Resentment to Purchasing Software - Split From Unrelated Topic on IT Professionals
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@VoIP_n00b said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
@IRJ said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
Maybe I'm Scott
Maybe we all...
OMG!!! Jinx. You owe me a Coke.
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@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
@stacksofplates said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
What functionality? Give me a functionality of LibreOffice that "crushes" MS Office?
Installation, support, licensing, self hosted live collaboration, connections to remote file storage.
MS Office tends to do things that I don't want an office suite to do... like work with files so large that it requires a custom built computer to handle it. It's brilliant that they can do that, but at some point I need people using databases, not spreadsheets.
So installation is not a feature, they're both pretty much the same. You're not going to concede on the support so whatever. But explain the live collaboration?
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@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
Pretty sure Pete is not in the US, but I have no idea where he is. Canada is what comes to mind, but I might be totally making that up in my mind.
I'm country fluid.
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@stacksofplates said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
You're not going to concede on the support so whatever.
Why would I when it's something we demonstrate every day. You claim it costs us more to support, how do you come to that conclusion based on my explanation that when we look at it, it is totally the opposite?
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@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
@stacksofplates said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
You're not going to concede on the support so whatever.
Why would I when it's something we demonstrate every day. You claim it costs us more to support, how do you come to that conclusion based on my explanation that when we look at it, it is totally the opposite?
Because I've had the opposite experience. As I already mentioned.
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@stacksofplates said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
So installation is not a feature, they're both pretty much the same.
It's a huge feature. That it is built into most OSes, and that we can install with just a command line from Windows (Chocolatey), and in all OSes get auto-updates that "just work"... it's a whopping feature.
That you even have to go somewhere to get MS Office is more work than installing LibreOffice. That's big IT time, over and over again to deal with.
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@stacksofplates said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
But explain the live collaboration?
Live collaboration we can self host with things like NextCloud (and we do.) With MS Office we, and our customers that have it, don't get that unless they pay MS for it monthly and put their data on MS. Which, if you want to pay for it and use it, it's a great service. When you don't, it's a gap. With NextCloud (and other options), LO lets you self host (for security, control, performance, or places where there isn't Internet). It's very flexible.
Is it as good as MSO's colaboration? No, absolutely not. It's a weak point on performance. But a major plus on flexibility.
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@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
@stacksofplates said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
But explain the live collaboration?
Live collaboration we can self host with things like NextCloud (and we do.) With MS Office we, and our customers that have it, don't get that unless they pay MS for it monthly and put their data on MS. Which, if you want to pay for it and use it, it's a great service. When you don't, it's a gap. With NextCloud (and other options), LO lets you self host (for security, control, performance, or places where there isn't Internet). It's very flexible.
Is it as good as MSO's colaboration? No, absolutely not. It's a weak point on performance. But a major plus on flexibility.
Yeah you can self host with SharePoint. Sure it's more, but don't act like you can't self host and have collaboration with Office.
And to get collaboration it's not just Install the software like it is with Office. You need to now manage a server running NextCloud and issues that come up with that as well.
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@IRJ said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
I'm not sure I understand the resentment on mangolassi of purchasing software.
Its not resentment, its more like...just why?
The audio/video person doesn't do anything with it, she hires a company otu of dallas for everything, even exchanging projectors when she buys a new one.
The phone lady also can't do anything on her own except run cable without bringing in a 3rd party. Every change to the phone system is done by a 3rd part. Its all cisco phones on their own pbx.
Our erp people(two dba's) do very little with it and are constantly hiring another 3rd party to help with configuration changes.
My vp is also bringing in consultants and 3rd parties on a regular basis to help with server changes and some of our code bases. Consultants and 3rd parties make a lot of money off us.
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@stacksofplates said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
And to get collaboration it's not just Install the software like it is with Office. You need to now manage a server running NextCloud and issues that come up with that as well.
Is that different than running your own Sharepoint? Running NC is a lot simpler than running SP.
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@jmoore said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
@IRJ said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
I'm not sure I understand the resentment on mangolassi of purchasing software.Its not resentment, its more like...just why?
The audio/video person doesn't do anything with it, she hires a company otu of dallas for everything, even exchanging projectors when she buys a new one.
The phone lady also can't do anything on her own except run cable without bringing in a 3rd party. Every change to the phone system is done by a 3rd part. Its all cisco phones on their own pbx.
Our erp people(two dba's) do very little with it and are constantly hiring another 3rd party to help with configuration changes.
My vp is also bringing in consultants and 3rd parties on a regular basis to help with server changes and some of our code bases. Consultants and 3rd parties make a lot of money off us.
But importantly, none of that is purchasing software. It's having an internal IT department that... doesn't really do (or know) IT, they just hire other people to do it. Which is great, but they don't hire someone to oversee it or understand it. Hence the other thread where they are making technical demands that are totally nonsensical and nearly impossible. That's the risk of buying too much, at some point you start buying all the pieces and have no internal knowledge at all. Which even that is okay, a CEO doesn't know IT, but even a CEO has to know how to properly hire a CIO whether internal or through a consulting firm.
The real problem arises when people inside are pretending to do IT, but actually buying it. CEOs rarely try to pretend that they know and do IT. But positions like IT Manager often pretend to be experts, while often having zero ability to even reasonably discuss, let alone do, the IT they are supposed to be doing.
