Which FreeBSD-compatible proprietary software would you buy?

One big benefit of Office 365 is that its documents are forcibly simpler (i.e VBA is not available to Office 365). No longer do I get something from a colleague containing hundreds of random MACROs causing LibreOffice to struggle. So if you had issues with Libre/Open Office in the past, perhaps try again. You might find it more feasible now that everyone is using a restrictive subset of Office 2019.

I do find it amazing however how all of these "absolutely non-negotiable" enterprise features are suddenly quite possible to go without as soon as Microsoft can't support them.

I.e if I made a company that released Office 365 ~10 years ago, it would have absolutely failed because some guys random Visual Basic 6 code wouldn't work rotating an image anymore. And yet now people are happy to pay a subscription for an effectively inferior product. The proprietary industry is great!
 
you seem to misunderstand what you're quoting, AND you link a document of the radical cult named GNU
I tried to find an article in english about the "phone-home" activities of Office 365 and that's the only one i could find.
Why i am misunderstanding that one?

I don't like Stallman and his GNU cult either but hey, at least the are against Microsoft too.

Edit: Now i get it. I thought that kpedersen was suggesting to try Office 365 again. The
One big benefit of Office 365 is that its documents are forcibly simpler
part got me confused.
 
To the suggestion to give LibreOffice or OpenOffice another try, you answer "never ever", refering Microsoft. So uhm …?
And then, what makes you think FreeBSD (that's the context here) is "against Microsoft"?
 
To the suggestion to give LibreOffice or OpenOffice another try, you answer "never ever", refering Microsoft. So uhm …?
Yeah, your're right i misunderstood that. I meant to "never ever" give Office another try.

what makes you think FreeBSD (that's the context here) is "against Microsoft"?
FreeBSD can't be against Microsoft, it's only an OS.
But i know that the GNU people don't like them, see https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/microsoft.en.html
 
I don't like Stallman and his GNU cult either but hey, at least the are against Microsoft too.
I don't actually mind the guy. Also GNU is in principle a good idea.

Plus, we need risk takers! And someone who eats stuff from his feet whilst in the middle of giving a lecture is nothing but a risk taker! XD

However, I am not a massive fan of the FSF or Linux Foundation. They are trying too hard to focus on the fantasy of freedom itself rather than specifically on free software (i.e something that is more feasible in terms of scope).

Edit: An example of said risk would be to restrict GPL more. If they want to damage proprietary software, they should prevent companies (people) taking free code and just making an online service around it. In this case AGPL should be the default. Only Stallman would push for this. The FSF are a bunch of wet leaves. At least the BSD licenses don't tempt companies into those darn clouds.
 
Also GNU is in principle a good idea.
It is but the GPL is cancer.
And someone who eats stuff from his feet whilst in the middle of giving a lecture is nothing but a risk taker!
Gross. I almost puked.
An example of said risk would be to restrict GPL more.
For me, it's too restrictive already. I try to avoid GPL'd software for this reason.
If they want to damage proprietary software, they should prevent companies (people) taking free code and just making an online service around it.
If the want to damage proprietary software, they should make better software.
 
Cool down, check the Donor Roster & search for Microsoft: they're among the very 1st donors every year, and I'm quite confident they will donate more when their fiscal calculations are done. Feel free to follow their example & donate, too.
 
So if you had issues with Libre/Open Office in the past, perhaps try again. You might find it more feasible now that everyone is using a restrictive subset of Office 2019.
Yep, tried it again last week. Same thing. It'll auto format, just not in the way I am required to format. Maybe there is some trick to getting it to work, but I haven't found it. Besides, I need to be focusing on evaluating theories of leadership, not the scripting language of LaTex or whatever hidden setting in Libre/Open Office allows me to do it.
My statement still stands - if I had to pay for it (again, MS Office is currently free for me) and Microsoft released a version of Office for FreeBSD, I would not hesitate to pay for the proprietary software. I know the software, I know it will accomplish the task I need it to, and I know how to make it accomplish the task I need it to.
 
I need to be focusing on evaluating theories of leadership, not the scripting language of LaTex or whatever hidden setting in Libre/Open Office allows me to do it.
The thing is: Typically you learn once, and once you learned, you can use it efficiently. I just assume this is what happened with MS Office in your case. My assumption is based on the fact that you didn't mention anything that would be particularly troublesome with LibreOffice.

Of course, sparing yourself the time to learn something else is still a good reason to pay money instead, so, no objections here ;)

(side note, OT, I'd assume you could get MS Office to work with wine as well?)
 
