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While Sun may not be the strongest FOSS advocate, they've made many adjustments over the past few years to open up several products.

Stop right there. Sun is one of the biggest corporate contributors to open source. Go ahead, count lines of code. I'm betting Sun will be in the top two if not #1.

Here's a brief list of things Sun has open sourced:
Solaris - Their entire OS, including ZFS and Dtrace
SPARC - Their CPU line
Java - Maybe you've heard of it.
OpenOffice - The office suite that ships with every desktop Linux distribution.
VirtualBox - A GPL desktop virtual machine.
NetBeans IDE - A multi-platform IDE.
OpenDS - LDAP Directory Server
High Availability Cluster

Honorable mention:
NFS - The Network File System
vi - developed by Sun founder Bill Joy
MySQL - Now owned and maintained by Sun-paid engineers

So, next time you say Sun hadn't done much for open source, look again. It would be a shame if Sun was bought by Oracle and all of their valuable contributions were abandoned.

Java is also listed as a general prereq for full functionality

damnation, this should have general prereq as a link.

I dropped that closing tag on the floor somewhere...

Your wikipedia link actually says the languages used are C++ and Java, but when in doubt go right to the source:

The general programming faq-type page where it says:

4. Fix a bug
In most cases this will require knowing C++ and sometimes Java. Start by finding a bug that itches you. Then contact the development list and we will help you fix it.

5. Contribute to a core module
Core components are written in C++.

and it looks like (from that page also) that you can use java and a few other languages to write extensions.

Prerequisites for building it

Java is also listed as a general prereq for full functionality

So, it appears that you're both right to some extent, though the core is written in C++ so Maxo might be considered to be "more correct." ;)

Your wikipedia link actually says the languages used are C++ and Java, but when in doubt go right to the source:

The general programming faq-type page where it says:

4. Fix a bug
In most cases this will require knowing C++ and sometimes Java. Start by finding a bug that itches you. Then contact the development list and we will help you fix it.

5. Contribute to a core module
Core components are written in C++.

and it looks like (from that page also) that you can use java and a few other languages to write extensions.

Prerequisites for building it

Java is also listed as a general prereq for full functionality

So, it appears that you're both right to some extent, though the core is written in C++ so Maxo might be considered to be "more correct." ;)

I believe more "average people" (primarily Windows refugees since 90% of desktop users are currently using Windows) can quickly get comfortable with Ubuntu or even Fedora, than with OS X.

I don't know but I'd think it would be roughly evenly split for people switching from Windows to Linux or Macs. I switched from Windows to first Linux then OS X and I found OS X a little easier. The biggest difference between them was the mouse, er trackpad on my Mac, which only has one button. However two button mice work with OS X, my trackball has two buttons. However I use key press/clicks as I did with Windows and I picked up on that pretty quickly.

Certainly Open Office and Evolution are more like the familiar Microsoft Office and Outlook than are the equivalent OS X apps.

Open Office has a version I have installed on my Mac. There is also Evolution for OS X.

Falcon

OpenOffice.org is a unix application rigged into running on Windows, sort of like Pidgin or GIMP on Windows.

http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Windows

And if you go over each of the official build services, you will find that one of the big differences between go-oo.org, StarOffice, and OpenOffice.org vanilla is simply build engineering. Specifically, if they're building with cygwin, it provides some major performance issues. Although Windows has some native POSIX support, you don't use it quite the same way as you do in Linux or Solaris- rather than accounting for these differences, OOo uses a POSIX emulation layer in order to avoid extra work. Despite the fact that Windows is the primary platform for distribution, it's simply too much trouble for Sun or Novell to screw with it. I know Novell is trying to move their build service (go-oo) into a straight GCC cross-compile solution, so the speed issue will not get any better on Windows.

My point is that this is built with Visual Studio 2005 as more or less a standard Windows application, not a Vista/7 application- it's not using the NT 6+ API's, so it's invalid as a true performance test. This would be similar to us testing Microsoft Office 2003 (I don't think OOo is quite feature comparable to 2007) on Windows vs. Wine and then declaring that Windows is the hands down superior platform.

So let's talk about Platform inequities. The Microsoft optimizing C compiler is a better compiler than GCC-- but GCC is really not half bad anymore. Visual Studio's really superior because of its debugging, refactoring, and profiling tools, not so much JUST its compiler. I think this is part of why Firefox runs faster in Wine than in native Linux. In fact, by writing your application in like vim and debugging with gdb then just using Visual Studio as a build slave, you're really getting the short end of the stick in both directions. But I digress, a native unix application like OOo is a native unix application, and I wouldn't expect you to get tremendously better success in Windows unless you're running it on Interix or something. Of course, that's not to say Windows doesn't do unix tasks like NFS better than UNIX, just that it doesn't necessarily run direct unix code better.

