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The Uncertain Future of OpenOffice.org
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Sep 19, 2007 11:29 AM
from the nothing-is-for-certain dept.
from the nothing-is-for-certain dept.
eldavojohn writes "What's the biggest threat to the success of OpenOffice.org? Is it Microsoft Office? Is it the simple fact that Dell doesn't offer it with computers? Not according to some participants in the 'open' source project itself, they say the biggest problem with OO.o is the fact that Sun codes, owns & makes all key decisions for the project when it should be more community oriented. A professor who participates in the project itself said 'enough developers are frustrated by both the technical and the organizational infrastructure at OpenOffice.org' and cites this as 'a real problem that is weighing on the project.' Other members of the community agree like Michael Meeks who asked 'At what fraction of the community will Sun reconsider its demand for ownership of the entirety of OpenOffice.org?' Hopefully with IBM's entrance into OO.o participation we will see the product become more community controlled & accessible. Has anyone else experienced this when developing for OO.o or another 'open' source project? Is it a good idea to criticize a company when they've put so much effort into a project that is technically open source and completely free? Is Sun trying to control OO.o like Java? Do they have good reasons or evil underlying intentions?"
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TRS-80 writes "Kohei Yoshida wrote a long post on the history of Calc Solver, an optimization solver module for the Calc component of OpenOffice.org. After three years of jumping through Sun's hoops on his own time, Sun says it will duplicate the work because Kohei doesn't want to sign over ownership of the code. Adding insult to injury, Sun then invites him join this duplication. Because of Sun's refusal to accept LPGL extensions in the upstream code, Michael Meeks (who recently talked about Sun's OO.o community failings, and ODF and OOXML) has announced ooo-build (previously just for build fixes) is now a formal fork of OpenOffice to be located at http://go-oo.org/. "
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In order... (Score:5, Funny)
Not continually improving both feature- and UI-wise, yes, no, around 3/5, yes, yes, probably, and both.
Now that we've cleared that up, anything else I can help with?
Re:In order... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:In order... (Score:5, Insightful)
If they are doing a bad job of managing it, then yes. Releasing it under an open source license is good, and they should be recognized for that. However, doing so doesn't automatically excuse other problems they may have.
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Re:In order... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:In order... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Why not? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it a good idea to lie to a company or not provide any (constructive) feedback on negative issues just because they're being nice? If nobody is honest with them then their product may start off well and then head south quickly due to the pandering masses.
Re:Why not? (Score:5, Informative)
One suggestion: don't complain to other Slashdotters: not a lot they can do. And don't complain to me: I'm just a hardware tech writer. Take your complaints to the top [sun.com].
Parent
Damned if you do... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sun gets bad press for developing free software...
Tough crowd.
Re:Damned if you do... (Score:5, Insightful)
There are times when its not exactly bad to have one entity, whether it be a company or an individual, who puts an end to the bickering, makes a decision, sets the direction, imperfect though it may be, and makes everyone pull in the same direction. Linus serves that role for the kernel, SUN does it for Open Office.
Debate is good, expressing different views is good, one entity with poor vision dictating direction is bad. But, a project with a hundred chiefs and no Indians, and design by committee is not a always a prescription for success.
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Re:Damned if you do... (Score:5, Interesting)
And the "greatest understatement of the year" award goes to.... *drum rolls*
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Re:Damned if you do... (Score:5, Insightful)
Some could successfully argue that Firefox contains a HUGE amount of UI work. The entire app is one large UI system.
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Re:Damned if you do... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Crying wolf.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Biggest threat? (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as Sun's dominant position over OOo goes; as long as they keep performing I don't see the problem. New 2.x releases have been appearing every few months and each is a notable improvement. They're doing a good job and while they keep doing it they'll remain in control. Their latest release provides a platform for extensions; go develop your miracle feature and let Sun keep cranking on the core platform, as they have been.
Re:Biggest threat? (Score:5, Insightful)
For real.
You're not happy with the direction of the project?
Fork it. It's LGPL'd. Take the code, release it under your new project, and make improvements that "the community", whatever the heck that means to you, will approve of.
