Gobe Productive GPL Release In Danger

Elliot writes "Gobe, developers of Gobe Productive, a fast and lightweight office suite initally developed for the BeOS and later ported to Windows and Linux (which never made it past beta stage), announced in August that they would be open sourcing Gobe Productive under the GPL. Unfortunately, it appears that financial issues might prevent this from happening. A shame to see yet another wonderful piece of software [possibly] fail."

Comments

Gobe is/was awesome

[kannibal_klown]

I bought a copy shortly after slashdot posted an article about it. It was a great software package. It was lite and quick, a hell of a lot quicker than OpenOffice and StarOffice, and the interface was just... clean.

My favorite part was the ability to export to PDF so easily.

My only complaint was the Spreadsheet program wasn't as robust as some of the other packages out there, but it still worked.

I hope everything works out for them. Personally, I think this was one of the best office packages around.

Re:Gobe is/was awesome

[Big Mark]

It was designed for the BeOS, which was itself fast, lightweight and clean, so what did you expect?

OK, neither were fully-featured but they did everything 75% of people would ever need.

-Mark

Re:Gobe is/was awesome

[moeman]

I just went to K->Office->wordprocessors->KWord and started Kword. (Thats where my default install of mandrake put it) I then typed sum stuff, went to print and selected "Print to file (PDF/Acrobat)." Can't get much easier than that I would think.

Anyhow, KOffice is an office suit I would like to see get more attention, as it can be so easily integrated into other KDE applications. Unfortunately my last experiances with it (one release previous to the current release) left me a bit miffed, as it didn't actually PRINT the way it was formated on screen.

Re:Gobe is/was awesome

[tshak]

OK, neither were fully-featured but they did everything 75% of people would ever need.


Which is 50% more than _I_ need!

flawed logic

[Anonymous Coward]

Blockquoth the page:

Our Take 2 This could be a great opportunity for the 3 major Linux distros, or any other OS maker, to differentiate itself from the competition by stepping up and helping out with the buyout of this software (even if it means no open sourcing). Surely, we do have OpenOffice and KOffice, but then again, the Linux distro next door has it too. Hey Linux executives that I know you are reading OSNews, think about it. Differentiate yourself from the competition, give an edge on why should I try your distro and not your competitor's. ;-)

But if they GPL it, their competitors get to have it too. And they'd need to GPL it to not be hypocrites and to make this worthwhile.

Let's face it. Open source is nice, but its economics are not as profitable as those of closed source software. That makes things tough.

This reminds me of the collective action problem. Open source software is a public good like the environment or national defense, since it is jointly supplied and cannot be denied to any single person. If it is supplied to one person, it is supplied to everyone. But since people are selfish, they often won't want to contribute to it.

So what can we do? I say we should fix copyright law so that it only works for seven years. After those seven years we can use the source code of the program.

Re:flawed logic

[Digitalia]

since you believe that you know how to fix the copyright system, I'll ask you a few questions. first, why only seven years? When someone produces a new product and puts in on the market, they should be able to enjoy copyright protection for a period of time long enough to be reasonably profitable, but not for so long that innovation is stagnated. Though seven years is short enough to prevent the latter, it is also so short as to be prohibitive to profit. Second, from what date do you intend to start counting these seven years? If I decided to reuse libraries from a product I wrote back in 1995, would the date be extended? If not, then what motivation would I have to produce a lasting product? A man needs to eat, and good will makes a poor bread. Though I support the rights of the individual, I also respect the rights of businessmen. I feel that corporations enjoy too many rights without the corresponding responsibilities, but I don't believe that the answer is to strip businesses of the right to profit from their innovation.

Re:flawed logic

[Anonymous Coward]

A man needs to eat, and good will makes a poor bread

really? try living on it sometime, it's quite tasty.

Re:flawed logic

[Billly Gates]

No the gpl would force there competitors to release there modifications to the source. A BSD license on the otherhand is different.

This is why Microsoft hates the GPL and prefers the BSD license. They can take but have no obligation to give back.

However if this is a publicly traded company then they owe it to there investors to keep there IP offlimits. They can be sued bigtime if they did this.

Re:flawed logic

[spitzak]

You idiot, if you bothered to read the blockquote you would see the text "(even if it means no open sourcing)"

Re:flawed logic

[Cokelee]

Simply put: If a Linux Distro Co [LDC] takes the code and GPLs it, every LDC is NOT going to start using it!

The LDC may modify the code all it wants and create an excellent product that worked well in THEIR distro. People would choose that distro because of the default capability of the product.

Redhat defaults OpenOffice.org in their distro-- nontechnical magazines (the kind businessmen read, like Journal of Accountancy) LOVE THIS!

Buying the source and GPLing it could very well be profitable for this reason.
You just have to realize that some of your target audience wants one solution from one partner.

Re:flawed logic

[Cokelee]

I'll go ahead and point out the flaws in the article I linked::

Mr. Zarowin,

I would like to take this opportunity to correct some misconceptions evident in your column Technology Q&A in Novembers issue of Journal of Accountancy.

Quote: For those who are unaware of Linux (pronounced LIH-nucks)

Correction: Linux is pronounced (Lee-nooks) here is a link to a wav file of Linus himself saying Linux. http://www.ssc.com/lj/linuxsay.html

Quote: You can download the latest version free from www.linux.org, although there are inexpensive commercial products available for those who want special support and easy setup. The leading commercial provider is Red Hat (www.redhat.com) and it costs about $49.

Correction: This is very misleading. Red Hat is also available free from Red Hats website http://www.redhat.com/download/mirror.html

Quote: The free version, OpenOffice.org 1.0, which uses basic StarOffice coding from Sun Microsystems, has all the usual office applications except for database and e-mail components. You can download the 50-megabyte app from www.openoffice.org.

Correction: OpenOffice.org does not use coding from Sun MicrosystemsSuns product StarOffice is based upon OpenOffice.org Sun Microsystems' engineering efforts that will deliver future versions of the StarOffice productivity suite will be derived directly from the OpenOffice.org technology base. Sun will use the single OpenOffice.org master CVS source base as its own engineering master source base. Thus, developers from all communities will be able to see Sun's development contributions on a daily basis and be able to become directly involved in the development of the OpenOffice.org technology as well as the branded StarOffice productivity suite. http://www.openoffice.org/white_papers/OOo_project /introduction.html

Re:flawed logic

[hector13]

Correction: OpenOffice.org does not use coding from Sun Microsystems

Oh really? From the openoffice web page:

The OpenOffice.org source code initially includes the technology which Sun Microsystems has been developing for the future versions of StarOffice(TM) software.

Re:flawed logic

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's face it. Open source is nice, but its economics are not as profitable as those of closed source software. That makes things tough.

Only if you assume that the economics of software are entirely limited to process of selling shrink-wrapped retail copies.

Open source makes =great= economic sense to custom solutions providers, hardware vendors, embedded systems developers and, most significantly, to software users.

Will

Re:flawed logic

[GigsVT]

However if this is a publicly traded company then they owe it to there investors to keep there IP offlimits. They can be sued bigtime if they did this.

What the hell are you talking about? Red Hat GPLs nearly everything they write, and no one has ever even thought about suing them for it.

Re:flawed logic

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's face it. Open source is nice, but its economics are not as profitable as those of closed source software. That makes things tough.


How's that? Somebody please explain the market value of this precious IP? People will shell out for software that has a future, hoping for some roi. That means Microsoft, and that also means Redhat. Nobody wants to waste a nickel on vaporware.

Re:flawed logic

[leonbrooks]

You can download the latest version free from www.linux.org

Er, no. You can download it from http://www.kernel.org/ though.

OpenOffice.org does not use coding from Sun MicrosystemsSuns product

Yes, it does. Sun bought StarDivision and with it the then-proprietary StarOffice 5.2. OpenOffice is an open-sourced and tarted-up version of SO5.2; Sun then re-developed or ported the extra componets from SO5.2 (like WordPerfect files, macro record/replay and grammer checking) that couldn't be (or weren't for political reasons) opened across to OOo, and the result is SO6.

Re:flawed logic

[fferreres]

Open source is nice, but its economics are not as profitable as those of closed source software. That makes things tough.

But that's also why OSS is the only one that can stand up and say HERE I AM YOU MOTHERF*CKER in a 100% monopolized and uncompetitive market.

Let's face it, anything that is not open source doesn't have even the slightest chance of success in the MS monopolized world.

You either do it for reasons that go beyond your profit (directly) and you either use it because you are in a position where they can't ban you from (like in most companies). And from there we grow and carve the monopoly into a less confortable position.

Start a fund?

[chunkwhite86]

Perhaps they should start a fund, similar to what Blender did?

When Blender when under, they started a fund to which anyone could contribute (and I did.) Now their 3D modeling product is open source.

I wouldn't mind paying a few bucks to open the source.

Re:Start a fund?

[BurritoWarrior]

I have alternative suggestion.

Read the artcile.

Re:Start a fund?

[God! Awful 2]

When Blender when under, they started a fund to which anyone could contribute (and I did.) Now their 3D modeling product is open source.

I know you haven't read the article, but I'll reply for the benefit of anyone else who is listening. One of the tenets of scientific reasoning (that are so often ignored on /.) is that anecdotal evidence is not proof. The fact that something worked once does not mean that it can work sustainably.

Blender had the advantage of being a test case. Everyone wanted to prove that the concept would work, so they gladly contributed. That flood of support is likely to calm down after the 500th company asks for money.

-a

Re:Start a fund?

[technix4beos]

Oh.. not even if it's quality software?

I think the impact of Blender going open source would prove to have tangible and positive effects on this case too, but it's not something that you can say, "Been there, done that... move on."

GoBe Productive is quality software. This has been stated by numerous people who have tried it since the beginning, across multiple platforms.

I would argue that it would be a shame to see such greatness pass into obscurity, and have already done a small bit in helping this by pledging $500 EU to the efforts to open source it.

Let those of us who feel the same way do what we can to make this happen, but not because it's how "Blender dit it", but because of the right reasons; greatness.

Thank you for listening. I look forward to wearing my asbestos suit... Flame away slashbots! ;)

Re:Start a fund?

[God! Awful 2]

Well I'm glad to hear that you have $500 EU to throw away* in this recession economy. I for one have bills to pay. Also, if I am going to donate to charity, I still think feeding the homeless is a more worthy cause.

(*) If you wonder why I say this amounts to throwing money away, think of it from a tragedy of the commons perspective. Your donation is fairly large, but still too small to make or break the project. The benefit to you is the same whether you make the donation or not.

-a

Jubilation too early

[twener]

There it goes what some people already saw as future integrated Gnome Office.

There's a reason

[Anonymous Coward]

Software fails because it lacks that special something that provokes everyone to switch. As of yet, there have been no office suites that offer a better experience than Microsoft Office. They've only been advantagous in pricing and openness, and that isn't such a great advantage that people are willing to switch. As a student, I'd spent a couple of years using non-Microsoft suites and always been disappointed. I first used Corel WordPerfect, then Star Office. I finally shelled out the cash and purchased Microsoft Office after being disappointed.

Re:There's a reason

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Bravo. It's important that people realize that Microsoft Office does not-- well, usually doesn't, anyway-- come bundled with new computers. If you want Office, you have to buy a copy. People use Office because they choose to.

Let me say that just one more time. People are not using Office because it's already installed on their new computers. And they're not suffering along with Office because there are no alternatives. People buy and use Office because they choose to.

Until one or another of the various free office products gets to the point where it's at least as good as Office, most people will choose Microsoft's product.

The "it's good enough" mentality will not result in a successful office productivity package.

Re:There's a reason

[SensitiveMale]

The "it's good enough" mentality will not result in a successful office productivity package.

Why not? It resulted in a successful OS, Windows.

Or what I call the worst boot virus ever.

Re:There's a reason

[isorox]

We have MS office at uni. (We also have staroffice, but nobody uses it)

People are lazy, dumb, senile and stupid. They will write their essay (all in 10 point times new roman, might as well save it as a text file!), save as Word 2000, and take it home. They then ask their computer "savvy" neighbour how to edit the essay. The neighbour installs a pirate copy of word XP on their machine, and they use it.

This doesnt gain MS any money though. However as the installed base of word is so high on students machines, and more up-to-date (and incompatable) then the uni machines, the uni has to upgrade.

Uncrackable product activation et. al. in microsoft's products will stop this, however the mindset (think Word Processor, think Word, think Microsoft) that is drilled into people from age 8 will take a lot to change.

Re:There's a reason

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong.

When shopping around for laptops for example, I could not find one that did not require me to pay for both Windows XP and Office.

Now, it was not the full professional version of Office that was required; it let me go with the "small business edition", but that is still >$200.

Figure that XP Home is adding at least $100.

That's at least $100 (realistically) that I would be able to donate to OpenOffice.org development.

Now, I run Linux and OpenOffice.org on my laptop, so the money was just wasted to fill M$s coffers.

Re:There's a reason

[Twirlip of the Mists]

It resulted in a successful OS, Windows.

Look at the evolution of Windows over the past decade: Windows 3.1 to Windows 95, with a sidestep to Windows NT, then bringing the two together with Windows 2000, and then improving it here and there with Windows XP. It's not a perfect OS, but you can't exactly accuse Microsoft of resting on its laurels, either. They work very hard on Windows, if for no other reason than to make Windows N+1 enough of an improvement over Windows N to get people to buy the new version.

Re:There's a reason

[insac]

And there are some other people that use Office simply because:

1 - everyone else uses Office and they have to share documents.

2 - they haven't heard of anything else.

I don't know if these are just a small minority, but they exist..

Re:There's a reason

[dvdeug]

And they're not suffering along with Office because there are no alternatives. People buy and use [Microsoft] Office because they choose to.

The single complaint I've heard the most about OpenOffice and friends? That it doesn't support Microsoft Office file formats well enough. The fact is, I have a half-dozen programs on my computer to read Microsoft Word (I don't care to install OpenOffice, as I don't need it); furthermore, I end up unable to read a number of files on the web and occasionally sent to me because they're in PowerPoint.

Is Microsoft Office a good program? Yes. But for a lot of people, the reason they don't use simpler, cheaper, more portable alternatives is because of Office's proprietary file-formats, not because Office is better for them.

Re:There's a reason

[insac]

but you can't exactly accuse Microsoft of resting on its laurels

Absolutely.. the problem is that a lot of times they should have thought about making the OS faster and safe.

Instead they kept putting in their OS features nobody asked for, increasing CPU speed demand and RAM hunger...

They think in terms of "the Next Product to sell to the customer", instead of trying to make it "really" good.

I don't mean that's just a Microsoft problem.. but since they're a sort of monopoly, people are going to suffer a lot more from Microsoft mistakes than from the mistakes of the rest of IT industry..

Re:There's a reason

[Twirlip of the Mists]

When shopping around for laptops for example, I could not find one that did not require me to pay for both Windows XP and Office.

That's funny. When you said this, I went looking for a laptop on the web. The very first one I picked-- the Dell Inspiron 8200, chosen for no other reason that because it came up first on the Dell web site-- is available with Microsoft Works instead of Office. Sounds like you didn't look hard enough.