But this is all fluff, the fact of the matter is that OOo is not a Windows application and most people are Windows users, so let's look at some logical alternatives:

So... if you're running Windows and you just need to type a paper for school for free/cheap.... why not just use Softmaker Office 2006... or Softmaker Office 2008 if you have 20 bucks. Just use Office 2007 if you're doing long reports- the bibliography handling alone will make the 60 bucks to get it through ultimate steal worthwhile when writing something long and arduous. Consider the time you save on formatting and grammar checking and such over a semester or two- it's worth it. If you're paying thousands a year for your education, the least you can do is not waste time with shitty office software.

Personally, I use OOo on my linux netbook and Softmaker Office 2006 on my Windows box and just keep my documents in ODF. It's the cheap-ass pro solution.

With the notable exception that OOo is Java-based. I know both compilers handle java, but we're still talking something that runs in a virtual machine, likely with a whole slew of JIT-compilation. To truly compare these, you'd need to make sure you're running the same Java VM, and be certain that the behavior of the VM is the same across the board (i.e. it's actually dead between OOo runs).

Just look here.

The Java Runtime Environment (JRE) is required for the Base (database) component of OpenOffice.org as well as several other features. By default the OpenOffice.org installer will install this additional piece of software as well.

It's not just about sticker price, and "FOSS beyond Linux servers" is pretty broad.

I'm a tech writer/UI designer/sometimes web guy at a small (~75 employees) ISV. Our company uses, and even prefers, FOSS when it suits us. Our two head IT guys are Linux nerds like me, which helps.

Basically, the F/OSS software we use falls into one of several categories (this only includes the software I use in my roles, and that I encountered during a stint in QA).

1. FOSS software that sees regular use.
   • Linux: It powers our web and mail servers. Our QA guys use Linux + VMWare to test our (Windows-based) server software. I've been offered a Linux workstation for a web-based project I'm working on, but XP+IIS may be the only solution.*
   • Audacity: We use this to record voice tracks for Captivate demos.
   • 7-zip: Every workstation has this.
   • Firefox: Again, the company standard.
   • Notepad++: A few of us have this for editing raw HTML/CSS/XML/etc.
   • OpenOffice: Don't get excited, Office 2003 is still our bread and butter. This lives on my secondary workstation for simple one-off tasks.
2. OSS software that was tried but failed
   • GIMP: This was before I started at the company, and at the time it couldn't equal Paint Shop Pro (which is what we use now).
   • Scribus: We tried this before caving and purchasing FrameMaker 8. Scribus simply can't match the features or (more importantly) training resources of FrameMaker.

We also use Lotus Notes, which is based on Eclipse.

* I have 2 XP workstations so that I can run every product I might need to document, some of which must be run simultaneously on separate machines. Neither machine is up to spec for Xen or VMWare.

What breaks includes the stated purpose in my post.

However, doing so implies that you don't save to any binary file format like Excel or whatsoever, otherwise you risk loss of data

Though apparently this is finally planned for 3.1.

I have to agree, why bother?
If I want to do something important I use LaTex, if not then OpenOffice works just fine.

As much as I hate Microsoft's operating system, their office suite is pretty decent. I happen to like the ribbon design, as a sometimes-user I have no intention of memorizing the menus. MS Office has terrific shortcut support as well, with hit-a-hinting like in Konqueror. I do have a problem with the proprietary document format, but I have heard that MSO 2007 SP-something or other supports ODF so that is not an issue anymore.

However, I am now saving my documents as hybrid PDF-ODF files:
http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/pdfimport

This Open Office extension lets the user save a document as a valid PDF file with the original ODT file embedded for editing. This is, in my opinion, the perfect document format: viewable in common software already installed on most desktop systems, and editable in an open source, cross-platform office suite. Furthermore, all the wonderful command-line PDF tools available for Linux work on these documents perfectly. The only thing missing from the extension is better save support, as the user currently must be careful to export (not save) as a Hybrid PDF file. For someone in the habit of hitting Ctrl-S after each sentence, this is quite a limitation.

