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GPL/LGPL and SISSL

In part, their site states:

Dual licensing of the OpenOffice.org source code provides open and free access to the technology both for the GPL community and for other developers or companies that cannot use the GPL. Dual license is common practice in open source projects like Perl and Mozilla. Through the combined use of GPL/LGPL and SISSL, developers will have a high degree of freedom yet compatibility and interoperability will be preserved. You can freely modify, extend, and improve the OpenOffice.org source code. The only question is whether or not you must provide the source code and contribute modifications to the community. The GPL and SISSL licenses allow different ranges of flexibility in this regard, but in the end, regardless of the license used, any and all incompatible changes must be published openly.

I am looking for a word processor. It must be able to understand WordPerfect, as I have several important documents in older WP formats.

wp2x will convert WordPerfect 5 documents to HTML, TeX, etc. From there, you can use StarOffice.

They can't. The source code is already available at Open Office. Probably, what Sun wants to do is sell a proprietary, "enhanced" version of StarOffice base on the Open Office code, but you could still get the open source version. Same as what Reghat is doing with Postgress. I don't see a problem with your Linux distributor shipping Open Office (although he'd have to check the site for the exact licencing agreement *sigh*)

"What are we going to do tonight, Bill?"

FWIW, the next version after 5.2 will have an xml file format which is of course documented (pdf) at xml.openoffice.org.

So anyone can create an import filter to import the new formats. Equally the xml format doubles as an api so creating import filters for OpenOffice is trivial enough

C. (I work for them, so I'm completely biased, but don't speak for them, etc etc.)

FWIW, the next version after 5.2 will have an xml file format which is of course documented (pdf) at xml.openoffice.org.

So anyone can create an import filter to import the new formats. Equally the xml format doubles as an api so creating import filters for OpenOffice is trivial enough

C. (I work for them, so I'm completely biased, but don't speak for them, etc etc.)

Star Office was originally a closed source application by a German company. The German company was bought by Sun, and the product open sourced (under both the sun community license and the GPL, just to assuage fears about the SCL, I suppose), as an attack on Microsoft -- if the newly named OpenOffice was available free, there was less reason to switch to Windows.

The old Star Office sucked more than MS Office of the time, which is saying something. After Sun took over, it got worse for a while when they started javafying it. Recent builds have started up pretty snappy however -- it's starting to get to Office level usability. At least, what Office was two years ago, that's how long it's been since I used it.

I know of no one who has modified the code of Star Office. But then, I know of only one person who has modified anything in the linux kernel, and only a few who have made modifications that ended up in distribution packages.

As far as "Jimmy the Haxor" making modifications, at least the DoD can examine the modifications, unlike the modifications made by "Bill the Haxor" working on closed source tools. ( It is likely that the DoD does license the source of many closed source tools simply for auditing purposes.)

Granted, it's been a while since I was a sp00k for Uncle Sam, but when I worked with the DISA systems, they all ran Solaris on Sparc hardware. The next giant leap for DoD will be to standardize on Linux for their other desktop systems and implement StarOffice or OpenOffice for compatibility across the board. When I worked on the non-secret squirrel projects, they couldn't decide on a standard office software package. Some shops used AmiPro, some used Wordperfect, etc. It varied across the board.

Note that the article mentions StarOffice 5.2, which does not use the Xprint extension (I assume this is what you are referring to?). As for the rationale of using Xprint... Admittedly not the best solution, but... Plus Xprint was in Solaris longer than it has been in XFree (>=4.x), I believe?

Ahhh, wait a minnit. Many people refer to Star Office, and ignore Open Office, which according to Sun is the next official version of Star Office. Noticeable changes, including a bug reporting page. Now, I admit that Star Office 5.2 does have issues. Might I recommend trying out what is actually the next official revision of it? I've had ever better success with it than with 5.2.

All depends on the vendor. In my experience most commercial software vendors are pretty good at fixing major bugs reported by their customers. OTOH, lots of open source developers complain about their fixes for open source bugs being stonewalled -- there have been some notable /. threads on the subject.