Re:There's a reason

[Twirlip of the Mists]

But for a lot of people, the reason they don't use simpler, cheaper, more portable alternatives is because of Office's proprietary file-formats, not because Office is better for them.

Well, with all due respect, we're kind of getting into a semantic argument, here. If you need to exchange files with your friends or co-workers or whatever, you're going to need software that produces files that those people can use. That's a necessary feature. If Microsoft Office fits that bill, then Microsoft Office is a good choice for you.

It's important to point out, though, that lots of programs can read and write the various Office file formats. AppleWorks, for example, reads and writes Word and Excel files with virtually no problems. Of course, if a file takes advantage of a feature that only Word or Excel has, you're going to have problems moving it into another program. But that kinda goes without saying.

Since interoperability is important, it should be obvious that any product that competes with Office must be able to read and write Office file formats. If Microsoft changes the format and doesn't release the specification, well, hard cheese. They've got the right to do that. Competitors will be back to competing solely on the basis of price and features.

Re:There's a reason

[Twirlip of the Mists]

They think in terms of "the Next Product to sell to the customer", instead of trying to make it "really" good.

Monday-morning quarterback. When you own your own multinational software corporation, you can make your own decisions about what features to implement. Until then, saying "Microsoft did it wrong" is kind of a cheap way out, isn't it?

Re:There's a reason

[m1a1]

I totally agree that MS Office is a good product. It is the best office suite there is, bar none. But I disagree about the total reason poeple use it. I think they use it because schools and universities get pulled in by Microsoft, and it becomes the default office product on school and campus. Since that is what everyone learns there, they continue to use it in the business world, and on, and on. It is the same as with .net. It may be easier to program with .net than any other programming environment, but that isn't the reason it's popular.

Re:There's a reason

[Darth]

It doesnt matter how good a competing office productivity suite is if it doesnt fully and completely support all of microsoft's proprietary document formats. The document formats are what create the barrier to entry for non-microsoft products in the office productivity area.

or did you think the document formats were rewritten with every release because they were adding a new feature to them?

Re:There's a reason

[Tim C]

If you want Office, you have to buy a copy.

That's true enough, but you'll often find Microsoft Works bundled with new PCs (e.g. the one I bought a couple of weeks ago), and that comes with Word. To a lot of people, Word *is* Office, as they almost never use Powerpoint or Excel, don't think of Outlook as part of Office, and wouldn't even know what Access is.

Also, if you look around enough, you will find Office bundled with new PCs. They'll be the sort that cost a fortune, and come with a printer, scanner, etc, but you can find them.

Re:There's a reason

[Twirlip of the Mists]

I think they use it because schools and universities get pulled in by Microsoft, and it becomes the default office product on school and campus.

Isn't it much more likely that Office is the default product on campuses because it's the most popular product in the marketplace? A school that taught only obscure tools while ignoring the most popular tools wouldn't be doing its students much of a service, would it?

If people stopped using Office more than any other tool-- indeed, if proficiency with Office were no longer an effective requirement for employment in most industries-- the schools would stop teaching it.

Re:There's a reason

[insac]

The risk is that customers use Office *now* because they choose it *yesterday* cause it was the best Office suite : today they just can't use any other suite because they can't share files with others...

I don't call it "being the best on the basis of price and features"... it's purely monopolistic advantage..

Think how the Internet would have looked like if, instead of HTML, we have had HDOC proprietary Microsoft format..

Re:There's a reason

[Kiwi]

OK, I second you on this. If I wanted to buy a new IBM Thinkpad T30, I can easily get it without Microsoft Office. No, I can not get it without Windows 2000 or Windows XP. With a 40gb hard disk, I may as well dual boot anyway.

For the record, I use Abiword for writing documents. I am well aware that it is, to put it mildly, not as feature rich as other offerings (and is somewhat buggy, to boot) [1]; however it is good enough, lightweight, and, most importantly, free.

As an aside, I do not think one of your earlier comments should have been moderated down. You said that file sharing takes money away from people who make content and were modded down for saying so.

- Sam

[1] Problem with inserting greyscale PNGs (in their bugzilla); problem with spelling suggestins going off of the screen when misspelled word is near bottom of the screen (I need to check bugzilla); problem with headers being too high to be printed (again, I need to check their bugzilla); and a problem with their ability to export documents to Word which have non-standard spacing (again, I need to check their bugzilla; I can't help them with this because a machine with Word on it is not handy).

Re:There's a reason

[nmg]

That's odd, considering neitherDell, Sony, Toshiba, nor Fujitsu require you to purchase Office XP. IBM was the only one that I saw from a quick glance.

Re:There's a reason

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course he didn't look hard enough; a proper investigation would have left precious little to complain (and lie) about. Welcome to Slashdot.

Re:There's a reason

[Anonymous Coward]

If I wanted to buy a new IBM Thinkpad T30, I can easily get it without Microsoft Office.

Yeah, but try to get it without Lotus SmartSuite!

Re:There's a reason

[Lord Vipor Scorpion]

OK, your arguments make less & less sense, but you are really into this. Why?

"Monday-morning quarterback" is a an entirely irrelevant pejorative in this context. Next, your 'Might Makes It Right' argument is really unnecessary. Finally, saying "Microsoft *does* it wrong" is the *hard* way out, because then you have to find an alternative.

I don't know what your deal is, but you should ask yourself what your personal investment is in Microsoft Office. Does your livelihood depend upon your knowledge and preference for this product? Do you write Office macros for a living? If so, I can understand the psychological problem your facing: You have wasted large chunks of your life using mediocre products that you have no control over.

The _Fire Upon the Deep_ nick shows you're intelligent. Use it; quit defending Microsoft.

Re:There's a reason

[Lord Vipor Scorpion]

Vinge would kick your ass for this kind of crap. Look here. Note at the bottom of the page how Professor Vinge does not teach Novell or Microsoft specific features? I guess he doesn't teach the "most popular product in the marketplace."

Re:There's a reason

[dvdeug]

Office saves to ASCII. Everything made in the last 20 years for Word Processing accepts ASCII input in some form.

The trick is that this is less than feature rich.

That's almost as bad as taking screenshots; in many case, I can get a screenshot in with more information than ASCII.

That's not really the problem, though; Word outputs RTF which will preserve most details. The problem is that the world of Office users don't bother to export, and send out Word docs and Powerpoint presentations without hesitation. The problem is input, not output.

Everyone buying Office has known exactly what level of interoperability is avaialable,

Yes, the majority of the people buying Word bought it with full knowledge of interoperability and understanding of the implications, instead of just buying what they used at work or using what came with their computer or upgrading their version of Works.

Re:There's a reason

[darekana]

I second that.
Take for example the HTML editor market...
Since HTML is a readily accessible standard MS is being forced to fight for their mark. In that market MS has a strong solution, but they are being forced to fight for every inch.

Re:There's a reason

[dvdeug]

If you are pissed with Office, its your own fault. Likewise, the problem isn't with MS, its with users.

Human nature is human nature; it's futile for me to complain about it. People who take advantage of human nature, those people I can and will complain about.

Re:There's a reason

[ogre57]

Otoh we tried StarOffice 3.1 because Microsoft Office was so poor at that time. We tried Unix at about the same time for much the same reason, because Windows 95/NT4 was so hideous. Today we are content with StarOffice 6.0 both at work and at home. If Microsoft ever produced a version that would run on our desktops (Linux and Solaris) and offered it at a reasonable and competitive price (under $100) likely we'd buy a copy to try. (Visio might be nice to have, but management feels the potential benefit isn't worth the hassle and expense of Windows.)

Re:There's a reason

[Twirlip of the Mists]

I don't know what your deal is, but you should ask yourself what your personal investment is in Microsoft Office.

I don't know what your deal is, but you should ask yourself why you're so biased against Microsoft. Microsoft is deeply flawed, and some of their business practices are both unethical and illegal. But that doesn't mean that they're evil to the core. I'm just trying to get you to have a little perspective, and to give credit where it's due.

In your post, you basically said that Microsoft developed their products wrong. You think they should have focused on A, B, and C, while they were actually focused on X, Y, and Z. The fact that Microsoft has produced good products and sold them by the boatload seems to contradict this fact. Or are you one of those who claims that all Microsoft products are pure crap? Microsoft has produced more than their fair share of crap. Their software is generally pretty needlessly complex, and their user interfaces are awful. But the worst piece of software Microsoft has ever produced is still better than 90% of the stuff listed on Freshmeat. I've said it before: credit where it's due.

Oh, and as to your remarks about my livelihood: I'm a chef. I work in a restaurant for a living. I don't even have a computer at my place of business, unless you count the cash registers our waiters use. I couldn't really give a tinker's dam about Microsoft Office, except in the purely abstract sense. People who hop up and down on one leg yelling about how Microsoft is rotten to the core and how they never produced any decent software are just as bad as people who say Microsoft is perfect and Windows is the epitome of user friendliness. Balance in all things, especially in one's opinions.

The _Fire Upon the Deep_ nick shows you're intelligent.

The what?

(Just kidding. But since we're both intelligent, why can't we see each others' point of view? I'm saying Microsoft isn't completely bad, and that they've done some excellent work in developing Office. You're saying "quit defending Microsoft." I don't think you're being fair, or reasonable.)

Re:There's a reason

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Vinge would kick your ass for this kind of crap.

Um. So? That page describes a programming course, "Computer Networks and Distributed Systems." Why would you expect to learn Microsoft Office in a programming course? Now, a business productivity class, on the other hand... there I would expect them to teach Microsoft Office. Along with how to use a fax machine, and how to make photocopies, and how to compose a proper business letter.

As you can see, we're talking about two completely different contexts. Maybe this is why you and I are clashing so dramatically on this subject.

Re:There's a reason

[fferreres]

Software fails because it lacks that special something that provokes everyone to switch.

You pretend to explain success with suceess itself? Oh yes, the software is successfull if everyone starts using it, but it does not help us see why software fails.

So what we need to understand is how to make people switch. And people switch mostly because everyone else is switching. Or the inverse. So nobody switchs. Individuals sense "heard movement". So to be sucessfull you people to sense the "heard movement" for a sustained time. In any other case, the "heard" does not move.

Re:There's a reason

[Lord Vipor Scorpion]

OK, so you're a chef, and your knowledge is limited to personal desktop computing. That's your context, correct?

I have spent my entire professional life putting together computer systems for schools and businesses, from DOS through XP; the original Mac OS through 10.2; on Solaris, *BSD, and now Linux. The frustration, disappointment, and EXPENSE that Windows+Office have caused has been described enough on the Net, in print, in business, and in court that even you should have a better understanding of it than you let on. That's the context of this story.

Perhaps you post obsessively to every thread, but you made it sound like you're a fucking expert on office productivity applications. Reading back through your posts is sickening. You wrote some long letters? LETTERS? Did Clippy help you?

My wife wrote her dissertation in Word because I couldn't simplify SGML enough (this was before XML). 300 pages in MSWord, and every footnote was fucked up in some way: on the wrong page, split across pages, any stupid thing possible. The automatic table of contents was a joke. If it was all kept in one .doc, it would take 10 minutes to open. TO OPEN!!!

I find this hilariously like the "Net of a million lies." Sure you're not lying, but ask yourself how many people really want to get their computer advice from a chef?

Re:There's a reason

[Lord Vipor Scorpion]

*I* didn't say shit about how "Microsoft developed their products wrong." That was insac, who's absolutely right & stated it in a very civil manner. You responded to that post like a bully, so I gave you some shit for it. You ignored my points, and responded to me with a recrimination.

As for your insulting the work offered for free over on Freshmeat, I doubt either of us has used 90% of what's there, so your claim is groundless. In my actual experience, however, I can say that the best piece of software Microsoft has ever produced is inferior to at least 10% of the stuff on Freshmeat.

I'm not saying Microsoft is rotten to the core, I'm saying it's rotten *at* the core.

I can't believe you think the Windows user interface is awful. I thought that was what was good about Windows & Office. You should see the API.

Office has some good features. But that's like saying the US Government has some good features. You still can't avoid the preponderance of crappy features, poor implementation, and bugginess.

Re:There's a reason

[Twirlip of the Mists]

OK, so you're a chef, and your knowledge is limited to personal desktop computing. That's your context, correct?

Not precisely. Before the bubble burst, I spent about 15 years in the computer industry. I was a field engineer, an operator, a system admin, a consultant, an engineer, a manager, and finally an executive. But the last business venture burned me out so hard I decided to just take a pass on the whole thing and open a restaurant. That was earlier this year.

Reading back through your posts is sickening.

I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.

My wife wrote her dissertation in Word because I couldn't simplify SGML enough

My girlfriend wrote hers, in molecular genetics, in Word too, but not for the same reason. She did it because she liked Word just fine. I don't remember how many pages hers was-- something in the 300 range, like yours-- but she didn't have anything like the problems you described. Citations, tables of contents and figures, pagination; all worked perfectly.

Perhaps you guys were doing something wrong?

ask yourself how many people really want to get their computer advice from a chef?

I don't recall offering any advice. Just opinion. And my opinion is that Office would never have become the dominant product in its market if it were as bad as you say it is. The conclusion, therefore, is that it's nowhere near as bad as you say it is. The only outstanding question, then, is why you think so poorly of it.

Re:There's a reason

[Lord Vipor Scorpion]

You're either lying or stupid.

The restaurant business has always been the harshest start-up environment. That bubble was nothing compared to the torture that is running a restaurant: No holidays or time off, cutthroat economics, and egos that make most CEOs look like Gandhi. And you opened this "restaurant" in the middle of a recession? Sure.

Oh, and _your_ girlfriend is a PhD, too, who also wrote her dissertation in Word--even the same page count. What a coincidence! Yet we have the exact opposite opinion of Microsoft Office. How can that be?

Where you really gave yourself away was by saying that everything in her dissertation "all worked perfectly" in Microsoft Word. Anyone who's used Word knows that something always gets fucked up.

Re:There's a reason

[Twirlip of the Mists]

You're either lying or stupid.

And you, sir, are ugly, and your mother dresses you funny. Are we done calling each other names now?

The restaurant business has always been the harshest start-up environment.

Yes, it's very tough, particularly in the city where I live. The difference between my last startup venture and my present one is that I love what I'm doing now. That's why I've done it. Long hours, hardly any money, but an overwhelming passion for the work. (As opposed to my other business venture, which involved long hours, hardly any money, and unbelievable boredom.) That's why we opened a restaurant in the middle of a recession. (Of course, we're not technically in the middle of a recession, but that's neither here nor there.) Fortunately, I've got a hell of a partner who acts as the business manager, and a positive review last month has sent bookings way up. I think we'll be okay.

Thanks for your concern, though.

Oh, and _your_ girlfriend is a PhD, too, who also wrote her dissertation in Word--even the same page count.

I pulled her thesis and checked, just for you. It's 224 pages of text, counting citations, and about 30 pages of charts, graphs, and other figures. So the total is 254 pages. I overestimated a bit, but I knew it was in that area.