The second hit that Google turns up for "oo 65536 rows" is http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Calc/hacks/number_of_rows, which shows you how to increase the limits for both rows and columns and tells you what breaks if you do. At least one person has increased the limits to 2 000 000 rows and 32 000 columns, resulting in a bottom-right cell address of AUHT2000000.

Can you not?

Whats stopping you going to http://download.openoffice.org/other.html and clicking "download"? I really am actually asking, by the by- I can't remember how easy or difficult it was when I installed OO.o 3.0 on my Ubuntu machine last.

And, like him, I still don't know how to get OOffice 3.0 installed.

Run Synaptic. Under Repositories -> Third-Party Software, add: deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ubuntu hardy main. (Or intrepid main, or jaunty main.) Then reload. Then upgrade OpenOffice.org to 3.0.1. That should do it.

Actually, when I go to http://openoffice.org/ I'm offered to download an installer. And they've got .deb packages too, which I think is how I originally installed it.

fully integrated as a replacement for all MS Office -- the only thing it doesn't do well are Excel macros, and that's for a reason: they're broken and easily replaced.

So many things wrong with that statement:
1) Companies have entire collections of complex Excel Macros written that need replacing. Often difficult to interpret and often with the original developer long gone. It's not just macros. Even charting is very different and doesn't convert over.

2) OO doesn't do everything Office does. I wish it did. I'd switch myself.

3) Sometimes it totally destroys the formatting on existing docs. Other times the destruction is more subtle when you convert, which can actually be worse. Try converting documents with formulae embedded etc., just for fun.

4) Bugs. I thought Office bugs were bad until I ran into the bug in Open Office 3 that would take down the application if you clicked on the File menu.

5) You might also have some issues if you want to save to Office 2007 format
http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=14253#p66736

What MS Office drawing app are you referring to?

Try Visio. You can use kludges to create a document in Impress based on existing documents with parts that you can copy and paste. It'll take you about 30 minutes to do what Visio will let you do in 5 but it can be done. It's just not practical.

At best I think you could claim that for your own purposes, Open Office works well. For other people that do other things - like open other people's office documents, use formulae regularly, make extensive use of charting and Macros etc and don't have time to replace everything, Open Office isn't a viable option without significant investment. Care to build a business case for it?

The list can go on, and others here can easily tell you more applications, I only wanted to harp in on a few that you might be interested in (or didn't even think about.) The days of MS Office being the be-all-end-all of office application suites is over and has been for a while now.

Only if you never used anything more than the most basic of basic functionality, and don't care if you can't open other people's stuff.

I mean, I hope the new appointee helps in pushing `open standards' including ODF. For Google, while I love the company itself, I do not understand why it still has no filter for searching ODF documents just like PDFs and MS Office documents.

Have a look.

What also does not help is the fact that there is not a single application in the Open Source world that is 100% compliant to ODF! Think about it...we push open standards (when attacking Microsoft), but cannot create an application that is 100% compliant with existing and a fairly popular standard!

There are suggestions that OpenOffice.org is not 100% compliant either. This is shameful in the least.

Sounds like possibly the formating you have set up in advance of data entry is being overwritten by the "AutoInput" reformating capability, or something like that.

Play around with your settings under Tools/Cell_Contents and Tools/Auto_Correct. Also, look over the options in Tools/Options.

Also, get familiar with your resources. The OOo Help system is generally more useable than MS Help ever was (it is not yet complete and some of the entries need more clarification... but the volunteers are continously improving it). There are very good support forums at OOo Support. Also, there is Solveig's blog that addresses a problem very similar to yours, as well as a lot of other things pertaining to transitioning.

Main thing: recognize that the OOo defaults are set up to assist total n00bes (like grade school students) in making their first spreadsheets work. You are no longer in that category: you know too much. You can use the extensive OOo online community to figure out how to best control the power of OOo for your own use, but if you continue to ride that motorcycle with the training wheels still attached, yeah, you are not going to be happy.

Right because Microsoft works SO hard to make sure developers can write for windows...

From your tone, it seems like you were trying to be sarcastic. Did you mean "write for other OSs apart from Windows"?

[...]So Steve, when we getting our official MS Office and Outlook for Linux? We'd really like it if Microsoft was open with it's toys too!

Except you're taking one issue and confusing it with another. Ballmer is talking about the freedom to develop for the iPhone. Microsoft doesn't prevent you from writing programs for its' OS (they even provide free IDEs so you can do so), and nothing's stopping you from developing on Linux. Hey, you could even help out OpenOffice, if you're so concerned about having an office suite on Linux. (Crazy idea, I know!)

