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Why Google Should Embrace OpenOffice.org

CWmike writes "Preston Gralla has a decent idea that could move the office needle: If Google really wanted to deliver a knockout punch to Microsoft, it would integrate OpenOffice with Google Docs, and sell support for the combined suite to small businesses, medium-sized business, and large corporations. Given the reach of Google, the quality of OpenOffice, and the lure of free, it's a sure winner. Imagine if a version of it were available as a Web service from Google, combined with massive amounts of Google storage. Integrated with Google Docs, it would also allow online collaboration. For those who wanted more features, the full OpenOffice suite would be available as a client — supported by Google. wouldn't be at all surprised to see this happen. Just yesterday, IBM announced that it was selling support for its free Symphony office suite. It's not too much of a stretch to imagine Google doing the same for OpenOffice, after it integrates it with Google Docs."

277 comments

  1. Re:Sounds like a by hostyle · · Score: 1

    And ... thats a good thing, right?

    --
    Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
  2. Sun and Google actually cooperating? by PFAK · · Score: 0

    Never! When satan skates to work!

    --

    Free means no restrictions, ironic the FSF's GPL forces restrictions, isn't it? What's your definition of free?
    1. Re:Sun and Google actually cooperating? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      Actually, Satan is known to be an avid rollerblader.

    2. Re:Sun and Google actually cooperating? by njcoder · · Score: 5, Informative

      Sun and Google actually cooperating?

      Never! When satan skates to work! What rock have you been hiding under?

      Google Adds Star Office to Google Pack

      You can get Google Pack Here.
    3. Re:Sun and Google actually cooperating? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Free as in freedom does not mean "no restrictions." Think about it for a minute ... in a free society, everyone is restricted by law to respect the rights (including the freedoms) of other members of that society. Without such restrictions, there would be no freedoms. By analogy, free software must bound by certain restrictions in order for it to remain truly free, e.g. the source code must be available for you in order for you to have the freedom to change it as you see fit.

    4. Re:Sun and Google actually cooperating? by davidsyes · · Score: 1

      Butt, does she spin and jump bus stop benches on her way to work...

      (Hey, if GOD can be a "she", then can't Satan(a) be, too? And, would hell-bent people look forward to 35.5 or 140 avowed-sex-addicts...?) (You don't have to do a hell of a lot of soul-searching to find the humor here...)

      --
      Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
    5. Re:Sun and Google actually cooperating? by hairyfeet · · Score: 1

      Actually that was a lie perpetrated by the Catholics along with the "Hell and Ice Water" bit(He prefers a nice cold Zima). for personal transport he prefers the Segway PT as it allows him to bitchslap the minions without having to slow down.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    6. Re:Sun and Google actually cooperating? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is the second time you've spelled "but" as "butt." Are you doing this intentionally?

  3. Why? by prockcore · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What does OpenOffice offer the average user that Google Docs is lacking?

    And why would Google use OpenOffice to fill that gap when they could just improve Google Docs?

    1. Re:Why? by peragrin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      what really gets me is that google docs uses Open Document format as it's default output. use open office locally and google docs on the road for the same document.

      you can swap back and forth. You can use google docs to store your files pass US customs and download them again quickly and easily once you have passed customs.

      i am not seeing the point of the article.

      --
      i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
    2. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      More important is what does OpenOffice can offer to Google? Google lives from advertisement, why would they avoid the opportunity of add advertisement doing this? Although, they haven't implemented some way of putting advertisement, I'd think they will do it soon, thus, why would they want to get rid of the possibility?

    3. Re:Why? by vux984 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What does OpenOffice offer the average user that Google Docs is lacking?

      Not running in a browser on AJAX, the stupidest application 'platform' ever congealed?
      Working reliably when offline?
      Working reliably with large documents, with embedded images etc?
      Performance? Even if you thought OO.o was slow, you'll be amazed at how badly you can bog things down if you implement it in mighty javascript, inside a browser.

      And why would Google use OpenOffice to fill that gap when they could just improve Google Docs?

      You mean by making google docs a real application instead of a gimped web based browser hosted mess? Why re-invent the wheel? Just enhance oo.o to store docs to google's servers and call it a day.

      Personally though, I don't know why anyone would even BOTHER with google docs. If you want web based document access I think we should be striving for remote desktop hosting and application publishing.

      Citrix already has this, and if you've ever used MSOffice as a published Citrix web application, you'll know what I'm talking about. None of this flaky ajax crap. Accessible from anywhere. Documents exist on the corporate server. It costs a bundle to license though and I don't know if it supports linux. -- but isn't that where FLOSS shines? I'd rather see this over another half baked AJAX app.

    4. Re:Why? by cyber-vandal · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      A Linux Citrix client has existed for a while.

    5. Re:Why? by moderatorrater · · Score: 5, Insightful

      First, it doesn't operate entirely over the network ajax-style. For most things, you don't need the document to be online and updated live. When I'm using Google Docs, especially the spreadsheet program, it's dirt slow and slows down the rest of my browsing, too.

