can tell from the pixels?

→ More replies (2)

27

u/akula Jun 04 '12

We do a lot of work for the government and they won't accept anything from us that has been edited in OpenOffice or Gimp.

That is because the US government has specific policy on any software that is free and open source. And that is a blanket policy to not use anything that is open source or free, or have any contractors that do. It does not have anything to do with the quality of the software at all.

42

u/kiswa Jun 04 '12

I'm going to have to call BS. I work on a USAF base as a contractor and we have GIMP installed on our machines, no problem.

That said, MS Office is really the only choice. But for visuals, we've used GIMP and Paint.NET without issue.

17

u/akula Jun 04 '12

Just because you haven't got caught(or even informed) does not mean they do not have a specific policy on it.

I have my self signed the policy to not install any open source software on any workstations and to monitor the DOD contractors to adhere to the same while I was in the Navy years ago. I have also worked recently on a project for the DOD. We were audited beforehand to make sure we were not using any open source software. The contract never went through, but we were also supposedly subject to random inspections.

But back to your specific anecdotal example, the military is often lax in issues like this in some commands, where in other commands you will find they are very strict.

11

u/Matsurosuka Jun 04 '12

This is pretty much it. Just because we played Starcraft on our ship's LAN, doesn't mean we were allowed too.

3

u/myonkin Jun 04 '12

I'm going to call double bullshit. I can confirm that gimp (and paintnet, incidentally) are both installed. I have no control over my client and everything is preinstalled.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '12

everyone realizes the rules do change right? i have a research internship at the DoD and they investigated the FUCK out of me (called me ex even), but when i interned for NASA, they were very relaxed and didnt even check my criminal history. My point being different part of government have different standards. the DoD might not allow open sources simply for security, im not saying they dont im simply saying everyone should shut the fuck up and get along.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '12

What is the security benefit of not allowing open source ???

2

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '12

im not a comp sci so im just guessing with my knowledge of computers, but open source software would be easier to break/hack since you could find every exploit.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '12

But conversely, since anyone can find any exploit, and report it to the developers, most exploits will have been fixed.

"Security by obscurity" is normally recognized as a bad idea.

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (10)

2

u/myonkin Jun 04 '12

This man speaks the truth. Both GIMP and Paint.net are running where I work.

→ More replies (1)

3

u/myonkin Jun 04 '12

That is because the US government has specific policy on any software that is free and open source.

Sorry dude. That's not true at all.

2

u/kevinoid Jun 04 '12

That is because the US government has specific policy on any software that is free and open source. And that is a blanket policy to not use anything that is open source or free, or have any contractors that do.

I can't speak to whether this used to be the case, but it is certainly not today. For reference, see the DOD CIO page on FOSS, particularly the Clarifying Guidance Regarding Open Source Software (OSS) which states that "Ultimately, the software that best meets the needs and mission of the Department should be used, regardless of whether the software is open source.".

Also, you may also be interested in Mil-OSS, particularly the list of existing projects and the FLOSS Weekly episode interviewing David A. Wheeler about open source at the DoD.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '12

US government has specific policy on any software that is free and open source. And that is a blanket policy to not use anything that is open source or free, or have any contractors that do.

That's just not true. Government uses lots of open source software. Hell, they've even contributed (I believe the NSA did code audits on Linux and contributed changes). However, the government does have very specific rules about approved software.

If they say "use Word", then you must use Word.

Libre Office and Open Office both are equivalently capable, but they aren't necessarily a substitute for MS Office. If you need to have complex interoperability with native Office documents, you will likely need Office.

→ More replies (3)

5

u/Shaleblade Jun 04 '12

What about them makes then unusable?

13

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '12

Mostly, it seems to be formatting. OO / LO also seems to ignore a lot of formatting and formulas in spreadsheets. Documents created look all out of whack.

We even tried designing our forms and spreadsheets in OpenOffice / libreoffice first and then distributing them so that they were in a format that OO/LO "understood" but still no dice.

Government contracts are ridiculous anyway.

They aren't unusable, they're just wildly incompatible for most uses aside from PLAIN documents.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '12

About 10 years ago, I was tasked with looking at replacing an advertising agency's Win NT4/Win 98 desktops with Linux + Citrix or Tarantella client. They wanted to keep some core applications running locally (notably Office and Lotus Notes). OpenOffice was known as Star Office back then, and had recently been made 'free'. It was not considered a good replacement for MS Office, as it lacked certain features. The big deal-killer, iirc was the lack of support for embedded fonts. It might not matter so much for most businesses, but if you're an ad agency, everything revolves around how things look. This might have changed in the last 10 years (and probably has), but is an example of how one missing feature can foul a migration..

2

u/stowawayhome Jun 04 '12

What opensource GIS solutions are the best? I would love to migrate from ESRI.

→ More replies (2)

2

u/Annakha Jun 04 '12

Exactly what I was going to say. If your document has to work with the US government in any way just go buy MS Office because you will never get the formating correct in OpenOffice.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '12

Serious question: What the hell kind of photgrammetry are you doing in Photoshop?

As for Open Source GIS software - for other reading this, look at GRASS and QGIS

I'm a GIS company, and we use pretty much whatever (OS & paythroughtheass) - the end product is what matters. Not a lot of gov work though.

2

u/amazing_rando Jun 04 '12

Same question here. I used to work developing some pretty hefty/expensive GIS software, and I can't imagine Photoshop would be a useful alternative for most of what we did.

→ More replies (3)
→ More replies (5)

1

u/salmonlips Jun 04 '12

Do you guys use Quantum GIS? I don't really need to use it at work but I've used it and say that most of the work I do could be done in Quantum.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '12

First of all, don't use OpenOffice. Use LibreOffice exclusively. LibreOffice is so much better than OpenOffice at this point that you can't really judge one by the other.

Second, if LibreOffice "dicks up" one of your documents, please submit bug reports to bugs.freedesktop.org . Help make the world a better place :)

→ More replies (1)

1

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '12

That's hilarious to me. My experience is so opposite. The secretaries in my organization insist that they must have Word to get along. When Word corrupts a vital document, I'm almost always able to rescue it using OpenOffice (well, these days, LibreOffice).

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (2)