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The real issue here comes in when someone is hired to "do", but decides to "buy". What often happens is a cover up, an attempt to keep looking like they are performing the IT tasks, while actually someone else is paid to do them. This results in some pretty serious messes, like demanding that binaries not be executable. Clearly making demands at a technical level that they weren't ready to discuss.
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@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
@stacksofplates said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
And to get collaboration it's not just Install the software like it is with Office. You need to now manage a server running NextCloud and issues that come up with that as well.
Is that different than running your own Sharepoint? Running NC is a lot simpler than running SP.
No that's the same. My point there was with office there's an option to not have to do that. You don't have that option with LibreOffice. Sure you have the option to run locally if that's a real requirement but most of the time it's not.
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@stacksofplates said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
@stacksofplates said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
And to get collaboration it's not just Install the software like it is with Office. You need to now manage a server running NextCloud and issues that come up with that as well.
Is that different than running your own Sharepoint? Running NC is a lot simpler than running SP.
No that's the same. My point there was with office there's an option to not have to do that. You don't have that option with LibreOffice. Sure you have the option to run locally if that's a real requirement but most of the time it's not.
What's the option? Can you do MS Office collaboration without Sharepoint?
Or do you just mean hosted? NC offers that.
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@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
@stacksofplates said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
@stacksofplates said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
And to get collaboration it's not just Install the software like it is with Office. You need to now manage a server running NextCloud and issues that come up with that as well.
Is that different than running your own Sharepoint? Running NC is a lot simpler than running SP.
No that's the same. My point there was with office there's an option to not have to do that. You don't have that option with LibreOffice. Sure you have the option to run locally if that's a real requirement but most of the time it's not.
What's the option? Can you do MS Office collaboration without Sharepoint?
Or do you just mean hosted? NC offers that.
I'm saying office will do collaboration without a local SharePoint install through O365 (because most places it's not a requirement to have everything local). LibreOffice requires you to run something else entirely to be able to do collaboration no matter whether that's a real requirement from the customer or not.
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@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
@IRJ said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
So you have to go to your NTG or whatever IT labor you use and open your pockets at $150-300 an hour when you have an issue.
The same as with non-FOSS software. People go to pay for support with non-FOSS solutions way, way more than FOSS ones. This is one of those myths that people selling software repeat, but has absolutely zero foundation in the real world. While it's 100% off topic and unrelated to the discussion at hand, it's a myth that should never be repeated.
The obvious examples would be things like Windows or MS Office vs. Ubuntu or LibreOffice. The amount of support hours that you have to pay to an IT firm (or hours spent by your department) are vastly higher, on average, with Windows or Office than nearly any alternative. It's some insanity that has permeated IT through sales and marketing that has convinced people that by some logic if you pay for software, therefore it costs less to maintain. There's no logical connection between the two, in fact, logic says the opposite - companies making software that you have to pay for have to have more overhead to acquisition to accommodate the process (licensing Windows is so complex, even full time Windows people constantly need to seek consultants just on the purchasing process alone) and then you have vendors who know their customers are willing to pay and so create ecosystems around milking them for more and more funds. And that's exactly what we see. Windows, in the enterprise, is measured at numbers like "quadruple" the support cost of an Ubuntu install doing the same workload. And Office must be in the thousands of times more effort per install.
It's simply absurd to connect FOSS with "more cost to support". Sure, nothing about FOSS guarantees that it also requires less IT effort, but the nature of FOSS actually does encourage that and the ecosystems of paid software encourage more costly support. And the market, quite obviously, plays this out constantly.
Ok the office discussion has sidetracked this.
Back to this post. I don't believe that you actually think this way. If you did all of the products you are selling would be open source or you would just be using the existing open source things.
Vetastic - $195 a month for a hosted service. When OpenVPMS is open source and free.
SodiumSuite - No idea pricing. Why even bother when other open source tools exist such as TacticalRMM. Sure it's new but it existing has now devaluated SodiumSuite by quite a lot. If you want Linux support you could just contribute that to the project instead of building your own separate competitor.
The point is, you either believe FOSS is always the better option or you believe that there are times where paid software is better.
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@stacksofplates said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
I don't believe that you actually think this way. If you did all of the products you are selling would be open source or you would just be using the existing open source things.
- I sell no products.
- I'm confused by this talk of products at all as none of it is related to the topic. It's not the office discussion that has sidetracked things, it's the entire talk of any products at all. The post was about IT, not software or hardware.
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@stacksofplates said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
The point is, you either believe FOSS is always the better option or you believe that there are times where paid software is better.
I 100% have always stated the same thing. Go ahead search, it's absolutely always the same...
- Open Source licensing is always superior for the customer.
- Closed source software is often better because the qualify of license is a small factor in the software decision.
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@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
@stacksofplates said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
I don't believe that you actually think this way. If you did all of the products you are selling would be open source or you would just be using the existing open source things.
- I sell no products.
- I'm confused by this talk of products at all as none of it is related to the topic. It's not the office discussion that has sidetracked things, it's the entire talk of any products at all. The post was about IT, not software or hardware.
You own Vestastic and SodiumSuite?
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@stacksofplates said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
Vetastic - $195 a month for a hosted service. When OpenVPMS is open source and free.
This is a weird comparison because...
- One is a service, not software.
- This thread isn't about software.
So it's neither applicable to the topic, nor a comparison on its own.