      Second, it provides an interface that's familiar to people, better than google docs. For a nerd like me or most of the people on slashdot, google docs works just fine; for people like my parents, OpenOffice is more familiar. Google can make internet browsers sing and dance, but the browser just can't replicate the experience as well.

      Third, it gets existing OpenOffice users to switch to google docs. The ability to save to google docs as easily as to the hard drive would be a compelling feature, at least to me. I run a DnD game online and I use google doc's spreadsheet to manage characters; this would make it a lot easier for me and my players to use it all.

      I would use this for my DnD game and most of my documents that I could possibly want in multiple places (and that wouldn't be interesting to law enforcement or identity thieves).

    6. Re:Why? by vux984 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      A Linux Citrix client has existed for a while.

      That's not the point.

      We need a Linux based application *server*, preferably one that is FLOSS.
      Publishing OO.o from Windows 2003 Server and Citrix Presentation Server to a linux client almost defeats the point if you ask me.

    7. Re:Why? by joshtheitguy · · Score: 2, Informative

      I don't know if it supports linux. Oh it does, my travel laptop at work is running Kubuntu 8.04 and I can access any citrix application hosted on the company's servers flawlessly. Just download the linux x86 ica client from www.citrix.com, install, import the SSL certificate issuer's public cert (if necessary I know I had to but it is easy to do) and you are done.
    8. Re:Why? by Threni · · Score: 4, Insightful

      > Not running in a browser on AJAX, the stupidest application 'platform' ever congealed?

      Web apps are shit, period. If you want security, run in a virtual environment, or just stick with apps from people you trust, like Google.

      Otherwise you get flaky, embarrassing, unresponsive bollocks which fails the second there's a network problem anywhere between the servers in the States, thousand of miles away from me, right up to my ISP and the little bits of metal connecting to me. Plus my data isn't being sent halfway around the world for some spotty bedroom boy to packet sniff and/or fuck about with. That's the worse possible solution.

      Surely you want the opposite - apps downloaded from the net, run locally, with internet access as and when needed - infrequently, probably.

    9. Re:Why? by dave562 · · Score: 5, Informative
      Citrix already has this, and if you've ever used MSOffice as a published Citrix web application, you'll know what I'm talking about. None of this flaky ajax crap. Accessible from anywhere. Documents exist on the corporate server. It costs a bundle to license though and I don't know if it supports linux.

      And if you want to take it to another level, you can implement something like this...

      http://www.sonicwall.com/us/products/Secure_Remote_Access.html

      It will do RDP or Citrix connections via a web browser, no VPN client software required. So anywhere you have a web browser and internet access, you have access to your applications and documents. Of course it isn't free, but when it comes to IT, I find that you get what you pay for.

    10. Re:Why? by vux984 · · Score: 1

      Oh it does, my travel laptop at work is running Kubuntu 8.04 and I can access any citrix application hosted on the company's servers flawlessly. Just download the linux x86 ica client from www.citrix.com, install, import the SSL certificate issuer's public cert (if necessary I know I had to but it is easy to do) and you are done.

      I know there is a citrix client. But can host one publish Linux Applications from a Linux Server? That is what I was referring to. And if not with Citrix... with anything?

    11. Re:Why? by WhiteWolf666 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Just use FreeNX+OpenOffice.org. Free, works great with Linux, does the job at least as good as Citrix, if not better.

      X11 is a wonderful thing, and extensions to it like FreeNX are quite incredible.

      --
      WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
    12. Re:Why? by Firehed · · Score: 5, Insightful

      For the most part I agree with you. However, remote access doesn't offer the realtime multi-user collaboration that's a part of Google's online office tools. Setting up centralized documents on the cheap is quite possible these days - I work for a company that sells that kind of thing, but for all intents and purposes it's an interface wrapped around a glorified subversion repository with some unrelated features that deal with the rest of that whole intranet thing. Hell, truly dumb it down and just have an FTP server. DropBox is one of those newer Web2.0 things that's basically a fancy wrapper around FTP (once again, we're starting to realize that user interface and ease of use is key to adoption); it's only meant for one user at a time and is more of a personal cross-computer document syncing tool. However, none of those to my knowledge deal with what happens when two people want to work on the same document at the same time. What we have at work has a check-in/check-out system, and DropBox would probably just give one user a read-only copy (since it treats it more like a network drive than an ftp server, and that's what happens on a local network). Google Docs/Spreadsheets, on the other hand, allows multiple users to edit the same document in real time and have each other's changes pushed to all other editors as they're being made, much more along the lines of SubEthaEngine.

      Granted, not a whole lot of people need that kind of functionality most of the time. For what I do, it's actually a great asset - it sure beats the hell out of emailing a document back and forward a dozen times over the space of ten minutes. And the functionality, again for what I do, is plenty - I'm just sharing lists of ideas with colleagues and clients 95% of the time. All of your points against Google Docs are very much valid, and I was going to point them out myself. The accessibility during offline time is the real killer for me, as I don't have a cellular card for my laptop and can't be bothered to pay for wifi at hotspots, so it certainly can't replace a desktop text editor. Some combination of a desktop editor, the "push FTP" of DropBox, and the realtime collaboration of Google Docs would be THE winner, but that's asking for a lot.

