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Opening the Potential of OpenOffice.org
[vmlinuz] writes "O'Reillynet is running an article about 'Opening the potential of OpenOffice.org' which explores how anyone can contribute to argubly one of the most important Open Source projects. The article also discusses the importance of a shorter release cycle."
"explores how anyone can contribute to argubly one of the most important Open Source projects." Your talking about linux right?
If something's in beta, people won't want to use it because it just doesn't sound reliable. If it sounds like a stable, final release, people will be more willing to use it, thereby finding the bugs, thereby resulting in bugfixers, which leads to more reliable software.
C'mon now. One of the most important open source projects in the world? I suppose that assumes that MS Office is one of the most important programs (suite...whatever) in the world? For real?
You'll have that sometimes...
But most of the time i dont have the time or dont know how i can start helping...
Strange, the submitter and the article writer share names.
--
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Remember how OO.org was absent from the MS/Sun settlement?
Personally I prefer LaTeX and send pdf files. That works ok till I am working alone. But if we have to work and interact, keeping track of changes is not the easiest thing to do in LaTeX.
...now that Office 12 has been demoed. That means the specs for OpenOffice.org 4.0 are almost complete!!
I didn't realize that the OpenOffice project had only 100 developers. Many more will be needed to establish the kind of release schedule mentioned in the article. Interesting stuff. Is this a potential weekness of open source - an inability to attract more developers who will donate their time?
"Me fail English? That's unpossible." - Ralph
A last note: As in with all Open Source projects, the people need to help the process to be successful, and these means that we should all help where we can.
+1 funny, -2 overrated. Life isn't fair.
Has anyone else had problems with Calc in the latest 2.0 beta producing files which later on couldn't be opened. I've had that happen a few times with password protected files saved from Calc, but it's possible that the problem happened while I was copying the files from my hard drive to a removable USB disk. I'm just surprised that it happened to so many files in such a short period of time since they weren't all copied to the same disk, or at the same time.
Just thought I'd make sure it's not a common issue.
Argubly indeed, I don't even use the damned thing. It's only important to nutjobs that like these annoying office applications. vi works just fine, I've yet so see a single reason to use anything but plain text.
I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
Why even have split development? Most ppl who don't use the current OO aren't not using it b/c of some small bugs, but b/c it lacks major abilites like being able to competantly convert MS formats. Also, when using OO, it needs to be able to produce MS files that are the same in MS office as in OO (usually it does a pretty good job in this aspect, but not always).
I would agree with more frequent release cycles up to a point; they would have to ensure, however, that they don't begin to mimic M$ by releasing new builds simply for the sake of releasing them just to keep the name fresh in people's minds. Release schedules should only be to either implement beneficial features or to resolve any outstanding issues that benefit the user base as a whole.
This sig is six words long.
Argubly, one of the reasons might be the spell checker :)
This is a timely and helpful article. As a non-coder I have often wondered how I could help, but except for turning people on to Linux locally, and helping them over the learning hump, I admit I have been lazy and haven't done much.
This article paints a good roadmap for more. Thanks.
Opening the potential of OpenOffice.org takes like 10 minutes on my computer. It's not going to win any awards for speed.
when the oil hits your anus...
I agree that the OOo guys need to draw a line in the sand soon with 2.0, go gold, if for no othere reason than the current 1.1 is so insainly lacking compared to MS office or OOo2 beta. But just because the number is higher doesnt make it better, want proof, look at Adobe Reader, what can 7 do that 5 can not?
I agree that Open Office is one of the most important open source projects. This is because it won't be a Linux derivitive that makes its way onto the desktops of the masses first. It will be open, free applications that can reliably provide the benifit of expensive commercial applications on the *Windows* desktop. A company I work for is interested in an open source "Save to PDF" tool because, well, have you priced Adobe's Acrobat lately? Not cheap. So, they are willing to consider this open source replacement to distribute to the general population. It provides most of the functionality that most of their user base needs and saves them money. The users don't even need to learn anything new. But ask them to swap out their enterprise desktop? Forget about it. If Open Office can get there (and it will *long* before Linux deriviti do), the Corporate World(TM) will open its loving arms.
Bang Logic - Serious Small Business Services
My suggestion is just to follow the mozilla phoenix/firebird/firefox approach and break the suite up and develop the components separately.
Break off the wordprocessor and strip it back to essential functionality as was done with phoenix 0.1. Go for a rapid release cycle again as happened with phoenix with new updates at least every month. This will reinject vitality into the project. The full office suite will still be available as Mozilla is to this day.