Agreed. Major bugs do tend to get fixed quickly. I think this happens in all environments though. However, special case bugs (in both open and closed source) tend to have the hardest time getting put in, since it's usually viewed as not a real issue. At least, that's been what I've seen. Unless you're paying somebody to fix the bug, a minor issue will be ignored for as long as possible. The difference I was trying to point out is the possibility to fix the bug yourself. While it might not be easy to do, it is possible, which is more than can be said for any closed source vendor.

Sorry for the shortness of the reply, and how long it took to do. Had some problems reaching here for the past two days. Anyway, it's late and I'm tired, so I'll ask this: Are we really arguing, or are we simply pointing out that the coin has both heads and tails?

Ahhh, wait a minnit. Many people refer to Star Office, and ignore Open Office, which according to Sun is the next official version of Star Office. Noticeable changes, including a bug reporting page. Now, I admit that Star Office 5.2 does have issues. Might I recommend trying out what is actually the next official revision of it? I've had ever better success with it than with 5.2.

All depends on the vendor. In my experience most commercial software vendors are pretty good at fixing major bugs reported by their customers. OTOH, lots of open source developers complain about their fixes for open source bugs being stonewalled -- there have been some notable /. threads on the subject.

Agreed. Major bugs do tend to get fixed quickly. I think this happens in all environments though. However, special case bugs (in both open and closed source) tend to have the hardest time getting put in, since it's usually viewed as not a real issue. At least, that's been what I've seen. Unless you're paying somebody to fix the bug, a minor issue will be ignored for as long as possible. The difference I was trying to point out is the possibility to fix the bug yourself. While it might not be easy to do, it is possible, which is more than can be said for any closed source vendor.

Sorry for the shortness of the reply, and how long it took to do. Had some problems reaching here for the past two days. Anyway, it's late and I'm tired, so I'll ask this: Are we really arguing, or are we simply pointing out that the coin has both heads and tails?

I was unable to find any software to create, review, store & update scientific knowledge on any particular subject. In hot areas of molecular biology new papers are published daily. No one has time to search and read everything that is relevant to his field of interest. It takes plenty of time to find most important papers, to obtain copies of it (in print or pdf) and to dig throw all unimportant parts of the paper that has to be included because you can not link (hyperlink) directly to certain paragraph in another paper.

I think that we need to switch from paper type publications (where earch paper consist of redundant data and is linked to other papers by references only) to knowledge-base like publishing. The knowledge base on any field of science may be stored in object oriented database with schema that is like table of contents taken from any "scientific bible" (i.e. "Genes VII"). The table of contents might be followed by another layer containing very condensed information (like in scientific reviews) that has links to titles of scientific publications, or better to one sentence summary of scientific finding of any particular publication. The next layer may consist of data taken from publication abstracts (containing everything impoprtant) with links to crude data. Each piece of crude data should be logically presented with rationale (reason for that experiment), discussion of crude result and links to exact paragraphs of other publications. Each fact stored in the database should be linked to crude data. The crude data should be taken from publications or direct submissions and of course before inclusion into the database it must be peer reviewed. The crude data may also include the probability of it's reliability (set by author or reviewers). The reliability is important because some results are obtained with methods that give reliable results, but many of the research in molecular biology provide only indirect evidence.

This scientific-knowledge database will remove most of the redundancy found in all scientific publications published as articles.

To create such a system you can start with object oriented database (i.e. ZOPE or object-relational PostgreSQL or MySQL that has good full text search). Please not that the database will contain trilions of hyperlinks, and link management will be very important part of it. It should have system for peer review (maybe similar to slashdot moderation). It will store crude results that are in hundreds of different formats. Each single crude result with additional data and files may be stored in one tar.gz or zip file. There must be also a some kind of versioning system. You will have to provide external editor or list of compatybile editors that suport XML format. Maybe OpenOffice? And last but not least - there must be a system that enable researcher to claim that this work is theirs. To obtain further funding scientist need to be able to show what research was done. In science the position of each researcher is based on how many papers he/her published in best scientific journals. Scientific journals has impact factro - if papers published in the journal are cited often - the impact factor of the journal is high.

-Piotr

I sure hate to reply to my own reply but there's an interesting interview with Richard Stallman on OpenOffice.org that touches a bit on this. His comments on NAFTA, WTO, etc. are interesting (but not all that surprising in light of what I've read of Stallman's writings in the past).

