Linked by Rahul on Sat 11th Oct 2008 01:39 UTC
Michael Meeks who leads the OpenOffice.org development team within Novell has taken a
detailed look at contributions associated by metrics to OpenOffice.org and makes the case that Sun's tight control over the codebase and the lack of enough volunteer contributors leaves the development slowly stagnating over a period of time. Michael Meeks has recently started strongly advocating the position that Sun needs to setup a more independent OpenOffice.org foundation or otherwise allow more relaxed policies for commit access and be less rigid about assignment of copyright to itself for the development community of Openoffice.org to thrive beyond Sun developers.
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Member since:2006-03-05
Well, we've always had the same message: see for instance http://dot.kde.org/1194021253. In the end, no matter what the mythical mr. Sixpack may think (if he is capable of cogitation), that's the situation, and unless someone donates a fairly substantial amount of money to KOffice, it's where it'll stay. If you implement a file format, you also need to implement all the features, and preferably in the same way as the application where the file format originated in. For instance, OOo has pretty good compatibilty with MS Word -- unless you use sections. This hit me when my daughters had homework for what's grandly called "ICT lessons" and had to create a document in the MS Word way -- but we don't have MS Word around. In the end, I had to download a copy of Office 2007 with bittorrent to let them finish the assignment.
Member since:2008-07-15
For instance, OOo has pretty good compatibilty with MS Word -- unless you use sections. This hit me when my daughters had homework for what's grandly called "ICT lessons" and had to create a document in the MS Word way -- but we don't have MS Word around. In the end, I had to download a copy of Office 2007 with bittorrent to let them finish the assignment.
Thanks, that's the biggest laugh I've had all day. You've just exemplified the stereotypical image of most open source software and the developers there of. I don't disagree with the rest of your comment, but this part...
Member since:2005-11-30
Member since:2007-02-17
As for MS supporting ODF fully, I'm on the fence. They could surprise us and actually implement the ODF standard properly, but we could also wind up with ODF an MS ODF, rather like the RTF situation. And what do we do then, I wonder? Unfortunately given MS's track record of supporting "standards" I'm really not holding my breath for standard ODF. But who knows, there's a first time for everything.
There is a test suite for ODF.
I know this is totally foreign thinking to the "One-Microsoft-Way" types, but such a thing actually does exist. Imagine that ... standard standards. Impartial verification. Either an application passes, or it doesn't. Either it has proper ODF support ... or it doesn't really have ODF support at all.
Member since:2007-07-13
"As for MS supporting ODF fully, I'm on the fence. They could surprise us and actually implement the ODF standard properly, but we could also wind up with ODF an MS ODF, rather like the RTF situation. And what do we do then, I wonder? Unfortunately given MS's track record of supporting "standards" I'm really not holding my breath for standard ODF. But who knows, there's a first time for everything.
There is a test suite for ODF.
I know this is totally foreign thinking to the "One-Microsoft-Way" types, but such a thing actually does exist. Imagine that ... standard standards. Impartial verification. Either an application passes, or it doesn't. Either it has proper ODF support ... or it doesn't really have ODF support at all. "
Um, Windows also has support for OpenGL (which is very well specified and also has a compatibility test suite) but look at what a crap driver they produced and barely maintain. They have just enough OpenGL support to get a tick in the box for government contracts that require open standards (in the say way the have a barely adequate 'POSIX' support for similar government/military contracts). They obey the letter but not the spirit of supporting open standards.
The ODF support will no doubt consist of very good ODF importers into Office, with an unreliable and underfeatured export. This is the same crap to standard formats they have been doing for years. Yet still people don't learn and end up losing control over their own data (since they can't read the formats of their own stuff unless they pay again-and-again to stay on the Microsoft 'treadmill'). The other real shame is that developers who could have been great are employeed by Microsoft to churn out these turdy implementations, simply because some dinosaur manager can't stomach the thought of competing on merit alone (heaven forbid customers ever have a choice!).
Don't say you weren't warned!
Edited 2008-10-12 22:35 UTC
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Member since:
2008-07-15
Well, at least you're being honest, but let me translate your comment into what Joe Sixpack is going to take from it:
Um, it's too hard and boring and we really don't want to, and you don't really need that anyway. ODF is better anyhow.
This is not what you said, and I'm not implying that it is what you said, but it is how many people will read it, and unfortunately that's a bad image to portray.
As for MS supporting ODF fully, I'm on the fence. They could surprise us and actually implement the ODF standard properly, but we could also wind up with ODF an MS ODF, rather like the RTF situation. And what do we do then, I wonder? Unfortunately given MS's track record of supporting "standards" I'm really not holding my breath for standard ODF. But who knows, there's a first time for everything.