Why ONLYOFFICE is a better alternative to LibreOffice | Hacker News Reader

Why ONLYOFFICE is a better alternative to LibreOffice

jatan.blog

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21883302

As long as it is not free software, as Libreoffice is, I don't need to even read about it. It does not matter how well or nicely some software is working, if it is not ethical to use it. Using yet another software and potentially file format coming along with it, potentially creating another network effect to use non-free software? No thanks. And if it uses open document standard, why make use of non-free where Libreoffice works just well?

ONLYOFFICE is free and open source.

> Now I know a lot of FOSS enthusiasts will be unhappy about the idealistic part of the recommendation, but hear me out.

Then what is the author talking about? Why would anyone be unhappy about the "idealistic" part then? I stopped reading after that, concluding, that it probably was not free software and that's what the author was relating to. Further reading though reveals, that the author does not know what they are talking about actually:

> My ideals for FOSS dwindled swiftly when I had to make something work in the real world. Not everyone can use everything truly FOSS all the time.

Sounds rather like a justification to "just in this one case use non-free software", but wait for it ...

> At least ONLYOFFICE is open source (AGPL-3.0, specifically) and not proprietary like Microsoft Office.

Great! Another one of those people, who fail to acknowledge free software and just label everything "open source" or just don't know the difference. Sorry, we do not need this to promote actually free software. Wrong-labeling something and in that way ascribing quality work to another set of ideals (or the lack of such) does not help.

So after reading, I still don't get the initial statement about the "idealistic part", as it really seems to be free (not only open) software.

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