Word is tons more powerful than Google Docs, has add-ins, way more formatting and styling. In my mind, Google Doc is not a direct competitor to Word when it comes to professional editing and writing.
Ideally, yes. But so many people only know of Word, or have been writing using Word for so long that they won't change their workflow and they simply do what works for them.
Professional firms that produce contracts and reports generally have document format guidelines and standard templates. They may also have approved typefaces, up to and including brand-custom typefaces. And while these things could be applied by document editors or tools later based on a simple set of text documents (I'd be in favor of that), in reality everyone works in Word, and the working Word documents are what will eventually become signed legal documents or stamped and sealed engineering studies, or similar. Styling does matter.
I've never used this, but I intend on checking it out. Just from the website, it seems it brings all the benefits of git like branching, merging, etc whereas Google docs revision history is strictly linear.
There is a lot of overlap here with the authoring process of a Word document. You don’t necessarily want the real-time coauthoring experience offered by Microsoft SharePoint or Google Docs., this can inhibit your ability to determine who is responsible for specific changes to content. Branching offers a much clearer audit trail of changes. Like with code, tags can be added to signify a minor or major version of a document is ready to be published.
While it's very cool, I'm shivering at the idea of teaching Git to non-technical people. And it still seems like a non-realtime version of Google Docs because Gdocs does offer audits
The addition of tags/versions is something that I would kill for in Google Docs. It would make life so much easier in my current role if we had the ability to tag a version so that you can easily see a diff between that specific, tagged version and the current version (rather than just seeing diffs over time as it is currently implemented).
There's an add-on you can get in whatever marketplace they have. But I hate using those because it's not clear to me what these third parties can or can't see. I found it when I realized that despite Google storing extensive change history they hardly do anything with it.
Exactly this. Right now, Google Docs marries the worst aspects of version control (long, weird, unstructured, incoherent change history) and the worst of no version control at all (the need to keep creating final.v2.edited.JS_changes copies as a multi-author document evolves).
I'm fairly convinced that Google doesn't really give a shit about their apps suite. The apps have barely changed in years.
This is actually a great idea, but not a new one. See this TED talk from 2012 [1]. I hope this kind of thing is integrated into more products and services
Took me a while of reading here to realise, there's no git here. This is a seperate thing that cannot be integrated with your existing stuff, if you're already using Git.
I'd like to have the option of Word documents in Git but I don't want a whole other system just for the special snowflake that is Word as I'm already using Git for managing LaTeX documents and doing that entirely on my own infra.
I agree. Git / version control is too complicated for most people. Doesn't Microsoft have its own collaborative editing / version control system in Office365 yet?
I'm asking honestly as someone who was in this space several years ago, I'm not convinced that even if it was backed to git that would be a big enough lure to make people want to use it.
Every lawyer who works in litigation would give an arm for something like this if it actually works. I spend so much of my time in "Track Changes" under Word and after three redlines it's basically incomprehensible.
Slightly off-topic, but if you're using Git for managing your LaTeX documents, you might like to give Overleaf a try -- it allows you to clone your LaTeX project on Overleaf to a local Git repo (which can be a submodule of a wider project). Details here: https://www.overleaf.com/blog/195
If you do use it, feedback is always appreciated (I'm one of the Overleaf founders), thanks.
I've used git for word docs for years now. Using pandoc to convert them to markdown allows sensible diffs to be displayed as well. Works great for redlining.
If all you need is to diff documents (Word, Excel, PPT, or arbitrary PDFs) then I can't recommend https://draftable.com/compare enough. It's an amazing tool. Granted, you need to do merges manually with just a diff tool, but that's not usually the bottleneck.
I tried doing something like this a couple of years ago by embedding an actual git repository inside a docx or ODF file. Unfortunately, most popular word processing suites back then trashed the git directory instead of leaving it alone (as they should, according to the standards)
I did something similar: I built a tool in Python called musdex to use in git (or any other VCS) hooks to extract the zip file that a docx/odf file is before commits and recombine them on pull/merge (essentially treating the docx/odf as something of the build product of the repo). Run an xml lint tool on the XML in them and you get decent diffs.
Want to? Near zero. Have to? Maybe a bit larger, hard to say.
As much as I hate having to work in Word for small things that could so easily be a plain-text format, the versioning system within Word isn't exactly the worst thing ever.