Or not...

http://www.openoffice.org/

That OO.org is still languishing in obscurity has more to do with it's flaws than some gigantic conspiracy of users who just can't think of anything better to do with their money.

What rock have YOU been under?

Gross market share moves slowly. Great change takes years or decades, and if you see change where the majority product becomes a minority in 10 years, that's very rapid change. There's every sign that this is, in fact, happening. It's by no means comprehensive, but it's pretty clear that OO.o is making some pretty serious headway. Whole nations are standardizing on Open Office!

And on a related note, OO's document format, ODF, is now a recognized international standard, is a mandatory standard for NATO, and is also being adopted by governments around the world.

It may not be all that visible where YOU sit, but the impact is both real and international in scope.

To all you Windows users, we feel your pain. Seriously, you don't even know how bad you have it. What's worse, you have been sucked into a mind set that, on one hand, you hate your computer because of all the problems you have with it, but think you *need* windows because of all the programs you feel you can't live without.

You don't need Microsoft Office, you can go to http://www.openoffice.org/ and download a fully functional office suite that, in many ways, is better than Microsoft Office. What's even better, is that it runs on system other than Windows!

Linux is a system, more similar to the macintosh than it is to Windows, and it will run on your PC. It replaces Windows completely. Not only that, out of the box, it is slick, beautiful, and easy to use, and if you like to tinker, there is absolutely no limit to what you can change.

Best of all its free! That's right, free!

Go to http://www.ubuntu.com/ and look around. (There are other vendors for Linux too, so you are not stuck with only one.)

I know, you ask "How can it be free?" Well, you know how your friends who know about cars will sometimes fix your car as a favor? That's because they enjoy working on cars. Well, with the internet, millions of guys who know about computers started working on a system in the '80s that was eventually called Linux. The software comes from places like IBM, Sun, U.C. Berkeley, MIT, HP, and a whole list of other companies and organizations. It is a collaborative system that is put together, not to make money for Microsoft, but to make computers more usable for everyone. In fact, a lot of the web sites you visit every day run Linux.

So, if you are fed up with your computer and Windows, now is a great time to start a new adventure. Try something new, learn something new! It won't be hard, but not too easy either, as a lot of things are different than what you are used to, but once you get the hang of it, you'll realize that sometimes "different" is the only to get "better."

If that's true, this page is very misleading: http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/download/aqua-Intel.html

I see that's in the Projects tab. And is new, from the page you provided the link to "OpenOffice.org 3.0.1 has been released on January 26th, 2009." About three weeks ago I upgraded from Tiger to Leopard but before I did I went through all of the software I wanted to run to see if I could use what I already had or if I needed to get a new version. When I checked OO.org all they had for download was a version that required X11, the one I linked to.

It's good they released the native Mac port for OpenOffice but I see no reason to download and install it when NeoOffice works for me. In a few months that may change but for now NeoOffice is all I need.

Falcon

If that's true, this page is very misleading: http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/download/aqua-Intel.html

---linuxrocks123

What you said used to be true, but OpenOffice.org 3 introduced a native Mac port in October of 2008.

No, OO.org 3 is not Mac native. It still requires X11. I downloaded and tried to install it when I heard it was supposed to be a Mac native app. The native version is Aqua Pre-Release, and is still being tested.

Falcon

What you said used to be true, but OpenOffice.org 3 introduced a native Mac port in October of 2008.

No, OO.org 3 is not Mac native. It still requires X11. I downloaded and tried to install it when I heard it was supposed to be a Mac native app. The native version is Aqua Pre-Release, and is still being tested.

Falcon

OpenOffice was big and slow long before it accumulated a nontrivial amount of Java code. The OpenOffice wiki lists exactly which functionality depends on the JRE. I don't see anything performance-critical in there. (Oh, and how did I know that? Because I've seen your argument debunked so many times on Slashdot it isn't even funny.)

As for Eclipse, I really don't understand. I have used Eclipse to write Eclipse RCP apps, and it's pretty miraculous the way it handles its own source code -- thousands of source files in many dozens of packages. If you compare IDEs by how quickly they pop up the "Print..." or "Save As..." dialogs, then Eclipse might rank near the bottom, but on large projects, I worry more about the performance hit of navigating, compiling, searching, and refactoring thousands of files. Eclipse does very well by those standards.