And yes, she's a Ph.D., and an M.D. UT Southwestern Medical Center, MSTP program, class of 2002. She's a first-year resident in general surgery now. What of it?

Anyone who's used Word knows that something always gets fucked up.

So your argument is so strong that you believe anybody who has had a different experience from yours must be a liar? That's mature.

The only reason I'm still responding to you is that with every post you make yourself look like a bigger ass. It's entertaining, to say the least.

Not enough money to be free...

[dagg]

It seems strange that there not be enough money to release something for free. Sometimes I get the impression that companies would normally release their product for free, but instead they see how much money they can weasel from the open source community. But on second thought, I'm sure that's not what usually happens. What usually happens (or what used to happen), is that companies will just bury their software forever. They hold out hope that their software will make them a buck in the future (somehow).

At least there is nowadays an alternative to burying the software forever.

--YerSex

Re:Not enough money to be free...

[Directrix1]

I like how this new company does not have enough money to "license" the software even though its under the same CEO. He can make it open if he wants. He just wants to suck in more money. Its ransomware nothing more.

Re:Not enough money to be free...

[MrAl]

Read the President of Gobe's reply around comment 80 or so. He doesn't have the source and Gobe can't just release it because they have venture (vulture) capitalists to report to.

Re:Not enough money to be free...

[justdisguyyaknow]

"Weasel from the open source community"?

I have to say that it's that sort of attitude that can really hurt the open source community. The fact of the matter is that an owner of intellectual property is free to do whatever they want with their property (subject to copyright law and other public policy).

Remember, it's __only__ the existence of IP law that makes the GPL possible. (Without copyright, the copyleft viral effect of the GPL goes away.) Some might argue copyright is immoral, but the fact of the matter is that it is the basis of the freedom that the GPL is built upon (until a revolution comes and legislates that all software must be free).

If a company wants to put their code in a drawer and not release it, that's their choice. The weasel comment makes it sound like they're holding something for ransom and doing something immoral. They're not. They have no more obligation to release their code than you have to share you ATM pin code. (Yes the analogy isn't dead on.)

They should ransom it

[Anonymous Coward]

As Seen Here. Make some money, then release the code, everyone wins. (Yay Everyone!)

It's not going to fail...

[JessLeah]

...because it is under, or not under, any specific license (even our beloved GPL). It's going to fail because Microsoft's "mindshare" is so phenomenal that it would take nothing short of a miracle for ANYONE to impact its 95+% of the Word Processor market.

I don't like that reality either. But, at the moment, it's true. That's why we need to keep pushing the existing suits remaining against MS. Because they DO have a huge monopoly, because they DID get it through illicit means, and because it IS making it virtually impossible for competitors (like the Gobe Productive people) to break into any of the many fields MS dominates.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Woah, woah. Office is the most popular productivity product because it's good. Complain all you like about Microsoft; they've produced an exceptional set of products in Office. It doesn't have anything to do with mindshare or monopoly power.

Consider the Mac. There are basically two office products for the Mac: Office and AppleWorks. Although some people use AppleWorks, Office owns the Mac productivity market. Why? Because Office for Mac is a good-- not perfect, but good-- product.

The answer to the market dominance of Office isn't to prosecute Microsoft for playing unfairly. The answer is to create an office product that's better than Microsoft Office. It shouldn't be too hard; everybody around here always complains about how Microsoft sucks, and how Office sucks, right? So coming up with something better ought to be child's play. ;-)

Re:It's not going to fail...

[Ty]

This is complete assinine bullshit. Although office is a good suite of software, but it remains dominent because of a monopoly. Ask any corporation why they use MS Office. The top two answers will be: 1. Because everyone else does and we need it for easy document exchange. 2. It is too costly to retrain our staff.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[the_rev_matt]

>The answer to the market dominance of Office isn't to prosecute Microsoft for playing unfairly.

Actually, it is. When a monopoly abuses their power , the solution is to prosecute. That's what happened. Microsoft was found guilty of abusing monopoly power. The fact that the justice department decided to not even slap MSFT on the wrist is seperate issue.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[nelsonal]

Sun's StarOffice is profitable. There was an article in BW on Sun a while ago, and McNealy confirmed this. While that doesn't mean huge marketshare gains, it does mean that someone besides MS is selling an office suite in decent numbers. Also, Corel WP suite is now included on all the major OEM's budget systems, of course that was a win over MS Works, but it sure looks like a sign of things to come.
GoBe failed because their major marketing happened here, and as much as we all like software, none of us buy enough to keep a company in busienss. Look at how much MS, Sun, IBM and the others market to business purchasers. There are no businesses that are easy to get into, look at all the failing .coms most of them had no established competitors.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Um... that's got nothing to do with a monopoly, dude. That's got to do with the fact that Office gives them one thing that nobody else can-- universality-- and the fact that there's no compelling reason for them to spend the time and money retraining their people to use something new. What you described is basically the same reason why any software product attains market dominance. Adobe Photoshop is the market leader in professional image editing for the same reasons that you mentioned; is Adobe a monopoly?

If something significantly better than Office came along, that also offered compatibility with Office in the ways that people need, you can believe it would be successful. I, personally, have no real idea what features or functions this notional product would have to have to excite the people who currently use Office. I suspect that the people who work on projects like this one and like Open Office don't really, either.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[JessLeah]

Oh, actually I don't think Office sucks at all. It's quite nice (albeit a bit large?). No, but you must consider this: If MS hadn't obtained their 95+% monopoly in desktop OS market share, might WordPerfect or some other alternative (remember Ami Pro?) became just as good as Word is now?

There are still people who prefer WordPerfect. They're rarer than blue moons, but hey.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

When a monopoly abuses their power, the solution is to prosecute.

Did you miss the part of my post where I talked about the fact that Office is the leading productivity software product for reasons that have nothing to do with Microsoft's monopoly? It's not like they're bundling Office with every copy of Windows or anything.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[spitzak]

If that was true then why is the #1 question asked about any new piece of word processing software is not "is it as good or better than MicroSoft word?" but is instead "how well can it import/export MicroSoft Office?".

Nobody can complete is because the ability to compete requires the ability to read and write a file format that they keep secret. That is monopoly behavior. If Word was so good they should be able to compete just fine reading and writing an open file format.

Reverse engineering this horrendous format requires so much effort that little time is left for making the rest of the program. Also the insistance that the program import and export the format without making too many changes severly limits the ability of the program to treat the text any differently than MicroSoft Word does, thus making "innovation" almost impossible.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[Anonymous Coward]

Another confirmation of a curious recent trend on Slashdot. A high user ID, the "hey guys don't be harsh / play nice" plea leading directly into a Microsoft is best conclusion, the feeling that you're reading a post written by your VP for company distribution, iced with a 'good-natured' anti-Slash troll and the suggestion that until you write a better Office suite, STFU. Bluntly, the feeling that marketing companies are starting to hire people with better technical backgrounds to astroturf MS.
Office is dominant because of closed document formats. Period. If every OSS developer had full access to the format (assuming it's internally coherent, many here who claim to have seen it suggest it isn't) would you still argue that people will gladly pay the extra $700 CDN for dancing paperclips and automated document formating that, at least for me, significantly hampers productivity?

Re:It's not going to fail...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

If MS hadn't obtained their 95+% monopoly in desktop OS market share, might WordPerfect or some other alternative (remember Ami Pro?) became just as good as Word is now?

I don't think so. As far as I know, Microsoft has never bundled any version of Office, or its predecessors, with any version of Windows or DOS. (If I'm wrong, correct me; also, I'm aware that some vendors bundle Office with their computers, but that's not the same thing at all.) So you've always had to go out and buy Office if you want to use it. I don't see how Microsoft's market position in the OS arena has any bearing at all.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[los furtive]

It's not like they're bundling Office with every copy of Windows or anything.

Uh what about WordPad and Outlook Express? Might not be the Office Suite, but it kinda ties you to their formats, don't it?

Throw in the fact that through their OS monopoly they have managed to convince almost all major PC vendors to include some sort of Office bundle, even if it's MS Works (which includes a full version of Word btw) then it starts to feel like they really do bundle it with every machine.

Only now are vendors starting to offer other office suites.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Nobody can complete is because the ability to compete requires the ability to read and write a file format that they keep secret. That is monopoly behavior.

No, it's not. I have written a word processor with exciting new features. It's called SurfWriter. I refuse to tell you the file format, because I don't want anybody else reading or writing SurfWriter files. This is not monopoly behavior. It's a simple business decision.

If Word was so good they should be able to compete just fine reading and writing an open file format.

Well, seeing as how just about every program can read and write Word files as it is, I'd say that this is, in fact, the case. But the important point here is that they don't have to. If Microsoft wants to keep their file format secret, they're free to do so.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Astroturf? Heh. Read my posting history, you twit. This is a relatively new account, but I've been posting on Slashdot for years. I've made lots of friends and a few enemies in that time. I've been accused of being a fascist, a religious zealot, and a troll, but never an astroturf.

Office is dominant because of closed document formats. Period.

Office is dominant because it is superior to any of the alternatives. For as long as I can remember, exchanging word processing documents has been no problem. I remember using Microsoft Word 4 for the Mac (under System 6, even), and exchanging files with people who used FullWrite Professional, or WriteNow, or Nisus Writer. Closed, open, whatever, those programs could all read and write the Word file format without any noticeable trouble.

The thing was, generally speaking, Word was a better word processor than the others. Microsoft Word 4 was the shit when it came to producing long documents. I wrote a lot of stuff with Word 4.

Then came Word 5 and Word 6, which were pretty lame, but they were still better than the competing products. So, over the years, Microsoft Word became the dominant Mac word processor. The story on the DOS, and later Windows, side is similar.

You can argue that it was about file formats all you like, but it never was. It was about features and ease-of-use.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[inode_buddha]

I'm going to call you on your comment about mindshare and monopoly power.

A recent conversation with my production supervisor strongly reveals the power of mindshare through market dominance:

(me) "Hey, could you recommend some tips to learn about databases in general?"

(him) "You mean Access?"

(me) "Nah, just general database concepts"

(him) "Access is easy"

*rest of conversation snipped because it makes my brain hurt*

Now, why do you think Office owns the Mac productivity market? Think again.

BTW, I use OpenOffice on Linux (personal preference). In most work environments this probably isn't going to fly, simply because anything that is not 100% MS is "nonstandard"
and therefore risky (aka not desirable).

On a slightly related note, it's interesting how many companies seem to want all the guarantees without having to offer any ("I hereby disclaim thee, O liability!") and of course, if you actually read and understand ie, EULA's you'll notice how they disclaim as much as possible.

All of which makes me wonder why the fsck am I paying them?

Just speaking from personal experience.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[nmg]

Oh my god, they're shoving RTF and HTML down our throats! How dare they!

Re:It's not going to fail...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

I'm going to call you on your comment about mindshare and monopoly power.

Hmm.

Okay, look, I stand by my comment about monopoly power. Compare the way Microsoft has handled IE versus the way they've handled Office. IE is integrated into the OS, and given away for free. That's abuse of monopoly, clearly; you can't get Windows without IE, so trying to compete with IE is suicide. But Office is just the opposite. Microsoft doesn't even bundle it with the OS, much less integrate it, and they charge a fortune for it. Clearly that's not monopoly abuse.

I may, on the other hand, have been wrong about the mindshare issue. If you mutter "spreadsheet" and 50,000 people all scream "Excel!" back at you, that's not something that's easy to overcome.

All right, let's call it a draw. ;-)

Re:It's not going to fail...

[tshak]

Because they DO have a huge monopoly, because they DID get it through illicit means

No, they didn't. No court has ever found this to be the case, and most reasonable people consider MS's success due to a combination of good marketing and innovation. This pisses /. off, but the bottom line is OSS is still _playing catchup_.

Don't forget about Word Perfect. I don't remember ever using anything but WP. And for those that didn't, they used Wordstar. Hardly anyone used Word at one point in time - it's not MS's fault that they got ahead of the game and won.

Oh, and if MS is so evil, why is the "UnRedmond" store linked from your sig running on ASP.NET? Seems kind of hypocritcal does it not?

Re:It's not going to fail...

[Lord Vipor Scorpion]

You are far too convinced of your own opinion. Of course, people might read your argument & accept some of it based on your intensity, you reject everything out of hand. That's FUD, bud.

"I'm aware that some vendors bundle Office with their computers, but that's not the same thing at all."

Do you seriously believe this statement? The bundling is everything. Try this: s/Office/Windows/g

In my experience, Office is mediocre at best (especially Word, Access, and Outlook).

If you're not getting paid to astroturf, ask yourself, "Why am I not getting paid to astroturf?"

Re:It's not going to fail...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're clearly upset because suddenly there's objectivity in the air where once there was just the musky odor of semen from the constant Slashdot circlejerk. Sorry, chucklehead, you've been bested (again), so just take your lumps.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[inode_buddha]

OK, I'll go with a draw on that. The bundling of IE spooks me though; if I mutter "browser', 50,000 people scream "IE".

Practical upshot of it all: it's a draw

Re:It's not going to fail...

[Lord Vipor Scorpion]

Oh, you're a Mac user. That explains a lot. I've never seen a group more willing to bend over and grab their ankles. I always thought you wished it was Steve Jobs banging your backside when it's really Bill Gates, but you seem to understand. Hmm, maybe it's the other way around?

In your defense, I will say that MacOS Office 2001 is far better than Windows Office 2000: No viruses, XP style interface w/o the huge resource suck. But then Office.X screwed up--WTF happened to Outlook, & what's this half-assed Outlook Express wannabe?

Also, you fail to mention ClarisWorks/AppleWorks, which is wierd. That's actually the predecessor to Gobe, so I would think you'd at least compare those two so as to be more on-topic.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[be-fan]

Actually, can you even buy a new PC these days without Word (or MS Works) being bundled in?

Re:It's not going to fail...

[be-fan]

The issue is far more complex than you understand. Bundling agreements is where a large percentage of the population gets Office. Because of Microsoft's dominence of the operating system, it becomes easy for them to give companies who bundle Office preferential licensing terms for Windows. Also, there is the ethical question. Should an OS monopoly be making other software at all? It's an undeniable fact that Microsoft has dominated all sorts of market segments with their products. In the segments they've conquered, the Microsoft product is basically the only choice. Are you going to tell me that their control of the underlying OS doesn't have something to do with this? If you look at other markets, even if a product is dominent, there are lots of other viable options. For example, lot's of programs share the 3D modeling applications market segment, even though a few key products dominate. Same thing for audio/video editing. How come the same situation doesn't exist for Word or Visual Studio?

Re:It's not going to fail...

[Anonymous Coward]

That software you used seven years ago imported Word docs is irrelevant in 2002. As I'd never heard of Nisus Writer, I looked them up and found that they gave up trying to support Word directly after 95. As they put it, they don't have the resources to "chase" (not my scare quotes) changing document formats. They're better off than the other two, who appear no longer in business. Nisus contradicts you.
MS got to where they are by being the first widely-accepted GUI attempt on the PC platform more than anything else. Wholesale lifting of Mac ideas, early customer ignorance, a direct bullseye with anti-IBM OS2/PC-DOS FUD and owning the OS these office suites run on all helped. They took full advantage of an incredible historical accident to make their closed document format a defacto standard. Business accumen for sure, technical excellence hardly.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[Waffle Iron]

You keep contradicting yourself. One the one hand you claim that Office dominates only because it is so much better than its competitors. On the other, you admit that it dominates because of the historical accident that it is compatible with itself and users have a barrier to switching.

