Slashdot Mirror
Looking At Gobe
mneptok writes: "OSNews is running a review of a beta version of Gobe Productive, the office productivity suite initially developed for BeOS by the former producers of ClarisWorks. The beta tested by OSNews is for Windows, but a Linux GTK (and that's toolkit only) version is planned for release after the Win32 version ships. A public beta of the Win32 version is imminent. Looks like a nice, affordable 'army knife' office app for Windows users, and a serious contender in the Linux office space." We had some coverage of this a while back,
It's always nice to see new linux software, even propritary..
Still I don't quite see the market. Office people want what they know: MS Office,
if your not using that, it really doesn't matter what you're using. So why not chose something that doesn't cost 120 bucks, like StarOffice or KOffice?
Still, I haven't used the software, maybe it IS an OfficeXP killer. My point is: It'd have to be.
"Disclaimer: I don't care if you don't find my grammar/spelling appropriate. Honestly, that's the best I can do. I bet you don't speak Greek at all. ;-)"
/. so I'm going to go out on a limb and say its generally /.'ers that are dishing the crap. Well, stop it. I hate to pull out the "you're representing all of us" routine, but its true. Everytime I read an article describing the slavering hordes of fanatical and rude linux users out there, I cringe, knowing that it is almost all directly traceable back to this website. And no, I'm not saying it is CmdrTaco's fault, if it wasn't /., it would be somewhere else. But come on, if you don't have anything nice to say.....
For those of you who don't normally read osnews and Eugenia's reviews, she continually gets crap over her spelling and grammer. Specifically, she gets a lot more whenever they are linked by
*off soapbox*
*ontopic*
I really liked Gobe Productive when I used BeOS. I even bought a copy. However, I wish they had decided to use qt instead of gtk... It just mesh better with the rest of my desktop. Oh, well.
actually, i was just about to post that whole paragraph..
.doc file format has not yet been mastered, no powerpoint compatibility, poor lettering on Glyphs, no sound or video.
For BeOS and Linux this office suite is one of their killer applications that users should be proud of. For Windows users, it still has some features left to be desired when a 'monster' like OfficeXP is already out and about. The Word
Uhm.. And this is a serious contender in any market, how? And it's closed-source, so it doesn't do anyone any good as a learning tool, either?
I'm sorry, but I just don't understand the front-page hype about it. It reminds me a lot of that vector-drawing program for linux that came out a little while and didn't do much other than coredump all over the place..
Indie rock lives! b-side!
"It take 9 months to bear a child, no matter how many women you assign to the job."
For $125, you get a "family liscense" which permits you to install their software on all the computers in your home plus one computer elsewhere (presumably one at work). This demonstrates a surprising amount of prescience on their part.
The real money for liscensing is in corporate liscensing. The really financially damaging software "piracy" is among corporate (or government agency...) clients. There's not terribly much to gain from having draconian liscensing schemes that prevent multiple parties in a household from having the software installed; one might even argue that there are no economically justifiable reasons from curtailing any installations, but that's another argument.
Historically, office-suite penetration has occurred from the corporate level down to the private level; that is, people are forced to use software at work and therefore find themselves having to use it at home as well. The corporate market is fairly well saturated by microsoft Office so it'd be suicide for Gobe to fight there first. Far better would be to worm into the home office market, and try to get employees familiar with it so they can demand their employers reconsider.
By making it almost pleasant to use their product (and for a reasonable price), they get my vote.
That's where the $120+ price tag of this aborted fetus of an app comes in. Payment for full functionality, not an API.
I'm fat, lazy, and sweat when I eat. I buy cheap beer, and listen to 80s music. I'm not a programmer, though I could be a spitting image of Stallmon, just with better taste in clothing. I pay to have it done.
I think it's pronounced 'Go be' as in the command 'Go be productive' implying one is not productive in other office suites *cough*msoffice*cough* so they should go be productive in their software. At least that's how I read it and it made sense to me.
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
So buying Gobe means you can use it one your W32, BeOS & Linux partitions.
Then they can have the 3 versions all on one CD in a crossplatform box. Retailers love that - it makes stocking easy.
Bit like if you buy the boxed version of BeOS you get both X86 & PPC versions inside it.
Actually I think the boxed version of ClarisWorks itself came with both Mac & Windows versions in it. You know, like it had compatible with both Macintosh & Windows markings on the box.
The real money for liscensing is in corporate liscensing. The really financially damaging software "piracy" is among corporate (or government agency...) clients. There's not terribly much to gain from having draconian liscensing schemes that prevent multiple parties in a household from having the software installed;
Others might not agree with this statement...
According to Wired, regarding Windows XP:
I'm with you in that I think that the money is in corporate liscencing. Then again, I don't have any software that anyone would want to buy.
For BeOs users, the migration of Productive from our favourite OS to a Windows platform has been painful as it was symbolic of the demise of BeOs. As a WP/Imaging/Spreadsheeting application, Gobe Productive is very good and has all the functionality everyone needs. Isn't surprising how a small switched on software company such as Gobe can produce a quality item for a reasonable price whilst M$ charges a vastly greater sum for essentially the same thing ? Gobe in the past has been tainted by association with BeOs. There are stories that their approaches to vendors failed as soon as the vendors learned that Gobe was a supplier for a non-M$ OS vendor.
Unfortunately as long as M$ Word is out there, and M$ uses its customary tricks, the alternative WP programmes will be marginalised. Remember Word Perfect ? It has more owners than I've had hot dinners ! Give Productive a go, use Star Office, try Abi Word, and then maybe Word will be sold at a reasonable price and competition may start to work !
They did more than a few betas of Gobe Productive- the last of the Be line was Gobe Productive 2.0, which handled .doc more smoothly than any other non-MS product I've ever seen.
Worked magificently on BeOS 5 Pro and PE.
Buy the thing now, and you can get the windows and linux version for the same money. use it on win at work (if you suffer like the rest of us) and linux at home.
> And they did it without any help from the Open Source community.
Guess again. Gobe Productive actually uses Libart for the cool vector rendering. Not only that, but they've contributed some nice patches back, and they've paid for bug-fixing and enhancement work. So I think they do get the Open Source thing.
LILO boot: linux init=/usr/bin/emacs