It includes at least me :) I switched to Latex for writing my second master thesis because I wanted to use version control but Word is far more easier to deal with when the document include unicode character outside the BMP. So I really wanted Word + git from that time.
Also when collaborating for writing a paper with Word, version control can be a huge help.
Did you ever try Xelatex? I think it has support for arbitrary utf8 characters. Also for your system's built in fonts fallbacks is a character is missing from a font.
I could recommend this for something like bank compliance. We're stuck with Word and have a largely non-technical staff, but could dramatically improve our performance if our documents were version controlled. If I were OP I would look banks as a launch point.
One would expect an engineering firm to be able to set up doc conversion for the special people who need "proper documentation" and consider Word to be at all related to that. Every "document" I've ever gotten from an engineer has been a PDF, which should work even for special people.
in over 20 years crossing around 10 different companies, all documentation produced has been in Word format... never a single exception other than simple text files for extremely minor stuff.
Word rules the world... love it or hate it, its the truth.
Finally someone is doing this! I've been toying with the idea myself but haven't been able to dedicate time to it, mostly I was deterred by the MS Word format mess. I'm sure it wasn't fun making this work with a 21st century versioning system.
I'm sure lots of people will happily throw money at you for this!
Most DMSes utilize a "check-in/check-out" process, meaning that only one person can work the document. Others can work on "copies," but there is no way to sync their changes back into the main document stored in the DMS.
Exactly. It means incompatible changes have to be merged manually later. It causes problems with large reports where, for example, an electrical engineer may be editing one section and a civil engineer another, but only one can have the document checked out at a time. It's possible to break large reports up into many small section reports, but that's a workaround to the real issue.
It also means that when someone checks a file out and then goes home for the weekend without checking it back in no one can update the file in the DMS without administrator support.
The group of people who still do their day-to-day by passing around Word docs via email or LAN likely does not intersect well with the people who fully understand (or have much less heard of) Git.
Thus, I'd remove pretty much all mention of Git from your project landing page (except perhaps to say that it was inspired by its success in the programming world to manage a similar need) so as not to scare off your likely target market (lawyers... who are ALSO notoriously Luddite!)
Other folks have provided a bunch of commentary on the validity of your idea, so I won't address that.
BUT: if this is a good idea, your pricing is far too low for a niche product like this. $10 (or 10 quid) is too low a monthly fee for pretty much any product marketed as a business product. 10 per seat per month is probably also too low, but would be a better starting point.
Likely objection: "But Spotify is only $10/mo!!!" Spotify has the much larger addressable market of people with hearing and an Internet connection. Even Dropbox has a higher price point for business users, and it also has a far larger addressable market.
If you're building something that's useful for people, charge more.
I would be careful with raising pricing. It is a very specialized product that requires changing the way people work with their documents today - meaning you need to educate the users on a) why they need this over the regular document version control in something like Sharepoint b) educate them on how to actually use it and c) define how this product fits into existing document management systems and workflows.
It's hard enough to train people to use existing baseline document management systems and not simply email these things around.
Also, the fact that you need to use your cloud service is a red-flag for certain clients.
As someone who evaluates and purchases business software on a regular basis, I agree with this. Business users will pay more for something that's useful.
And you don't want to lock too many customers into low pricing early on - it's a real challenge to start charging customers more when they're used to paying a ridiculously low rate.
Plugging these patio11 posts because a)they might be helpful if OP hasn't read them and b)even if OP has, somebody else here might not and they're pretty much evergreen:
Just to echo Patrick's default pricing model. If it's too cheap (and you currently are), I would not trust the developer having resources to make the product stable enough for me to trust it with my data. Also, it costs money to go through certification (without which you will not penetrate the market where this pain point is clearest).
Slight aside (since LibreOffice != Word, and XML diffs are still horribly messy):
If you save your LibreOffice documents in flat XML format, (e.g. fods, fodt instead of ods, odt), placing them under version control becomes slightly less annoying — the diffs become at least _potentially_ human readable.
This is very cool, and I wish we had something like this, but I don't see many law firms going for it.
Most law firms (and I would guess all major ones) will not allow uploading of client documents or work-product to any cloud provider, let alone an unproven start up. This risk is frankly way too high.
The only way I see this happening in the legal context is if it can be run from the firm's servers with all data hosted locally.