You can't have it both ways.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's "Microsoft", not "MicroSoft." Microsoft never used mixed case in any of their publications (at least as far back as the late eighties AFAIK), and they've trademarked "Microsoft" not "MicroSoft." This mistake makes an otherwise insightful comment look less-than-insightful.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Of course, people might read your argument & accept some of it based on your intensity, you reject everything out of hand. That's FUD, bud.

Uh. No. FUD stands for "fear, uncertainty, and doubt." It annoys me when people misapply "FUD" almost as much as it annoys me when people misapply "monopoly."

The bundling is everything.

I've said this before. Consider the contrast between the way Microsoft handled IE and the way they handed Office. IE is part of the operating system now; it can't be removed at all. Office is not part of the OS. It's an optional product that you have to go out and buy. Microsoft used their operating system monopoly to destroy Netscape, by integrating IE into the OS. They have done no such thing with Office.

Microsoft has abused their monopoly power on several occasions. This isn't one of them. Don't discredit yourself by making false or overstated accusations.

In my experience, Office is mediocre at best

Compared to what, I wonder?

If you're not getting paid to astroturf....

So now anybody who has a balanced opinion of Microsoft is an astroturfer? Whatever you say, friend.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

if I mutter "browser', 50,000 people scream "IE".

"Aieeeeeee!"

Yes, but it's all about how you get there. Microsoft destroyed Netscape by tying their browser to the OS. (Later, they put the last nails in the coffin by producing a much better browser than Netscape's.) They've won the office productivity war, however, almost exclusively on the strength of their products. Credit where it's due.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[mattdm]

Woah, woah. Office is the most popular productivity product because it's good. Complain all you like about Microsoft; they've produced an exceptional set of products in Office. It doesn't have anything to do with mindshare or monopoly power.

It might be good now, but at the time that there was competition, it was definitely inferior to offerings from other companies. Now, Lotus and All-the-various-owners-of-Wordperfect did some pretty stupid things, so it's not all Microsoft's fault, but I don't believe for a minute that MS Office won out on *merit*. They won through bundling, and they won through marketing.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[mattdm]

"Innovation" -- we keep hearing that word, but I've yet to see it from Microsoft. They do an *excellent* job of taking other people's innovative ideas and packaging them in a way that is Good Enough To Work, and they do an excellent job of buying up little innovative companies and products, but I've yet to see one bit of actual innovation.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[JessLeah]

For the umpteenth time, the store is run by Cafe Press. They run Windows. I did not choose their OS, thanks. Believe me, I would not have chosen what they did.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[Anonymous Coward]

I used, personally, Wordstar 2000 Pro. I taught WordPerfect 5.0. Then along came Word, which was so bad I bought Ami Pro to try to avoid using Word. There is NO doubt in my mind that bundling is the only reason Word is even on the shelves today. Every program I mentioned was better than the Word product of the time and every one of them either died or was pushed off into relative obscurity.

Now I use Open Office and I think I'll take a look at GOBE. My household is Microsoft free. We don't need to support a criminal monopoly. So we don't.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Oh, you're a Mac user. That explains a lot. I've never seen a group more willing to bend over and grab their ankles.

How's this for grabbing my ankles? Fuck you, you ignorant son of a whore.

There. Now we're even. On with the show.

WTF happened to Outlook

Nothing. There has never been an Outlook in the Mac version of Office. There's a Mac version of Outlook, available separately and for free, but it only works as an Exchange Server client. I've only ever known one guy who used it and he was kinda... well, let's just say he wasn't the most critically minded soul you could ever hope to meet.

& what's this half-assed Outlook Express wannabe?

Are you talking about Entourage? It's actually a pretty nice piece of kit. Don't use it myself; I'm not big with the "personal information organizer" things these days. But back when I had contacts and appointments and shit to keep up with, it was actually a much nicer tool than Outlook 2000 was on my PC.

Also, you fail to mention ClarisWorks/AppleWorks

I mentioned AppleWorks in another post. The reason I didn't mention it in my comments about olden style word processors is because, if I remember, it didn't exist in those days. I'm talking about circa 1989, and ClarisWorks 1.0 didn't ship until late '91.

Incidentally, ClarisWorks (later AppleWorks) is a predecessor to Gobe Productive only in the sense that Scott Holdaway, Bob Hearn, Tom Hoke, Scott Lindsey and a few others worked on ClarisWorks before leaving to start Gobe. There's no code or IP shared between the ClarisWorks and Productive. So your statement isn't really accurate, you know.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[tshak]

So? If you're boycotting MS then don't promote a business that uses them.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[tshak]

If their products were just Good Enough To Work, they would have never won in the office productivity or consumer desktop space. The bottom line is that their products and business model was far superior. The old kings of the hill are now dead. Microsoft was the underdog at one point. True, part of their strategy is buying up small companies, but that doesn't negate from the quality of their software. Plus, it's the talent that they aquire most of the time, not the actual product. For example, both IIS and IE were born from strategic aquisitions. However, they've both been completely rewritten since then.

I'll agree that MS has it's flaws (like any company), and I could spend a LOT of time critisizing them, but I'm sick of people jealous of their legitimate success.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

One the one hand you claim that Office dominates only because it is so much better than its competitors. On the other, you admit that it dominates because of the historical accident that it is compatible with itself and users have a barrier to switching.

Not precisely. I'm not saying that users have a barrier to switching. I'm saying that they have no compelling reason to switch. I guess you could call that a barrier if you want, but I don't think that's a very accurate way of describing it.

Look, it's really simple. Office is the most widely used productivity product. How did it get that way? By being better than its competitors. Any product that competes with Office will have to be better than Office for people to seriously consider it. In addition, because Office is so entrenched, competing products will have to be compatible with Office in order to be considered.

The typical "open source" approach-- the "it's more-or-less good enough for what I want" approach-- simply won't fly here. In order to make your product competitive with Office, you have to make it better than Office, and so far none of the alternatives are. Alternatives like Open Office, and, yeah, Gobe Productive, have basically nothing more than "we're not Microsoft" to recommend them. Which is fine if your goal is to be marginal. If your goal is to be competitive, though, you're going to have to raise your standards quite a bit.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

My household is Microsoft free. We don't need to support a criminal monopoly.

Nice to see that your opinion isn't biased or anything.

Sheesh.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[Lumpy]

yeah outlook is so widely used because nothing else is anywhere as good...

that is a fricking bold-faced lie.

EVERY It person on this planet will gladly throw outlook out of their offices or corperate in a second if they could... the CEO,CTO,CFo and EIEIO will piss and mona because something tiny changed and also because they cant send bloat-mail with background inages and HTML text.

outlook is the #1 largest security hole on the planet larger than setting your root password to nothing and having all ports open and running unpatches services without a firewall.

Outlook sucks, everyone admits this as fact except for microsoft. and unfortunately the only other "corperate alternative" is lotus notes and it's horribly overpriced.

If they made evolution in a windows version and made an easy to use sendmail+group calendar system that was dumbed down enough so that MCSE's could understand it we could undermine outlook+exchange within a year..

Re:It's not going to fail...

[spitzak]

You don't go back far enough. MicroSoft's original logo had a capital S and the o looked a bit like the AT&T death star. This was gradually refined to a notch in the o and a small s before they switched to the serif fonts in about 1995. Also all their products were clearly named MSblah (ie MSDOS, MSMouse, etc) and the S was always capitalized. Even in the Serif font they printed MS in capitals a lot.

MicroSoft! MicroSoft! MicroSoft! Pbbbttt!

Re:It's not going to fail...

[inode_buddha]

Most definitely, "how you get there" has a lot to do with the issue at hand. In that regard, the method used to "get there" make perfect sense from a business perspective; unfortunately it seems to be filthy (here in the US) from an ethical perspective. It's really a question of "What is your ethics anchored to, as a programmer, integrator, ISV, company, etc. I never thought I would say this, but perhaps RMS is right about a few things. I'm not against big business per se (as a registered voter, etc;) I am for ethical business practices in the US, which sadly seem to be going extinct within my lifetime.

No, I will debate whether IE is better than Netscape after using Mozilla. Mozilla is all the more impressive when I consider that I cannot find any monetary motive for it, ethical or otherwise... thus freeing moz developers from Yet Another Thing To Deal With (TM). Whether IE or Netscape is the superior browser is very much open to question in my experience. It does everything I want, including half a dozen different multimedia formats.

No doubt, MS has won the office productivity war; I'm not debating that. I *am* debating the methods used to obtain that status, thereby questioning your "Credit where it's due." statement. (wrt "mindshare" in a previous conversation)

BTW, the last I checked, "Aieeeeee" was French for "garlic".

Re:It's not going to fail...

[dmaxwell]

I already tend to distrust Office because I cannot be assured that I will have a way to open documents made with it in the future. 5,10,20 years or more go by and one day I realize that if I ever need to get at some old data I'm going to have a hell of a time with it. You see, the format my data is stored in is a secret. That makes Office next to useless as an archival format. Unless I'm constantly trasformatting as well as transcopying my data to new media, I may as well XOR it with a one time pad and throw away the pad.

Since I already mistrust the tools in the world's most used office suite, why should I trust yours? What is so wonderful about Surfwriter that I essentially encrypt my life and business with it?

Yes, Microsoft can make the business decision to make their formats a secret. Because they are secret, I make the business decision not to entrust anything to them. Incidentally if just about every program on Windows can open Word files it is because Office dlls function as an engine to let them be opened. No third party program can be counted on to open all Office files perfectly. Not even Office can be counted on to open all files made five years ago with earlier versions.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

unfortunately it seems to be filthy (here in the US) from an ethical perspective

See, I really kind of check out at this point. I'd say that some of Microsoft's business practices have been illegal, and some of them have been heavy-handed, but I'm not personally aware of any that I'd call unethical. But maybe I use the word differently from you. My girlfriend is a doc, so we talk about ethics in that context pretty often. Questions like, "Can a clinically depressed patient give informed consent?" And, "At what point is it worse to continue treatment of a terminal disease than to discontinue it?" Stuff like that, real head-scratchers.

Microsoft, among other acts, used their monopoly position to coerce partners and vendors into signing deals that were good for Microsoft but bad for everybody else. That's not fair, but it's not genocide, either. It's illegal, and they should be punished for it somehow, but it's not something I get really worked up about. I like to think that I have a sense of perspective on this sort of thing. But maybe I'm just detached and indifferent. Hard to tell.

I never thought I would say this, but perhaps RMS is right about a few things.

Oh, come on. Let's not say things that we can't take back. ;-)

I am for ethical business practices

I absolutely agree, but like I said, I might have a slightly different idea of ethics. In a competitive situation, if you have an advantage, I believe the right thing to do is to press that advantage. The closest example of this I can think of from my line of work is something that happened to me a few weeks ago at the restaurant. One of my purveyors got his hands on some Tasmanian steelhead trout, and he wanted to sell it to me at $21 a pound. Now, I buy thousands and thousands of dollars a month worth of fish from this guy; I'm an important customer. I told him he was gonna give me the trout-- his whole shipment of it-- for $10 a pound, or I was gonna take my business elsewhere. Now, I had a pretty good idea that he was buying the fish for right around that price, so I knew he wasn't going to take a huge loss or anything, but I pressed my advantage anyway. He offered it to me for $12, I told him I'd give him $11, and he said okay. Did I screw him? Maybe, in one sense. But he and I have a relationship, and relationships are about give and take. I screwed him on the Tasmanian trout, but I know for a fact that he makes a fortune off of me on the abalone and the conch, so it's a wash. If somebody from a regulatory agency looked at my business practices really closely sometime, they'd probably take serious issue, and maybe even find a way to fine me. But this is how things are done, and it's a system that works well for everybody.

I *am* debating the methods used to obtain that status, thereby questioning your "Credit where it's due." statement.

My position is real simple. Microsoft has built some kick-ass software. Their software hasn't been perfect, but it's been solid and functional, and wildly successful. They deserve recognition and respect for this fact. They deserve a sound spanking for breaking various laws, and maybe they deserve to be called bullies, but that doesn't change the fact that they've built some kick-ass software. Thus, credit where it's due.

BTW, the last I checked, "Aieeeeee" was French for "garlic".

Not where I come from. But be that as it may, I'm pretty sure it's also Italian for, "My boyfriend has sold his overcoat!" At least, so I gather from those operas my girlfriend makes me go to.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

EVERY It person on this planet will gladly throw outlook out of their offices or corperate in a second if they could

This statement is so wrong, I don't even know where to begin. Do you even know what Outlook and Exchange do? Email is just a small part of it. The public folder function alone is enough to seal the deal in many cases. Contact management, especially in a sales organization, is something that can't be half-assed. And calendaring, of course, is a critical function in a lot of environments.

The Outlook/Exchange combo isn't going anywhere until something comes along that can provide the same functionality, with the same or even greater ease of use.

Your attitude is typical of what's wrong with the "open source" developers in general, and why there is no competitor to the Microsoft productivity products in particular. Those guys-- as well as yourself, evidently-- tend to look at something like Outlook/Exchange and say, "That's simple! We can do that with Sendmail and IMAP!" without knowing what you're talking about, or thinking about the implications. The result is half-assed solutions (Evolution, Sendmail, "+group calendar system," whatever that means) that nobody takes seriously. This, more than anything else, is what stands in the way of a successful "open source" productivity product of any variety.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

I already tend to distrust Office because I cannot be assured that I will have a way to open documents made with it in the future.

How about with Office? If you're saving long-term archival copies of your documents without saving long-term archival copies of your applications, you're not doing a very good job.

And if long-term storage is your #1 priority, you'd be best served by getting rid of that computer completely. Paper is a much better long-term archive medium than any electronic format ever could be. Great user interface, too, and the ease of use just can't be beat. Paper is good for up to 100 years with no special precautions, or up to 500 years in an inert environment. Beyond that, consider photo-etching your documents onto a durable metal; nickel is a good candidate. Etched sheets of nickel-plated steel should last for 10,000 years or more in even the most unfriendly of environments.

Hey, if you're going to plan for the future, you might as well do it right. Right?

What is so wonderful about Surfwriter that I essentially encrypt my life and business with it?

Um. You do know that SurfWriter is a notional program used only for purposes of illustration, right? As far as I know, the idea was invented at Apple; the original Macintosh Toolbox developer documentation ("Inside Macintosh") included examples that referred to a word processor called SurfWriter. It's sort of been tradition to talk about SurfWriter (or SurfPaint, or SurfDB, or whatever) when you need to refer to a typical application without complicating matters by talking about a specific one.