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I sure hate to reply to my own reply but there's an interesting interview with Richard Stallman on OpenOffice.org that touches a bit on this. His comments on NAFTA, WTO, etc. are interesting (but not all that surprising in light of what I've read of Stallman's writings in the past).

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Because all the nice GUIs and bells and whistles in the world do not compensate for a severe lack of serious business applications. Long live Open Office :~P

Not to mention (which is most important) a sad showing of the possible overall outcome for Linux, ...

This does not matter. Linux does not have an "overall outcome". It's evolution and evolution is a slow process. All the Linux roadkill and MS speeches will not change that.

There are some excellent competitor software packages (OpenOffice is one that comes to mind, is free and is bloody brilliant - and did I mention almost 100% compatible with Office2K?) available. Microsoft know this, but the people do not, and Microsoft would like it to stay that way. That way, they can screw everyone as much as they like and no-one will know any better. Advertise OpenOffice whenever you can!
-==-
We are Microsoft. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

Ok, I know this ones a troll but the sentiment of other comments doesn't sound good. What's the problem? So Sun is a Mega-Corp. But the're giving us stuff! They did the whole Open Office thing. And now they give us JXTA which is not some worthless bone thrown out of Bill Joy's garbage bin but something that could potentially make Gnutella, Napster, and Freenet look like tin cans with some string. They've got specs. Thats the kind of organization OSS projects need. When was the last time you saw an OSS project with a spec. Never. Invariably, you just start typing and half the time it turns out to be crap. Whatever the truth is, you should look at the software before posting fooling comments. I suspect the normal people are off looking at the white-paper.

Take a look for yourself, check out the mailing lists, read the docs;

http://www.openoffice.org

[1] For paranoids: http://www.openoffice.org/project/xml/index.html

The biggest one I can think of is OpenOffice, which has a little tiny "powered by collab.net" logo at the bottom of the front page. Since this one's on Sun's bankroll (more or less) it'll likely continue, but what about the rest of 'em?

An operating system is not only the kernel and a bunch of device drivers! We didn't even start the most important project of them all: consolidating our manpower and our technologies. We could really use a component object model. The good news is: we have that technology. The bad news is we are working on more than one.. XPCom part of the Mozilla web browser project and ORBit part of the Gnome Desktop project. Speaking of desktops, like Doug said, we are working on two competing projects, Gnome and KDE. We already have all the technologies Doug thinks put Microsoft ahead in the game. Mainframe / AS400 connectivity? Linux-SNA. A kick-ass web browser? Mozilla vs. Internet Explorer. Word processor, spread-sheet, Business presentations? Star-Office. I could go on and on but I guess you get the picture. What we have to do now is to consolidate all that into a coherent system.. I want to be able to manipulate Star-Office spread-sheets using a system-wide scripting language (how about perl? python?..?).. I want to be able to embed that spread-sheet into any application, not only into Star-Office's word processor (XPCom? ORBit?) I want to be able to use the same printer driver from Star-Office and any other application on the system (anybody working on a printing subsystem for X? Or do we put it into GTK's GDK?).. There's still a lot of work for us to do before we can really kick their asses on the desktop. I'm looking forward to both.

Let's face it: if it weren't for Star Office, we wouldn't really have much of anything at all in terms of an integrated office suite for Linux. I think it's an excellent application, given it's price.

But SO falls short in many areas; one of which is the fact that it tries to mimic the Windows GUI. Really annoying.

Enter Open Office.

Well, hopefully with the increasing demand for something reasonably priced for him to use, the OSS community will port some of free word processing programs over to winblowz.

Check out OpenOffice (formerly Star Office). They treat Win32 as a primary platform (along with Solaris and Linux) and its starting to look preaty spiffy and stable. Still a bit left to do (ie. Its still beta, so its more stable than MS Office, but doesn't have all the neat templates yet ::grin::).

Once its hit General Availability, I'm sure people are going to work on/improve the MS Office compatability filters, and when Joe-Six-Pack needs to get his home office suite, he'll either borrow a CD from his "Techie Friend" (amazing how much this happens), or he'll shell over a VASTLY smaller number of $$ for a copy of OpenOffice on the retail stores... put out but Sun or someone else.

The source to Star Office has been opened. The Open Office hackers are working on merging the component architectures. They already have an early working version of a component you can embed in Nautilus.

