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118 Comments
- inactive, on 12/31/2008, -17/+46OO is mad sick yo. 3.0 is teh bomb *****
- TheAttacks, on 12/30/2008, -14/+41Nice sensational title Cnet. . .
OpenOffice is fine. They just don't have 300 developers writing code, which isn't a bad thing. It means more time is spent developing and not worrying about "Hey, if those 20 guys write this, would it break that?". - santasing, on 12/31/2008, -1/+23Oh an ad for Novell's GoOO, coming from a Novell guy, after Novell forked OO. I will just shuffle along then.
- lemur, on 12/31/2008, -5/+24OpenOffice rocks. It doesn't matter who controls the project or if it's "sick." It's Free software, which means it can't die; whatever good code went into it is out there to be taken advantage of. Look what happened with Firefox: Netscape turned open source, created Mozilla browser. People were unhappy maintaining Mozilla, didn't like the way the program had turned out, was sick of kowtowing to what Netscape wanted. Pretty soon, Mozilla was cannibalized, and what was good about it got revitalized into a new project. All of you who enjoy Firefox forget that it was once Mozilla, the OpenOffice of its time. Whatever lies in the future of OpenOffice, it will never have been a lost cause.
- blastcube, on 12/31/2008, -11/+27Buried as inaccurate... OO is fine
- tcklord, on 12/30/2008, -6/+22I hope this is not an indication that it will later be abandoned. I don't want to be forced to use Microsoft Office and have always recommended Open Office to friends and family as a compatible, affordable office suite.
- Darkhacker, on 12/31/2008, -1/+16OpenOffice is NOT fine for the reasons the article pointed out. And your argument on breakage is a bad one. The whole point of writing code in a modular way is so that breakage is kept to a minimum. Linux has 300+ developers and how often does breakage occur?
- frieddonuts, on 12/31/2008, -1/+13Didn't another Michael Meeks article hit digg recently? I thought he had a conflict of interest, as he's involved in a competing fork to Sun's version of OO?
- Darkhacker, on 12/31/2008, -0/+12Open source projects get abandoned all the time. Just look at half the crap on Sourceforge. The key difference is that OpenOffice is a large project and has a lot of presence in people's minds and is thus unlikely to be abandoned due to its mature development and high usage. But just because a project is open source doesn't mean it's not abandoned. The open nature simply allows for the possibility of someone picking it up, and not being tossed the curb because a single proprietary developer was sick of it.
- inactive, on 12/31/2008, -3/+14And I'd say people who prefer proprietary closed source software are delusional.
- HimThatSpeaks, on 12/31/2008, -5/+16I tried Open Office just for whatevers and it is pretty good. I still like Microsoft Office better though.
- santasing, on 12/31/2008, -1/+10I use OO because I am done with school, and I am not a secretary. It gets the job done and I don't have to pay for MS Office, neither do I have to look for pirated versions.
- Jerky1312, on 12/31/2008, -0/+9@HimThatSpeaks
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sarcasm - nullcodes, on 12/31/2008, -3/+11Besides this obvious hit piece, I've noticed a lot of hit pieces and various charges leveled at free software projects in the blogosphere recently. Instead of dissing the project offer solutions and ways for these projects to get the resources they need rather than mountains of raw non-constructive criticism and negativity. Or form your own project, let Sun manage their own ones.
It's like no good deed goes unpunished.
I don't know if it's the economy or what. People desperate for attention? But come on, some people are even out for Wikipedia ..a top 5 website that uses less money than digg which is a top 200 website ..cause they're asking for donations?? Wikipedia even publishes it's budget and exactly what they are spending money on. Something ain't right. - wedderburn, on 12/31/2008, -1/+9Novels Netware was pretty usefull back in its day.
- Darkhacker, on 12/31/2008, -0/+8@TDDebug
Every project has its own development atmosphere. What's your point? Could you elaborate on that, because I'm not entirely sure where you're going with it. - damentz, on 12/31/2008, -2/+9Actually they're both equally productive except one of them is free.
