OpenOffice Could Soon Become Web-Based Apps

An anonymous reader writes "Via Linuxtoday.com, a message from the OpenOffice Dev mailing list in which a new company is introducing the GravityZoo OpenOffice porting project. The unusually named group aims to bring OpenOffice to the Internet as a series of online apps. 'When OpenOffice.org is GravityZood, it will become a suite of productivity applications that are always available, online, via a broad range of devices. It will be possible to share and collaborate in real-time, to switch from one device (e.g. a PC) to another (Mobile) device. There will also be no need to save data, because everything you produce is saved automatically on the network. There is no need to download, install or update, the latest version is just available and accessible from any GravityZoo enabled client.'"

Slow Down There, Tiger

OpenOffice Could Soon Become Web-Based Apps

GravityZoo is NOT, I repeat NOT converting OpenOffice into a webapp. I don't really want to detract from their idea, so I'll try to be succinct. Basically, GravityZoo has a special client that interacts with the application running on the server. The application on the server is always available, and autostores your data in a GravityZoo Object Storage database.

Supposedly, it's an actual conversion of the application to a networked form rather than a simple remote desktop concept. If I were to make a W.A.G. of the Day, I'd say they're probably going to bus the normal IPC communications over the network. Not revolutionary by itself, but possibly nice if they have a good framework.

Mobile apps suck

I have an Axim, and its great for a lot of things. Calendar, tasks, note taking, note recording, some light web surfing. But document creation. No. Even using Powerpoint on it is just horrendous. I have no faith that these apps with be nearly as enjoyable across devices that are not desktops.

ick sp!

These guys seem cool and all, but dude, get a proofreader
"distributing Data, Information and Intelligence. A development that should not be dependent upon the whimp of a few very affluant and powerfull entities."
http://www.gravityzoo.com/developers/openSource.py [gravityzoo.com]

Error 404 ClosedOffice

I like the internet, I use it an awful lot, but for most uses I cannot see needing an Office package to be online.
It will be nice as a compliment though for those very rare occasions.

Re:Error 404 ClosedOffice

"I like the internet, I use it an awful lot, but for most uses I cannot see needing an Office package to be online."

I'm with you...I'm a bit queasy about keeping any mail I use on Gmail...but, since Katrina forced me on the run awhile back, I've not been able to set down roots and set up my email server again yet.

However, in general, I just don't want a bunch of personal docs out there on a webserver, and I can't imagine a business with any kind of security concience would want to trust a web based office application with their work and possibly trade secrets.

I'm just kind of amazed that there is a market for these web based office applications. I mean, if you've got a computer with you....don't you generally have your document processing software with you too?

It is a proprietary layer on top of OO code

From www.gravityzoo.com: The GravityZoo Framework employs patent pending technology to achieve its goals. It can be divided into three major components, all fulfilling a special and important task:

Re:It is a proprietary layer on top of OO code

Or they just used "patent pending" as a synonym for "good" without even realizing the phrase has a meaning, like so many people these days.

Licensing Unclear

As per "Open Source [gravityzoo.com]" at the GravityZoo website [gravityzoo.com], [...]"this requires the involvement of a global community of Information Analysts, IT architects and Engineers from both the Open Source and Commercial environment. Open Source because to achieve an egalitarian development of tomorrow's information society requires the free flow of Data Information and Intelligence to those in need. Commercial because certain developments require upfront investments and thus risktaking, a step the Open Source community is not always willing or capable to take. In the latter case the risktaking should be rewarded by limiting the access on a for Pay basis.
It is therefore that The GravityZoo Company from day one decide to implement a Dual Licensing model.
More information about our Open Source projects and activities will be available at this page soon."

Until they clarify their licensing, I refuse to be interested, let alone excited.

There is also so far only a Windows client. They don't even have a beta for other platforms. So I'm not interested in that way, also.

Also: if it requires a special client, it is not (repeat not) a web-based app. I don't fucking care how it's delivered. The web is browsed with a web browser - see how that works?

Deja vu all over again...

I seem to recall that Sun attempted to do this with Star Office a few years back.

They gave up on it after a while, most likely because (1.) it took more in the doing than they thought and (2.) the marketoplace didn't show the expected interest.

Why?

