I didn't want to divert or bloat the Outlook Express thread in General, but I had the urge to write this story down. I've told friends, but never written it down. It's not some fantastic tale, but it sticks in my mind, irony-wise.

Story:

3-4 years ago I spent 6 months working on a project with a medium-sized, somewhat dysfunctional company reporting to an nice, but weary interim CIO named "Jay"

Among other problems, due to poor management, IT turnover, and deficient inventory control, they had a software problem. Somewhat innocently, they had cruised along buying OEM licenses of MS-Office with new PCs on a somewhat haphazard basis; they *thought* they had everything covered under the then-prevailing concurrent-usage licensing for Office, but, along with many other companies, they were slow to pick up on the implications of the new "per-named-user" licensing model that quietly went into effect in late 1997.

Their problem got worse when a PC tech, fired for some sort of nasty behavior, reported the company to the SPA. So, months before I arrived, they were already getting nasty letters from MSFT lawyers. As the FNG on the scene, I became the obvious candidate to conduct a sweeping software audit that would miraculously find 2000 or so Office license certificates that had fallen into cracks in 20 locations over 3-5 years (or into trash cans or the homes of employees!). Well, we know that "miraculous" is tough to achieve. Gad, I hate software audits.

Jay was not happy with the result of the laborious audit, which turned up only trifling bits of software. We extended the audit, but little was gained. Finally Jay seemed resigned.

he said "Give me some alternatives".

A few days later I said "MS-Office: ~$300K. Smartsuite (we had a lot of IBM PCs): $125K. Corel Office: $75K. Star Office: $0"

Jay: "Well, that's no good. The people in research say they *have* to use MS-Word, and accounting says they *have* to use Excel!!"

Me: "OK, then the answer is $300K"

Jay: "well, thats's no good. Give me some alternatives"

With a few minor variations, we had pretty much this same little circular discussion every day for 6 weeks. All the while the lawyer letters increasing in frequency and urgency.

The day came when we had a BIG meeting. A vendor partner flew in 4 staff from Europe to review some huge system specification document. Their main office mailed the final version to us while these 4 staff were en route. The morning of the meeting, a bunch of IS staff attempted to open this 140-page Word document on their NT4.0 machines, but each time, it got to around page 120 and choked. The doc was created in the same version of Word97 that we used, except that it wasn't US English and the page size was Euro-spec. The doc was resent. Same problem. At this point many people are freaking out. About 30-40 manager/director types sat in our biggest conference room waiting for this doc. I tried opening it on my machine, a brand-new HCL-compliant, NT4-preinstalled Dell with 256MB of RAM. Same result.

At that point, in desperation, with like 3 hot-and-bothered people standing in my doorway, I took about 15-20 minutes, downloaded Star Office (5.2? I think), installed it on my Dell, fired it up, and had that 140-page document open in about 30 seconds. I changed the paper type and started printing. The hot-n-bothereds left my doorway and ran to the copy machine.

I told Jay the story of what had happened. Two days later....

Jay: "The people in research.......Well, that's no good. Give me some alternatives."

As the project that I was *actually* supposed to be working on was finishing up, I was able to make good my escape a few weeks later. So far as I was aware, the lawyer letters kept coming. Jay, a very lovable guy in so many other respects, stayed on for another 6 months.

Toward the end of that period, I heard through a colleague that all of the alternatives had been weighed and the choice had been made.

$300K

Brings tears to my eyes, Jim. Great story. That should really be published somewhere more "official".

So the moral of the story is we have no one to blame but ourselves when it comes to Microsoft's dominance.

So the moral of the story is we have no one to blame but ourselves when it comes to Microsoft's dominance.

Well, I try not to blame *myself*, and I don't think that moral is as absolute or as all-encompassing as that, but I'd say your point is part of the moral.....ITIS*

(*If There Is Such...a little rally term for Doug's gratification)

Why does this story remind me of Office Space [the movie]?

I can't put my finger on it, and if I had not worked for a large Canadian [wannabe US] software company in the last 10 years I wouldn't have believed either Jims' story or the Office Space movie.

However having lived through it I get a uncanny sense of "de ja vu" over this story!

Here's a crack cocaine version of the same story:

Requirement: cross-platform client-server database for contact management
Successful product: Microsoft Excel

Peter

The moral of the story is that the people in research should take thier own medicine

Am I the only person who disliked Staroffice 5.2? I mean, yes it was free and so I used it instead of those other products. But I got so frustrated at the incredibly weird user interface. I didn't like that. I do plan, however, on buying the new one when it comes out. You still can't beat $30 either.

But a great story.

And no, I don't think that we are totally to blame. My dad's office has always been all about Wordperfect. Unfortunately, at some point their product just didn't agree with our machines, so it got put on the back shelf in favor of Word. Too bad. I miss those reveal codes.

It was very wierd when it appeared to take over your desktop. But it was wonderful being able to know that the printed version would look exactly like the document on the screen.
And it would look the same opened under Linux, Windows or Solaris.
And it did what you told it to - rather than some bizarre nonsense.

I have been wrestling with a word doc today that shows up fine in a print preview, but looks like all the images are shifted down an inch and first sentences in paragraphs are repeated when in normal view. WTF???

Edit>> This problem is in Microsoft Word, not StarOffice, just in case anyone was confused.

That's true. I do like that. Still can't wait for the new version though. It's supposed to have more traditional, seperated programs, right? Go Sun.

Yes. IIRC, you could actually get StarOffice to not have that awful ``desktop'' thing through some sort of config file magic, but I never figured out what it was. I'm mostly not interested in that sort of program, and whenever I received a Word doc, I just told the sender I was unable to read it.

Am I the only person who disliked Staroffice 5.2? I mean, yes it was free and so I used it instead of those other products. But I got so frustrated at the incredibly weird user interface.

Yes, StarOffice had wierd default behavior -- that whole very presumptuous replacement desktop type of approach. Didn't like it, but figured out how to turn it off. Not sure that I still would love StarOffice, but it certainly presented a compelling value proposition when the cost was zero (and when it could open Word docs that Word could not!!). I used "jay" and "research" in my story to hide the nature of that company's business and its identity, but trust me when I say that they could ill afford to part with $300K...but somehow did. I''d say that 95 percent of their computer users probably used 5 percent of the features of Word -- they could have done their work with Notepad. If I had been CIO and CEO, I know the choice I would have made.

Blame-wise, I think it is a mixed bag. Microsoft practices in achieving near monopoly on the desktop were complemented by the "nobody ever got fired for buying ____" mindset.

I might part with $30 when the new SO comes out. Is that how much it will be? Will it have reveal codes??? Pleeeeze???

Last time I checked, the new StarOffice (version 6?) is supposed to cost $30. It's also supposed to do away with that desktop hijacking thing.

I'm really interested in how it will look. I was also impressed with its compatability. When you can't open Word documents in Wordperfect (which is due to MS), it's nice to have another program to use.

I think the reveal codes is likely. That seems to be a huuuge issue for people (I know it is for me). They'd do wise to incorporate it.