2016 2 nd International Conference on Social, Education and Management Engineering (SEME 2016) ISBN: 978-1-60595-336-6 "Make It Possible" Study: Can LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice Be Alternatives to MS-Office from Consumer's Perspective? Jun IIO 1,* and Shusaku OHGAMA 2 1Socio-informatics Dept. Faculty of Letters, Chuo University, 742-1 Higashinakano, Hachioji-shi, Tokyo, Japan 2Information Technology Dept. Information Systems Div., Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd., 4-5-33 Kitahama, Chuo-ku, Osaka-shi, Osaka, Japan *Corresponding author Keywords: Open-source software, LibreOffice, OpenOffice, Productivity suites. Abstract. There are many guidebooks which offer some instruction of using productivity suites, and most of them focus on Microsoft's Office (MS-Office,) because it is the dominant products in the market. However, we have some other productivity suites, such as LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice, as the alternative of MS-Office. Therefore, we investigated whether such software could be used properly, within the content of the guidebooks which are widely used. In this paper, the results of our investigation show that the interoperability of such software has already reached a tolerable level from a practical perspective. Introduction Recently, we can find in bookstores many books for reference that provide guidelines on how to operate productivity suites. However, most of them only focus on Microsoft's Office suites (MS-Office,) because it has the largest market share in the world in the productivity software market. On the other hand, there are some other options, such as LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice. In recent days, persons in businesses face some problems in using these productivity suites. For example, license fee for proprietary productivity suites products tends to become expensive, and there is a lack of freedom to customize the product. These negative effects place more exceptions on the adoption of alternative software products (hereinafter they are called open-source software (OSS) productivity suites.) In the meanwhile, it has been pointed out that OSS productivity suites do not have enough interoperability and/or compatibility to the proprietary one. Regarding interoperability, we can consider several aspects. In such aspects, it should be noted that interoperability on manipulation capabilities and operational procedures are important. Furthermore, the Open Document Format and Open-source Office-suites Promotion Group Japan (ODPG) [1] is discussing the promotion strategy for the coordinated adoption of OSS productivity suites into enterprises. In the discussion, the opinion, which it makes clear what is possible by using OSS productivity suites, is needed in order to spread the potential of the software. Therefore, as part of a comprehensive approach to compare MS-Office and OSS office suites, some members from ODPG conducted a survey to make clear whether the items listed up in a commercial-release beginners’ guidebook (or self-training materials) on productivity suites are available or not, when OSS office software is used instead of MS-Office. And results of the survey are considered useful to show that the OSS office suites have sufficient capability to execute practical office work. This investigation has been conducted in the last three years, and currently, work in forth-years of program is in progress. In this paper, an overview and a method of implementation are illustrated, and the results from previous verification activities are described. Method for Investigation In this section, the books which we chose as the target of our investigation and how the study were conducted are described. Target Books “Make It Possible” Series Firstly, the typical beginners’ reference books were chosen as the target of our investigation. We chose “Make It Possible” series published by Impress Corporation. This is a famous set of books for reference on many different software. In such series, six typical reference books were selected. Figure 1. The books as the target of our investigation. “Make It Possible” series for MS-Office 2010 and 2013. “Make It Possible: Word 2010 / 2013” for the verification on Writer, “Make It Possible: Excel 2010/ 2013” for the verification on Calc, and “Make It Possible: PowerPoint 2010/2013” for the verification on Impress were picked up for our study (hereinafter, we call Book2010 and Book2013, respectively.) These books cover common operations which are required in a daily usage of productivity suites, and if these operations are conducted without any defects in the alternative software, it could be proven that the alternative software has sufficient functionality, especially for consumers' request