Mark Shuttleworth writes: "We are a somewhat chaotic crowd, the software libre army. Thousands of projects (hundreds of thousands, if you consider Sourceforge as a reference point). Hundreds of thousands of contributing developers from virtually every country and timezone. We are a very loosely coupled bunch. But sometimes I wish it were easier to keep track of changes and have a slightly clearer view of progress across that whole galaxy." Eugenia agrees.
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Member since:2005-06-29
You forget that a lot of the critical code is shared between KOffice, OpenOffice.org and GNOME Office. Not to mention other projects, something like KOffice uses a lot of the same, well tested code as the underlying KDE platform (same with GNOME Office - yay Abiword!).
Member since:2005-12-02
"OK, here's an example. Everyone knows that linux needs an alternative to MS Office. But instead of everyone working on the same project, we just *have* to have a whole team on koffice. Why this duplication of effort? because KDE *needs* special apps of its own. Now if KDE was the standard desktop, there wouldn't be a need for a special KDE office. OpenOffice would be koffice and kde would put its resources to better use. Instead, we have 2 subpar office alternatives instead of 1 that would make people dump MS Office 2003."
Personally I agree with this statement. The duplication of effort unfortunately is due to the fragmentaion of the different distros, viewed as Linux, although Linux proper is only the kernel. KDE just insists on having a 'Keverything'. I use KDE myself and it has some great features, but to his end I agree. If they concentrated on OO.o instead, maybe even bigger and better things would come.
Member since:2005-07-02
That is not *at all* what you were arguing before. You were saying that the mutlitude of DEs *prevented* people from making software.
There's also a logical fallacy in your argument. There's absolutely *no proof* that someone working on Koffice right now would world on OpenOffice if KDE didn't exist (or if it was the main desktop). Absolutely none. That's utter bullcrap.
Why are people working on alternative Office suite for Windows? They should all just give up because there's already a MS Office, right? They should stop working on OpenOffice, or on WordPerfect, or on Gobe Productive Office...they should all work on MS Office instead, right?
What do you have against competition? It's the founding element of a market economy, and yet you seem to consider it as a bad thing.
Well I disagree with you. I think competition is good. I think it pushes people to improve their product. I also think that Koffice and OpenOffice are very good products, and getting better all the time.
And, most of all, *none* of this has anything to do with low dektop market share numbers for Linux.
Member since:
2006-11-15
OK, here's an example. Everyone knows that linux needs an alternative to MS Office. But instead of everyone working on the same project, we just *have* to have a whole team on koffice. Why this duplication of effort? because KDE *needs* special apps of its own. Now if KDE was the standard desktop, there wouldn't be a need for a special KDE office. OpenOffice would be koffice and kde would put its resources to better use. Instead, we have 2 subpar office alternatives instead of 1 that would make people dump MS Office 2003.