Remember, 99% of office users don't use any of the advanced features. - borsaid, on 12/31/2008, -0/+7it's a distribution technology, no one is trying to pirate it. i hate when people auto-assume you're pirating things when you download them from the pirate bay. it's like the word 'pirate' is in their name or something
- inactive, on 12/31/2008, -0/+6quit bitin coz. office is weak. last week. Sun bringin in mad more bitchez
- cheekymonk3y, on 12/31/2008, -0/+6Someone brought up this article and a sun employee gave his take on it and also says that "Meeks' calculations are flawed and spun to reach the conclusion he wants to reach".
Link if you want to read
http://blogs.sun.com/webmink/entry/link_roundup_to ... - Darkhacker, on 12/31/2008, -3/+9Just because Novell is in bed with Microsoft doesn't mean EVERYTHING they do is bad. Go-OO has some neat improvements that Sun has refused to add. And for that matter, not everything Microsoft itself does is bad.
Don't misunderstand. I read the Boycott Novell blog and have a strong resentment towards them and MS, but let's not let it cloud our judgment. - linagee, on 12/31/2008, -2/+8OpenOffice is sick because Microsoft will come out with a new office format every two years which has to be tediously reverse engineered in less time. (Office 2003, Office XP, Office 2007, etc.)
- hoowahman, on 12/31/2008, -2/+8i think the real problem here is that you guys use these damn suites for different things. For people that need to have all the diff features in these suites a commercial software package is probably the way to go. If you are using it for not so complex tasks and dont need the features then either one is probably ok.
- imasuperDOTcom, on 12/31/2008, -9/+14Novell... I think I've heard of them.
Oh wait, aren't they those guys who lay people off by the hundreds/thousands every few years? Oh yeah, and they're also the ones that have never churned out a useful product until magically, this product that was practically done for them called "linux" came along.
Yes, I'll listen to everything Novell has to say! - MrViklund, on 12/31/2008, -0/+5I don't know what you are talking about. I use OpenOffice and it works. And as long as it works and does what it does, I don't care if you think this project is sick.
Buried as FUD. - ikarus2k, on 12/31/2008, -1/+6Novell actually produces quite good software (think Evolution Mail, Banshee etc.). Wouldn't you be frustrated to highly improve OO and then be told "we don't want to play with you" by Sun?!
Them getting in bed with MS is just business bs. - BugMeNot2, on 12/31/2008, -1/+6breh breh u hella whack microsoft office is the shizt it got letters n words yo
- TheAttacks, on 12/31/2008, -2/+6I don't think it's going to be abandoned anytime soon. The project is backed by a big tech company, no way would they let it just sit there and collect dust.
- damentz, on 12/31/2008, -5/+9Because office 2000 is actually broken.
Try creating an outline then modifying it... ya, it doesn't indent right.
Oh ya, it also crashes a lot. My school was using it before I graduated and I gave up and brought openoffice on a usb stick to use instead.
Sure it was a bit slower, but damn, I could actually export PDFs and work without worrying whether it will crash or not. - TDDebug, on 12/31/2008, -2/+6@xevidentx
you're delusional if you try to convince actual intelligent people that a much better supported, aesthetically pleasing and open-source free software is in any way worse than your God company's hunk-of-crap closed-source program for the mentally handicapped. - Darkhacker, on 12/31/2008, -0/+4They can't drop the ".org" part if their name because the trademark on "OpenOffice" is owned by another company. By calling it OpenOffice.org instead, they are allowed to use that name and it has the dual benefit of making their URL easier to remember instead of wondering if it's .com or .net, etc.
If they were to use XUL, it would be almost a complete rewrite. That's irrelevant anyway because OpenOffice already has plugins/extensions. I'm not sure how themes are handled but I know certain things like the icon set can be changed. I know OpenOffice looks great on its respective platform and even molds to KDE and Gnome desktop environments separately. - KAMiKAZOW, on 12/31/2008, -0/+4@Darkhacker: The problem isn't that there are no devs who are interested in devloping OO outside of Sun. The problem is that OO's source code is still very, very complex and hard to understand for outsiders.
- daPhoenix, on 12/31/2008, -2/+5Yes indeed, a company like Novell has no interest in protecting itself or its customers from litigation.