Eclipse support for C++ sucks ass compared to its Java support, though. If you tried developing C++ code in Eclipse then I'm sure it disappointed, but the problem there is not Java but the fact that C++ is not a big development priority for Eclipse.

go-oo is a different build to OOo. I am aware of an extension Sun Presenter Console, however I have never seen it in action because it crashes on any OOo I install it in.

Inkscape is a vector editor, and doesn't support automatic layout when you move items around. At least that I know of, if you can tell me how, you'll make me very happy. That said, I use Inkscape for making presentation graphics in Linux, but it's not really a Visio replacement.

Reddit had a thread on this topic a few months ago, which you can find here: AskReddit: What is the best Visio replacement?

Some of the better suggestions were:

• OmniGraffle - Great, but Apple only
• Gliffy
• Project Draw
• yEd
• OpenOffice.org Draw
• Dia

One thing that burned our test users with Impress is that when images are dragged-and-dropped in, they are linked, not embedded (PowerPoint defaults to embedding). This caused one of our users to take an image-heavy presentation they had carefully assembled and have no images show up on the presentation machine.

When you add images using the menu in Impress (testing with 3.0), you can choose to link or embed, but when dragging-and-dropping, which is what our users were used to, the default is link. This cannot be changed as far as I could determine (see bug 15369).

Impress also converts embedded images to PNG, which can really inflate their size compared to JPG.

Actually, they only removed it from the GUI... you can still specify this via the command line, so I just created a shortuct to the installer with the switches specified. I yelled and screamed about this, then actually read the README that comes with Openoffice.org and discovered this. From the README:

"Registration of OpenOffice.org as default application for Microsoft Office formats can be forced or suppressed by using the following command line switches with the installer:
* /msoreg=1 will force registration of OpenOffice.org as default application for Microsoft Office formats.
* /msoreg=0 will suppress registration of OpenOffice.org as default application for Microsoft Office formats."

You might be interested in my Feature Request for a proper 'File Associations Manager' though - I really, really don't understand the resistance to this idea: http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=77257

3.0 was relesed not long ago. In two months we'll get 3.1 which addresses more than 1000 issues.

But they're not addressing a lot of issues that people actually care about. This feature request is one of the most wanted features of writer (an equivalent to normal mode, or at least collapsible margins in page mode) with almost 20 pages of comments, most of which are saying how this issue is at least very important, and probably half of which are saying that it's a blocker for them or someone else using OO. (FWIW, I agree. None of Writer's features, nor them all together, make up for this in my mind.) The request has been outstanding for seven years, since two weeks after version 1.0 was released and there is very little visible progress on it and no target date.

Oh good... OO 3.1 sorts better. Whoopdie do.

(I'm probably understating the importance of the sorting thing, and there are things in the 3.1 update that I care about, like being able to accept or reject changes using change tracking through a right click instead of a dialog that is akward and annoying city. (Oh good, so Writer is now at Word 2000 level on that feature, and only 10 years later. Now all they need to do to make that feature good (instead of merely usable) is to put deleted text out in the margin so it doesn't mess with the page layout and disrupt reading.) But I still think they are leaving their main issues behind.)

I agree, I didn't *see* anything listed about the broken python support either. This is preventing me from using the Zotero citation plugin.

It's there, in the link I provided. See. Yes, this has been fixed.

It's interesting that the overline examples they showed did not show overlines in equations, specifically over italic text. This is where the overline feature really fell down.

See: http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=21486
And, for eye-gouging images: http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?t=54058

For the record, Microsoft Word (equation editor) also doesn't get it right. But that's no excuse :)

I've been using the MacOS X port for years via X11. I was obviously quite happy that 3.0 had a native MacOS X version. However, version 3.0 is severely lacking in terms of MacOS X UI compliance. Example: the command and control keys are wrongly used by OpenOffice (wrongly = different than in all other apps on MacOS X). I learned via this link provided in another /. story yesterday, that there are 47 issues directly targeting MacOS X and that the keyboard shortcuts have been fixed it seems. Great! Hope the 3.1 will be become a real good software for the Mac! :-)

I've been using the MacOS X port for years via X11. I was obviously quite happy that 3.0 had a native MacOS X version. However, version 3.0 is severely lacking in terms of MacOS X UI compliance. Example: the command and control keys are wrongly used by OpenOffice (wrongly = different than in all other apps on MacOS X). I learned via this link provided in another /. story yesterday, that there are 47 issues directly targeting MacOS X and that the keyboard shortcuts have been fixed it seems. Great! Hope the 3.1 will be become a real good software for the Mac! :-)

http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML But you could open directly the Office2000 .doc too... Nice move btw!