2. When will solaris be shipped with GNOME as the default desktop?

At Gnome version 2.0. In the meantime you can certainly download Solaris packages of Gnome. Try the Ximian distribution of the Gnome desktop.

. When will SUN ship it's systems with a protocol a bit less bloated than X? (Ica?)

Huh? What major UNIX vendor ships with something other than X? What realistic alternatives are there now? Framebuffer? Berlin? I think not, at this time.
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The source to Star Office has been opened. The Open Office hackers are working on merging the component architectures. They already have an early working version of a component you can embed in Nautilus.

2. When will solaris be shipped with GNOME as the default desktop?

At Gnome version 2.0. In the meantime you can certainly download Solaris packages of Gnome. Try the Ximian distribution of the Gnome desktop.

. When will SUN ship it's systems with a protocol a bit less bloated than X? (Ica?)

Huh? What major UNIX vendor ships with something other than X? What realistic alternatives are there now? Framebuffer? Berlin? I think not, at this time.
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Is anyone using this? Why is there not more Hype to OpenOffice?

C.

C.

...is available from a number of places, such as OpenOffice. Another small skip-and-a-jump down the road to World Domination.

Odds are there is a dual license with that one and this one . I would think that that one is for PHBs who don't want open source and the good one is for the rest of us. This is fairly common and it would make sense that once they have written a license in house and had some of the big names in OSS bless it that they will stick with it.

If you call 2.96-71 an "incredibly stupid broken development-snapshot-compiler", tell us WHY.
2.96-71 is the most stable compiler I've used so far, no matter what some people say. I haven't seen a single ICE or miscompilation of valid code with the current version.

As for producing incompatible binaries, read the FAQ.
First of all, this affects dynamically linked C++ only, and the same thing has been true for *any* new gcc release so far. egcs C++ is binary incompatible with gcc 2.95 C++. gcc 3.0 C++ will be binary incompatible with egcs C++.

Statically linked C++ code and plain C code WILL AND DOES run everywhere else, assuming the right glibc version and such is installed (last time I checked, most other distributions were still using glibc 2.0.x and 2.1.x; you may need to update).

For your comment about GPLing StarOffice, you're out of date, Most of the StarOffice code was released under the GPL in October last year.

Some Additional Linux Distribution Suggestions

• Caldera Systems
• Turbo Linux
• SuSE
• Mandrake

• Sun/Open Office
• Applix/Applixware Office
• Oracle
• HP
• Compaq
• Dell
• GNU

• Osborne/McGraw-Hill
• O'Reilly
• Sybex

Man! How did I miss that - did /. report the open-sourcing of Star Office. Surely that is very significant - I was very impressed by the applications when I first saw them but could not stand the stupid "desktop" that ate up the screen. Any piece of software that doesn't allow its windows to be neatly arranged next to other apps is next to useless as far as I'm concerned. If some sensible development work is being done on this suite then it should blow everything else out of the water.

I work for a charitable organisation that is 'locked in' to MS Office 2000 but we're really running out of cash to support it. If I could move to something like Star Office, and look at jettisoning Win98 clients entirely I would be a very happy man indeed.

Why is everyone so convinced that Linux has to be prettied up, promoted, and made palatable to the masses?

Because the masses have money. Companies like money. Companies that see the prospect of money in Linux on the desktop are more likely to publish Linux ports of their video games, write Linux drivers for their hardware, and offer Linux-compatible ISP services and online media.

I like Linux game, Linux drivers, and Linux compatibility. Any more questions?

There are many more reasons why even the most hardcore, non-gaming, free-software-only Linux user still benefits by "Linux for the masses", though. You may complain that Red Hat is aiming for a Linux distribution a 3 year old can use... but they're not taking away our Perl interpreters and ssh daemons to do it, and eventually that 3 year old may grow up and spend a little time playing around with the compiler himself.

The other thing that's "vital for desktop acceptance" is an office suite of the caliber of MS Office 2000, which isn't going to happen unless they decide to port it.

Of course it isn't. Free software developers could never produce any sort of useful desktop software on their own, certainly not any office programs. That stuff is just too complicated for a bunch of hackers. Why, where would they even start?

