this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2025
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[–] Tehhund@lemmy.world 26 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (8 children)

The problem: our desire for convenience

Bring on the downvotes, but: When it comes to tools like computers, convenience is synonymous with productivity. People aren't unreasonably demanding to have their hands held, they want to get stuff done. We need to stop acting like ~~convenience~~ productivity is just one of many concerns. It is the primary concern.

Freedom is nice but to most people it's only important if it helps us do the things we want to do.

[–] sunbeam60@lemmy.ml 2 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

In addition to that, with great respect to the hard working developers on LibreOffice, at least some of what seems like “unnecessary complexity” in Microsoft’s format is most likely just requirements LibreOffice isn’t solving or haven’t even encountered yet. You don’t get to Office’s size without having to deal with the most insane batshit crazy backcompat or compatibility issues.

[–] Noja@sopuli.xyz 4 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

They are intentionally obfuscating their file formats. It has nothing to do with complexity or "backwards compatibility" Microsoft has a LONG history of stuff like this.

[–] sunbeam60@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

That may be but without sources that say “let’s make the format more obscure” this is just opinion. Your opinion, OpenOffice opinion, IBM opinion etc.

Look for example at the 1904 dating system that Microsoft still has to support. Real customers still use this shit.

I’m not saying Microsoft has always exhibited good behaviour. But their crappy approach tends to be on the go to market side.

Office still has to support a leap year bug to allow banks to run their crappy Lotus based record keeping. Lotus for Darwin’s sake!! There is so much history in these files and what office has to do with them.

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