Technically she may be required to pay-up, but that doesn't mean she has to. It's very likely she could ignore the email, never pay, and the scammers would drop the bill because it's too expensive to file court cases to claim $96.

I'm not a lawyer and more importantly I'm not a German lawyer, and ultimately I think that getting German legal advice if possible is a much better idea than asking Slashdot. I'm finding this whole case difficult to understand, however. I can't see how she could be liable for anything or how this distribution could have been legal, simply because they shouldn't be allowed to change the OpenOffice.Org LGPL distribution licence.

What I find very confusing is the use of open source software with subscriptions. How does that actually work, and how is it possible to offer a "1 year subscription" to use OpenOffice.org at all?

OpenOffice.Org 3.0 is distributed under the LGPL, which to my understanding (please correct me if necessary) typically means that once you have the software, you can use it as you like, even as far as giving the software and its source code to someone else. Given that the LGPL already says that you can only re-distribute LGPL software under the LGPL (or the GPL), what right would some random company have to attach extra conditions such as requiring that a user may only use it for one year?

Subscriptions and OSS go together frequently, but in such cases the subscription is nearly always for services that surround the software, but which aren't specifically for using the software. Is this company perhaps trying to claim that she agreed to purchase a 1 year support contract? (Hint: Get a lawyer to check the actual wording and give real advice.)

It's also not uncommon to see companies charging for OSS, but in such cases as others have already pointed out, the charge usually accompanies the form of distribution (like a disk or in a package), and the distributor still can't stop the user from receiving the software under (L)GPL. If the distributor already gave the user the software in this case, surely it must have already been given with the complete LGPL licence (if it was given legally), and the company wouldn't have any mechanism to demand further money after it's been received.

Yeah, especially if you're referring OpenOffice.org...

Well, there are two ways to solve the problem. The first is the right to cancel an online contract within two weeks. So she should delete the files, download OpenOffice.org from http://de.openoffice.org/ and send them a letter that she wants to cancel the contract.

The second way it to loock at the download site if the price is clearly visible. If it is not visible before completing your personsal information or is it hidden somewhere in a long EULA or wherever then take some screenshops and keep them. Ignore all payment requests until you receive a summons (in German: Mahnbescheid) from a court. Then hire a lawyer, give him/her the screenshots.

If OO.o says in its license that other companies cannot charge for it, then other companies cannot charge for it. You can "agree" to pay for it, but they cannot enforce payment.

OpenOffice is GPL software

The GPL allows open source software to be sold for ANY price, even a billion bucks a copy

" High or low fees, and the GNU GPL

Except for one special situation, the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) has no requirements about how much you can charge for distributing a copy of free software. You can charge nothing, a penny, a dollar, or a billion dollars. It's up to you, and the marketplace, so don't complain to us if nobody wants to pay a billion dollars for a copy.

The one exception is in the case where binaries are distributed without the corresponding complete source code. Those who do this are required by the GNU GPL to provide source code on subsequent request. Without a limit on the fee for the source code, they would be able set a fee too large for anyone to pay--such as a billion dollars--and thus pretend to release source code while in truth concealing it. So in this case we have to limit the fee for source, to ensure the user's freedom. In ordinary situations, however, there is no such justification for limiting distribution fees, so we do not limit them. "

Shouldn't Sun change the license of OpenOffice.org to protect their fans or are they doing this to protect someone else?

First of all, it's the general public that doesn't understand open source that need protection--highly unlikely a 'fan' would buy OpenOffice.org or even download it from a third party.

Second, your friend is boned.

Does the GPL allow me to sell copies of the program for money?

Yes, the GPL allows everyone to do this. The right to sell copies is part of the definition of free software. Except in one special situation, there is no limit on what price you can charge. (The one exception is the required written offer to provide source code that must accompany binary-only release.)

Unless she downloaded it without being notified upfront of the cost, she ain't going to win this one. If they even host a binary distribution from their site they can claim the bandwidth you used was worth whatever you have to pay. If they aren't also offering you the source code or haven't given it to you of that distribution, you could maybe send the EFF after them and try to escape via that route ... although I've seen lawyers work their magic & you could still end up paying.

Third, they aren't going to limit or restrict selling their software because this could turn into a scary thing for companies. I write proprietary software for my job. I use code licensed as open source. I make available the source to my customer and they pay my company quite well so that we can adopt and add to that code to specifically suite their needs. It's fairly close to 'software as a service.' Now, assuming I used some library (I can't think of anything off of OO.o that I would use) but my company's law-talkin' guys would be scared as hell if it said I couldn't charge money for it ... because maybe it's an integral part of our product?