The essential thing that Mozilla had was the gecko rendering engine and XUL. None of this was lost in moving to single app development. The essential thing that OpenOffice has is its well-developed ability to read/write MS office file formats and its own OpenDoc format. This also would not be lost by splitting off the wordprocessor.
The Office suite as a monolithic application was really a marketing innovation, not something that was user driven. Let's free ourselves of the unwieldy bloat it has given us.
Disclaimer: I'm no MS fanboi. In fact, I dislike a lot of what they do. I'm no OO fanboi. In fact, I'm quite disgusted with what they've done with the product.
7 20
and you'll see that OO is 5-6 yrs behind MSO. I've done my best to use OO and even to try and help. I am so disgusted by the developers and their responses to my pleas for improvement in key areas that I've stopped promoting OO to people that need a cheap office suite. If they need a free one then I still show it off. If they have some $$ then I show them where to get MSO dirt cheap. The new MSO 12 looks to blow the socks off of anything out there. If it all works like it is supposed to (huge IF) it will be a remarkable product.
The delta between Excel and Calc is too large to ignore.
The delta between Powerpoint and Impress is small at the moment and can be tolerated.
The delta between Word and Writer is negligible for _most_ users. For a basic word processor Writer is better but _a lot_ of people I know love the collaboration features of Word. I hate how Word keeps "thinking" for me and screwing with my documents.
The delta between MSO and OO in terms of speed is just a tad smaller than the distance from one end to the other of the Grand Canyon.
Now considering all that, OO is trailing, hugely. Now look at... http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=114
In that case, I thank the OO development team for putting pressure on MS. Like everyone, competition causes one to raise their performance and I think MSO 12 will be a killer app. I just wish OO could have moved quicker.
between each BSD poor priorities, perspective, the getting together to cons1der worthwhile 200 running NT Their parting propaganda and future. The hand already aware, *BSD and promotes our is bus*y infighting
If anyone's trying to write open source software that uses MS Word, here's a web service that uses OpenOffice.org to convert to Oasis OpenDocument 1.0 format, and then optionally runs the XML through an XSLT pipeline to make any XML/HTML.
I had about 100 test documents and I tried using Abiword, WVWare, but OpenOffice.org had the best reverse engineering of msword. Is there any other open source conversion software I should have used?
-Docvert converts MSWord to OpenDocument, clean HTML
I tried to contribute to the OOo project on the marketing team. It was incredibly difficult to be taken seriously when your "product" moniker could not be distinguished from a web site.
I tried to contribute to the OOo project by submitting valid and repeatable bug reports but I was told that getting label and envelope printing working CORRECTLY was a feature request, not a bug, and would not be addressed in the upcoming release.
I tried to contribute to the OOo project but could not because the software build system REQUIRES PAM so I could not build the current tree (Slackware user). I WAS going to work on a stand alone viewer for Impress.
I would love to contribute to OOo, but the OOo team seems to want to make things as difficult as possible for outsiders to come in. Why on Earth would an Office Suite need PAM???
Ron Gage - Westland, MI
Why does he have to be 100%?
If all internal users change over, then only sharing with external clients is needed, and 100% wont be necessary.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Maybe someone can create a new GUI for OOo that doesn't like that of Office 97. Sad but true, much open source software clings to GUIs of old closed source designs (Nautilus : MacOS 9, Epiphany : Netscape 4, AbiWord : Word 97 etc.). I wonder when open source developers will make GUIs that are innovatively good, rather than creatively bad (Blender, Grip anyone?).
He claims that the Desktop environment was bloated. The fact of the matter is that the 5.2 state of StarOffice, where everything was integrated, ran like a hare compared to the tortoise that is now OO. Five yrs later and there isn't much that inspires me.. Take a look at, http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~nino/Openoffice/images. html
Jon Udell has an interesting idea of reinventing the office suite for a networked world. He says it should include "service orientation, peer-to-peer capability, workflow, federated identity, and new ways to query and visualize data." With the source code, someone could develop a system that could improve inter-company communication and collaboration using Open Office. We need to think 21st century.
I understand Abiword and Gnumeric can't replace the entire MS suite, but surely word processing and spreadsheet are the most common office suite applications (except maybe email, which OO doesn't have either.) I certainly don't understand why an integrated bloated "Office Suite" like OO is needed to replace MS Office, when Abiword and Gnumeric seem to me to be doing a much better job right now than OO.
