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Comment by emmelaich | Hacker News Reader

Something to help is coming in the form of Fluid.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/19/21260005/microsoft-office...

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/get-started-with-...

This looks very interesting but I doubt large enterprises will allow it considering the online nature and the inability to secure confidential work on internally hosted systems.

That's my reaction too - most people here are somewhat jealous of their "ownership rights" over this or that document, since this often define their actual roles. It looks like Fluid is trying to "share everything" and that's too much.

I'd be happier with something that simply allows me to have a github-like workflow where I can propose and justify changes to this or that block of document, and an owner can sanction and merge. This would not touch internal hierarchies (the most sacred element of corporate life) but would improve collaboration.

If Fluid is a step in that direction, it's welcome. Unfortunately to me it looks more like "web-native COM objects" and few people ever liked those.

> can propose and justify changes to this or that block of document, and an owner can sanction and merge

This is called 'Tracked Changes' and 'Comments' in Word. Under the Review ribbon.

Here's the How-To: https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/track-changes-in-wo...

I've tried the equivalent feature in Powerpoint and I'm not impressed. I gave permission to edit to a colleague (it's either that or readonly, as far as I can see in SP), let her change it, then looked at the document again. "Show changes" lasted a few seconds and then disappeared, never to return. And I guess the Compare items will only come up if you have a different file? Just opening the same file from SP, they are all greyed out...

Absolutely not comparable to a github experience, as far as I can see.

It’s going to be open-source, so I’d bet that Microsoft will package some kind of on-prem server like Exchange and SharePoint if enterprise demands it. But since lots of enterprises are moving to Office 365 anyway (including big banks that historically had massive security requirements), if Microsoft can make a security SLA, maybe it’s enough?

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