They won't do under-20 count licensing. If your org/corp is under 20-count, just use it.
So far, it has been 98% perfect. One or two hiccups, yet: we own our data, in our Debian servers. Android app works awesome. Browser works awesome.
Give it a go if you want.
It seems like the entire thing is under a FOSS license. https://www.collaboraoffice.com/terms/collabora-online-mplv2...
Now ok the problem was caused by them in the first place, but support was easy up contact, I didn’t wait long and they fixed the problem.
Corporations use a lot of fancy tech like Citrix, VDIs, remote application management software, securuty software, etc. They can often end up with weird problems with software compatibility and need vendor support.
Or maybe HR receives resumes and a certain percentage don’t open because of a bug.
Then there’s stuff beyond bugs. There’s training and migration for people who’ve been using MS Office all their lives. There’s early access to RCs. There’s support if you want to learn how to deploy within your enterprise rules. Maybe your enterprise gives employees locked down laptops and the way their laptops are locked down prevents a new update from working.
Finally, you may have migrated and would like to use a portion of the money you’re saving by switching away from the Microsoft solution (which is significantly more expensive for enterprises) to keep the solution that allows you to save that money supported.
Or maybe there was a power outage and I "lost" the latest version of that important presentation I was working on, then closed out of the recovery window—how can I get back to where I was?
What if I forget my online credentials?
What if a document isn't formatted like I expect it to be, because I'm using the application wrong?
Note that the question I'm asking is the same question that the LibreOffice themselves are panicking about!
Microsoft also provides many different ways to install/deploy Office products for enterprises. In fact, one of the biggest selling point of the O365 enterprise tier is flexibility in deployment/installation options.
Collabora's support model allows companies to outsource that support responsibility, similar to http://electric.ai/
Does it make financial sense for their users? I don't know. But I can see the value proposition for someone making office software purchasing decisions, especially if they're concerned about a lesser-known brand like LibreOffice, or think open source software is inherently less reliable.
I fear they are misunderstanding how commoditised office software has become.
Most individuals don’t need anything like this type of support. But if you’re a large company or government, it’s required.
Even the LibreOffice people agree it doesn't really seem to be required. Hence their panic.
> It is routinely the case that I meet organizations that have deployed free LibreOffice without long term support, with no security updates etc. Try the Cabinet Office in the UK (at the center of UK Government), or a large European Gov't Department I recently visited - 15,000 seats - with some great FLOSS enthusiasm, but simply no conceptual frame that deploying un-supported FLOSS in the enterprise hurts the software that they then rely on. Or a giant Pharma company in the news right now; companies do it left & right.
How has your experience been than an installed libreoffice? I have this thing where like 5-7 users have to work on a network share drive on "xls" files. For over 15 years now we have worked on this setup whereby everyone knows the folder structure, the naming scheme among other things. I want to try this browser thing for "collaborative editing" which isnt present in excel or libreoffice desktop but i fail to understand how i can manage this.
do i have to map the network drive over to the browser engine? do i open the network drive as always and double click the file to run in browser?
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/LibreOffice_...
Keep in mind that every development version (even the official one) has a maximum limit of 20 concurrent connections.