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No Abiword For Mac?
aliya writes "With Abiword's version 1.90 coming out, their cocoa developer has announced that he will no longer work on a Mac version of the software because he doesn't want to support the company which treated him so poorly. There is a still a somewhat-supported X11 version available, though it is not kept current, and it appears that Abiword will join the abundant ranks of 'almost supported' word processors for Mac OS X."
Obviously it's entirely possible that this individual is incompetent. Whether he is or is not isn't something that any of us-- us bystanders-- are qualified to comment on.
What is absolutely, undeniably true, however, is this: incompetent or not, he's bloody immature.
I say good riddance. Leave the programming to the grown-ups, please.
Who on Earth would want to advertise their sour grapes to every prospective client or employer?
If you're pissed, just say, "look, I'm having difficulty negotiating a good deal with these people" or some kind of euphamism.
But don't let everyone know that things got messy!
From the cited post: "I had no reason to be a loyal customer (sort of like I was until 1988) and offer them what could *possibly* be a killer app on
MacOS X"
I should point out that AbiWord was a VERY integral part of the software system that got my business going. I can't say that the overall system, and therefore my company, would never have gotten off the ground without AbiWord, but the open document format and load of command line options/commands made it possible for me to save months of work by just dropping in command line uses of AbiWord in Perl scripts. The AbiWord programmers are great to work with and have been very kind and helpful to me.
However, I recently changed the entire system over to OpenOffice.org. While AbiWord has some wonderful features, OOo has a fully documented programming language and API. It's a full blown office suite -- if, by chance, anyone didn't know.
While AbiWord was very important to me and I have nothing but the utmost respect for the programmers and people behind the project, I cannot see anyone realistically seeing it as a "killer app."
To be honest, while I love choice and all the options in OSS, I think Linux in particular and OSS in particular, would be much more widely adopted (and would be much more of a competitor to Micro$oft) if, instead of having so many OSS word processors and spreadsheets, all that effort had been focused on creating one kick-ass office suite. Once done, different groups could take the code from that suite and customize it to their hearts' content, much like what's happened with Mozilla -- one browser, but many groups have taken the source code and created their own versions (like Galeon and Konqueror).
While no AbiWord on OSX is not good news, I think the actual number of users (in proportion to the total number of Mac users) who will be effected by this is very low. I'm sure most people that spend the extra money on a Mac tend to either buy their own word processor, or use OOo, since it is almost out of beta for OSX.
While AbiWord is a great program, it is hardly a killer app.
If it's a job worth doing, one of any of the thousands of OSX developers who are competent enough to fill his shoes will step up to the plate and give it a shot.
Welcome to the wacky world of open source projects. Maintainers may die, but projects will always live - provided they're of use to somebody.
Oh no, he couldn't possibly have actually been incompetent, the company must be lying and firing him for no good reason.
And of course *his* word processor is a "Killer App".
Oh, I'm sorry, the killer app in word processing happened a couple decades ago. sheesh
And companies don't usually fire their most competent employees (at least not intentionally without other good reasons to get rid of them). Either this guy did something he's not mentioning to get himself fired, or he was just near the bottom of the competency ladder when the time came to shave off a couple rungs.
...or is this guy talking more about his /dedication/ than the /quality of his work/ as to why they should have kept him?
I don't know why this guy got fired--perhaps they weren't satisfied with his work, perhaps there were politics involved, perhaps they needed to trim their staff and he wasn't valuable enough to keep--I don't know. What I do know is that he seems to be saying that he deserved to keep the job because he wanted the job and was dedicated to it--not because he was particularly qualified to keep it.
Also, this has just marginarlly above a 0% chance of become "the killer app" on MacOS X. A good app? Perhaps. Widely used? Maybe. A killer app that everyone downloads right after getting a mac? Not a chance.
I've used Abiword. It's good, but it isn't *that* good.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
no offense but, there are so many solutions to edit word documents in OSX that I've yet to even consider abiword. OpenOffice, or Micro$oft Office have word doc editors with integrated graph & spreadsheet programs. Abiword is fine for *nix, but it's got little use in a largely commercial based operating system (at least it has for me thus far, and I used to use abiword in linux).
Besides, if i really want to run abiword that badly in osx, i'll just run the gtk version through fink/x11.
- tristan
Some folks here have positted that the man may have been fired as part of a reduction in force, and the "incompetence" arguement was a smokescreen.
That seems unlikely to me - usually it is the reverse, and incompetent moron being fired with some made-up RIF so as to avoid problems.
Here in the US, If you lay somebody off as part of an RIF there's very little they can do about it - unless they can somehow show that you were not reducing force in his area at the time of the RIF there's little legal ground to file a wrongful termination suit.
However, if you terminate somebody for incompetence, they can bring suit for wrongful termination, and insist that you prove they are incompetent. Since they will challenge everything you say, and your case will be heard by twelve people too incompetent to get out of jury duty, you are very likely to win.
I know - for years I had to deal with an engineer who didn't know an FFT from a HITG(*) and management was unwilling to do anything about it because of their fears of a suit.
(*)hole in the ground
www.eFax.com are spammers
First off, I do not believe he is being immature in taking this course of action. It would be immature to delete the code base, and make it not available. It would be immature to introduce bugs directly in the OSX version directly.
I worked for a mortgage insurance company and they pull the same crap on me. Instead of being "incompetent" they said I didn't do anything. Well, when you aren't given anything to do, and you have reviewed the code base over and over again for bugs, what can you do? So, when I started looking for a house, I decided that I would NOT use them for my mortgage insurance. Is that being immature? No, it is choosing a company to support a company or not. Because of the way that they treated me, I did not want to support them. Personally, I think I did more to hurt my former employer's bottom line, than this guy is.
BTW, I have been a Mac-head since 1989...
"Too bad, obviously the guy was fully capable of programming yet Apple thought he was "incompetent"."
Maybe "incompetence" referred to some other, more nebulous, quality. Maybe they were unsatisfied with his hygine, or his appearance. Perhaps he is a damn good coder but can't keep to documentation or follow orders. Perhaps he is a God of Programming(tm) but can't communicate with others (and the managers were getting sick of slipping pizza boxes under the door).
We, as outsiders, can do nothing but speculate but don't assume that "incompetence" had anything to do with the quality of his code.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
This will only hurt Abi's success on the Mac and hurt this guys chances of getting a job on par with Apple.
Apple already has Microsoft and Openoffice and even TextEdit. There are dozens of good word processors out there, and Abi will never be the killer app for OS X. If anything's a killer app, it's Konfabulator. A word processor hasn't been a killer app since 1985.
It's a shame, I like and have advocated Abi at various times, but with putzs like this, I'm almost ashamed at even suggesting it.
m.kelley
life is like a freeway, if you don't look you could miss it.