Do your friend a favor: sit down with her and talk with her. Explain to her that not every piece of software requires you pay out your ass to use it. In the United States, I would call the Better Business Bureau and let them know about this company you speak of. I don't know a lot about your rights or organizations that will help you in Germany but I wish you the best of luck.

Bottom line: For the sake of and proliferation of open source, please don't argue for a fork of the GPL or even for stipulations on charging to be worked into it.

Hmm, don't know about this.

This page claims it only needs GTK for the optional 'crash reporter'.

On my system (Debian Etch) if I do the following:

find /usr/lib/openoffice -type f -perm +ugo+x -exec bash -c 'file {} | grep -q 64-bit && echo {}' \; | xargs ldd | less

I can't see anything that looks very Gnome-y, except for 'ooqstart', which uses glib (and nothing else Gnome-y).

So, without downloading the source, I guess it's either doing it all itself in Xlib or Xt, or those java libraries that it's linking are doing the drawing. Hmm.

"I used to work in a school about 5 years ago when I .. started changing the network backbone to Linux in my school"

Do you mind providing the name of the school? What do you mean, you changed the switches & routers?, if so what did they run on before and why the need to change ?

"I was a newbie in the tech departments at the time"

But they let you upgrade the 'backbone'?

"The existing Linux "expert" .. had a problem and .. refused to look at it citing the amount of time and his previous Linux experience"

What was the nature of his problem, what was he tryign to do, give specifics. Did either of you contact other educational facilities involved in Linux migration .. ?

"Bottom line what it comes down to is budget strapped school systems can't afford a sizable tech department that can take the time to research and develop new systems"

What research do you need to browse the Internet, email and do word processing, spreadsheets etc, all of which are currently available on Windows ...

Please, read the TextCursor API page linked above, and then see if you can quickly understand what properties and methods a TextCursor object has.

Okay, I've never once looked at the OO.o API document, but I can tell you right now that, as a developer, those docs are completely understandable. The TextCursor object implements a whole series of interfaces. If you want to know what those specific interfaces do, then hit the links for them. For example, here's the doc for the XTextCursor interface:

http://api.openoffice.org/docs/common/ref/com/sun/star/text/XTextCursor.html

As you can see, it has a bunch of methods for moving the cursor around. The other interfaces do essentially the same thing, but at the sentence and paragraph level. Meanwhile, the XPropertySet interface, described here:

http://api.openoffice.org/docs/common/ref/com/sun/star/beans/XPropertySet.html

Gives access to the TextCursor state. This is the one problem I see with the documentation. Because the XPropertySet interface exports a generic property provider interface, there isn't actually any doc to describe the properties that are applicable to a TextCursor instance. 'course, the easiest answer is to hack up some test code to emit all the properties and see what's there, but that's certainly not ideal.

So... what was it you were complaining about, again?

Please, read the TextCursor API page linked above, and then see if you can quickly understand what properties and methods a TextCursor object has.

Okay, I've never once looked at the OO.o API document, but I can tell you right now that, as a developer, those docs are completely understandable. The TextCursor object implements a whole series of interfaces. If you want to know what those specific interfaces do, then hit the links for them. For example, here's the doc for the XTextCursor interface:

http://api.openoffice.org/docs/common/ref/com/sun/star/text/XTextCursor.html

As you can see, it has a bunch of methods for moving the cursor around. The other interfaces do essentially the same thing, but at the sentence and paragraph level. Meanwhile, the XPropertySet interface, described here:

http://api.openoffice.org/docs/common/ref/com/sun/star/beans/XPropertySet.html

Gives access to the TextCursor state. This is the one problem I see with the documentation. Because the XPropertySet interface exports a generic property provider interface, there isn't actually any doc to describe the properties that are applicable to a TextCursor instance. 'course, the easiest answer is to hack up some test code to emit all the properties and see what's there, but that's certainly not ideal.

So... what was it you were complaining about, again?

Sure, on the surface it looks like Mozilla. But I have a counter argument: plugins are the new hotness of OO.o 3.0, and even a plugin developed by Sun appears dead. This inspires neither confidence in Sun nor the plugin API.

