algeriatul team mailing list archive

[Tom <1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi :)

It's probably better to tell them further down the road.  Once you have
become a bit friendlier with each other and they know 1st hand that you
are excellent and provide good quality services.


It might surprise them how much extra effort you had to and were willing to put in to secure the relationship.  It might embarrass them to know that Word formats are increasingly tough for people now that Windows is not number 1 and that their form causes people such problems.  Are they starting to lose business by sticking to such temperamental formats?


MS Office 2007, 2010, 2013 and 365 can "Save As ..." "OpenDocument Format" (.odt for 'text' (really documents done by word-processor NOT text-files)).  That's 6 years and 4 versions.  2007 and 2010 cunningly used the outdated Odf version 1.1 but that's only a problem for spreadsheets.  2013 and 365 use Odf version 1.2 same as everyone else has been using for over 7 years.  


Odf is becoming much more widely used because it means documents will be able to be read long after MS's formats have changed so much that old documents are unreadable.  Entire countries and large organisations are switching to it.  The French police force over a year ago, hospitals in Copenhagen about a year ago, all government desktops in one of the 'States' of Spain (40,000 machines) added to 70,000 machines in schools which switched a few years ago, all of Brasil for many years now.  Errr, those are just a few that caught my eye.  


It's probably still better to use the older Word formats (.Doc) (fomr MS Office 2000, Xp, 2003) rather than their newer ooxml .DocX format even if they want to restrict their business to other MS Office users because the DocX implementation changes with every release.  In fact we often find that it's the LibreOffice user that has to act as "go between" in offices when 2 people have trouble sharing documents with each other.  The DocXs produced by LibreOffice are the only ones that can be read by all different versions of MS Office!!  


So, it is tough at the moment but things are moving your way and beginning to move quite a lot more quickly.  Are businesses going to be ready?  Your new corporate customer's isn't.  Yours is.  
Regards from 
Tom :)  




>________________________________
> From: Pedro Galvan <>
>Sent: Thursday, 30 May 2013, 23:05
>Subject: [Bug 1] Re: Microsoft has a majority market share
> 
>
>Just this week, a corporate customer with whom I am starting a business relationship sent me a ms word document with a form that I needed to fill in order for them to register me as a supplier. 
>
>Needless to say, I had to use ms word to open it.
>
><snip />
>
>I know that some will say that they would have told the customer to send
>the document in a non-proprietary format. Yeah, right. I would like to
>see you tell that to a new customer with an important deal.
>
><snip />
>

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu 4
dz, which is subscribed to the bug report.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1

Title:
  Microsoft has a majority market share

Status in Club Distro:
  Confirmed
Status in Computer Science Ubuntu:
  Confirmed
Status in LibreOffice Productivity Suite:
  New
Status in dylan.NET.Reflection:
  Invalid
Status in dylan.NET:
  Invalid
Status in EasyPeasy Overview:
  Invalid
Status in Ichthux - Linux for Christians:
  Invalid
Status in JAK LINUX:
  Invalid
Status in LibreOffice:
  In Progress
Status in The Linux Kernel:
  New
Status in The Linux Mint Distribution:
  In Progress
Status in The Linux OS Project:
  In Progress
Status in Neobot:
  New
Status in Novabot:
  New
Status in The OpenOffice.org Suite:
  In Progress
Status in Tabuntu:
  Invalid
Status in A simple player to online TV streaming:
  Invalid
Status in Tv-Player:
  Invalid
Status in Ubuntu Malaysia LoCo Team Meta Project:
  In Progress
Status in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released
Status in Arch Linux:
  Confirmed
Status in Baltix GNU/Linux:
  Invalid
Status in “linux” package in Debian:
  In Progress
Status in Fluxbuntu: The Lightweight, Productive, Agile OS:
  Confirmed
Status in openSUSE:
  In Progress
Status in Tilix Linux:
  New

Bug description:
  See Mark's closure comment here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1/comments/1834
  ------

  Microsoft has a majority market share in the new desktop PC
  marketplace. This is a bug which Ubuntu and other projects are meant
  to fix. As the philosophy of the Ubuntu Project states, "Our work is
  driven by a belief that software should be free and accessible to
  all."

  "Ubuntu software is free. Always was, always will be. Free software gives everyone the freedom to use it however they want and share with whoever they like. This freedom has huge benefits. At one end of the spectrum it enables the Ubuntu community to grow and share its collective experience and expertise to continually improve all things Ubuntu. At the other, we are able to give access to essential software for those who couldn’t otherwise afford it – an advantage that’s keenly felt by individuals and organisations all over the world."
       * http://www.ubuntu.com/project/about-ubuntu/our-philosophy

  Non-free software leaves users at the mercy of the software owner and
  concentrates control over the technology which powers our society into
  the hands of a few. Additionally, proprietary software stifles
  innovation, maintains artificial scarcities, and enables malicious
  anti-features such as DRM, surveillance, and other monopolistic
  practices.

  This bug is widely evident in the PC industry.

  Steps to repeat:

      1. Visit a local PC store.
      2. Attempt to buy a machine without any proprietary software.

  What happens:

  Almost always, a majority of PCs for sale have Microsoft Windows pre-
  installed. In the rare cases that they come with a GNU/Linux operating
  system or no operating system at all, the drivers and BIOS may be
  proprietary.

  What should happen:

  A majority of the PCs for sale should include only free software.

       * http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
       * http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines
       * http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd

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