this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2025
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FOSS is always available. R is always available. Your points remain but you're never in a situation where Excel is the only thing you can use.
Where I worked, many of the contacts specifically said we could not use open source software, so no, it is not always available.
Why did the contracts specify that?
A lot of government stuff requires that they have complete provenance of all code in the system. When you have people contributing to it from different places - potentially different countries - they get nervous about it.
You'd think they'd also be worried about most proprietary software being a black box when it comes to their code. But it could be only a secondary concern
We were restricted even on some proprietary software (especially if it was from a foreign owned company), but you'd be surprised how much scrutiny some of the major packages have had.
In an ideal world where people read the open source yes. But having contracts with a provider means someone else is responsible if shit fails and that’s half of the corporate world there.
You are if company policy dictates that's all you can use.
This is more of an argument for LibreOffice (and in line with the post you're replying to) than it's an argument for using a programming language, let alone a specific one.
Current version of Excel stripped out a macro I made to make a specific task easier. It didn’t just block it from running. It refused to let me even see it anymore.
LibreOffice allowed me to see it again so I could re-implement it temporarily. I love how often Microsoft’s own tools can’t do what FOSS can with Microsoft files.
R, the language where dependency resolution is built upon thoughts and prayers.
Say what you want about Excel, but compatibility is kinda decent (ignoring locales and DNA sequences). Meanwhile, good luck replicating your R installation on another machine.
You heard about conda/containers/pixi/whatever?
PS: Excel will often fail if your system has a different default language. Like in many European countries one and a half is 1,5, not 1.5. Excel can't take it.
I have fucked around enough with R’s package management. Makes Python look like a god damn dream. Containers around it is just polishing a turd. Still have nightmares from building containers with R in automated pipelines, ending up at like 8 GB per container.
Also, good luck getting reproducible container builds.
Regarding locales - yes, I mentioned that. Thats’s a shitty design decision if I ever saw one. But within a locale, most Excel documents from last century and onwards should work reasonably well. (Well, normal Excel files. Macros and VB really shouldn’t work…). And it works on normal office machines, and you can email the files, and you can give it to your boss. And your boss can actually do something with it.
I also think Excel should be replaced by something. But not R.