The fundamental problem may be that OpenOffice lacks anyone interested in throwing out all the parts that are crap. I can imagine someone saying "Fuck you Sun, your coders are insane!" but not the next, critical part "And I'll publish an experimental branch that doesn't suck, since the software is still useful."

I'm of no relation to the OP, but simply from my own frustrating experience of trying to slog through their API documentation, I'd have to agree with the overall point that Sun has done no one any favours when it comes to clarity.

Say, for example, that you're trying to whip up a simple script to munge some text in a Writer document. After considerable reading around, you might discover that you need an object of type TextCursor to work with Writer text. So you dig into the API docs to try to find out what properties and methods a TextCursor object has.

Please, read the TextCursor API page linked above, and then see if you can quickly understand what properties and methods a TextCursor object has.

If the OOo source code and related documentation are at all similar to the API documentation, then I must say that I'm frankly flabbergasted that the project has made any progress at all.

Cheers,

Let's talk basic functionality -- word count. Many different important word processor use cases, professional and academic, absolutely require sensible word counts -- counts that include just the selected text, or that include the whole document, or that count everything except footnotes and endnotes, for example. OOo's word count functionality is bare-bones in the extreme, and doesn't offer anything but counts of selected text, and the whole document. For that matter, it doesn't even count mixed Asian-Western text properly, meaning that no one dealing with Chinese, Japanese, or Korean (the CJK languages) can use OOo for anything beyond casual use (i.e. why bother).

I would dearly love to avoid the MS tax and ditch MS Office, but OOo leaves me unable to do so. (Thankfully, IBM has stepped up to the plate with Lotus Symphony, but that's both closed-source and a bitch to install...) And it's not for lack of bug reporting -- I've known for blooming years that OOo is a sick, dysfunctional project simply from the number of brain-dead bugs that linger and linger and linger and linger and linger , with no signs of progress or even any forecast of when they might be fixed.

Take the word count bug, Issue 17964. This has been on the books since 2003, FFS, with no real progress -- all they've done to address any of the details described is to add Word Count to the Tools menu. Or take the related enhancement of allowing word counts of selected text as opposed to just the whole document, Issue 4568. This was first posted in May 2002, and took until November 2007 to be implemented. This is absolutely required basic functionality for any word processing program intended for professional or academic use (i.e. almost any word processor at all), and it took over five freaking years for the OOo devs to get around to it.

I simply have to ask, what in the devil's briefcase are Sun and the OOo devs doing ? They make Vista look like development time well spent.

Frustratedly,

Let's talk basic functionality -- word count. Many different important word processor use cases, professional and academic, absolutely require sensible word counts -- counts that include just the selected text, or that include the whole document, or that count everything except footnotes and endnotes, for example. OOo's word count functionality is bare-bones in the extreme, and doesn't offer anything but counts of selected text, and the whole document. For that matter, it doesn't even count mixed Asian-Western text properly, meaning that no one dealing with Chinese, Japanese, or Korean (the CJK languages) can use OOo for anything beyond casual use (i.e. why bother).

I would dearly love to avoid the MS tax and ditch MS Office, but OOo leaves me unable to do so. (Thankfully, IBM has stepped up to the plate with Lotus Symphony, but that's both closed-source and a bitch to install...) And it's not for lack of bug reporting -- I've known for blooming years that OOo is a sick, dysfunctional project simply from the number of brain-dead bugs that linger and linger and linger and linger and linger , with no signs of progress or even any forecast of when they might be fixed.

Take the word count bug, Issue 17964. This has been on the books since 2003, FFS, with no real progress -- all they've done to address any of the details described is to add Word Count to the Tools menu. Or take the related enhancement of allowing word counts of selected text as opposed to just the whole document, Issue 4568. This was first posted in May 2002, and took until November 2007 to be implemented. This is absolutely required basic functionality for any word processing program intended for professional or academic use (i.e. almost any word processor at all), and it took over five freaking years for the OOo devs to get around to it.

I simply have to ask, what in the devil's briefcase are Sun and the OOo devs doing ? They make Vista look like development time well spent.

Frustratedly,

OSS projects could distrubte a ready-made build environment in a virtual box image or something ...

You mean like:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Prepared_Build_Images
http://www.mail-archive.com/dev@de.openoffice.org/msg24326.html (german)

There are certain features that are missing, the most obvious one I know of (due to a personal interest) is http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=4914Normal View
And of course there is ongoing maintenance to keep up with data formats (Office 2007 writing is still not there?) but it's true that in general OO does the job.

Hardly surprising considering they have been working on it since 1984!