Sometimes companies do have valid licenses (usually purchased in bulk) but no one has any idea where they are and what the heck happened to the software keys. Not every company is blessed with IT departments or people - so from their point of view, they paid for it, and they just use whatever method they can to get it working, this is especially true on the other side of the world where calling the local Microsoft or vendor office won't get you much help. And no way they are going to call a US hot-line to get it resolved

In a local court of law, especially one where software rights are acknowledged, sometimes the actual software and license key is irrelevant as long as the paper trail holds up

As much as I dislike using MS products, the fact of the matter is OO is not ready for day to day usage. The following are true:

- It is slow
- It is at times unstable
- If a user cannot achieve their tasks in OO in less or equal time to Office, then OO has failed

Our company prefers to implement open source solutions, simply because it means the customer's budget can be allocated more towards services and customization rather than license fees.

That being said, trying to wrangle with OO when you're doing simple tasks such as drafting documents, contracts and presentations becomes a technical debugging exercise... means that this software goes out the window.

I tried to like it, but they really need to focus on getting performance and core functionality polished until it's so reliable day to day users can get their tasks done without thinking about the tool. Adding feature after feature and increasing bloat is the same direction that MS is taking the next version of Office, but at the very least, the performance and basic functions are working. The same definitely cannot be said of OO. If they want to be a MS Office alternative, they should not emulate MS's path of counting the # of features. Core functionality and reliable performance would definitely at least win this user's usage.