Come back when you have a clue. In other words, never. - Darkhacker, on 12/31/2008, -0/+3@TheAttacks
Then you didn't read the ***** article. That was the ENTIRE PREMISE. The reason OpenOffice is sick is because that small development pool is all Sun employees and those who want to participate, can't, because Sun isn't accepting their code. You're right that you don't need dozens of developers to be successful, but a project is still sick if those who want to and are able to participate are blocked from doing so, which is exactly the scenario we have here. - inactive, on 12/31/2008, -1/+4@HimThatSpeaks
Are you kidding me?
"I looked up your Wordpad and it is only for text."
/facepalm - TDDebug, on 12/31/2008, -0/+3Are you retarded?
- adamroach, on 12/31/2008, -0/+3Sounds easy enough. Go ahead and get started, I'll be right there.
- AppleMacStud, on 12/31/2008, -1/+4Thank God NeoOffice which is Mac only is built on top of the Go-oo version by Novel rather than OO.o version by Sun. Trust me, there is a difference.
- Murdats, on 12/31/2008, -2/+4why not use something like google docs then? its all I use as I dont need much.
I also never have to worry about losing my documents or remote desktoping into my computer because I forgot to grab that file - rmxz, on 12/31/2008, -3/+5Novell's also the group with the no-sue-each-other-patent-covenant with Microsoft.
I wouldn't trust their forks of a F/OSS work as far as I can throw them, since they have little interest in making sure they're clean when it comes to IP issues. - TheAttacks, on 12/31/2008, -1/+3Open Darwin, *cough*
- flyingmeteor, on 12/31/2008, -0/+2I concur with you whole heartedly my African american brother.
- lemur, on 12/31/2008, -1/+3True, but my point was more that it will always be a possibility. If OpenOffice's code never goes into a better project, that just means something else has come along that was even better than that.
- Darkhacker, on 12/31/2008, -0/+2@KAMiKAZOW
At what point in my comment did I say, "there are no devs who are interested in devloping OO outside of Sun"? That wasn't the argument I was making, so I have no idea why you're acting as though I said that. All I was saying was that open source projects get abandoned and that being open doesn't necessarily save them from that. - KAMiKAZOW, on 12/31/2008, -0/+2That's why the author said that OpenOffice.org needs to turn into a foundation (Mozilla is a foundation). Do you think that Firefox would have come to life if Netscape/AOL still controlled the project?
- motters, on 12/31/2008, -0/+2From a user point of view OpenOffice is fine. The report suggests that the vast majority of the code is being written by Sun, and that therefore it's not especially resilient as an open source project. However, it should be borne in mind that open source projects often have one main contributor (there are of course exceptions, but this seems to apply certainly for smaller projects).
- strangewill, on 12/31/2008, -3/+5"Oh ya, it also crashes a lot."
LOL WUT?
Seriously, did you just make that up? I had practically no problems with office stability, sure it has bugs, but stability wasn't an issue, and I used Microsoft Office all throughout school. - inactive, on 12/31/2008, -0/+2Inaccurate, I have seen like that before.
- KAMiKAZOW, on 12/31/2008, -0/+2Sun requires contributors to sign an agreement that hands them over all copyrights. I don't think that's fine...
- jejeje666, on 12/31/2008, -0/+2You're not getting rmxz's point.
Novell has a deal with Microsoft not to sue each other for patent infringement. So, they can use patented Microsoft tech freely and sell it (or give it away) to its customers.
But the code is open source, which means you might be tempted to reuse the code, modify it or redistribute it. Novell's deal will NOT cover you in those cases. If you make a product based on Novell's code, you might be vulnerable to litigation from Microsoft without knowing it. It's essencially a way to turn free software into "closed" code. You shouldn't even read it if you plan to write software you want to sell or give away.
You should read the requirements that you need to comply with if you want to be covered by Novell's "protection" deal. You can't modify the source code for the product you bought from them, or you are no longer covered. You must install any patches they put out, or you are no longer covered. You can't install any third party packages on your SuSE box, or you are no longer covered (only Novell's official repositories are permitted). In a word, if you want to be covered, you must treat their version of Linux as if it were closed source. And even then, why would you trust that deal? -
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