Just, you know, FYI.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[Xtifr]

Did you miss the part of my post where I talked about the fact that Office is the leading productivity software product for reasons that have nothing to do with Microsoft's monopoly

Repeating a falsehood doesn't make it true -- Office is the leading suite for reasons that have everything to do with MS's abuse of their monopoly in OSes. Ever hear the phrase, "Windows ain't done till Lotus won't run"? WordPefect, Corel, AmiPro, Lotus, and Borland all had products that were higher quality and better selling, at one time, than MS's offerings, and all of them got screwed by MS's games with secret APIs and MS's ability to browbeat hardware vendors.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[sirinek]

This is not monopoly behavior. It's a simple business decision.

Bullshit. Its monopoly behavior because Microsoft was determined to be a monopoly.

siri

Re:It's not going to fail...

[Lord Vipor Scorpion]

Your obstinate praise for Microsoft and rejection of any other conceivable opinion amounts to FUD. This article is about Gobe Productive, and tangentially about free software. When the entire point of all of your posts is to say that the only viable office suite is MS Office, the main effect is to create fear, uncertainty, and doubt in other Slashdotters (who may not know better).

I think Microsoft is planning on doing the same thing with Office as they did with IE. The fact that they haven't seems to have more to do with their inability to program well; anybody who's had to deal with COM or even OLE knows the bulky ugliness that is Windows+Office.

In my experience, MS Office is mediocre, at best, compared to Gobe Productive. Microsoft is working on a version of Office that incorporates all of the programs into one app. That is essentially what Gobe achieved after several iterations (Claris->Appleworks->Gobe). Apple tried this, too, but failed. Also, Gobe's spreadsheet program wouldn't zoom off wildly everytime the user tries to scroll down.

Actually, your opinion of Microsoft reminds me of my opinion of California: I bitch about it, but I've never lived anywhere else; and the truth is, I love it. My opinion on Microsoft is the exact opposite of my opinion on California.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[juhaz]

What if I don't have OS or hardware to run that antique version of Office any more? Yeah, maybe you can save the os as well, but hardware is not going to last forever, it will broke at some time. And what then? Office and OS required to run office don't run on the modern hardware and your stuff is gone.

Point of open format was exactly that, YOU DON'T NEED the application, or any other variable to be exactly the same it was when the document was originally created to document do be able to access it at some point in the future.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[Derek S]

In the experience of most other people, Office is at least better than any of the alternatives. I've managed to switch entirely over to Openoffice at work, but I mostly stick to basic features of the word processor and spreadsheet. If I ever have to do anything complicated (particularly if the resulting file has to be shared with other people), I'd have to go with Office. Even in WINE it runs rings around Openoffice, and is just a more polished product.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Your obstinate praise for Microsoft and rejection of any other conceivable opinion amounts to FUD.

Wrong. If I were to say, for example, that you should avoid free software because the Tilly incident demonstrates that one well-placed claim from a current or former employer could yank a piece of so-called "free" software right out of the market leaving you with no easy alternatives and no support whatsoever, that would be FUD. Saying that Microsoft does some good work and deserves credit for it, and that anybody who wants to beat Microsoft at their game has to be at least as good, is not FUD. See the difference?

When the entire point of all of your posts is to say that the only viable office suite is MS Office, the main effect is to create fear, uncertainty, and doubt in other Slashdotters

Have you not been reading? The point of this thread is that "open source" competitors to Office are not currently good enough. The point is that there are no viable alternatives to Office yet. There is no sensible context in which this could possibly be construed as FUD. If anything, it should be a fucking rallying cry for people, such as yourself, you want to bring Microsoft Office's dominance of the market to an end. How to do that? Be better. But instead, people such as yourself get defensive, shout from the rooftops that Office sucks and that anybody who disagrees must be an idiot, a Mac user, or a Microsoft employee. Way to change the world, guys.

In my experience, MS Office is mediocre, at best, compared to Gobe Productive.

Your opinion is different from mine, and from most people's. That's not to say that you're wrong, but I do think it's worth wondering why, on such a relatively straightforward question, your opinion is so different from the commonly held one. Obviously your experiences have been different, but is that all there is to it?

Actually, your opinion of Microsoft reminds me of my opinion of California

You have not been listening, or perhaps I have not been communicating effectively. I have "lived" with other tools than Office. I started out, as I wrote before, using Microsoft Word 4.0 for the sole reason that it was the best word processor available. When Word 5.0 and 6.0 happened-- which were terrible-- I tried every alternative I could find. I wrote volumes of user documentation in LaTeX, for crying out loud. I've used practically every document tool, from Word to SimpleText to FrameMaker to QuarkXPress to Lyx to (shudder) Open Office. None of them is as good as Word 4.0 was then, or as Word 2000 or Word 10 are today. So the idea that I've never "lived anywhere else" is kinda off the mark.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Its monopoly behavior because Microsoft was determined to be a monopoly.

Having a monopoly, in and of itself, is not against the law. Using a monopoly in one area to gain or attempt to gain a monopoly in another area, however, is.

The various departments of justice have accused Microsoft of every violation that could possibly be interpreted as illegal. And yet they have not accused Microsoft of any antitrust violations related to Microsoft Office.

Why do you think that is?

Re:It's not going to fail...

[JessLeah]

I'm not promoting their business. I'm promoting my products, which I happen to be distributing using their services.

Don't like that? That's nice. Give me an alternative that does everything they do, as well as they do, and runs something other than Windows.

Can't do that? Tough cookies for you.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[Planesdragon]

It might be good now, but at the time that there was competition, it was definitely inferior to offerings from other companies. Now, Lotus and All-the-various-owners-of-Wordperfect did some pretty stupid things, so it's not all Microsoft's fault, but I don't believe for a minute that MS Office won out on *merit*. They won through bundling, and they won through marketing.

Back in the day, MS Office had to be "better" in the combination of cost, usability, and ease-of-transition compared to its competition. AFAIK, MS did this by building Wordperfect-specific and Lotus-specific help into Word and Excel--and bundling them together.

Now, since then, MS has had to compete agianst itself. Each version of Office since, oh, 4.0 at least, has had a marked improvement over the previous edition. Maybe not a clear-cut across-the-board improvement, but always at least something "better."

Re:It's not going to fail...

[Planesdragon]

Outlook sucks, everyone admits this as fact except for microsoft. and unfortunately the only other "corperate alternative" is lotus notes and it's horribly overpriced.

Actually, Outlook's gotten a bit better than pervious versions. The massive security holes are more legacy software or a consequence of the monopoly than anything else. (Consequence of the monopoly: if everyone ran PINE instead of outlook, and someone found a hole in PINE, it'd be a huge hole just based on the installation size.)

Oh, and there IS a different alternative. Go novell, and use groupwise. (yes, it's a program I dislike almost as much as I dislike outlook, but it does everything that a "corporate" e-mail system needs to.)

Re:It's not going to fail...

[captaineo]

You do have a good point. For most people, probably the safest economical way to back up text documents is by printing them on high quality paper, and storing multiple copies in different locations. If the need arises to retrieve any data, scan the paper and use OCR software to convert it into whatever format is currently popular.

For archiving images, printing on high-quality paper with a good printer would work, although not so cheaply.

Sound and video are even more difficult, because you're pretty much confined to some sort of magnetic or optical format, which may not be readable on any machine in the future. (good old optical film with an optical soundtrack might work, at horrific expense...)

Re:It's not going to fail...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

probably the safest economical way to back up text documents is by printing them on high quality paper, and storing multiple copies in different locations

I stick with the tried and true: write 'em on calfskin, roll 'em up in clay jars, and store 'em in dry caves in the middle of the desert. My system isn't perfect, though. Back in the 40's, a bunch of my stash disappeared. I think somebody swiped some of my jars. Good thing I had backup copies.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[mattdm]

Their business model was obviously superior. Judged on technical merit alone, though, the products weren't and aren't. And my question was: what actual innovations have come from Microsoft? Only a few, and those aren't exactly leaping to mind. This doesn't mean their success isn't "legitimate" -- but there's no evidence to support the idea that it comes from their contributions to technology.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice to see that your opinion isn't biased or anything.

My God! After reading all of your unabashedly apologist posts throughout this topic, I can't believe that you would accuse somebody else of being biased.

Too bad that moderator points seem to be allocated based on how much BS one spouts through the week...

Re:It's not going to fail...

[Lord Vipor Scorpion]

You actually try to spread more FUD while arguing that you're not spreading FUD. I don't think you deserve to be let off the hook.

Why does Microsoft deserve any credit? Is it necessary? What would this credit entail? Actually purchasing the product?

I don't care if you're employed by Microsoft of not. As I said before, you might as well be. You have done nothing but put down free and open software in every exchange we've had. You don't seem to like the community or culture that predominates on Slashdot. Why are you here? Your posts cannot be construed as anything but astroturfing.

I honestly, sincerely do not like Office. However, in deference to your piercing psychological insinuation, I will admit that I think that Office Productivity Suites, in general, are a dilettantish crutch for lazy & stupid people. Still, Microsoft Office is for the most lazy & stupid.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[Lord Vipor Scorpion]

I don't get it. You're as defensive about being a Mac user as you are about Microsoft Office being a great product. Why do you have such investment in these products? I care very little for both, and I don't want other people to feel like they *should* care for either just because you do.

You have changed my mind on Office 2001, especially Outlook, however. You're right; they're crappy.

Your pedantic explanation of Gobe's ancestry is either a half-assed nitpick and/or a sure sign you've never programmed anything. Claris->Gobe shows the maturation of a concept. It's obvious the same people created both, and that was my point. Interestingly, Microsoft seems to be headed towards that same concept. Why would they change Office if it as perfect as you say?

Re:It's not going to fail...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Why does Microsoft deserve any credit?

Because they have produced some good software.

Is it necessary?

No, but it's the right thing to do.

What would this credit entail?

It would entail persons such as yourself dropping your "everything Microsoft does sucks" attitude and acknowledging that their software is neither universally good nor universally bad, but rather in between. It would also entail persons who develop or advocate alternatives to the good Microsoft products, like IE and Office, get a bit more serious about it, instead of maintaining the "it's good enough, more or less" approach.

You have done nothing but put down free and open software in every exchange we've had.

That's because it's generally not very good. If that makes me an astroturfer in your eyes, you need to reconsider what that means.

However, in deference to your piercing psychological insinuation, I will admit that I think that Office Productivity Suites, in general, are a dilettantish crutch for lazy & stupid people.

Well, then, I don't suppose I care much about what you think of Microsoft Office after all. I don't have much patience for elitism in any of its forms. It sounds to me like you're suffering from a delusion of superiority, and I can't help you with that.

Good day to you.

Re:It's not going to fail...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Why do you have such investment in these products?

I feel strongly that people's opinions should be balanced and reasoned. Your opinions are neither balanced nor reasoned. I'd love to be able to get to you realize this, and to get you to put a little more thought into them, but I've pretty much written this off by now. Now I'm just playing along with you to see how far you'll go to try to insult me. The more invective you spew, the more amusing I find it.

You have changed my mind on Office 2001, especially Outlook, however.

That's nice. I can't say I've thought about Office 2001 for quite a while now. Seeing as how Microsoft has been shipping Office v. X for so long and all.

Why would they change Office if it as perfect as you say?

Look back over my posts. Find the one where I said Office was perfect.

I've said, in case you haven't been listening, that Office is the best productivity product on the market. That doesn't mean it's flawless, and I have never even so much as implied such. It just means that it's better, overall, than all of its competitors. My point, of course, has been that the people who want Gobe Productive to be a serious player in the marketplace need to start working toward one all-important goal: making their product better than Office.

Your point, on the other hand, seems to have been that Office is obviously hammered shit, and that anybody who has a different opinion (and voices it) must be either an astroturfer, a liar, or stupid.

Kinda boggles the mind, doesn't it?

Re:It's not going to fail...

[Lord Vipor Scorpion]

Our contention over office productivity suites has been rhetorical rather than logical. Our exchange in the last two posts should show you that you are not thinking rationally:

#1: I ask why Microsoft would change Office into a more integrated product like Gobe Productive if that model didn't offer advantages over the current separate apps linked by OLE in Microsoft Office.

#2: You respond that MS Office isn't perfect, but that Gobe should be the one working toward becoming a better product than Office.

Can't you see that Microsoft's very own course of action goes against what you're saying?

You seem to have very little technical understanding of the products we're discussing, but insist that your layman's argument is more pertinent than any consideration of programming design.

BTW, have you ever used Gobe Productive on any platform? If you are just arguing for arguments sake, please save us both from wasting time.

IN SOVIET RUSSIA

[Anonymous Coward]

Danger release GPL in productive gobe

Re:IN SOVIET RUSSIA

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy mother.. that was the worst attempt at the soviet russia joke I've ever seen.

Re:IN SOVIET RUSSIA

[Anonymous Coward]

You know how it is -- something funny shows up and the Slashdorks, accustomed to the intricacies of Star Trek humor, take it out back and shoot it. "linux geek" and "comedic genius" aren't exactly synonymous terms.

do we really need it?

[g4dget]

It seems to me that OpenOffice fills the software category of "Microsoft Office clone" expertly. It is very full featured, XML-based, and is actively being developed by many people. Sure, it's a bit big and sluggish, but that should only make MS Office users feel more at home, and there is no guarantee that Gobe won't be as big and sluggish once it has been made cross-platform and equivalent functionality has been added.

It seems to me that, going beyond OpenOffice, the notion of an "integrated office suite" itself is broken. Gobe may be a little better than OpenOffice in design (I doubt it's as functional), but somehow that strikes me as just a meaner sabre tooth tiger--a better implementation of an evolutionary dead end. Even Microsoft has seen the light and claims that they will be trying to redefine what an office suite is in the future.

Unless there is some groundbreaking new functionality in Gobe that just can't be added to OpenOffice, the efforts that would go into porting Gobe to Linux and enhancing it would seem to be better spent on tuning, modularizing, and enhancing OpenOffice.

Re:do we really need it?

[morgajel]

it would be nice if it was GPL'ed because, even if no one used it, the openoffice, koffice and abiword people can pick up bits and pieces and make theirs better.

Re:do we really need it?

[g4dget]

Sometimes, that's a good reason. But here, I just don't see it. Moving code between such huge projects is usually a lot of effort--more than it's worth. And Gobe has the additional problem that it was written originally for a specific platform.

Re:do we really need it?

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Sure, it's a bit big and sluggish, but that should only make MS Office users feel more at home

You haven't used Office lately, huh? Office 2000 or XP for Windows is slick and fast. Office for Mac is also slick and fast. If Open Office is sluggish, that's a very bad thing.

It seems to me that, going beyond OpenOffice, the notion of an "integrated office suite" itself is broken.

It is, though, what the market seems to want. You can buy the various Office products individually, but people still buy Office instead.

Re:do we really need it?

[Anonymous Coward]

The chain of logic:

Why KDE and Gnome?
Why Free/Net/Open BSD and Linux?
Why Rock, Suse, Gentoo and RedHat?

is now joined by

Why Gobe, Abiword and OpenOffice?