in their daily business life. Method for Verification In order to make clear whether the description in the books are available with LibreOffice or Apache OpenOffice instead of MS-Office, verification tasks and a worksheet for the verification were shared by the members of working group (WG) implemented in ODPG. The members wrote “OK” on the worksheet if an item described in the book can be completed without any difficulties by using OSS office suites, and they wrote “NG” on it if the item cannot be completed or some defects were found in the verification process. The results were confirmed in regular WG meetings. In the case that the member confused in judging “OK” or “NG,” the case was discussed in WG meetings and the final result was decided based on the discussion by WG members. Testing Environment and Versions of the Target Software Examination started from September 2012. Every year, before started the testing process, the leader of WG defined the versions of target software. For the process in FY2014, whose results are reported in this paper, LibreOffice 4.3.x and Apache OpenOffice 4.1.1 were the targets of verification. Testing environment, hardware of computer, operation system (OS), Japanese input method (IME), and Java implementation took many and varied form over the participants in this work, shown in Table 1. In the table, the characters from “A” to “L” represent the participants. Twelve members from WG participated in the examination. Results of Verification The results of examination on Book2010 with Apache OpenOffice/LibreOffice and that on Book2013 with each software are shown in Table 2, 3, 4, and Table 5, respectively. As illustrated in Table 3 and Table 5, total number of items which we verified in Book2013 is relatively small compared with that in Book2010. The reason is that our study only focused on additional items in Book2013. Three books labeled with Book2013 in this study are revised version of Book2010, therefore, they have many similar items written in Book2010 and our study ignored such items in Book2013. Table 1. Testing environment and versions of the target software. Computer OS IME Java Windows7 Enterprise A-1 Lenovo ThinkPad L530 Microsoft IME 2010 1.7.-_07b11 SP1 Google Japanese Input B-1 Apple Mac mini Mid2010 OS X 10.9.5 N/A 1.13.1880 Google Japanese Input B-2 Apple Mac mini Mid2010 OS X 10.10.2 N/A 1.13.1880 Google Japanese Input C-1 MacBook Pro Early 2013 OS X 10.10 N/A 1.13.1880 TOSHIBA dynabook Linux Mint 17.1 D-1 fcitx Java-1.7.0-openjdk-i386 satellite K16 200E/W Cinnamon VMware Windows7 Enterprise E-1 Microsoft IME 2010 1.7.0_67b01 (Acer VERITON X4620G) SP1 SONY VAIO E-2 Windows8.1 pro Microsoft IME 1.7.0_07b11 SVF13N2BBJ Windows7 Professional F-1 Lenovo X220 Microsoft IME N/A SP1 Google Japanese Input G-1 Surface pro2 Windows8.1 pro N/A 1.13.1880 G-2 Surface pro2 Windows8.1 pro Microsoft IME 2012 1.7.0_67 Windows7 Professional H-1 Dell Latitude E5530 Microsoft IME 2010 1.7.0_67b01 SP1 Windows7 Professional H-2 Dell Latitude E5530 Microsoft IME 2010 1.7.0_67b14 SP1 I-1 FUJITSU FMVS02009 Windows8.1 pro Microsoft IME 2012 1.8.0.25-b18 VirtualBox 4.3.16 Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic iBus-Mozc openjdk-7-jdk7u71-2.5.3-0 J-1 (HP Compaq Elite 8300 Unicorn 1.15.1857.102-1 Ubuntu1.0 SFF) Windows7 Enterprise K-1 Lenovo ThinkPad L530 Microsoft IME 2010 1.7.0_21 SP1 Windows7 Enterprise L-1 Lenovo ThinkPad L530 Microsoft IME 2010 1.7.0_07 SP1 Table 2. Ratio of # of “OK” / # of total items: apache openoffice for Book2010. Year (version) 2012 (3.4.1) 2013 (4.0.1) 2014 (4.1.1) Writer (Word2010) 84% (46/55) 85% (47/55) 91% (50/55) Calc (Excel2010) 89% (51/57) 91% (52/57) 95% (54/57) Impress (PowerPoint2010) 82% (51/62) 82% (51/62) 84% (52/62) Table 3. Ratio of # of “OK” / # of total items: apache OpenOffice for Book2013. Year (version) 2013 (4.0.1) 2014 (4.1.1) Writer (Word2013) 44% (4/9) 56% (5/9) Calc (Excel2013) 44% (4/9) 44% (4/9) Impress (PowerPoint2013) 29% (2/7) 29% (2/7) Table 4.Ratio of # of “OK” / # of total items: LibreOffice for Book2010. Year (version) 2012 (3.6.x) 2013 (4.1.x) 2014 (4.3.x) Writer (Word2010) 85% (47/55) 91% (50/55) 91% (50/55) Calc (Excel2010) 93% (53/57) 93% (53/57) 93% (53/57) Impress (PowerPoint2010) 84% (52/62) 84% (52/62) 82% (51/62) Table 5. Ratio of # of “OK” / # of total items: apache OpenOffice for Book2013. Year (version) 2013 (4.1.x) 2014 (4.3.x) Writer (Word2013) 56% (5/9) 56% (5/9) Calc (Excel2013) 44% (4/9) 44% (4/9) Impress (PowerPoint2013) 43% (3/7) 43% (3/7) Figure 2. Ratio of # of “OK” / # of total items: apache OpenOffice (AOO) and LibreOffice (LibO) for Book2010. Figure 2 indicates that the graph on the ratio of numbers of “OK”-items to total numbers of items. X-axis is fiscal year when our work was conducted, and Y-axis is the percentage.