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Google Hiring Programmers to Work on OpenOffice

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the money-and-open-source-like-peas-and-carrots dept.

massysett writes "Google is hiring programmers to work on OpenOffice.org. "We use a fair amount of open-source software at Google. We want to make sure that's a healthy community. And we want to make sure open source preserves competitiveness within the industry," said Google's manager for open-source software. Perhaps Google's work will address an oft-heard complaint about OO.o: "Google believes it can help OpenOffice--perhaps working to pare down the software's memory requirements or its mammoth 80MB download size.""

5 of 538 comments (clear)

  1. "mammoth 80MB download size" by dextromulous · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Maybe it's just me, or does 80MB not seem like that much when you're downloading an office suite? It's been a while since I've download^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hseen people download MS office, but isn't it in the 1+GB range? Granted, it has more features/programs, but in my books, 80MB isn't enough to complain about these days.

    --
    There are two types of people in the world: those who divide people into two types and those who don't.
  2. the industry? whoever could they mean? by mrn121 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    "And we want to make sure open source preserves competitiveness within the industry."

    should read:

    "And we want to make sure open source preserves competitiveness against Microsoft."

    Not that there is anything wrong with that, I just find it funny that they don't just come out and say what we all know they are thinking.

  3. Kill Windows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Could Eric's attempts to kill MS be anymore obvious? IIRC 40% of MS' profits are from Office. If people (read: companies) realize that free (and higher quality) is better than $300-600 / license (and lower quality) the open source world could start to get the penetration it needs to hit a tipping point.

  4. Sizes - Memory, Download by karearea · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Getting the memory usage down would be a godsend. It seems that 'big' OOS projects seem to have tendancies to hog memory - Firefox, OpenOffice.org - what causes that?

    The download is not that bad (how big is MS Office?). What is bad is that the update requires a new download rather than an update/service pack type thing.

    Can 2.01 be a smaller download to update a 2.0 install, rather than a complete download that'll try to install itself to OpenOffice.org2.01?

    Just my list of demands, feel free to ignore :-)

  5. Maybe File Sharing by baggins2002 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Maybe they'll add some of the file sharing features that are in MS Office. This has been a major stumbling block to bringing OO into small to medium size businesses.