We don't necessarily need a single office suite like OO to replace MS Office. Right now I would support Gnumeric and Abiword.
Penny - plain text accounting
I'm glad, Sun's license is restrictive, or else they would've bundled their own Java too.
Such bundling is wasteful of not only the memory/storage/bandwidth resources, but also the development efforts of people, who maintain all of those "3rd-party" software packages.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
What are you talking about? Who modded this person up?
Stupid comment on all fronts. It's NOT the money important to most people, it is always, and often of legal concern, document FIDELITY (look it up).
I have just finished a M.S. degree, wrote and formatted my thesis, ALL homework, presentations, and writing, used OpenOffice to import ALL MS Word docs, presentations, slides, bibliography for over *20* classes and *never* had to open Word or Office, except to verify my presentations looked OK before the podium and a couple of old Mac Word docs with math symbols (I think PC Word had problems with them). NEVER a lost document, NEVER any major compatibility issue importing or exporting.
Impossible? Obviously not, but your previous posts show you are an Office fanboy, but one that really doesn't know the real reasons why Business use word processors to begin with (hint: not $$$)
Load on my AMD 3000+ in under 20 minutes, for starters. There's also font antialiasing. Adobe 5 looks like butt compared to 7. I'm no Adobe fan, but that's still kind of a bad example.
Working in a DevOps shop is like playing in a band made up entirely of keytarists.
For the love of God, fix the UI.
Love,
A Concerned User
Writer vs. Word isn't much of a comparison unless you want the collaboration.
Excel vs. Calc I tend to think isn't as big as a lot of people make it out to be. I think there is plenty of room to improve on the OOo side and take the lead. Allowing the use of sometihng like python for macros to produce new functions which can be put in to cells and allow the python to travel with the document would make it easy to produce plug-ins to fix and calculation short comings. As far as supporting MS's file formats and such, I think it's as good as it should really get unless there are a bunch of volunteers that want to work on it. It's a losing battle trying to stay compatible with MS. I'm not a super hard core spreadsheet hacker and I see a lot of people using them just as tables or for column based editing rather than performing a lot of cool calculations.. but that's just my opinion. I mention python becuase you can securely load it if you choose to.
The other apps are pretty close also. The big missing pieces are visio and project.
Now what I think OOo should do is start forking off in a different direction. I'd like to see openpgp integrated so I can sign documents or encrypt them to my colleagues, seemlessly. Upon that kind of framework then start to build collaborative editing. It needs to be made for the 21st century, using web technologies and such. Integrate seemlessly with subversion... MS Office is stagnating, they do big upgrades but lately it has been more UI related than serious function. Look at some of the stuff Lotus has done with Notes, I know it's laughed at by many but that's because they don't understand it, you can do some really really cool stuff with it too.
Performance needs to seriously looked at. I know they hear it a ton and I know they've worked on it a lot. I think it's quite usable once it starts up, there has to be some other things that can be addressed though.
Something else that I know has been hacked around on and talked about and I've seen demos of is further integration to the desktop. In particular, kparts, xpcom and bonobo type objects with some intelligence. As blogs and shit like that continue to grow and there are more and more web based interfaces (it's probably gone beyond "fad" guys..
Gnumeric was the only spreadsheet in the list, so is the only direct competitor. HOW is Excel more powerful than Gnumeric? I know from personal experience that Gnumeric has more built-in functions & the functions are CORRECT. Excel does have some mistakes, which have persisted for many versions.
The others all allow you to manipulate and chart data, so they aren't ALL that different. They each intend to address specific (and different) limitations of standard spreadsheet software.
R/S/SPSS are for when you need more thorough statistics.
Octave is a decent Matlab clone. Matlab is more costly than Excel, but Octave is GPLed. They are both better general purpose/scientific numerical programming languages (I'd also group python+Numeric+scipy+matplotlib in this group).
Grace/Kaleidagraph/Origin are for better graphing.
I can't speak to the legacy version of Gnumeric, but I can say that Gnumeric lets you set the number of rows and columns at compile-time. I have used spreadsheets with more cells than are possible in Excel with no problem.
Thank you for pointing out the obvious, I've been waiting for someone in the Slashdot community to notice this fact: The next MS Office is at LEAST half a decade more advanced than OpenOffice.
I'm not a Microsoft fanboy by any stretch of the word, and I REALLY cringe when some PR bozo starts spouting words like "innovation" to describe their company's products. Having said that, MS Office 12 is the DEFINITION of innovation. Yes, I just cringed at myself, but it's true. If you watch that video, you simply cannot deny the truth in this.
