In an interview with derStandard.at, Novell developer Michael Meeks talks mostly about Sun's lack of openness in regards to OpenOffice.org. He goes as far as stating that if Sun dropped out of OOo-development this "wouldn't be an entirely negative thing". He also goes on to talk about promoting Go-oo instead, and emphasizes the importance of breaking down the barriers between GNOME and KDE.
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Member since:2006-01-16
I don't like this project just for the reason you pointed out: It is obvious that it is ran by Novell but they don't openly admit it.
Instead they list individual employees as the developers of the project. Then they do press work like this, talking bad about OpenOffice while promoting their fork.
This is not the expected behaviour of a good free software citizen.
It is also obvious what the main goals of Novell are with this software suite: strengthening the relationship with Microsoft (while effectively weakening ODF) on several fronts. While better interoperability is always a good thing, the question remains unanswered what parts/developments of OpenOffice went missing in Go-OO for this.
As an individual developer, wether you work on OpenOffice or on Go-OO, you just get involved into a fight between some big software companies. At least on of these talks about openness and freedom, while signing contracts with on of the biggest enemys of this very freedom. No thanks.
Edited 2008-07-28 19:24 UTC
Member since:2005-07-06
If Go-OO is the same version of OpenOffice as the one in openSUSE, then (as far as I can see) nothing is missing.
To be fair: Almost every company has contracts with MS -- like AMD or Intel. Yet both are big supporters of free software.
I'm not defending the Novell-MS deal in any way but keep in mind that Novell still releases lots of free software. If you don't like Mono, just don't use it.
Member since:2005-11-18
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Member since:2005-07-07
Member since:2005-07-06
Knowing him, I was actually surprised at how nice he was in the interview towards Sun. Yes, Go-OO is heavily contributed to and sponsored by Novell, but nearly all Linux distributions use it (Fedora uses patches from it but not go-oo directly) and contribute to it as well. All you have to do is look at the commit logs in subversion[0] to see that. And Go-OO isn't just a couple of patches like some people seem to think, there are currently over 750 patches that are applied to 3.0. Many if not most of those patches are licensed such that Sun could apply them to the official release if their commit process wasn't so slow and hard.
[0] http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/ooo-build/
Member since:
2005-07-07
This is essentially a Novell developer taking potshots at Sun while promoting a project he's involved in. Is it a project sponsored by Novell? They seem really coy about disclosing any of their affiliations on the go-oo.org website (notice the lack of any solid info in the About page).
Ironically, go-oo.org would not exist if Sun hadn't opened up Star Office in the first place and it's highly dubious what that project seeks to achieve.