Openoffice is seeking to address this. This may be of no consequence for someone needing a solution to today, but I thought I'd mention this.

the link is xml.openoffice.org. Draft formats are available for download, and you can follow the development on the mailing list there as well.

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Keep in mind that the FAQ refers to the closed StarOffice 5.x, which is only distributed in SPARC or x86 binaries.

OpenOffice, which is to StarOffice what Mozilla is to Netscape, is available in source form (CVS or Rhode Island-sized tarball), so xBSD, PowerPC, and Alpha users don't have to worry about binary-only distribution.

We're not scare-mongering/This is really happening - Radiohead

The source and binaries are easily downloaded here:

http://www.OpenOffice.org/dev_docs/source/download .html

These are the source and binaries for StarOffice 6 (devel version, but very stable).

...or, hell, a anon CVS server I don't know.

You can not download StarOffice source. You can download the GPLed parts of the code (nearly everything, except for printer drivers), released under the name OpenOffice. In fact, those sources have allready been made RPMs out of by MandrakeSoft, some weeks ago!

Here you go, little gurl:

I'm a little gurl

Perhaps you could attempt to check out the source code using these instructions? I just did, and found it so easy it was pathetic. My only complaint was the download time.

Look here for the source and binaries of the GPL'd version of StarOffice.
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The ones you saw at CompUSA were not free because they include documentation, etc. SO, since Sun bought them, has been free for use (free beer, not free speech), unless you wanted to redistribute. However, as of 13 Oct, SO 6.0 (now called OpenOffice) is dual licensed under the GPL/SISSL. You can find it at The Open Office website

Now that you've woken up from your 3 month kip, check this out.

Think of how much the school systems could save, if each district didn't have to pay millions for crappy on-off, outdated applications from houghton-mifflin or macmillan or whatever...

On a side note, isn't Mandrake funded by Macmillan? They are in the perfect position to sell software to schools. With the recent release of OpenOffice they could profide a complete office automation system for schools. This would also be a good way for students to learn some real computer skills instead of how bad systems behave irrationally and the magic three fingered salute.

The ZDNet story mentions that the code is licensed under the GPL and the Sun Industry Standard Source License (SISSL). They stated that compliance to both licenses is necessary. They may be smoking crack and completely off (I haven't checked - there wasn't anything obvious at openoffice.org), but if not there are problems with this.

OpenOffice has a bunch of modules depending on each other. There are different kinds of application layers ( eg. the low level graphic layer and a high level spreadsheet application layer ).

Building the whole thing takes a lot of time and it would be insufficient if everyone would have to build the whole thing just to change a few lines of source code.

Instead the delevelopment process is organized as following:

After a module has been build it 'delivers' everything that is needed by other modules ( library files, header files, ... ) to a common directory for the current build version to the SOLVER directory.

The solver files that can be downloaded at openoffice.org are just all those already compiled library files, headers, resources, IDL files, ... for one platform.

When the build environment has been setup a developer just needs the solver files ( milestone tarball ) and the sources for the module he wants to work on ( cvs checkout of the relevant subprojects ).

Have a look at all the technical documentation on openoffice.org for details.

OpenOffice build process

Cordially,
Bernd Eilers

• the source uncompresses to 300MB.
• When built, all source/compiled modules under the main directory will occupy approximately 2GB.
• Building would take approximately 20hours on a PIII with 256M of ram on an optimized Linux system.

The ZDNet story mentions that the code is licensed under the GPL and the Sun Industry Standard Source License (SISSL). They stated that compliance to both licenses is necessary. They may be smoking crack and completely off (I haven't checked - there wasn't anything obvious at openoffice.org), but if not there are problems with this. IIRC the GPL forbids the addition of restrictions of any kind, so while it's possible to allow alternate license terms it is not possible to apply the GPL and another license simultaneously if the second license adds any restrictions. Also, according to the GNU license list page the SISSL is not GPL compatible.

What's there and what's not
The source code available at Openoffice.org is the majority of the current source code under development for StarOffice 6.0. Not available are certain 3rd party source code (for example: printing, spell checking); we will explain this situation further in the week following the launch, please bear with us. The source code is pre Alpha code and is undergoing extensive development and change.

So, no, it's not alpa, it's pre-Alpha. :) And that also explains why you can't print or spell check.