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One Year Of OpenOffice

no parity writes "Last year on October 13, much of the source to Sun's StarOffice was released as the OpenOffice project. They have set up a birthday page to celebrate what they have achieved in that one year - yes, it prints, spellchecks and has online help. Keep up the good work, guys!" Yep - and my installation still spits up, too. *grin*

19 of 215 comments (clear)

  1. Thank God for Open Office! by Roofus · · Score: 3, Funny


    I just checked out news.com - Guess what one of the headlines are?

    Anthrax found in Microsoft office

    Can the DOJ show that MS does harm consumers now?

  2. Getting there by CmdrTroll · · Score: 5, Interesting
    My roommate was an intern at Sun last summer, and he was assisting the OpenOffice team with resolving compatibility issues with MS Orifice 2000. He said that was the biggest stumbling block for the project, aside from memory management and speed issues. He also said that the DoJ was privately talking to a few of his co-workers and they were interested in widening the probe into monopolistic file format practices. I doubt that the current administration will give it a green light, but if they do, that would help knock down the last barriers to seeing OpenOffice on every Windows desktop in the near future.

    Wishful thinking...

    -CT

    1. Re:Getting there by All+Dead+Homiez · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I believe the story on the widened probe is here or here.

  3. Congrats - What will it take? by pgrote · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Congrats to all involved!

    What will it take for the stranglehold on Microsoft Office to be overcome?

    Many people have suggested that the "new" offices have to have complete file compatibility with Office, but I don't think that's it.

    Others have said that it is necessary for businesses to adopt the suites.

    What do other think?

    I am really interested in this because for three years or so there were four office products you could choose from: Lotus SmartSuite, WordPerfect Office, Microsoft Office and Microsoft Works.

    Then boom ... it was over. Microsoft ruled.

    1. Re:Congrats - What will it take? by Tumbleweed · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Well, _most_ businesses wouldn't bother unless it _can_ read and write with MS Office apps. I think that's what the DOJ should really do - force MS to open their file specs.

      I think it'd be great for Lotus to open the source to SmartSuite - since IBM owns them, one wonders what the chances are. Then again, they've not opened the code to the OS/2 WPS. *shrug* I've heard from people inside IBM that there's too much licensed code inside those products for them to be able to do that - they simply don't outright own the code those products are made from. That's a shame.

  4. Re:CUPS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    638 didn't work with cups, but 638C and other versions did.

  5. OpenOffice needs MacOS X programmers! by sakusha · · Score: 5, Informative

    Since StarOffice dropped official support for MacOS X, OpenOffice needs more MacOS X programmers. Microsoft is going to make a huge marketing push for Office X, but if we had working OpenOffice versions, their monopolistic push could be thwarted. But it's too late for now. We need help!

    1. Re:OpenOffice needs MacOS X programmers! by Phroggy · · Score: 4, Informative

      Agreed. It looks like some of the work has been done, but large chunks have not been ported yet. More information here.

      --
      $x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
      $x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
  6. A real good start! by albat0r · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I've look at the features list, and tried it too, and I must say that it's a really good start! And I hope that it will continue like it.

    But, even if I know that a lot of you doesn't like Microsoft (and I understand it!), an office suite for Linux can only be complete if it can read/write in .doc format. I'm not saying that this format is better than anything else (an empty .doc file is far from 0k in size, and I've never understand what it can have in it to take that much space on my hard drive...!), but in my case, I have contacts with many people that use Microsoft Office, and I need to share files with them, and read there works and show them mine. Without the support for .doc, this thing become more hard to do; some people don't want to use other things than .doc format. So by now, I use Star Office and KOffice, but I've have trouble with both of them with .doc sometimes. So, if Open Office support this format one day, and handle them good, I'll be very happy to use it!

    So, everybody that work on Open Office, continue your good work!

  7. It could take a long time... by Drakula · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...due to the file compatibility issue you have mentioned.

    Not that I speak for everyone in a similar situation, but when you work in an enviroment that is 99% msoffice, usually the main stumbling block is "Yeah linux sounds cool but can I read everyone's files under linux? What about Word?"

    It sucks but it seems to be the case in my experience. In fact, that is what kept me strictly a windows user for so long (until recently) was the one or two programs I needed at the time, which we unavailable under linux.

    I'm not saying its right. I'm defending the laziness of the average computer user but it seems that is one of the major issues, and most likely be solved by an open source office suite (which I am impressed with by the way).

    The linux users just have to change the world one user at a time, I can't imagine one single piece of software making that happen.

    --
    "It's comin' back around again..." -RATM
  8. Just out of curiosity... by Reality+Master+101 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Does Sun use StarOffice exclusively within Sun? Maybe I just haven't seen all the press releases of them touting how much money they save and the huge success it has been, but isn't a little funny that they don't make a huge deal of Sun being "100% pure StarOffice -- Microsoft free?"

