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Google Hiring Programmers to Work on OpenOffice
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.""
...since I've installed Office but is 80 MB really mammoth? That doesn't phase me. I only get mildly annoyed when I see a 500 MB or greater install, these days. Pretty crazy when you think back to the size of harddrives ten years ago.
"Whether or not you believe me, I'm right" -RWF
So much for ever getting a real Mac OS X version OpenOffice.org. Spare me your comments about NeoOffice and the X11 version working on OS X.
I know Google can't *stop* a Mac port, but they've got an awful track record of supporting Macs. I'm sure they won't direct any of their resources toward the recently announced new effort to build a Cocoa version.
Oh well. Pages is nicer anyway than OpenOffice, even if I do have to pay for it. It's a shame that the businesses and governments that would be willing to consider OpenOffice want it to have every ounce of the feature bloat that MS Office has.
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They have to make a nifty "GOO.ogle" logo.
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.
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.
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.
"I just installed OO2,"
I bet OO7 will be killer!
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
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.
This is a powerfull message to anyone being involved in the decision process over the state of Massachusetts: "We do support the Open Document standard!". A welcome move at a critical time.
How do you commoditize an operating system? One way is to make web services that can be accessed by any standards-compliant browser. Check.
How do you commoditize an office suite? By backing and improving a free-of-charge office suite, and by providing coders, money, and publicity to the project. Check.
I wonder what MS will do now? I think that if they have to fight to maintain a monopoly against Google, IBM, Sun, and the entire F/OSS community, they may well have a losing battle.
Eventually.
All of them.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Just wait till he finds out that Google is hiring people that directly affects his bread and butter software -- Office. He'll throw a couch at the person who tells him the news...
Coderz 4 Life
It seems to me that if companies like Google need to hire programmers to work on the "less glamorous" aspects of FOSS applications, that points out a significant weakness in the FOSS development model.
One may also say that if companies like Google are willing to hire programmers to work on those aspects, that points out a significant strength in the FOSS development model.
Esoteric reference.
Google is investing in OO.org for the same reason that Sun, Red Hat, Novell, and even IBM (to a certain extent) are investing in OO.org. If Google can make OO.org a more useful competitor to MS Office for a nominal investment then that investment is definitely money well spent. This has little or nothing to do with Google's use of Free Software, and everything to do with the fact that with Microsoft Office is vulnerable. OO.org is actually pretty competitive, and Microsoft's upcoming format shift means that people are going to have to deal with format incompatibilities no matter what they decide to use.
Google execs know that Microsoft begins to lose sales of its ridiculously profitable office suite to OO.org that investors will demand that Microsoft stop focusing on new endeavors (like MSN) and focus on its bread and butter businesses. Increasing the viability of OO.org is almost certainly Google's most cost effective weapon in its fight against Microsoft.
Apparently, an aged Richard Stallman has been recruited by Google to help them in their efforts. After taking one glimpse at the code, Stallman said he "recoiled in morbid disgust". "Jesus f***," he said, "I'm going to have to re-code this thing from the ground up... using LISP." Stallman's project is said to be under the codename "emacs" and will be useful for everything.