Linux may be one of the more advanced operating systems in the world, and a bunch of open source software may be the best in their field by leaps and bounds. However, OpenOffice is really going to be in trouble, saved only by the fact that it's "free".
In fact, looking at the differences between Office 12 and OO brings up a very obvious point about open source software: VERY few OSS developers are willing to innovate (with notable exceptions, of course). Look at KDE copying Windows, for example, with a start button and all that crap. You find this in most popular OSS projects, they copy the look, feel, and functionality of commercial products without really doing any innovation (yes, that silly term again). This is the biggest weakness of OSS, by far. They look like clones of existing commercial software (with usually just a handful of improvements). This is a weakness because when a commercial company like Microsoft releases a completely redesigned product like Office 12, the OSS competition is immediately cut off at the knees.
Having said all this, I wish the OO.org development community a lot of luck. They've been busily trying to clone what is essentially the 1997 version of MS Office, and perhaps this will be their wake-up call. I'm sure that one of the next releases, perhaps two or three years from now, will be similar to Office 12. But perhaps, given this sudden jolt of REAL competition from Microsoft, they'll design something even BETTER. And if that happens, we will all benefit.
UNIX: A computer user is defined as a programmer. WINDOWS: A computer user is defined as a consumer.
I wish OpenOffice would increase their row limit. I can't use Excel because it can do only 65535 rows and OpenOffice has the same limitation. Geez, my home brew spreadsheet app could do far more than that. FWIW, yes, there are applications that legitimately require more than 65535 rows.
The article was more about how to make a good open source application better quicker and to how to make its user base grow. A shorter release cycle lets people use new features, and test new features faster. It also lets people feel that there is actual progress. Features are no use to me if they're stuck in the CVS tree somewhere. I'm sure not going to download and compile OOo for CVS just to get feature x, y, or z. It's not really about boosting the version number, that's arbitrary anyways.
I can remember thinking that OOo was "almost good" enough for years now. The multi-user install is/was (?) weird in 1.x for Windows users, and it loaded sooo slow. Two years later, and I have no idea if these two things have been fixed/improved.
I totally agree. To me, Access is like the swiss army knife of data processing.
.mdb file and you are done.
Have a list to mangle? Shove it in a table or two and run some queries on them.
Want to query to totally unrelated databases that use totally different database servers? Link the tables via ODBC and run queries.
Create a really basic data entry tool? Build a form that feeds a table in literally minutes.
Want to easily move that little form to another computer for someone else to fill in? Just copy that ONE
Plus, if you want to move into something with a real database, well, Access makes a great front end to your full featured database.
I'm not a huge MS fan, but they do have some excellent products. Access, and Exchange/Outlook and SQL Server come to mind.
- Lack of Microsoft Office
- Typically, people don't want to go to the command-line and 'apt-get' or 'make install' or 'emerge' et. al. their software. Most people want to be able to go to website XYZ and download something that shows an icon on their desktop. That icon when 2x clicked will launch an installer and do everything for them in a little user interaction way such as:
- Launch Installer
- Click "Next"
- Click "I agree to the soul sucking license agreement"
- Click "Next" a few more times
- Click "Finished"
- The installer for the Operating System must be as easy as Windows or MacOS X
- Linux/*BSD need to have the following:
- Pre-Configured Systems at retail outlets such as:
- Wal*Mart
- Costco
- BestBuy
- Circuit City
- Fry's
- Sears
- Support from Major software vendors such as:
- Microsoft
- Apple (Quicktime/iTunes)
- Macromedia
- Adobe (Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat)
- Alias/Wavefront (Maya)
- Quark
- Other Major vendors
- A Call Center
- The user should have a standard command-line available, but should not ever really need to touch it if they don't want to
Between Linux and *BSD, I believe that the very nature of the GPL hinders Linux in becoming a serious desktop OS. By the very nature of the BSD License, BSD is more ideally suited to be supported by major software vendors than is Linux. (This thought is incomplete as I have to leave) I will explain why I believe this on my own website and post the URL here for anyone interested.Sorry all you OpenOffice guys, you have to face facts though, Microsoft Office is THE BUSINESS STANDARD. Just about every major business under the sun uses the Microsoft Office suite, it is installed on all desktop workstations from the Janitor to the CEO.