I know I'm the minority here, but I have and will pay for Microsoft Office (I currently get it for free with the University I work for). I've tried, I've really tried, to use Open/Libre Office, but it just doesn't get the job done.
Try either the free "Microsoft 365" office suite (which is fundamentally a stripped-down version of Office, just running via a web browser interface), or Google's office suite, which is called Google Docs. Both have a free tier, which allows creating hundreds or thousands of documents (I don't actually know what the limitation is, never having run into them). They work very well, and can read and write documents in Office format much of the time. Today I use them for many documents, but I still keep a copy of real MS Office on one computer, for when absolute compatibility with the format is required, or for documents that contain VB or have to integrate with Access.

I've also tried using the various OpenOffice/LibreOffice/... versions, and always found them to be problematic: incompatible, buggy, user-inimical.

As for LaTeX: Once every year or two, I still prepare a document with LaTeX, mostly because some organization or conference has templates that need to be used. But if the problem is formulas: You can get add-ons for Google Docs that allow typing formulas in LaTeX inline in a document.
 
I always hate it when I'm forced to use Google Docs at work. Let me regale you with what I immodestly call "Jose'
s conjecture": There's always another version of this Google doc.

I've noticed that whatever version I have access to of the Google doc I need is old & bogus. There's always a new & improved version somewhere and I don't have the right permissions to have it even show up in search for me. There may be more than one newer version. That is a subject for further study.

I do agree that the Libreoffice UI is user-antagonistic. All I wanted to do is format this cell as currency, why have you inserted random stuff from cells I had selected into my complicated formula?
 
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I do agree that the Libreoffice UI is user-antagonistic.
I still think that's also a matter of taste. I never got used to this "Ribbon" interface MS Office uses and always get confused where to find anything.
All I wanted to do is format this cell as currency, why have you inserted random stuff from cells I had selected into my complicated formula?
Can't say anything about the spreadsheet though, cause I almost never need this kind of application.
 
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I always admired the LTSP project from Linux, I'd probably pay for BSD software that performs the same, but if I looked hard enough I'd probably find out someone has already done this.
Well, I looked and it appears as though the xen project has already does this {LTSP looks slightly more streamlined [less general purpose] and less stratified by layers [all it does is mount a network drive and chroot, xen is a full virtual environment], but still very similar}.

* LTSP also has subordinate kernels running on the client-side in conjunction with a primary kernel on the server-side [perhaps they should be called lieutenant kernels].
 
GNU is the software equivalent of cultural marxism. Hardly a feat, but if you beat a drum long enough others will follow.
The honourable Karl Marx is still honoured here in street names, places etc., and rightly so; he's regarded as a brilliant analyst even by notable conservatives. What you mean could probably better be called cultural barbarism? We have that joke here in Germany about the self-called "real existing socialism": KM peeking out of his coffin after the downfall of the soviet imperium, saying: "Sorry, guys, I was just brainstorming...".
 
If it got me out of being dependent on either Apple or Microsoft, I would buy a FreeBSD or Linux release of the Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat Pro, etc.). Either that or I have to learn to master Gimp, Inkscape, and Scribus.
 
I have and will pay for Microsoft Office
Word Perfect is much better. I wouldn't even consider Microsoft Office, especially not its office product of subscription for yearly use.

If I were to buy something from Microsoft, it would be video games. Old ones worked. They would go through hoops to block newer games from running on opensource operating systems.

If they still had Encarta encyclopedia, that would be worth buying from Microsoft. I bought an encyclopedia CD from Britannica years ago that worked under Wine emulation.
I would buy a FreeBSD or Linux release of the Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat Pro, etc.).
I would go for Corel or any other company than Adobe that makes and forces bad products on consumers like Acrobat or Flash player.


Also, other paid alternatives to these are a consideration.
 
I might have bought autocad, but FreeCAD is right here. No need to.

Language learning software on Linux/BSD is rather skimp. I'd pay to have something like Rosetta Stone / DuoLingo (which is free, but not available on BSD). The web browser versions don't have the same sort of experience.
 
All these office things aside (this turns into a whatever office .vs. someelse office) - I would buy software that I NEED and can't make do with free stuff.
Programming environments are good enough for me, no need to shell out 4digits on one. The gap for me, want-get, is small enough not to worry.
Then there is what I WANT.
Sadly, freetime is little enough once you got kids that you don't need to invest in games. So what I WANT is free time, but there is no software available that makes me sleep faster. So I do things like paying professionals for doing my taxes. Much faster.
 
So what I WANT is free time, but there is no software available that makes me sleep faster.
I used to go to websites to see weather data, stock quotes, the news, the forecast.

Now I just use perl scripts and crontab on FreeBSD/RaspberryPI, I wake up in the morning and all of the info I need is right there [perl has a JSON module to make it easier]. Then I have nothing to do but go to this forum. Ancillary info from news sites has a huge impact on free time, this cuts down on it.

* wkhtmltopdf converts any website to a pdf file.
 
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