This has about a much chance of flying as your common or garden stone. Aside from the fact that the article appears to be fundamentally flawed who would really want this functionality? Networks are just too slow for this to really work well. Even dumb terminals have lag and they are generally connected via a high speed network with minimal hops. Factor in the Interweb and this is just another web 2.0 pipe dream. Why is there this obsession with putting everything on the network even when it's not suitable for it?

[e-mail]

I was GravityZood last year...it was horrible. The...the nightmares! I...my...my wife left me, my therapist committed suicide, my dog *SOB* I can't talk about it any more. Run! RUN! While you still can!

Business plan

1. Put open source desktop app on server.
2. Sell as web service.
3. Profit!

Another great Web 2.0 concept.

Some days I think the Web peaked at HTML 3.2.

Nothing new here?

I can't see how this is different to what you can do already with FreeNX, except that FreeNX is available now, and this is vapourware.

Sure this will work

'When OpenOffice.org is GravityZood, it will become a suite of productivity applications that are always available, online, via a broad range of devices.

...and when that fails I hear there is good money to be found in verbing nouns.

Re:Sure this will work

Come now, he's simply trying to embiggen the language. "GravityZood" is a perfectly cromulent word.

Firefox

What I'm looking forward to is a web-based version of Firefox.

Dan East

Re:Firefox

Here you have it: chrome://browser/content/browser.xul [chrome].

Great Idea, Ok not...

Ok, we all kind of understand that there will come a time when bandwidth allows profile concepts to be moved to a universally accessible secure location. But it will have to be a highly secured and trusted service or user created server service. (i.e. A home BSD box or even Windows Home Server for example for home users.)

However, I don't want my personal documents stored on their servers, and I know most business policies will not allow documents to be stored in this manner.

Also, why are they 'reinventing' the wheel with patented technology to do this? There are many known and secure remote app technologies that could be already put into place for something like this.

I'm open to ideas here, but I don't see how this is 'Open' or a good thing...

Google??

What's the difference between this and what google is already doing? Except google's doing it for free.

Architecturally, it's possible.

Although the title of this story is a little misleading, I should point out that it is possible for something like a web-based OpenOffice to come into existence.

OpenOffice is built using a retargetable GUI framework -- that's what allows it to work on both Windows and Linux without the need to resort to cheap and sleazy WINE tricks. So, theoretically at least, it's possible to build a front end to OpenOffice that targets the browser as a remote desktop.

Can't do it

I just can't use a product associated with the name "GravityZoo." GravityZoo sounds too much like GravityGlue... which sounds too much like CavityGlue... which sounds just a little too close to CavityJew... which reminds me of the dentist (sorry for the anti-Semitism -- I needed this for the joke to work. I love you guys. Shalom!) Anyhoo, so... the dentist. I don't like the dentist, and so, logically, I don't like GravityZoo. QED.

Google Docs

Too little, too late. I'm pretty sure that Google Docs is using OpenOffice code for a large portion of Google Docs functionality. (Take a look at the Google spreadsheets help and also note the producer tag on its pdf output.)

That said, any spreadsheet application needs to be able to perform regression and factor analysis at a minimum to be useful to me. Google Docs has no such advanced statistical functionality, Excel is satisfactory, and SYSTAT is preferred. Fancy formatting be damned, it's actual functionality that matters to me. Hell, a CLI is all that is really required; I started with MINITAB and SAS on a monochrome VAX/VMS connected terminal about 15 years ago, it worked just fine and little, if anything, since has improved on it. I'm betting it would not be too hard to turn VMS apps into web services...

If SSI ever does web-based applications then colour me interested.

Thinking outside the box

Somebody has found a way to make OpenOffice slower! I am in awe.

thinkfree

Don't we pretty much have this with think free?

Promising but not there yet.

Gravity Zoo is very promising, i can think of many applications that could be enhanced by it (OO included, imagine it in a corporate environment), but it is not there yet. It is between proof of concept and betas. Lots to be done before i can really think about including it in a production environment. Congratulations and best of luck to the Gravity Zoo people.

Common data store

Ok, it seems to me that the single biggest draw for these online desktop-like apps is to have access to your files from anywhere. Assuming that is correct, they why aren't we seeing more traditional apps that are capable of drawing from a common network data store such as Amazone S3? I know Amazon provides an API. Seem like you could extend OpenOffice to talk to S3 (or similar) directly and you'd have your "documents just about anywhere" feature that everyone (on Slashdot) seems to think is so useful. Really, it is such a relatively simple solution considering compared to trying to coerce a web browser into doing things God never meant it to do.

