This fund is targeted only for situations where Microsoft may lose to Linux, no other. It is specifically targeted to kill Linux at any cost. You didn't have a problem with the large trucking companies driving independents out of business using the same system? In government contracting, such a fund may be illegal, at least as the pricing rules were explained to me while working at a few Fortune 100 IT contracting companies.
I'm sure someone could dumb down the requirements for office software bidding so that OpenOffice meets the criteria.
Show me your average office user, then show me where OpenOffice doesn't meet the requirements, or StarOffice since it's also much cheaper than Office. Most people don't use 90% of what Excel or Word can do. For those few that need it, give it to them. It's the same thing that happens when Windows houses needed abilities that only Macs could do -- you'd find a few Macs running there.
When an employee is pulling down $50K plus benefits, what employer would forego spending a few hundred dollars per year for the tools to make him more productive?
Does Excel make the average user more productive? I don't think so, and I use Excel extensively at work and OpenOffice extensively at home. Switching between the two is easy. A few thousand employees times several hundred each in licenses adds up.
Useability, retraining, compatibility, productivity all have their costs & benefits which should be factored into any objective criteria.
You want to know what the biggest training problems were for Largo? "How can I change my desktop background" and "There's no floppy, so how can I take stuff home?" Application-specific training was almost not needed since for the vast majority of people most of these applications work pretty much alike.
Maybe the so-called "average user" only uses 10-20% of the features in Excel. But each "average user" doesn't use the same 10-20% featureset. Hence the need for 100% of the features offered.
Open source zealots always start out with outlandish claims of how superior their software is. But eventually they, like you, fall back on "You really don't need all those extra features that the commercial-grade software offers... and the open source is FREE! Whoopee!"
So much for quality.
Show me your average office user, then show me where OpenOffice doesn't meet the requirements...
Most people I know would rather be sent to the Russian front than be pegged with "average user" status. I've used OpenOffice, and I know its shortcomings firsthand. For one, it won't render any except the most simple Powerpoint slides. Thanks, but no thanks.