This isn't as absolute as you'd think, at least in the firms I've seen here in the US. Nearly all have shifted to cloud solutions for some documents at least in the litigation world where I dwell, especially in doc production and discovery. In a recent class action, my team was sent opposing counsel's link to the Box folder with their 4gb+ docs sent over from their client. Which shows that the clients are demanding that their outside counsel use some of the tools that they've embraced.
You're right with respect to internal memos, notes, drafts of pleadings, etc. But I suspect this is changing too as more lawyers want to be able to work on docs from their phones and iPads and remote laptops.
This fills a niche I need but I can't use a service where I upload the documents to your server (unless you can show certification of at least ISO 27001). I would also be willing to pay more for it. Version controlling Word documents is a need for anyone doing a lot of QC. You have a superb product to sell.
Hey OP, this looks like an awesome tool, good job! Just a quick question, would the primary alternative to your product be Microsoft Sharepoint? If so, how would you market your service as better?
nice work! at my last company we hooked up word docs with SVN. Its very useful to have a workable format for lawyers to update, and then be able to process everything in the back end.
I've had multiple frustrating conversations where I tried to get people to stop using the strategy of copying entire folders in SharePoint to get some kind of versioning, so they might be right.
FogBugz offered a server version where you could install on a private server yourself. They still offered a cloud version if you didn't want to manage the data yourself.
This point is huge. I'm a technical writer for a large conglomerate, but often get pulled into drafting or contributing to business documentation that is all created in Word. These things have to cross the desks of over a dozen different people spread across three continents so versioning is painful and it's often left to me to put everything back together. I need this product, but there is no way we can put sensitive sales and IP details onto some random cloud service.
Make this a standalone product and it's a no-brainer that can command an enterprise price point.
Here's my unsolicited opinion: you preemptively answer "why wouldn't I just use git?" but I think "why is this better than track changes?" is the question prospective users are more likely to have. Comparisons to SharePoint versioning might also be helpful.
I hope OP helps lots of people, because if they've been so abused by their computers as to think "Track Changes" is anything other than a torture device, they really need help.
I think this is a good product, once worked in strategy as an intern at a bank and we basically used manual versioning where we would version using date and time or even content, this is definitely a step up
I worked for a company that did studies to get FDA approval for a medical device. The company was very professional and well managed. But THIS is what they were lacking. I always thought they need something like github and Version control for the constantly changing documents.
Many others have said it already, but I'll say it again:
1. You have a fantastic product
2. Many potential users won't accept to have their documents stored "in the cloud" (even though those same users share those same documents by email with zero security, all the time)
3. Offer a stand alone version and sell a licence (or a rent, think the former Google Search Appliance)
4. Charge an arm and a leg for it -- think Oracle pricing
The fact word offers a competing feature does not mean this is not a pain point people would pay money for.
Have you tried to use Word's features as part of a mid-size team to manage a complicated document being edited by multiple users? Word's merge is crap.
My old law firm used version control software that appeared to be straight from 1991. So there's plenty of room to solve real problems here.
OP, I wish you the best of luck. But I concur with others, the use case for this product I see is for a team or company to learn to use it internally, not for a bunch of lawyers to use it across firms. So, keep the free tier to attract people who are willing to use it on their own (or in case someone can convince those outside their organization to sign up in order to participate on projects), and then increase pricing to any sort of team.
Also, I'm sure my firm could never have used a cloud-based solution, regardless of security, because we probably had clients who would not allow their information to be stored in the cloud.
Also, because I can speak to lawyers, the diffing needs to be excellent and it needs to be easy to create and share redlines in the ways lawyers are used to (send as a word doc/PDF, etc.). Perhaps this is already there, I'm excited to check it out.
117 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 180 ms ] threadI'm fairly convinced that Google doesn't really give a shit about their apps suite. The apps have barely changed in years.
http://willgrant.org/post/idea-dump-6/
[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_the_internet_will_...
I'd like to have the option of Word documents in Git but I don't want a whole other system just for the special snowflake that is Word as I'm already using Git for managing LaTeX documents and doing that entirely on my own infra.
I'm asking honestly as someone who was in this space several years ago, I'm not convinced that even if it was backed to git that would be a big enough lure to make people want to use it.
Please feel free to convince me I'm wrong :)...
If you do use it, feedback is always appreciated (I'm one of the Overleaf founders), thanks.
