Comment by bluegatty
1 day ago
'Libre Office' did not 'win'.
People are happy to pay $50/year per seat to have the extra features and to not have to deal with stuff.
There's an issue at the margins here:
$1000/employee is a massive cost - it has to be deeply justified. $50/employee is like ... $2 out of your pocket. It's an incremental cost. The CFO is happy to pay it if there is a lot of value.
A lot of software is in that later category.
Imagine if gasoline was 1 cent per litre - and there was 'free gas' but it was a pain to use, and you had to check a bunch of things. You may just pay the 1 cent.
AI is not quite that yet, but these dynamics will play out eventually, for a lot of things.
> 'Libre Office' did not 'win'.
I think France and other parts of the EU are switching over to it. Although that's probably more due to Microsoft's aggressive behavior recently. Agree on the cost thing generally, but I can't help but think that when the hype to "do AI" blows over, people are going to be casting a jaundiced eye towards data security, which probably means self-hosting and sandboxing
> Although that's probably more due to Microsoft's aggressive behavior recently.
The current US govt might have played a role as well.
It's way more US gov than MSFT.