For the same reason I don't find OO's sluggish a virtue, different needs require different tools. OO is no rocket on my 1333 desktop, on the P2 366 in notebook I'm using to type this it's an anchor. I would love to give Gobe a spin, if it saves mid-complexity documents in any relatively common format with good portability OpenOffice would be uninstalled tomorrow.

Re:do we really need it?

[m1a1]

Open office is the worst office suite I have ever used, and I am not even kidding. Any time spent working on open office is wasted unless it is spent chopping out useless code, and optimizing various slow processes. Also the default look of pages needs to be more beautiful, and the font's need a lot of work. I would always rather use KOffice than open office. The only thing open office is useful for is busting open that random .doc document that shows up in your inbox. Otherwise it is a slow, bloated, disgusting piece of shit, that makes linux feel and behave as if broken when trying to accomplish any useful word processing.

Re:do we really need it?

[sirinek]

So tell us how you really feel! :)

Re:do we really need it?

[morgajel]

my point was, if there was any chance of it being helpful to anyone, that was better than just destroying the whole thing.
it's sorta like donating your body to science for the betterment of humanity(ethical/moral issues aside).

Re:do we really need it?

[Raindog]

I would disagree with this. I use OpenOffice for all of my work, both in Windows and Linux, and I have been quite happy with it. I will admit that it is slower than pretty much any office suite out there, but once it is up it is a non issue.

KOffice and Abiword are fine little buffed up text editors, but they simply can't handle simple things like footnotes, which make them completely unsuitable for my, and probably many other peoples purposes. OpenOffice handles footnotes very well, even better that Word IMHO.

Word is fairly good...but is expensive, not cross platform, and does certain things that annoy me. I wish that OO had its spell and gramemr check (which I ignore half the time, but is still useful for catching some mistakes). Other than these two issues though, OpenOffice fills my needs perfectly on this front.

Re:do we really need it?

[skryche]

Open office is the worst office suite I have ever used, and I am not even kidding.

I sympathize with this troll. OOo is sluggish, and, more importantly, difficult to use. I spent a day trying to make a presentation with it, and oh my god. Doing anything was a huge ordeal. Eventually I installed Powerpoint, and doing the rest of the presentation was so easy.

The OOo UI is on crack.

On the other hand, OOo has loads of functionality. Which is nice, but not as nice as being useable in the first place. I want GoBe!

Re:do we really need it?

[Anonymous Coward]

You just don't stop. The involuntary 'upgrade' from Office 98 to 2000 on my work P2 notebook converted it from a relatively snappy office tool into an anchor. For the privilege I got no features of productive value in return, just hesitancy and lag.
I'm sure Office XP is fast on the newest hardware as it's overpowered for most all user software but please, enough of the bubbly, one-sided MS boosterism. You've only yourself to blame for being considered a shill.

Re:do we really need it?

[g4dget]

You haven't used Office lately, huh?

I have recently run MS Office XP and MS Office X. I try to use it for actual work as little as possible, however.

Office 2000 or XP for Windows is slick and fast.

Microsoft Office is more bloated and more CPU intensive than ever, and about as buggy as has always been (meaning, usable, but expect crashes). The only reason why it seems to be getting a little better is because machines have gotten so much faster and have so much memory. Also, Microsoft plays some dirty tricks with pre-loading code so that it seems like it's starting up fast even though it isn't.

If Open Office is sluggish, that's a very bad thing.

OpenOffice runs better than MS Office on equivalent hardware. The thing that's "sluggish" about it is mostly the startup, which takes distressingly long for a Linux program, but is about par for a Windows program. It's just that traditional UNIX and Linux users are used to programs starting up almost instantaneously and not consuming dozens of megabytes of memory to do something as simple as word processing or calculations.

It is, though, what the market seems to want. You can buy the various Office products individually, but people still buy Office instead.

That has nothing to do with what people want. It's because Microsoft makes site licensing deals for the whole thing, because lots of people get it with their PC, and if you want any two components, you might as well get the whole thing. It's also because the way office is set up, if you buy just one or two components, it feels vaguely incomplete.

In fact, many people don't want to run MS Office at all--they only do it because people send them proprietary documents that they need to read somehow. That's certainly the only reason why I run it.

If the company falls under...

[nlinecomputers]

..what is stopping them from releasing the code as GPL anyway? Is the code tied up as an asset that might be seized by a bank?

Re:If the company falls under...

[gimpimp]

Well, GoBE don't actually *own* all of the code...so they have no rights to release it - until they buy it.

Re:If the company falls under...

[Traicovn]

I think you may have misread the article. Actually, that's not how it works. See, FreeRadical has to purchase the rights to the code in order to open-sorce it. FreeRadical Software and Gobe are two seperate entities. FreeRadical wants to be the new owner of the Gobe product Gobe Productive (and they are the ones who want to open-source it) They do not currently have rights to the program/code needed to release the sourcecode under GPL/Open Source. Now yes, one would wonder why Gobe won't simply open-source the code (with the exception of the fact that perhaps they see the possibility of further revenue, like selling it to someone, perhaps someone who wants to open-source it like Free Radical Software) Now yes, if Gobe goes bankrupt or completely belly-up, or they decided to just completely abandon the project and thought that nobody would be interested, then yes, they might as well open-source the code if it became abandonware, In my opinion, that's probably what software companies should do. However, as long as they see some sort of viable market for the software, then they will not open-source it.
Or perhaps I misread it?

Re:If the company falls under...

[nlinecomputers]

Oh who does own all its code. I've never heard of this company until today.

Re:If the company falls under...

[Anonymous Coward]

> Now yes, if Gobe goes bankrupt or completely belly-up, or they decided to just completely abandon the project and thought that nobody would be interested, then yes, they might as well open-source the code if it became abandonware

This brings up an interesting idea I've been toying with. It amounts to a means of helping to resolve the issue of copyright. In regular terms, if copyright is a limited incentive period for an author as a means to promote art and science, it seems reasonable that a requirement of copyright would then be that what was copyright was *guaranteed* to promote art and science, ie it would be a requirement that something that was copyrighted would fall into the public domain. You might say, copyright already declares this. However, as copyright stands, there's nothing preventing an author either intentionally or accidentally from destroying all copies of a master copy of the work thereby rendering it impossible for the work to fall into the public domain. The excuse for abandonware falls under this bases reasoning.

A good solution to this problem would be, imho, to require that any work that is distributed, if for commercial gain, be required to continue distribution of the copyrighted work continuously to retailers and through their own company until such time they decide to give up their copyright. At the time at which the copyright for a work is released, multiple duplicates must be released to public domain instutions in which works may be copied at a marginal fee.

What does this mean? Well, if demand for a work falls off significantly enough that retails refuse stocking a product, a product will no longer be distributed and hence will be forced into the public domain. A company *pushing* a work or even owning a large stock of works would try to minimalize their collection of works to only those which will turn a good profit in a realtivity long period of time. Actually trying to pay retailers to sell a product that sells would be a double penalty as it would only increase costs without adding any benefit to their bottem line. It would also guarantee that companies would not hold onto works for extended periods of time waiting for "potential" profit.

Various problems to overcome include issues such as restrict pricing such that a company may try to push a work into retailers at an exhorbent price to retain copyright on a work. However, the previously mentioned profit loss may be a significant enough deterent to try such tactics.

Now comes the issue of resolving what happens if a company does not either a) release a work into the public domain or b) ends up destroying all original masters which prevents them from releasing into the public domain. Because copyright is really a *privledge* (it's a privledge to possess a monopoly), stripping a company of being allowed to hold any future copyrights would seem as just punishment. Possible inclusionary punishment (or supplementary if there is reasonable explanation (only having a single site backup for everything is *not* a reasonable explanation (and yes, it's possible to have multisite backup and still have a really bad accident not help--ie, a company shouldn't be punished for its entire existance for an "act of God")) could include releasing other works directly into the public domain. Such a "stigma" as it were would have to be passed along to other companies formed from the original company. Any absolving company would have to release its copyright on works.

This is in total just a foundation on what would be a reasonable system to insure that works do infact return to the public domain. In the end, the best incentive for this is the work of other companies being public domain means more foundations for their own work--*cough*MS liking BSD type licensing*cough*.

Re:If the company falls under...

[tunah]

I think you may have misread the article.

I think you might be being a bit generous ;-)

Thank goodness.

[Erpo]

I realize most people probably won't agree, but I'm incredibly thankful this thing didn't make it past the beta stage for linux and windows and might not be released under the gpl. I guess that might be considered a loss, as I'm sure it contains some great code that other OSS developers could use or draw from, but it will prevent anyone from finishing the port. In a software category like this (one that's so critical to broadened acceptance of linux on the desktop) I'm a firm believer that competition between products is actually a bad thing.

When all of the competitors in a market are OSS*, more product choice does not equal more freedom. That's kinda what the GPL is all about -- one person (or company) can't run off with the source and deprive the OSS community of the best piece of ______ software it ever had. On the contrary -- with the need normally satisfied by inter-product competition is taken resolved in another way, more product choice equals more confusion. Users like to get comfortable with a method for accomplishing a task and stick to it. "How do I create a new spreadsheet, again?" is not a question users want to have to ask more than once every five years; if they're forced to, they'll go back to what they were already comfortable with.

*The market I'm talking about is inclusion in linux distros. I'm well aware that MS Office is not OSS. ;)

Re:Thank goodness.

[be-fan]

Competition in this area is a great thing. There is no competition in the Office Suite space in Windows, and thus the products there are sub-par. MS Office might be standard, but's it's not a great product. It's large, slow, the menus are confusing, and it's about as innovative as dirt. Word Perfect is an example of a great piece of software (that had a nifty text and graphics layout capabilities Word still can't match) that isn't here anymore because there is no competition in the Office Suite space. The current Linux office suits all offer something different. Open Office is big, bloated, and full of features. AbiWord is lightweight and very cross-platform. KWord is lightweight, well integrated with KDE, and has a nifty frames-based design that neither of the above have. The problem with choosing only one product is that a lot of these features are contridictory. You can be well integrated with KDE or GNOME, but then you can't be cross-platform. You can have tons of features, but then you can't be lightweight. You can use a frames-based layout system, but then you can't use a more conventional one.

Re:Thank goodness.

[Telex4]

I'd agree with your point that a lot of very different office products might cause confusion, but I don't think it's necessarily the only result of having many choices.

For one thing, I think a lot of the confusion is caused by the fact that lots of the packages try to do the same thing, and try to follow the (good) market leader, MS Office, and so confuse people who expect them to behave in the way that MS Office does. If packages could just focus on what makes them distinctive, on their way of doing things, then initially the choices might be confusing, but given the chance the average consumer will settle down with the choice that best fits them.

I also think that different file formats contribute to a lot of frustration and confusion. Were Gobe and OpenOffice and StarOffice and KOffice and AbiWord and all of the Free Software (or potential FS) suites to create a standard, open format and then use it as their default format, they'd be a lot less confusing, and one could switch between them more easily (as I clumsily do at the moment with OO and KO by exporting as (yuck) MS Word documents).

What Gobe could contribute is a nice, clean office suite that focuses on its own design choices. That could be a really good thing, and could force OO and SO to start looking at how dreadfully slow their interfaces are.

Re:Thank goodness.

[Maul]

Not to mention that with free software, you are free to download any and all of these office suites and then decide for yourself which one you like the best, without any money out of your wallet.

Re:Thank goodness.

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux development might as well stop now then. The question "How do I create a new spreadsheet?" (why you don't think it's File>New in OSS I'm not sure) pales in comparison to "How do I format a floppy?" or "Where's my D: drive?"

Re:Thank goodness.

[Darth]

I dont see the problem you are talking about. The number of office suites available is irrelevent. If they all adhere to open standard document formats You can use any office suite to open documents created in any other office suite.

That seems to make multiple office suites a good thing because people can pick the one that does things the way they are most comfortable with. There's no need for them to get confused trying to learn a new suite because theirs will open any standards compliant file.

On top of that, since they are all open source, if one develops a compelling feature the others need, the others can add that functionality to themselves. So again, no reason for people to switch office suites.

Re:Thank goodness.

[m1a1]

When all of the competitors in a market are OSS*, more product choice does not equal more freedom. That's kinda what the GPL is all about -- one person (or company) can't run off with the source and deprive the OSS community of the best piece of ______ software it ever had. On the contrary -- with the need normally satisfied by inter-product competition is taken resolved in another way, more product choice equals more confusion. Users like to get comfortable with a method for accomplishing a task and stick to it. "How do I create a new spreadsheet, again?" is not a question users want to have to ask more than once every five years; if they're forced to, they'll go back to what they were already comfortable with. This is not a good argument. You act as if just because the software were released everyone would use it. That isn't true. People who like and prefer open office would continue to use it. In fact, the secretary who only uses the computer to take dictation from her boss would never even know it had been released unless she was forced to switch. The simple truth is, either it would be better, and a lot of people would sitch. Or it would blow, and nobody would start using. It certainly can't hurt anything.

Re:Thank goodness.

[Erpo]

Please look here.

Re:Thank goodness.

[istartedi]

more product choice equals more confusion

This is one of the major fallacies of Free Software/Open Source advocacy. Whenever presented with the argument that the GPL might tend to discourage entry and result in a public monopoly, the advocates always counter that "the user has the source so they can customize it".

Now, ask yourself how many times you've heard somebody say "I don't like the way this program does ______" and you could counter with "have you tried brand X? It does _____ differently".

Now, if there is no brand X, or if the only way to obtain brand X is to have it custom built to your specifications, how many SOHO users are going to learn C or hire a consultant to give their office suite a "different feel"? Slightly less than 1% of half of none of them. They will all be trapped because, while there will be some variations, fundamentally all suites will be the same.

What kind of freedom and choice is that?

Re:Thank goodness.

[dvdeug]

They will all be trapped because, while there will be some variations, fundamentally all suites will be the same.

Why will they be all the same? Thinking of text wordprocessors, Lyx, Texmacs, Kword, Abiword, Ted, and OpenOffice come to mind. It is not the fact that they are all the same; they are an increadibly diverse group of programs that has very little in common. Both free software programmers and proprietrary programmers try and write copies of popular programs; but free software programmers frequently write programs that fits how they think things should work, making a very diverse set of programs that don't work all the same.

Think free as in "working for IBM without getting paid".

If IBM gets some of the benefit of the work I've done on Debian, why do I care? I've got incredibly more benefit. It certainly working on some shareware program alone.

Re:Thank goodness.

[istartedi]

With the first part of your response, it's a little off base because the previous poster had posited that a lack of diversity in Free Software would be a good thing. Those who make that argument usually base it on the need to conserve community resources, namely the limited developer talent pool. Ooooh.. SNL is on, the faux Tom Ridge is speaking. This might be good. gotta go.

Re:Thank goodness.

[fferreres]

If packages could just focus on what makes them distinctive

That's exactly what most people try to avoid like the plague. They want an Office suit that behaves like MS Office, and does what it does. If you can create software that can mimic Office while using a radical new system that's available for the ones that want to retrain themselves, then GREAT: you are ahead of the competition. If you can't deliver that the people like about Office, the you lost (you don't need to mimic everything, just the parts what everone likes).

Re:Thank goodness.