Once OpenOffice provides all the same functionality as Microsoft Office in a consistant way, offers technical support (excluding forums, because mom & dad want to be able to call someone), and can be purchased, even at a nominal price in places like Costco, then it will become more popular and has a chance on the desktops of corporate America, provided of course that it is 100% compatible with whatever the current version of Microsoft Office is.
Oh and OOo or OpenOffice.org is a stupid name to call the suite, drop the .org and just call it OpenOffice.
and then have a nice little icon in their "Start" menu or on their desktop that they can lauch the application with.
Sorry, The GIMP doesn't cut it
Without a place where users can call and speak to a live person for support, Linux/*BSD will never gain significant marketshare outside of the server room.
Abiword will kick this thing to the moon. Open Office should fix the loading time already, for the Love of God!
I'm always curious when someone makes a blanket statement like, "don't get it done." Can you give a specific example of a document you need MS Office for? Just wondering because I managed to make it through a Bachelor's degree, half a Master's degree, and 10 years of professional technical document creation (including a 107 page government document this last week) without ever needing MS Office. Not that I have never used MS Office, just that I haven't ever needed or wanted to use any feature that isn't available in an open source application. I'm not trying to be argumentative here; I honestly can't think of an example.
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Indeed, the SpreadOpenOffice.org site has been set up to provide a similar level of marketing push.
The activity on this site is very low and even the link to OpenOffice is outdated. No way this can compare to SpreadFirefox.com.
If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough. (Alan Kay)
They already have Linux products. We'd certainly benefit if they (and others) put out more. A lot can be run under Crossover.Phone support comes with most Linux PCs and most commercial distros.check
Single window Multi Search link: http://tinyurl.com/4txmk . Search engines, AOL, MAMMA, Google, Yahoo, plus BibleTools, BibleGateway, and 2 online calculators. In addition to that nice link, this link has a link to a Space Car uhm sort of: http://www.newpath4.com/ManmadehurricanesWarAborti onWaFutureJudgementTheDayAfterTomorrowLawEngineOut erSpaceDrivingSpacecar7777777.htm . Anyway, you know, the links are good plus it's a big SlashDot plug! SlashDot is on the Mega Search link too. SlashDot Rocks. Even tho the sun is burning whiter and less yellow, I'm not concerned because I know someone will post something that will make it all better, on SlashDot. Maybe someone will even make a few perpetual motion-like machines, engines, and we'll just build the spaceships like cars and drive plumb th' heck over to Mars. They have water there now you know. I know it because I read it on SlashDot just last week! SlashDot Rocks er Waters.
1) Open Office needs to reach the good enough mark. I think it is getting very close to that for a lot of people.
The whole tech support thing is a bit of a non issue - I only know of one person who has called Microsoft for tech support - they weren't very impressed. What mums and dads like better than somebody to ring its somebody they can take the computer to and have them fix it. As more IT professionals become familiar with OpenOffice this sort of support will become available.
Although I can't see OpenOffice in costco in the immediate future - I am willing to bet that you will be able to pick up a copy in most newsagents.
partly true - Openoffice needs to be compatible with the features that are frequently used and is likely to be experienced by that user. The Office compatibility thing only really works if you have everybody using the same version of office in the same environment. It might work that way in other parts of the world but it does not work that way in my area. People very quickly learn what they can and can't send to other people. As long as OpenOffice is as good or better than using a different version of office I think that will be good enough.
Open Office was the prefered name. But it turns out that name is intellectual property of somebody else.
2) Have you actually seen a mum and dad user with a windows installer for the first time. They freeze they get through two maybe three of the questions and give up. It is very intimidating. Essentually what should happen is the user should click once agree to the license (if absolutely necessary) and install (two clicks tops) (maybe with an option for advanced users to tweek the settings before install). The best installer I have used on linux is Synaptic. It is excellent for expert users. If somebody could create a polished version of this that would show only the applications that a normal user would be interested in (by default) and let them install them with a single click I think we might be onto a winner, I agree with the comments about the start menu however
3) There are installers that surpass the ease of use of the windows XP installer. Mepis Linux is my favourite. You put the CD in boot from it - You end up with a fully working desktop... There is an Icon on the desktop that says "Install me" You answer a couple of questions (things like language settings and location) Then the whole lot gets copied to your hardrive. The extra complexity comes from the fact that Mepis allows you to install itself along side other operating systems - which is something people generally want to do... To aid in this task it runs a program very simular to partition Magic - A very nice touch
4) a - these will come as the market matures and demand increases - There are things that nead to be done in order to make these systems popular enough for these chain outlets to stock it.
b -
It seems OS projects that start from corporate roots, like Mozilla and OO (started as StarOffice), take a longer time to get competitive . Maybe their closed source roots require them to spend some time in software purgatory before they're admitted in open source heaven. Or something.