    --
    Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
    1. Re:Just out of curiosity... by dagnabit · · Score: 3, Informative

      I work for Sun in the Cobalt Server Appliances group. I personally run StarOffice on my RH7.1 laptop for doing presentations for customers, etc. It is not _mandatory_ for Sun employees to use StarOffice, but most do. It's the only suite that Sun's internal IT group supports. So people who choose M$ Office are on their own for support. Also, Netscape is Sun's "official" browser and email program. If you read your mail with Outlook, etc, you're on your own too...

    2. Re:Just out of curiosity... by purplemonkeydan · · Score: 4, Interesting

      They are supposed to use StarOffice and Solaris exclusively, but they don't.

      Some Sun sales guys came to my former company and gave us the salespitch for the Spaghetti .. sorry .. Serengeti line of servers.

      They were using Office 2000 on Windows 2000 on a Toshiba laptop. The sales guys mentioned that they were supposed to be using StarOffice, but they said it sucked.

      I guess being in Australia they weren't under as much scrutiny as the US operation, and could get away with stuff like that.

  9. Tends towards MS Office - A good thing! by aliebrah · · Score: 4, Insightful

    With each release of Star/OpenOffice we're seeing something that more and more resembles MS Windows/Office. Most people here keep on saying that its a bad thing. I think otherwise.

    You'll Microsoft and Apple are slowly tending towards very similar UIs, case in point being Aqua and Luna - they're really similar now. This is because both companies are spending millions of R&D dollars to find out what the best user interface is for their users, and, surprise-surprise, this doesn't differ across platforms.

    That's why I see this trend in SO/OO as a good thing. It's tending towards a much more usable state now. Though, it still has to play catch-up with MS Office. In Office, even if I don't know how to do something, I can easily find out by clicking as few buttons or even some guesswork based on looking at icons/tooltips. SO/OO still has quite a ways to go before it reaches this kinda ease-of-use.

    I just hope that people understand why these office apps are all tending towards a similar UI. It's not Microsoft's UI, or anyone elses for that matter, its just the one that works, and that's what's important.

  10. One year of OpenOffice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    OK, presumably they're talking about the wait-time for the damned thing to load. Has anyone actually gotten around to using it yet?

  11. You should be ashamed... by Patoski · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I wonder if everyone would be yucking it up and joking so much if this letter was sent to the FSF? I dislike MS as much as the next geek but making wise cracks about this is pretty low and tasteless. I wonder if you would mind telling that joke in front of the affected people's familes? If the thought of that makes you uncomfortable then you know you shouldn't say it in the first place. If it doesn't bother you then any words would be air better used elsewhere than talking to you...

    -Pato

    --
    G. Washington on Government "it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
  12. Mac support dropped? Why? by A_Non_Moose · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What was the reason for dropping mac support, does anyone know?

    I, for one was looking forward to Star/Open Office 6 for the mac. (drooling for it more like it).

    It just seems a trifle silly, really, if you think about it.
    Everyone that wants an alternative to Microsoft's Office products, but still need the compatability with it.
    I'll concede that the Mac has a smaller market share, but, you gotta admit that it has a more "vocal minority" (kind of reminds me of /. in a way).

    Add to the above thought, that, it is NO secret that Sun's CEO released S.O. free to tweak Microsoft's CEO's nose. (figurativly, of course).

    So, If you see where I am coming from it does not make sense.

    heck, I platform hop enough not only to keep up with the tech, but sometimes the politics of distros, tools and apps.

    Look at the screenshots and tell me that this would not look good under aqua, and run under osX.1 really nice.

    I suppose I understood a little in the 10.0.X days becuse a lot of developers and programmers were griping (rightfully so) about the APIs not being coherent and up to spec/snuff.

    But now, seems silly.

    Help me understand.

    Moose.

    --
    Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
  13. Open Office has a marketing project. by Futurepower(tm) · · Score: 4, Interesting


    Wow! Open Office has a Marketing project too!

    Even though open source projects don't try to make money, there is still a marketing function. Marketing is creating communication between the project and prospective users. Most projects ignore this requirement; some die as a result of not communicating.


    Secrecy corrupts democracy: What should be the Response to Violence?

    --
    Bush's education improvements were
  14. Re:No linux support by big.ears · · Score: 3, Informative

    Don't you hate it when you embarrass yourself and all someone can say is RTFM? I'm doing this from memory, so I might be wrong about a few details. You have to do a "network" installation: as root, execute the downloaded binary with -net option (...or was it \net) and put it, e.g., in /usr/local/staroffice. Then, as a user, run /usr/local/staroffice/soffice and it will do a user installation (it uses about a megabyte or so.)