-matthew

The market is there, how about the players?

There is absolutely a big market for this. That is what 37signals [37signals.com] and Google [google.com], among others, are proving with their web apps.

The benefits of web office apps are many and great. I do not intend to discuss them here, since it is too long a topic. For instance, the same site links to a very interesting article on the subject [gravityzoo.com].

What is holding this evolution of the systems right now are the genuine security and confidentiality concerns from managers and sysadmins. As many stated, most companies will not trust their data to servers that leave a minimum possibility for security breaches. That is what makes Google Apps (and the likes) not a viable option for many.

I do not yet clearly understand the goals of this project, but I hope they intend to make the resulting applications open source, and easy to install.

One project with that goal in mind is OpenGoo [opengoo.org], with which I am involved. What the project intends is to form a community from existing open source project members to leverage their work in the pursuit of this ambitious goal that we believe can not be achieved by one single OS project alone.

Please contact me [methegeek.com] if you want to get involved or have any ideas or suggestions for the project.

This makes sense, if the server is in your pocket

Putting a web app front-end on Open Office makes good sense, especially if the application server is already in your pocket. We currently tote around several electronic gadgets, and yet can only access "serious" applications through stationary desktops and bulky laptops. As electronics shrink, all of this must converge to a single platform. Since pretty much all applications require comms, and mobile phones provide this, they will probably end up being the platform that we converge onto. They will carry the files we're currently working with, like a level 1 cache, and swap out the ones we haven't touched for some time to server farms. They will give us dinky interfaces into their apps while we're on the move. When we need the big screen experience, they will deliver their apps to ubiquitous, big screen docking stations (a.k.a. browsers) via local wireless. So we will need to web-enable most of our important apps over time. See http://trevors-trinkets.blogspot.com/2007/02/after -desktop-what.html [blogspot.com] and http://trevors-trinkets.blogspot.com/2007/03/mobil izing-mobiles.html [blogspot.com] for how.

Worse than TiVo

At least TiVo just stops you from running modified software on their hardware, what these guys will be doing is attempt to circumvent the LGPL by interfacing an LGPL server program using a proprietary client, thus by not distributing it they are not bound by the LGPL. Of course, LGPL programs are not the only ones vulnerable to this. Even the GPLv3 will run into problems with it. The Affero approach won't solve the problem because it will be a hassle for many free software developers, and quite frankly, it is non-free as it doesn't allow you to modify all parts of the program. I am worried that if more company's start to do this kind of thing there will be no other solution than to stick in a use-restriction. I.e, "if you let people interface the program over a network, you must make your changes public". Yes, use restrictions are very bad, but unfortunately it seems as if they might end up being necessary. I pray that these applications will turn out to be a big enough fiasco for people not to use them.

I liked this idea better...

...when it was called ThinkFree Online [thinkfree.com]. Oh wait, we have to hate ThinkFree because it's written in Java. Even though it works well, lets you use your own fonts and printer, opens and saves real MS Office docs, and installs into the JVM cache faster than an MS Office or OpenOffice install.

Oh well, trying to write an Office suite in Ajax has kept people busy for a few years, now they can try to get the native OO.o app working in a browser. Maybe next we can port it to Flash. That'll be fun.

Re:But...

Do anyone care? openoffice has about one third of the options of Microsoft Office... No serious user can be satisfied with openoffice.

You appear to be under the mistaken assumption that you are a serious user.

But anyone who would use any part of microsoft office but excel and perhaps outlook is by definition not a serious user.

Powerpoint has support only for crap low resolutions. Word is a pathetic joke in terms of layout and typesetting ability and publisher frankly is not noticeably better. Access? Don't fucking get me started.

If you want to do a presentation that anyone is going to care about, you're producing a video, not a powerpoint presentation. If you're trying to create a document for external release, like advertising or documentation, neither word nor publisher can help you. You must use something real, like Framemaker, InDesign, et cetera.

Office is a sad, pathetic Joke. OO.o does everything that office does well, but not as well as office does it in some cases. But in terms of casual use of an office suite, which is all office is good for anyway (again, with the exception of excel, IMO Microsoft's only worthwhile program period full stop) there is simply nothing significant missing from OO.o.

Anything office does that OO.o doesn't, office does a horrible job with.