Warez: Do you pirate software or just use FOSS? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 1 year ago by BermudaHighball@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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In the past, most software I used was paid and proprietary and would have some sort of limitation that I would try to get around by any means possible. Sometimes that would be resetting the clock on my computer, disabling the internet, and other times downloading a patch.

But in the past few years I've stopped using those things and have focused only on free and open source software (FOSS) to fulfill my needs. I hardly have to worry about privacy problems or trying to lock down a program that calls home. I might be missing out on some things that commercial software delivers, but I'm hardly aware of what they are anymore. It seems like the trend is for commercial software providers to migrate toward online or service models that have the company doing all the computing. I'm opposed to that, since they can take away your service at any time.

What do you do?

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[-] heeplr@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Formulars, such as calculating a sum based on the preceding fields.

Field formatting, such as appending .00 to a currency amount

You're doing it wrong. PDF with embedded javascript is a nightmare and it still doesn't make PDF equal to excel.

Better generate your documents with your favourite HTML templating engine from your DB and convert them to simple PDF in the last step.

LibreOffice notoriously renders Microsoft Office documents incorrectly in my experience.

Only had that experience with badly designed, macro ridden documents which there's no excuse for anyway nowadays. I use a lot of print templates (various label printers) and it works flawlessly.

Also, exporting a non MS file format usually imports fine in LibreOffice, even with complex documents.

The ability to quickly edit PDF makes it the office suite of my choice.

[-] mikezila@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah, but if your boss or client sends you a document that doesn't work you're not going to tell them "Uh well this is a badly formed document and you shouldn't embed scripts and it's your fault that my FOSS alternative application can't work with this". At least I hope you're not.

[-] heeplr@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

At least I hope you're not.

Of course I do and I expect my employees to report such incidents to IT. Such documents are common attack vectors.

In my experience, customers are not aware of failing interoperability or possible security threats and often grateful for such hints.

There's a reason why libreoffice (and I guess other office suits aswell), evince or antivirus show a big, fat warning when opening such documents. Surely there are cases were macros are useful or necessary, but if they have to leave the company, you're doing it wrong.

This talk might be interesting for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F2xMw3987I