:-)
So, while OO may be fairly crappy for now, I have good hopes that in a few years time we'll see a firefox-like revival. Props to the developers and users who stick it out during this hard part of the development cycle. BTW, that's all the support you're likely to get from the likes of me. I'll maybe try updates once every year or so, then complain bitterly
I really like the idea behind LaTeX -- I've used it for about 5 years now (mostly academically), but I've always had problems when it's come to writing my own classes and packages.
I've found LaTeX is fine to a certain point, but I've also found that as soon as it comes to writing any sort of presentation code, the documentation becomes a lot harder to find and usefully comprehend. I've also had a lot of problems figuring out TeX and LaTeX as languages at all.
There seems to be so much potential for conflict between packages, and the whole thing feels quite flakey. Even in standardly-provided classes, I've lost count of the number of times where I've read things like "it's okay to do this, but make sure you don't do it at the same time as that, or you'll have problems". They're numerous things like not being able to use a table recursively, or having a page environment act like a page 90% of the time, but inexplicably break with the other 10%. Maybe it's something like being able to get the width of object A and being able to set the width of cell B, but not being able to insert the result of one into the parameter for the other.
The need to compile something two, three or four times just to make sure references are all up-to-date seems a little unnecesary and overly-complex in today's world. It might help for compiling large documents without much memory, but in today's world it seems a bit awkward when weighing it against the possibility of making a compilation mistake. (Okay, I use a Makefile for my compiles, but I still think it's something the compiler should really be doing itself.)
For anything beyond basic writing (which to be fair is often more than enough), the language is full of exceptions and inconsistencies. I've always found that to be quite frustrating. I'm sure that part or all of it might be because I've missed some fundamental points of the language, but I've not yet been able to identify what they actually are.
I do like the concept behind LaTeX. I realise it's a type-setting language, and that puts certain restrictions on it. It's just that when using it, I've often felt like I'm dealing with a language that was built on some dated 1970's programming concepts and restrictions, and has never seriously improved over all this time. Even though it's probably not as powerful, I find it much more convenient (and enjoyable) to just mark up things I write in some basic HTML, which I'm confident will work much more consistently if I try to do anything non-trivial.
Agreed regarding whatever version of Office they happen to be actually using, that compatibility though is a MUST. And I was unaware that OpenOffice was already trademarked :(
Does Amazon count? No, because if you check that out, you will see that it is from TigerDirect. Tiger Direct in turn gets it from Flexiety Software Flexiety. So I went to the Flexiety website and the only OpenOffice.org they have there is made for, you guessed it, Windows. Now since it is OSS, it probably comes with source code, but, in order to install it on another platform, it will involve compiling it. No Good, therefore Amazon does not count :)
I have not seen a Linux distro at my work with double-clickable packages. I would however like to see that :) That would be pretty neat to see. How do the graphical front-ends work though? IIRC the last one I used basically downloaded and installed an rpm or something...it has been a while. Still a far cry from a double-clickable package :)
I have seen some pretty decent installers, SuSE if I am not mistaken was very clean and nice :) but I have seen others that are nothing more than a curses-based install where manual partitioning had to be done, etc. which is unacceptable for mom/pop
I knew Wal*Mart carried Linux machines, I was not aware about BestBuy and Fry's though since I don't have one anywhere near me :)
Crossover office can indeed supply SOME people with functionality that they made need where some major software publisher doesn't create a Linux version, however, that leaves those that would use a *BSD out in the cold not to mention what will mom and pop say when they go to Costco to buy Crossover Office and they are running Linux on a Sun box or a Mac or anything that is non-x86?
Taking a look at Linux support from Novell, it is $325/incident!!! if you do not have an annual support contract ($5800/yr from what I could see, which would be ridiculous for a home user). I checked out RedHat and it appears that you call in leave a message and they will get back to you within 4 hours during their business hours. Not too good if you ask me...
OK, so I went to Linspire to check out the support there. This is what it said about phone support:
Talk to our Support Representatives
Ask Us. We strive for prompt turn around. Logged-in members can expect a 3-5 day response time during business hours (9am - 5:30pm PST, Monday-Friday).