As much as I hate having to work in Word for small things that could so easily be a plain-text format, the versioning system within Word isn't exactly the worst thing ever.
So not so few people :-)
I like the idea, let's see how it plays out.
Also when collaborating for writing a paper with Word, version control can be a huge help.
Most engineering firms (web dev << the development world) have a need for proper documentation, and LibreOffice generally won't cut it either.
I'm sure lots of people will happily throw money at you for this!
It also means that when someone checks a file out and then goes home for the weekend without checking it back in no one can update the file in the DMS without administrator support.
Thus, I'd remove pretty much all mention of Git from your project landing page (except perhaps to say that it was inspired by its success in the programming world to manage a similar need) so as not to scare off your likely target market (lawyers... who are ALSO notoriously Luddite!)
Other folks have provided a bunch of commentary on the validity of your idea, so I won't address that.
BUT: if this is a good idea, your pricing is far too low for a niche product like this. $10 (or 10 quid) is too low a monthly fee for pretty much any product marketed as a business product. 10 per seat per month is probably also too low, but would be a better starting point.
Likely objection: "But Spotify is only $10/mo!!!" Spotify has the much larger addressable market of people with hearing and an Internet connection. Even Dropbox has a higher price point for business users, and it also has a far larger addressable market.
If you're building something that's useful for people, charge more.
Good luck!
It's hard enough to train people to use existing baseline document management systems and not simply email these things around.
Also, the fact that you need to use your cloud service is a red-flag for certain clients.
And you don't want to lock too many customers into low pricing early on - it's a real challenge to start charging customers more when they're used to paying a ridiculously low rate.
The Black Art of SaaS Pricing: https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/saas_pric...
Doubling Saas Revenue by Changing the Pricing Model: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/08/13/doubling-saas-revenue/
Selling To The Fortune 500, Government, And Other Lovecraftian Horrors: https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/enterpris...
Patrick's default pricing model: https://twitter.com/patio11/status/479095257284345857
If you save your LibreOffice documents in flat XML format, (e.g. fods, fodt instead of ods, odt), placing them under version control becomes slightly less annoying — the diffs become at least _potentially_ human readable.
See also:
http://blog.riemann.cc/2013/04/23/versioning-of-openoffice-l...
https://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/msg48067.h...
Most law firms (and I would guess all major ones) will not allow uploading of client documents or work-product to any cloud provider, let alone an unproven start up. This risk is frankly way too high.
The only way I see this happening in the legal context is if it can be run from the firm's servers with all data hosted locally.
You're right with respect to internal memos, notes, drafts of pleadings, etc. But I suspect this is changing too as more lawyers want to be able to work on docs from their phones and iPads and remote laptops.
I work in legal and compliance technology, and it is very important to keep documents secured internally if the have confidential information.
Make this a standalone product and it's a no-brainer that can command an enterprise price point.
...but people here irrationally hate svn, so you're getting unfairly downvoted.
Here's my unsolicited opinion: you preemptively answer "why wouldn't I just use git?" but I think "why is this better than track changes?" is the question prospective users are more likely to have. Comparisons to SharePoint versioning might also be helpful.
1. You have a fantastic product
2. Many potential users won't accept to have their documents stored "in the cloud" (even though those same users share those same documents by email with zero security, all the time)
3. Offer a stand alone version and sell a licence (or a rent, think the former Google Search Appliance)
4. Charge an arm and a leg for it -- think Oracle pricing
5. Get rich!
Have you tried to use Word's features as part of a mid-size team to manage a complicated document being edited by multiple users? Word's merge is crap.
My old law firm used version control software that appeared to be straight from 1991. So there's plenty of room to solve real problems here.
OP, I wish you the best of luck. But I concur with others, the use case for this product I see is for a team or company to learn to use it internally, not for a bunch of lawyers to use it across firms. So, keep the free tier to attract people who are willing to use it on their own (or in case someone can convince those outside their organization to sign up in order to participate on projects), and then increase pricing to any sort of team.
Also, I'm sure my firm could never have used a cloud-based solution, regardless of security, because we probably had clients who would not allow their information to be stored in the cloud.
Also, because I can speak to lawyers, the diffing needs to be excellent and it needs to be easy to create and share redlines in the ways lawyers are used to (send as a word doc/PDF, etc.). Perhaps this is already there, I'm excited to check it out.