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

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?

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. ;)

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.