[fferreres]

That's a problem that arises with 100% end user software for the masses. Chances are many geeks will be interested in the subject or some big corporation will use it as a good way of advertizement.

Other than that, I have proposed a way to construct a public fund to pay for the software. Think of it as Money@Home where everyone pays just a little so that they can have the best software open sourced. It could work in a ramsom model, inverse auction model (ie: here's 1 million dollars, offer me projects to open source).

And after that comes the problem maintaining the software and having a maintainable source code (users only see the end result, so they can shoot themselves in the feet if they are the ones choosing).

Re:Thank goodness.

[pavon]

No, creating a situation where people are discouraged from trying to make a better product is NEVER good.

Read the quote

[Ryanwoodings]

In the quote Eugenia states "even if it means no open sourcing." She isn't saying that a Linux distro should fork over the $$ and then GPL it, she is saying that a Linux distro should fork over the $$ and then release it free-as-in-beer with their distro. (At least that's how I interpret her comment)

Re:Most Unsecure OS? Yep, It's Linux

[TrekkieGod]

Although this is really off-topic, and it's obviously flame-bait (therefore posted anonymously), I somehow still feel that I need to respond...to help guide anybody who reads this and takes it seriously.

According to this article, the Aberdeen Group has reached the conclusion that Linux is the most unsecure OS on the basis that there are more security advisories in Linux than in the other operating systems.

I can draw a completely different conclusion from the same data. Linux is the most secure OS exactly because there are so many security advisories. With so many people looking at the source code for open-source software, these people will find security issues before they become a problem. The advisories are then sent, and talented people proceed to fix the problem.

The article then goes on to say that the argument that open-source vulnerabilities are fixed quickly "means little" because they need more testing before they're released to customers. The strength of the system is that those customers will do a lot more testing and fixing of bugs themselves than any proprietary distribution could hope for. If a customer is unwilling to test new software, they can always choose older, tried and true versions.

Please remember that security advisories, i.e. finding the security vulnerabilities is a good thing. It's a much worse problem to have those vulnerabilities and only find out about them after they are exploited.

Re:do we really need it? Yes

[bstadil]

Yes, for one the OpenBeOS folks would most likely love to have it. It was the defacto (if there ever was such a thing) Office Suite standard on BeOS.

SmartSuite

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought Lotus SmartSuite 9.7 (9.8 was released fairly recently), and it is fast and easy to use. It doesn't have as many options as the other office suites by Corel, MS, or Sun but it gets the job done. The bad things about SmartSuite is that you have to buy the latest version to get bugs fixed, since they don't release many patches for the current version. Also, the files SmartSuite saves are pretty big, way larger than StarOffice/OpenOffices' format.

Re:Attention Readers of Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just wondering why this hasn't been moderated offtopic or troll.

linux beta still available!

[Anonymous Coward]

just google it...
gobe productive 3.0 for linux is right here: http://www.gobe.com/downloads/gobe_linux_x86_insta ll.tgz

Re:linux beta still available!

[Serpent Mage]

That is beta as you can clearly see if you actually try using it.

Re:linux beta still available!

[Killer Napkin]

As you can clearly see if you actually looked at the parent's subject line, we knew that.

This will be a real shame

[X-Nc]

I bought and used gobeProductive on BeOS and also got the WinXX version. I was egerly waiting for the Linux port. Many have already asked the question "Why another Office Suite?". Well, as good as the existing open and commercial office products are they still aren't as smooth and easy as gobeProductive. It doesn't do everything MS Office does but (and follow me on this) it does 100% of the 80% od Office that 95% of the people actually use. And it does that piece better than MS Office and even OpenOffice.

Right now I have on my Linux laptop; Applix Anywhere 2.2, HancomOffice 2, SOT Office (OpenOffice repackeged by SOT), Koffice, and what I call a "best of breed" combination suite of Gnumeric/Scribus DTB/AbiWord/HTMLDOC/Ted. Of these, Applix was the best. Unfortunatly the company has killed it. HancomOffice looks like it might have potential but it's not yet there. OO, and it's like, is very good and makes a great MS Office clone. Unfortunatly it brings with it all the baggage that that intails. gobeProductive was a hope of mine. Sadly, it seems that once again, superior technology loses out.

Never past beta

[quantaman]

and later ported to Windows and Linux (which never made it past beta stage)

Sure it's not always the most user friendly and has a lot of development ongoing but I think we can still consider Linux to be past Beta!

It is a pitty

[herveb]

Gobe Productive is a very elegant and potent product. And the Gobe team seemed to be a very nice group of people (I exchanged emails with some of them). I used Productive on both BeOS and MS-Windows and it is a great job while being fast and very compact. The next version could have added functionalities like support for XML file format that could have really brought it the point that it meets the needs of 80% of the users. It is unfortunate that this product is going to disappear. Well, it shows once again that the impact of Microsoft behavior does not lead to more innovation (like Productive) and more choices for the consumers but to their alienation (and I am not arguing about MS-Office value but who really needs all its functionalities?).

Re:Attention Readers of Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Matt's a loser, and like all losers, if you ignore them, they'll go away. :-)

Re:IN LINUX HIPPY LAND AND IN SOVIET RUSSIA

[ebbomega]

Are you kidding?

Who says the GPL failed/is failing?

Linux is still a big worldwide competitor, so much so that Microsoft has deemed it the "Enemy".

This is a volunteer-designed operating system with a few corporate elements working to bring Linux to the mainstream public, and it's a prime concern for Microsoft to be worrying about... Microsoft being one of the biggest Blue-Chips on the market today. To get that kind of recognition, I'd call Linux a success.

The fact that I run Linux on my home box is just another symptom of that. I'm a computer-literate person with some programming knowledge, and playing around with Mandrake is bloody EASY. Only complaint I've had with my box is shit resolution, but I just today figured out that my problem was actually that my video card had only 2M memory (Never seen the specs before today).

GPL's not a failure. To have acheived what it has today is quite a landmark.

Re:IN LINUX HIPPY LAND AND IN SOVIET RUSSIA

[Anonymous Coward]

Communism survived in USSR for 40 years. That doesn't mean it's not a failure.

All GPL is doomed to fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you honestly think GPL will succeed? GPL is doomed to fail, I give it 10 more years till we don't hear much from it anymore.. good riddance too. PAY FOR YOUR SOFTWARE YOU COMMUNISTS.

Re:All GPL is doomed to fail

[ninejaguar]

Fuck you Bill Gates. What a hypocrite! He tells us to buy commercial products, yet he enjoys reading and posting to a Free site like ./ that runs on Open Source software.

May your billions turn to bouillons, you nasty rat bastard.

Re:All GPL is doomed to fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Why won't you kill yourself? People kill themselves every day for being half as lame and obviously stupid as you are.

Gobe trying to poke fun at BeOS users now?

[browser_war_pow]

Found this on their product page below the Corum III listing:

The only real choice for entertainment on BeOS.

Re:IN LINUX HIPPY LAND AND IN SOVIET RUSSIA

[enos]

I agree that the GPL is not a failure, and neither is Linux. Far from it.

But getting Microsoft to call Linux the "Enemy" isn't neccessarily a good measure of success. Who else is left to be the enemy?

Hogwash!

[Xtifr]

Office is the most popular productivity product because it's good.

What a load! Office is the most popular because MS held back information on Windows internals that would have allowed its competition (WordPerfect and another formerly very popular word processor whose name I can't even remember now) to match the performance of Word. Thus, WP and whazzit were late to the Windows platform, and slow when they got there. And suddenly WP lost its first place position, and whazzit disappeared completely. A clear case of MS leveraging its monopoly in OSes to take over the word processor market. (Analogous things happened with spreadsheets too.)

If MS has the best office suite now (which Corel/WP users might still argue -- in fact, the ones I know would strongly disagree with this assertion), it's because they cheated. If they'd been competing on level ground, there's no way in hell that WP would have lost its former dominance of the word processor market.

Re:Hogwash!

[momobaxter]

Are you referring to StarWrite?

Re:Most Unsecure OS? Yep, It's Linux

[nmg]

So what would you say if the study concluded that Microsoft had more security vulnerabilities than Linux?

Re:Good

[m1a1]

Mozilla development is ongoing. Phoenix is a separate project. A project that actually optimizes Mozilla (just like you are talking about). I like Phoenix better than Mozilla.

I understand your disagreement with some of the things that happen with Mozilla. But either educate yourself or shut your damn mouth about things you have no knowledge.

formats, support, and portability

[Erpo]

I dont see the problem you are talking about. The number of office suites available is irrelevent. If they all adhere to open standard document formats You can use any office suite to open documents created in any other office suite.

If they all adhere to open standard document formats. The problem is they don't. Even if there were an open standard document format that every open source office product supported, all office suites would still need to read and write MS Office files. Sure, you could save your document in the open format and convert it using an office suite that does support MS formats, but that's more work than users are willing to do; besides, if the conversion were anything less than perfect, it wouldn't be an option for serious work. Documents can start to look pretty run down after multiple passes through an imperfect document converter.

That seems to make multiple office suites a good thing because people can pick the one that does things the way they are most comfortable with. There's no need for them to get confused trying to learn a new suite because theirs will open any standards compliant file.

What about people that are introduced to an open source office software suite at home and then switch to a different one at work because it's the new company-mandated standard? They have to re-learn basic skills. Multiple open source office software suites also fracture the support base. It's nice to be able to lean into the cubicle next to you and say, "Hey Dan, how do I do X?" You can't do this when Dan is using a different suite -- he won't be able to answer your question. Unless a company wants to double the training requirements for their support staff, the help desk won't be able to answer your question either. In addition, developer time is divided by multiple projects. If you have 4 talented developers that want to contribute to OSS and 4 office suites, each office suite gets fewer developers. With one office suite, that project can take on as many developers as it can use. I'm not saying that more developers always equals better software (sometimes the opposite is true), but it's better to be turning developers down than starving for volunteers.

On top of that, since they are all open source, if one develops a compelling feature the others need, the others can add that functionality to themselves. So again, no reason for people to switch office suites.

Just because two projects are OSS, there's no reason to think that code can be easily ported between them. OpenOffice and Productive may (and probably do) have radically different architectures.

Isn't it ironic...

[kevlar]

That free software requires money to fund its production? Almost sounds like Capitalism.... the irony....

Re:Where did this start?

[phobix]

I may be totally oblivious to the answer but when and how did this "in soviet russia" shit start?

I didn't misread it.

[nlinecomputers]

I guess I wasn't clear. I understand the Free Radical Software is trying buy it. The line in the slashdot article implied that if they failed to buy it then the software would die. I was asking why it couldn't be released as open-source "abandonware" as you put it. Like for example the company has a lein on its assets. I've never heard of the company until today.(Might explain why they are in $ trouble, Yes?)

Re:I didn't misread it.

[Traicovn]

Ahhh... I understand now... I too don't always come across clearly ;) I probably just misread.
Same here though, about the not hearing about them. Funny that that company is even bothering holding on though I think, since BeOS is virtually dead from what I understand (waits for the flames from all the BE users)...

I like the sig by the way ;)

Linux is succeeding in spite of the GPL

[MeanMF]

Linux is the most viable server OS next to Windows. Microsoft is using Linux's weakest spot - the license - as a weapon against it. If Linux were commercial software with a viable company behind it, it would be in a lot more companies, and not just running web sites.

Re:Linux is succeeding in spite of the GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

If Linux were commercial software with a viable company behind it, Microsoft would have bought it out ages ago and made it proprietary, and we'd be stuck with Microsoft. For this reason, the GPL is Linux's greatest strength.

Re:Good

[Oliver Defacszio]

Two points.

a) You've been trolled.
b) You're still making no sense. Why in the hell should I have to care about the technical excuses behind why Mozilla was years late in order to speak my mind? Its eventual release was the equivalent of a mother giving birth to a four year old and, while I'm certainly no mother, I am fairly sure it doesn't feel great.

Although it's patently typical of the OSS community to reject any criticism that doesn't come from a 10+ year veteran of the industry who has millions of lines of code under his size 48 belt, one doesn't need more than eyes with which to see in order to cast judgement, using terms like 'bloated' and 'really, really late,' upon Mozilla.

Until either of those descriptions aren't true, it is you who can just shut his doughy mouth.

not a linux problem

[Erpo]

[...] "How do I create a new spreadsheet?" (why you don't think it's File>New in OSS I'm not sure) [...]

You're right. Bad example. I should have said: "How do I set my page margins and change my spacing settings to double globally?" That's not always in the same place.

Linux development might as well stop now then. [...] "How do I format a floppy?" or "Where's my D: drive?"

This is not a problem with linux; it's a problem with desktop GUI software. You're right in that most non-geeks are more comfortable with (and I would go so far as to say prefer) viewing data storage devices (cd-roms, floppies, hard drives, usb microstorage doodads, etc...) as separate icons representing separate hardware rather than all merged into one directory tree like linux does. However, the unix "all devices are files" and "every file that the system has access to can be found under /" philosophies have their merits and contribute to the extreme (and extremely useful) scriptability of nearly every action.

The solution? Have the desktop GUI software query the kernel as to what data storage devices the system has access to (devfs works great for this) and present icons representing them in a "My Computer" type interface. Then simply interpret any URIs starting with floppy: (such as floppy:images/picture.png) as /mnt/floppy/whatever.

Of course then you run up against the original problem I was talking about: more than one software package competing to perform the same task. What if the GNOME team decides that representing storage devices as above is a great idea (so much so that they change the standard file dialog boxes in gtk apps so that they represent data this way), but the KDE team thinks it's a silly idea? What is the user to do who really likes the change GNOME made, but needs (for example) the ability to browse tar files without unpacking them in her file manager? Use GNOME some of the time, and switch to KDE at others? Send emails begging the GNOME team to add tar browsing or pleading with the KDE team to change their minds about devices? Give up and go back to windows where she has the interface she wants and can look through tars with Easyzip?

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[account_deleted]

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Ad Hominem

[Glorat]

Parent was: Office is the most popular productivity product because it's good

Your reply starts: If that was true then why is the #1 question asked about any new piece of word processing software is not "is it as good or better than MicroSoft word?"

Your reply doesn't logically rebutt the fact that Office may well be the most productive produce because it is good, it is discussing a different point altogether. IMO, Office *is* the best office suite out there and from a corporation point of view, that is what usually counts.

Re:Ad Hominem

[Error27]

An "ad hominem" attack on your argument would mean that Spitzak said your argument was invalid because _you personally_ made it. He clearly did not do so.

The rest of your post doesn't make any sense either.

You claimed that people use Microsoft Office because of the high quality. Without denying that Office was a high quality product, Spitzak showed that most people use Microsoft Office to be compatible with what other people use.

Re:Where did this start?

[Anonymous Coward]

In soviet russia, "in soviet russia" shits on YOU! :)

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[account_deleted]

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I hate to disagree with a 'friend'...

[Big Sean O]

But AppleWorks is a very good product. In fact, it's good enough for most Apple users. That's Apple and MS are having a "MS Office for $200" special. It's a ploy to increase the number of iMac MS Office users.

