RedOffice 4.0 Beta Updates OpenOffice UI

Johannes Eva writes "As IBM Lotus Symphony shows its first public version 1.0, the Chinese OpenOffice.org derivative RedOffice offers the first beta of its new version 4.0. The open source RedOffice gets a new UI inspired from Microsoft Office 2007, with a vertical 'ribbon.' Is this the future of OpenOffice.org?"

Comments

Re:Microsoft

[ShieldW0lf]

Be that so. Although some Russian leaders have ruined the idea of communism for many people,

Who supplied you with all your news about what was going on in those Communist states? Was it Stalin, or was it your own national news?

It's not communism-the-economic-model that's the problem, it's totalitarianism-the-political-model. You can't dissociate the two in your mind because your own nation has been brainwashing you to think of them as inseparable, most likely since the time you were born.

Both democratic capitalist states and totalitarian communist states have carrots and sticks.

In the democratic state, you are dominated through economics, but liberated from autocratic government, in totalitarian communist states, you are dominated by government, but liberated from dynastic capitalist empires.

Capitalism is the same as Totalitarianism, Communism is the same as Democracy, ain't nobody free on this hunk of dirt, and very few who even know well enough how to even ask for freedom in the first place.

Re:Microsoft

[Tranzistors]

Well, communism works great, if there is abundance. And in case of software, there is abundance.

Capitalism works on axiom "there is infinite human needs and wants, in a world of finite resources", and it can't normally work in world where production (copying) and distribution is very cheep, so it must make resources scares artificially (DRM and such).

Anyway, what these communist countries did wrong was what Software vendors and MAFIAA did - applied good paradigm in wrong situation.

Re:Microsoft

[R2.0]

"For what it is worth, Yugoslavia under Marshall Tito worked out fairly well."

For a while - until he died and the lid blew off.

One of the reasons that Yugoslavia "worked" is that Tito ruthlessly suppressed sectarianism and ethnicities. While it appeared to be a good thing, especially to the eyes of Western liberals who regard religion as evil, it had the effect of building a pressure cooker which blew apart in the 90's, causing violence far in excess of whatever Tito did. Iraq is the same way - Saddam suppressed the Kurds and Shia, and "kept the peace". But in doing so, he set the seeds for the situation we see now, with the US popping the cork prematurely.

You can't take large populations of ethnically and religiously diverse populations, put them in close contact, and tell them "Get along - or else". It just doesn't work over the long term.