Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 6th Aug 2009 13:18 UTC
The OpenOffice.org team has been experimenting with a new user interface for the suite of programs, and they've presented the first rough prototype of this new interface, more specifically for Impress. The general gist? It's Microsoft Office 2007's ribbon interface.
Permalink for comment 377662
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Recent Original Stories
Recent Comments
Headlines
Random Comments
Random Stories
Random OS Link
Member since:
2005-07-06
The OSS devs have as much freedom as the users of their software allow. E.g. look at K-Office, an excellent office suite, but very few people uses it, most likely becaus they feel unfamiliar with the new interface.
BTW Microsoft have not always been dominant on office software, they got where they are by making it easy to switch to Microsoft, e.g. by making it easy to import, and to some extent files to competing system, and to have similar features. This is the same thing we are seeing in OpenOffice today.
Free software developers depend on the market demand just like Microsoft or Apple. If you can't get users to use your software, there will be very few potential buyers of support, less advertising income from your website, and when you try to advertise your developer skills e.g. at a job intervju the chances are much less chanse that the employer knows what you have done.
The problem is that a few venders controls large parts of the software ecosystem, and we get defacto standards of how things should look and work. If you don't fit in that ecosystem you are gone. This is a problem that applies to both free and non free software.