3-5 DAYS? You have got to be kidding me! Lets check somewhere else...Linare!
Now Linare offers a full year of technical support, it didn't say if there was a per incident fee or not, so I will assume for the sake of argument that there is not. But look at the Machine 1.53GHz? Come on, that is like the stone age.... I am not trying to be a killjoy here, but there is a LOT to do before Linux/BSD are ready for the desktop. Some other things I can think of are (Brief List)
It has to is the answer, and it has to be a double-clickable installer. There are so many Linux distributions out there that they cannot possibly include them all unless they are going to include source and make it so you double-click and wait a year (OK that is an exaggeration) for it to compile with the proper patches/optimizations, etc for your particular Linux/*BSD. Alternately, they have to provide say 5 Linux Versions and at least 3 BSD versions in the same or seperate boxes, and if seperate boxes, no
I should have taken more time on the Maya site..My point was to grab some major apps/vendors that I knew of, and Maya hit the list. I should have researched that more before including it.. :)
1) fully compatible or better office suite (OOo2 looking damn good) 2) accounting oftwarefolks, thats so far behind its insane. no myob or quicken. forget business without those.
Nothing - well thats something.
So what applications are these, that you cannot do better with MySQL, PostgreSQL, or even MSDE? It isn't rocket science to ODBC a spreadsheet to a database.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
I'll have to side with rolfwind on this one. "Let's mis-label it a release, so people will beta-test it for us" is the kind of idea that really disgusts me.
Now I'm not opposed to smaller incremental releases, meaning less features added, and easier to thoroughly test before release. But nevertheless, I expect "stable" to be just that: stable.
You have to understand that while maybe for you "yay, I contributed a bug report to OOo" or "yay, I dug for a week through kernel sources and made my old ISA SCSI board work" may count as fun, for most people it doesn't. In the real world it's more like "fuck, why doesn't this POS print my document right?" Or I can tell you first hand that at work we're not like "yay, it's so cool that we contributed a bug report", but rather "fuck, I'm opening yet another PMR for this POS software. Someone remind me... why are we using this crap anyway?"
What's attractive about OSS to most people is the "because lots of other people have inspected the code and made it better for you" part. It's not the "because you too can spend weeks debugging our code and fixing our bugs, or just beta-testing our unstable stuff and waiting for months for a fix" part. Forcing people to be beta-testers against their will, isn't really going to make your software popular.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"Sounds like what a lot of people around here criticize Microsoft for."
Well, no. Actually MS does have a policy of not shipping with known deffects. (I.e., literally, they won't release until there's no bug report left.)
Now I won't argue whether their software is higher or lower quality than OOo (that's another flame for another time), but just saying that the "hey, let's mis-label betas as releases so unsuspecting people will beta-test them for us" idea is really sinking even lower than MS ever did. MS's QA and testing might be a lot less than perfect, but, you know, they at least _exist_.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Better names for noobs might be:
Spreadsheet
Excelsior
Excellence
1-2-3-4
etc.
Don't make it harder for us who are *trying* to implement it for our users! Give us some names that make sense! (Off topic, but ask new users to pronounce some of these open source names: ProgreSQL? Suse? Xiaman? Knoppix? Gnu? Debian (Day-bian? Dee-bian? Deb-ian?) Even Linux (Pronounced Lee-nux? Lii-nux? Lin-ux? yeah, I know, Linus has recorded how to pronounce it.) Maybe I need a quick pronounciation guide! I ain't stoopid, and i is havin' trouble!)
If it will take while to move to the 6 monly release cycle they could move to a minor release every 6 months (primarily bug fixes and incremental improvements) plus a less frequent major change release ever 12 months.
I agree. You should try out OpenOffice 2 beta as they've fixed this. That is, you can now get 65535 rows in a spreadsheet.
While you don't need 100% compatibility (that would mean even trivial feature differences would forever doom OO adoption,), you still need broad compatibility on two levels: (a) document format and (b) interface.
The OO community seems to have recognized the shortcomings of OO compatibility with the .doc format. Each release seems to read and convert .rtf, (and .html, and .xml) a little bit better, but we've got a ways to go.
My personal "gold test" is where clients could send me an RFQ in Word .doc format (yes, that is how most RFQs arrive at my desk), that I can edit in OO, convert to a proposal, and send back in .rtf format. My documents have outlines in tables and tables in outlines and embedded pictures and Visio logic diagrams everywhere. (Yes, I am grudgingly open to converting those Visio diagrams to .jpgs if necessary.) Indexes, chapter sections, and table-of-contents generation are pretty much everywhere. In practice, some of the idiosyncrasies of OO mean I will spend TOO MUCH TIME fighting with the system to get everything displayed the way I want, and so I fall back to using MS Word as deadlines approach.
