Never a single “normie” that ever tried LibreOffice complained that “it doesn’t save to Microsoft format by default”.
I not sure you deal with many “normies” then. They wouldn’t even form that statement you’re making. “Normies” don’t even know what a default saving format is. I have firsthand experience with multiple “normies” that have had this exact resulting problem with OpenOffice (before the Libreoffice fork). The way it manifested was a situation where they say this:
“I tried OpenOffice and I was able to create my document just fine, but when I sent it to my coworker/friend/teacher they couldn’t open it (because it was an ODF file) or the formatting was all screwed up when they did, so I gave up on the software and went back to Microsoft”
Sure, they could have likely saved their file in an MS format for better compatibility when they sent it but these these weren’t savvy users that even though to change the file format when saving because thats never something they had to do when they used Microsoft Office.
So if you want to get non-savvy users to adopt open source, its not a bad idea to meet them closer to where they are. Am I saying Libreoffice should change default saving format? No. But Libreoffice criticizing another open source product where they chose to is what is the bad look.
I not sure you deal with many “normies” then. They wouldn’t even form that statement you’re making. “Normies” don’t even know what a default saving format is. I have firsthand experience with multiple “normies” that have had this exact resulting problem with OpenOffice (before the Libreoffice fork). The way it manifested was a situation where they say this:
“I tried OpenOffice and I was able to create my document just fine, but when I sent it to my coworker/friend/teacher they couldn’t open it (because it was an ODF file) or the formatting was all screwed up when they did, so I gave up on the software and went back to Microsoft”
Sure, they could have likely saved their file in an MS format for better compatibility when they sent it but these these weren’t savvy users that even though to change the file format when saving because thats never something they had to do when they used Microsoft Office.
So if you want to get non-savvy users to adopt open source, its not a bad idea to meet them closer to where they are. Am I saying Libreoffice should change default saving format? No. But Libreoffice criticizing another open source product where they chose to is what is the bad look.