> - see anyone do something in Excel that could not be achieved in LibreOffice with similar effort.
> Yes, there is no 100% feature parity. But there is feature parity in the things that people actually use.
It's not close to being wholly about the capability of the product itself.
Excel has the incumbency advantage - more people are familiar with it and more people already have it. Switching to LibreOffice therefore often means switching to a tool you don't know as well and then living with interop issues with your co-workers that are still on Excel. For LibreOffice (or any other competitor) to do something with "similar effort", it has to overcome those headwinds.
If you look at the history of spreadsheets, there is a long history of "better" products coming along, but only a few that were good enough to be able to displace the incumbent.
* VisiCalc - The First
* Lotus 1-2-3 - Runs on the PC, has graphics, and a bunch more capacity than VisiCalc
* Excel - GUI support
* Google Sheets (maybe) - Online real-time collaboration, etc.
There were many others along the way, and many of them could make the same claim you're making here about LibreOffice. (Multiplan, Improv, WingZ, Quattro Pro, Framework, etc.....)
Parity is ok, but the goal really has to be 'so much better that it justifies all of the switching costs'....
To not deal with those headwinds because it is difficult to pick-up a new tool—especially if you haven’t in a long time or aren't interested in the tool/technology—we should priortize kids learning FOSS tools. Especially if it's not often used, I think most folks we be happy with both meanings of ‘free’ as something to pick up every once in a while. Most of the differences matter only once you're a power user. I use LibreOffice for the reason because I open up a document once a month, not my daily work.
It's not close to being wholly about the capability of the product itself.
Excel has the incumbency advantage - more people are familiar with it and more people already have it. Switching to LibreOffice therefore often means switching to a tool you don't know as well and then living with interop issues with your co-workers that are still on Excel. For LibreOffice (or any other competitor) to do something with "similar effort", it has to overcome those headwinds.
If you look at the history of spreadsheets, there is a long history of "better" products coming along, but only a few that were good enough to be able to displace the incumbent.
* VisiCalc - The First
* Lotus 1-2-3 - Runs on the PC, has graphics, and a bunch more capacity than VisiCalc
* Excel - GUI support
* Google Sheets (maybe) - Online real-time collaboration, etc.
There were many others along the way, and many of them could make the same claim you're making here about LibreOffice. (Multiplan, Improv, WingZ, Quattro Pro, Framework, etc.....)
Parity is ok, but the goal really has to be 'so much better that it justifies all of the switching costs'....