User interface in terms of user support is an area that gets little discussion in the community. I have ~300 customer companies who use my software. (An average of 10 "power users" per customer.) My software enables data exchange between itself and Excel and Word. As a result, my staff becomes an informal MS Office support resource as our customers don't want finger pointing. ("What do you mean I'm calling a about a Word problem, I'm using YOUR data!") Until there is some kind of toggle to enable OO menus to display closer to Word's, the differences in interface are such that my tech staff will revolt before being required to also support OO.
Failure to help MS Word users to make the transition to OO will only result in eventual failure of OO! I remember in the early years that Word could be configured with WordPerfect menus. They weren't perfect, but they were GOOD ENOUGH. That made transitioning to Word less stressful for both users and support people.
Yup.................Still to poor for a sig.
Live Long and Prosper - Thanks Leonard. You are missed.
It seems like something like this could at least get a number of eyes looking at the differences between the SS and OpenOffice and maybe sort of "fertilize" the project's mindspace a bit, if you know what I mean. Something along the lines of "gee, the paid Lotus guys used technique X and over here in Open Office , they used bloated technique Y" type of thing.
What do you think?
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Sorry all you OpenOffice guys, you have to face facts though, Microsoft Office is THE BUSINESS STANDARD. Just about every major business under the sun uses the Microsoft Office suite, it is installed on all desktop workstations from the Janitor to the CEO.
MS Office is currently the de facto standard. This will hopefully change with the OASIS Open Document standard. As more and more governments adopt this standard (Massachusetts, various countries in Europe), hopefully businesses will too. While it's not in Microsoft's interest to have Open Document become the standard document format, it is in everyone else's interest.
Once that occurs, Open Office is just one player in the office suite market. It can fill a very specific niche -- a free office suite. You're not going to get call centers, etc for a free product. That doesn't mean that the product is useless. There clearly is a market for 3rd party support vendors.
Your requirements for Open Office to be successful:
- offers technical support (excluding forums, because mom & dad want to be able to call someone)
Open Office may not ever support such a thing. "Linux" doesn't offer such a thing, while companies like RedHat do. In a similar vein, support contracts are available for Star Office. I suspect if you search around a bit, you could find a company that would offer support for Open Office as well.- can be purchased, even at a nominal price in places like Costco
This isn't necessary for corporate adoption. What would be nice is if Dell, Gateway, etc would offer Open Office as an option when purchasing a system. Again, Microsoft's abuse of its monopoly position makes this impossible for practical purposes.then it will become more popular and has a chance on the desktops of corporate America, provided of course that it is 100% compatible with whatever the current version of Microsoft Office is.
I think the world is starting to wise up, and Microsoft Office document format will not be the commonly used standard for too much longer. There's a good chance that the OASIS Open Document will be submitted to ISO. If Open Document becomes an ISO standard, and Microsoft chooses not to play, they will be locked out of some markets they currently dominate.
get Crossover WITH their linux distro.MS and other companies are the same. For the small user, you should go through an authorized support provider, rather than directly through the company. You usually get a few free support calls for the first few months anyway.If you buy the Linux version. But why bother, when you can buy Linux prebundled with OO.o and other F/OSS apps? But this gripe is like asking why win32 off-the-shelf software doesn't work with Mac & vice versa. Packages are clearly marked.They can (and vendors do) either provide an RPM (since there are only a handfull of distros that are typically supported & most use RPM) or their own custom installer. Just provide a statically-linked x86 binary.Why? Plenty of vendors support multiple *nixes without resorting to this!Most people use KDE. Particularly the mom/pops. I do prefer Gnome. Most distros provide both & default to one. It isn't really a big deal.
The slashdot trend is to diss Sun, whilst there's about 50/50 support for OOo.
From TFA: "1 RedHat, 80 Sun, and 8 Novell hackers" - but the slashdot ethos still seems predomainanlty anti-Sun.
I don't work with Sun any more (I used to work alongside them), so I've no axe to grind, but it seems amazing that whenever OOo is mentioned, Sun barely gets a look-in, despite the number of users.
Oh well, it's slashdot,
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
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I use this all the time on my PowerBook... can't wait until they get their RTF version out the door!