At our house, we didn't buy MS Office because we couldn't justify the price when AppleWorks does virtually everything we need (and it came with our Macs).

The only reason we broke down and bought MS Word is because my wife needs it for her work. If Word wasn't the de facto Word Processor, or if AppleWorks2Word file conversions were more robust, she could tell her Windows-using clients to deal with RTF files.

Frankly, we both prefer AppleWorks word processing module to Word. However, I think AppleWorks presentation module is quite sucky, especially compared to PowerPoint on Windows. Thankfully, I don't need to do presentations on my Mac. In my opinion, AppleWorks is more 'mac-like' than Office, which still feels like a well-done port of Word for Windows.

That being said, I wish that Gobe, Abiword, and OpenOffice all succeed. The more choices, especially free choices, the less likely that any one will dominate the landscape.

Re:I hate to disagree with a 'friend'...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Frankly, we both prefer AppleWorks word processing module to Word. However, I think AppleWorks presentation module is quite sucky, especially compared to PowerPoint on Windows.

I think that's kind of supporting my point. You guys prefer AppleWorks to Word for word processing (which, of course, is to words as food processing is to food), but you prefer PowerPoint to AppleWorks for presentations. If you needed PowerPoint more than you do, you would probably tip the scale over to Office rather than AppleWorks.

In business, PowerPoint is everywhere. Based on my limited but not insignificant experience as a cubicle-dweller, I would have to say that PowerPoint is used in the average corporation about as much-- or even more than!-- Word is. Because AppleWorks is strong on word processing but short on presentations, it's not going to compare favorably to Office in that sort of environment.

Overall, Office is a better productivity suite, to the average business user, than AppleWorks is.

The more choices, especially free choices, the less likely that any one will dominate the landscape.

In my opinion, the only way that could be a good thing is if file formats for word processors, spreadsheets, and presentations are all standardized; I don't long for the bad old days when everybody used a different word processor, and files always had to be converted.

I'm not sure how that can happen. Standardized formats, I mean. A Microsoft Word file can be incredibly complex, with embedded graphics and revision histories and annotations and all sorts of stuff. Heck, I believe that you can even embed voice annotations straight into a Word document. If your word processor doesn't implement voice annotations, it'll still have to know about them so it can know to ignore that part of the file without coughing up an error or worse. That puts a pretty serious burden on the shoulders of the people who develop all those word processors you mentioned, and I'm not sure how that could be worked out.

Re:I hate to disagree with a 'friend'...

[Big Sean O]

Yes, Office is the better productivity suite to the average business user. And that's largely due to four programs: Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook. Access tends to be used by a much smaller crowd of business users.

Word processing standardized file formats are out there. RTF and PDF are all supported virtually everywhere. I do my part by sending things out as RTF when I can.

Of course, MS Office and OpenOffice file formats are going to be XML, which means XSLT stylesheets could be used by any word processor to convert to-from any format. I expect sourceforge projects to write these stylesheets real soon now (if they don't already exist).

As for MS Word's voice annotation, I don't know a single person who has ever used it. Most of the bells and whistles in Word aren't used by the majority of users. That's why I think Word's dominance as the default word processor might be coming to an end. When AbiWord supports tables, or when OpenOffice gets faster and/or runs reliably on the Big 3 (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X), then you will see a lot more interest in free word processors.

Yes, PowerPoint is better than the other presentation software I've seen. But, a free presentation module, done right, could reduce the need for some companies to buy Office. Why? PowerPoint presentations aren't shared as widely, and if they are, they're more likely shared within the same company. Less dependence on interoperability.

I've used many different spreadsheets and I've never felt that one was significantly better than the other. But IANAA(ccountant).

Outlook is quite handy, but IMHO it is a substandard mail client to Apple's Mail.app. I do like it as a calendar and address book, there is other software out there that can make do (Palm desktop doesn't suck).

I guess I'm just rambling off-topic, so I'll try to get around to a point...

If Gobe Productive were to be released under the GPL, it wouldn't be a bad thing. MS Office seems to have a lock on office productivity suites, but I think the lock is primarily due to the dominace of Word. The more quality choices there are, the more likely that MS's market share will erode.

Gobe is not so awesome

[mrm677]

Gobe Productive is meant to be a lightweight office suite, correct? Then why the %&^*$ does the Linux beta require Gnome libraries?!

Re:Gobe is not so awesome

[damiam]

Because the Gnome libraries aren't bloated and do useful stuff?

Re:IN LINUX HIPPY LAND AND IN SOVIET RUSSIA

[Oliver Defacszio]

Dude, I know how badly you want to back a winner, but being a Microsoft enemy means virtually nothing. If given six months with which to market, I could get Microsoft to call a sandwich it's "prime enemy". In smart business, there is no such thing as happy co-existence and anyone who wouldn't sell his own mother to crush the competition isn't long for this world.

BeUnited may try the Blender trick

[starseeker]

There's some talk at BeUnited about raising money to get the "Be only" version of the source code. To me this makes sense, since GoBe did more for Be than any of the other platforms it ran on. If OpenBeOS really comes through it would be a great thing to see. Check out

http://www.beunited.org/standards/phorum/read.ph p? f=21&i=4&t=4

Re:BeUnited may try the Blender trick

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think it's to get a BeOS only license. I may be wrong though. And so far it's only to see how many people would be interested in donating. I think the number of people willing to do so will decide wether there won't be a donation fund, a BeOS only one OR a full fledged open sourcing. So please go /. Beunited

Frankly this doesn't surprise me a whole lot

[starseeker]

I was surprised to see the original announcement, and was wondering what business reasons they could have. I can't say I'm surprised to see this.

Now I hope a way is found, so that when openBeOS achieves it's goal it has GoBe productive to distribute with it. That would be worth dual booting my machine for. But it will most likely have to be a Blender type effort.

I'm afraid Blender has given some companies a false idea of people's willingness to pay to release programs. Blender was a unique program that solved a problem no other free program did - interactive 3D modeling. It had a huge, multiplatform following willing to pay to see it survive. I know of one or two efforts by other programs which didn't succeed. It takes the right software package to do it.

That said, GoBe may be such a package. It largely depends on how many BeOS users are active and willing to contribute. That's a tough equation to compute and I honestly have no idea what would happen. BeUnited may be about to find out, though.

I hope it does get released, and OpenBeOS succeeds. I have tried BeOS briefly and found it to be clean, smooth and a nice experience. It might be just the thing for an open source business desktop. Sure it may not have the infinite flexibility that WindowMaker, fluxbox, gnome, kde, etc. offer for interfaces, but to business that may actually be a plus. Trick would be software to run on it. GoBe would be a nice carrot to offer.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, I am not disagreeing with some of the things in Mozzilla, I am disagreeing with the no real sense of direction, lets get 95 percent done and start a new product to do the same thing. Its as if Open source people love to build software so much they can't take the post partum of completing it, so they start over.

Not just BeOs

[leonbrooks]

It largely depends on how many BeOS users are active and willing to contribute.

Not just BeOs. gobeProductive does basically what Microsoft have been dreaming about doing with OLE for about twenty years, and have only managed to bandaid-and-string together with any success at all in about the last five.

If GoBe do go kerplonk, I hope someone's brave enough to slap `GPL' on the openable parts and kick it out the door before that door slams. It would be an excellent legacy to bequeath.

Seven year copyright followed by source release

[Adam J. Richter]

I say we should fix copyright law so that it only works for seven years. After those seven years we can use the source code of the program.

(I am not the anonymous poster who wrote that.)

Yes, I think that is exactly what we need. I've believed we should have almost exactly that change for years. I think seven years is a period of time long enough to be reasonably profitable (contrary to what another respondent claimed). Go to a surplus store and compare the selling price of seven year old software with recently released software. Nevertheless, everyone I know who buys software at all buys the latest versions of software in spite of the price difference. If you update in a timely manner, your brand of software should be profitable indifinitely this way. Also, publishing cycle times have shrunk both for physical packaging and, of course, by the addition of distribution over the internet.

If your software solves such a fixed and narrowly defined problem that there really is nothing to update, then it's the sort of software that would be cloned after about seven years anyway. Also, if people know that your software is going to be released in seven years, it may actually discourage cloning.

Under your proposal, right now the source code to Windows 95 would have just been released and I imagine people would be starting to beta free binary distributions of it.

Word export support

[jago25_98]

I'd still like to try this for same reasons as Applixware.

- do I have to purchase the full Office suite?

Often Word compatibility is seen as a big plus in terms of import/export, but,

- can it work the other way, using Word to export/import, possibly using VBS or something? Can Word export a document to an OpenSource format or is that against company policy (competitive nature)?

If not we could do with a drag+drop/similarily easy program that converts and makes the market a bit less anti-competitive. I could see me use this program at work with permission.

Also:-

- isn't it annoyance when proprietory companies go bust and all thier knowledge etc dies with them?
This is why I chose a Zaurus - I know that when the company abandon it I can keep it useful. I can't say the same for my Amiga, how easy is it to still find software for that since most of it wasn't actually free?

Re:Most Unsecure OS? Yep, It's Linux

[TrekkieGod]

Damnit...I was modded down for that comment, and I will be again for responding to this question...oh well, I don't really care about karma, just voicing my opinion and trying to help. :)

My problem wasn't the conclusion they reached, whether it was Linux/Windows/Palm OS. It was a problem with the data they used to reach the conclusion. I offered an alternate explanation that is just as viable to prove the point that people shouldn't be flocking away from Unix worried that they're going to get hacked into because they just finished reading that it was less secure than windows.

If that study was indeed supposed to find the level of security of operating systems compared to others, it was badly designed. I'd put more weight if they were measuring actual security issues that were exploited, for example.

+5: Funny

[Anonymous Coward]

+5: Funny

Proposal for donations

[failedlogic]

I've seen a few threads on other sites (sorry, I wouldn't want them to get /. 'ed) with a general consensus from former users and others willing to contribute $20 to $50 in varying currencies to support GPL'ing GOBE. There have only been at most a few hundred replys and, truthfully, I don't think the $100 Grand plus the former developers are estimating it will cost will not be met. My alternative: Ask the Open Source community (that's right, you /. 'ers ) to donate $5 - $10 through a PayPal system, for example, that as yet not been organised.

The benefit: Another production quality Office Suite portable across many operating systems, a small code base and binary, enough features for most everyone and a spreadsheet and other office apps integrated in one. As limited as the speadsheet and presentation might be, I'm sure it will meet the needs of corporations, students and home users throughout.

As an aside: With quite a few popular Open Source office suites, why not standardise on one file format? It would have the added benefit of everyone being able to share files across different office applications with ease. I would hope that wether or not Gobe is GPL'D, a standard file format should be created.

recession economy

[chunkwhite86]

I'm still wondering why people are calling this a recession economy. (I'm assuming you're refering to the US here - if not, then disregard this post)

Despite all the tech sector layoffs, unemployment is still very low. A record number of people have cell phones and high-speed internet access to their homes (neither of which is "required" to live.)

The higher priced (and higher quality) euro car brands are selling like hotcakes and posting record sales quarters. Check MB, Land Rover, Audi, or BMW's sales in the past 11 months.

And real-estate prices are SKY high. A small 2 bedroom home in my neighborhood sells for over half a million US dollars! Expect to spend 1 or 2 million+ if you want a medium or large home and you want a yard. The condo building across the street sells their cheapest model for $400,000 - their most expensive 3 bedroom condo is over $2,000,000. I just bought my first home - a $675,000 "fixer-upper" as they called it. Sheesh.

The NASDAQ and the NYSE are in the toilet, but that's due to those bastard large company CEO's taking insider loans and falsifying financial records.

It's true that prior to WWII, the stock market WAS the econonmy. Not so any more. The stock market is just a fraction of what makes up the economy.

If we go to war with Iraq and oust the bastard Saddam, everyone knows that war = more government spending = more money in peoples pockets.

To hell with the so-called financial experts on TV who claim the economy is shit. These fools are usually recent college grads who don't know a thing, or they are people who were fired from large financial institutions for their incompetence. They wouldn't know a screw driver from a bus driver.

Just telling it like it is....

Re:recession economy

[God! Awful 2]

Well, I was actually only talking about the tech recession, but do I think we're in a recession overall? Yes. (I'm always willing to argue amateur economic theories.) Last I checked, economic growth has basically stalled (by official figures) so the numbers say we're in a recession. In Canada (where I live), unemployment is high; I don't know about the US.

As for the pundits on TV, I think they are as full of shit as you do. The only thing they seem to say is that "I think we're at the bottom of either a V shaped or U shaped recovery, but I can't tell which one." My stock portfolio is actually in pretty good shape, since I declined to invest in the tech bubble. The NASDAQ (in particular) and NYSE are not in the toilet because of corrupt CEOs nor because of the terrorist attacks. Those are lame excuses concocted by the TV pundits to explain why their earlier predictions were shit. The NASDAQ is in the toilet because of the tech bubble, plain and simple. The NYSE undergoes regular fluctuations that correspond with population cycles.

The tech bubble is not unique in history. Once every 20 years or so (i.e. roughly one generation), the population undergoes a kind of mass hysteria in which the laws of common sense are thrown out the window. This time, one of the main causes was OSS. People invested in companies that had no business case. They tried to get revenue from ads, but this created an adspace glut, which was aggravated by the fact that 90% of ads were for other services that were themselves selling ads. This was its own little bubble: the advertising bubble. To make things worse, OSS lowered the barrier to entry, thus creating fierce competition. Even companies that had a decent business case were driven out of business in this way.

The NASDAQ is following a typical boom-bust cycle. The NYSE also fluctuates long-term with population growth. The baby boom generation are nearing retirement so they have a lot of money invested. When they start spending that money, the market growth either goes down or decelerates. As a compounding factor, many baby boomers lost a fair bit of money on the NASDAQ, so they now have less to invest in the NYSE.

Stating that penetration of broadband and cell phones is increasing doesn't prove anything. These are new technologies that are quickly becoming commodities. A recession is a statement about economic growth, not the economy itself. High real estate prices are a sign of inflation more than a hot economy. The long term outlook for the US economy is not great. Assuming the gap between rich and poor countries narrows in the future, we're going to see more inflation soon.

-a

Re:recession economy

[God! Awful 2]

Despite all the tech sector layoffs, unemployment is still very low.

Actually dude, you're full of shit. I just heard on tv that the US unemployment rate is 6%, which is the highest rate in 9 years.

-a

Not as profitable?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's face it. Open source is nice, but its economics are not as profitable as those of closed source software.

No let's *really* face it: we are talking about a closed source consumer software product that like all others (except Apple) is unprofitable and uncompetitive faced with Microsoft. Closed source is nice but let's face it, its economics are not that profitable compared to monopolism.

Last Post!

[alpg]

All the big corporations depreciate their possessions, and you can, too,
provided you use them for business purposes. For example, if you subscribe
to the Wall Street Journal, a business-related newspaper, you can deduct the
cost of your house, because, in the words of U.S. Supreme Court Chief
Justice Warren Burger in a landmark 1979 tax decision: "Where else are you
going to read the paper? Outside? What if it rains?"
-- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"

- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...