Sheesh, as a previous poster said, tough crowd. Sun can't do anything right in the eyes of slashdot smitties.
~X
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Diffuse or Focused? (Score:5, Interesting)
From reading the comments here for years, the biggest issue with contributing seems to be that the code is a behemoth, and takes time and skill to understand. This hasn't stopped the NeoOffice folks from getting it running on Macs, and Sun's continuing final say shouldn't stop anyone from adding some missing features (such as a decent reference manager, or spell and grammar checker).
Sun Bashing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sun Bashing (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't like the community around OO.o, fork it and make your own community. If you think the codebase is too unwieldy to fork, there are plenty of other open source office suites you can contribute to.
Parent
Then fork (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can do a better job coding, owning, and making key decisions, then fork the project and demonstrate.
If you can't fork because you need Sun's expertise, then maybe you should admit that Sun deserves to participate on their own terms, just as you participate on yours.
For years I've been amazed at how people will whine and whine about the direction an Open Source project is taking, rather than just demonstrating that another direction is better. The people doing the work are exercising their freedom to do whatever they want however they want it done. If you don't like it, not only is nobody making you participate, but lots of people have invested lots of work in giving you the freedom to do it the way you want to, instead.
It worked for EGCS and X.org. But 99% of the time, it's just whiners whining that they don't have control. Power and control don't matter in Open Source; we all have equal power. You have the power to control your own version, and if that's truly holding the project that you're whining about back, then obviously once you unleash your new vision of project management yours will blow away the one you're whining about.
Re:Then fork (Score:5, Insightful)
It is a logical fallacy to say that someone only has a valid complaint against someone if they can do it better.
"we all have equal power"
No, we don't. It is perfectly valid for someone who can't code to complaing about a bug or the lack of a feature, or the fact that it is slow. Just like a automobile owner can complain if their breaks don't work. No one is going to say to them to shut up unless they are willing to build there own car.
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Re:Then fork (Score:5, Insightful)
When you're managing a project, usually you have to make decisions that are going to piss some people off. Those people can whine about it forever or simply realize that the decision had to be made and shut up about it. If they feel a bad decision is THAT big a deal, then it's time to put up or shut up, and show everyone else how wrong they are. That's productive and helpful, complaining isn't.
I find OpenOffice to be really good software, and it's improving rapidly. I don't see the problem in the grand scheme of things.
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Sun is the biggest problem? (Score:5, Interesting)
The main problem is OpenOffice isn't 100% compatible with MS Office documents. I have tried using Openoffice as a replacement to MS Word and Excel several times. Each time I end up getting burned because some executive pencil pusher thinks my layout sucked and looked bad. So in my attempt to use OpenOffice, I end up looking like a moron.
SO sure, I can use openoffice for my own documents, and then open it in Word or excel and format it completely when giving it to others, but comon. I don't have enough hours in the day to use something just to "stick it to microsoft", because honestly, the company I work for already has site licenses for Office and all other microsoft products. So in reality my attempt to use Open Office won't ever "stick it to microsoft".
Re:Dont think so. (Score:5, Funny)
or OfficeWeasel?
Kind of has a ring to it ... sort of like calling Major Frank Burns (M*A*S*H) ferret-face.
Parent
Re:Dont think so. (Score:5, Funny)
OfficeSpace
I mean, lookit: the clueless would look and go "oooh, cool name - space to do my docs n' stuff!"
The rest of us will simply giggle when we get asked why the app suite insists on showing a red stapler on the splash screen.
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Re:Can anyone... (Score:5, Interesting)
The other problem is that OOO isn't well divided up internally. It was designed to load as a huge glop o' code back in the StarOffice days and still does. I once argued about this until I was blue in the face with a OOO developer on NewsForge. I could not get it through his head that I wasn't talking about splitting off Writer, Calc and so-forth into separate apps. I understood that OOO's "apps" are developed from an internal common set of objects (which also means an equivalent to MS' COM system is also loaded with the main app). I was talking about being smarter about which objects to load initially and then loading others on demand. This would get the startup time and usual memory usage down. It would also make it easier to use OOO as an API the way Office is used as an API.
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