The Open Source Superiority Complex
Description
A classic 'We are not the same' meme featuring a photograph of actor Giancarlo Esposito, known for his role as the meticulous and calculating Gus Fring. He is dressed in a sharp grey suit, adjusting his tie with a calm, serious, and slightly condescending expression. The image is overlaid with white text in three parts. At the top, it says, 'You are using MS Word'. In the middle, 'I'm using LibreOffice'. And at the bottom, 'Our documents are not the same'. The humor is derived from the juxtaposition of a common, proprietary software (MS Word) with its free and open-source alternative (LibreOffice), framed as a mark of sophistication. For developers, this meme taps into the cultural pride associated with using open-source tools, often seen as a more principled or technically pure choice over mainstream, corporate-pushed products. The punchline also cleverly hints at the very real formatting and compatibility issues that often arise between the two
Comments
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Sure, our documents aren't the same. Mine is in a fully documented, open standard format. Yours is a binary blob that changes its schema every time your marketing department needs a new font
Git just flagged a 9 MB diff because Word converted our ADR into XML confetti, LibreOffice reflowed it, and the merge conflict is now in Wingdings - document-driven chaos engineering at its finest
After 20 years in tech, I've learned that 'cross-platform compatible' is just industry speak for 'your carefully crafted document will look like it went through a blender, but at least it opens.' The real compatibility layer isn't XML or ODF - it's PDF and the resignation that nobody will ever edit it again
The eternal optimism of sending a LibreOffice document to a client and hoping the bullet points don't transform into abstract art. We've all learned the hard way that 'open standards' and 'actual interoperability' exist in parallel universes - one where your carefully crafted technical proposal renders perfectly, and the reality where your margins have achieved sentience and your fonts have been replaced by Comic Sans's distant cousin
Sending a DOCX from Word to LibreOffice is the desktop equivalent of integrating two “RESTful” services - both “compliant,” both in quirks mode, and your bullet points become an eventual consistency demo
Office suites and CAP theorem: pick two from Compatibility, Aesthetics, Proprietary - LibreOffice picks the wrong two
ODT↔DOCX is the worst API - same nouns, different semantics; after one round-trip, your page numbers implement eventual consistency
I have been using LibreOffice for a long time and have never encountered font curvature Comment deleted
Libreoffice actually makes better structured documents. Comment deleted
You should've used LaTeX Comment deleted
only if it was not this slow Comment deleted
groff Comment deleted
typst Comment deleted
It's awesome for equations, but heck as tedious for documents Comment deleted
it may be time consuming but at least output is consistent Comment deleted
It'll be consistant for any program. Failures happen when converting formats Comment deleted
And beautiful Comment deleted
Still waiting for someone rewrite TeX in Go/Rust 😂 Comment deleted
There is such a project https://typst.app/ Comment deleted
(wish it was that simple) Comment deleted
Libre office creates documents in open formats whereas MS office wants you tobe addicted to constantly changing proprietary format. Support of open format is good for everyone except MS 😂 Comment deleted
Same here. But I am keeping an eye on it. LuaLaTeX with TikZ and friends is my favorite still, though. Comment deleted
To be more exact Comment deleted
Use Google docs instead Comment deleted
wordpad 😌 Comment deleted
Notebook (navigate through this compiled byte code) Comment deleted
.class Comment deleted
.css Comment deleted
ascii encoded Comment deleted
write on notebook Comment deleted