      At the end of the day, there's no one tool that's right for everyone right now. OOo is free, functional, and will get the job done for most people. Word is expensive, more functional and stable, somewhat faster, and has advanced features for power users that most people will never go near. Google Docs is free, limited in functionality, but doesn't require installation or local storage.

      (Yes, I know I didn't really address the whole Word/Citrix thing; however, assuming you have VPN access then you're already able to get to the central repository and then there should be no reason to bother with the published web app through Citrix thing since you could just locally install OOo/Word - the file access is the crucial thing there more so than the app itself. Yes, this still isn't quite what you meant, but humor me)

      --
      How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
    13. Re:Why? by aplusjimages · · Score: 2, Insightful

      There is a character limit to Google Docs. I thought it would be a good idea to get some video game walkthroughs saved to my Google Docs, so I didn't have to look them up all the time, so I copied the text to Google Docs and some of the files had too much text for Good Docs to handle.

      --
      Can I bum a sig?
    14. Re:Why? by J+Story · · Score: 2, Interesting

      What does OpenOffice offer the average user that Google Docs is lacking?

      And why would Google use OpenOffice to fill that gap when they could just improve Google Docs? Footnotes. Text boxes. Styles.

      Whether Google can put these into their online Docs is a valid question, but it doesn't look easy.

    15. Re:Why? by ady1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I have used Citrix and to be honest, it is horrible. A royal pain in the ass to use on a regular basis. I would take Google docs any day over that torture.

    16. Re:Why? by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      Well, in theory X11 has always worked that way. Just point your DISPLAY at your local terminal.

      The main disadvantage of X11 is that it doesn't handle latency well, unlike Citrix. NX helps this a bit - a FOSS equivalent would be nice.

    17. Re:Why? by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      Are you sure it wasn't a poor implementation? Citrix works pretty well, and I've seen it used in lots of places with thin client terminals (hospitals in particular). Now, if you're not using it in seamless mode than that IS a pain!

      Where it shines the most is with client-server applications over high latency WANs. Most client-server apps aren't designed to handle latency - but Citrix is and it isolates the app from the link. I've seen client-server apps that took seconds to respond to entries that went to almost-normal responsiveness when Citrix was employed. That is what makes it fairly popular in global corporations.

    18. Re:Why? by gregbot9000 · · Score: 1

      Google docs is actually very useful if you're working on computers that don't have word processors, such as library catalog computers.

    19. Re:Why? by CastrTroy · · Score: 1

      But why start with OpenOffice? They would probably be much better off starting with KOffice. It shouldn't take much to get it working on Windows, Linux and MacOS, now that KDE4 is out, and it's a much better starting point than OpenOffice. OpenOffice is slow, huge, and from what I hear, has terrible code.

      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
    20. Re:Why? by no-body · · Score: 1

      Uploading a .xls spreadsheet with some more fancy stuff - comments, pulldown selects and text boxes to google docs and downloading it again as .xls, it's lossy in such a prohibitive manner to be unusable. Considering it a "toy".

      What works to some degree is a shared gmail account to send documents as email attachments.

      Better than having a script running under a browser (assumed this is google docs) would be a server having the actual applicaton and some interface shooting user input and server output encrypted back and forth.

    21. Re:Why? by francium+de+neobie · · Score: 1

      Say... how do you make a list in Google Docs like the following?

      1. Point 1 1.1. Point 1.1 1.1.1. Point 1.1.1 1.1.2. Point 1.1.2 1.1.3. Point 1.1.3 1.2. Point 1.2

      AFAIK, it's not possible right now.

    22. Re:Why? by francium+de+neobie · · Score: 1

      Oh, line breaks and spaces aren't working here. What I meant is a numbered list like this... with indentation.

      1. Point 1
      1.1. Point 1.1
      1.1.1. Point 1.1.1
      1.1.2. Point 1.1.2
      1.1.3. Point 1.1.3
      1.2. Point 1.2

    23. Re:Why? by stephanruby · · Score: 1

      The accessibility during offline time is the real killer for me, as I don't have a cellular card for my laptop and can't be bothered to pay for wifi at hotspots, so it certainly can't replace a desktop text editor.

      If you use the US English version of google docs and if you check the box that says you're willing to try their advanced features, you can work on google docs while off-line. It downloads a google client to your machine and allows you to work off-line using your internet browser, and when you get back online -- it syncs back the changes.

      At least, that's what I have and that's what I have been using so far, but since I use a paid google apps account -- may be this feature is not available to the free accounts yet.

    24. Re:Why? by billcopc · · Score: 1

      Great. Let's spend 40 trillion dollars to buy an RDP framework to run free software.

      The point is: we could be rid of this Ajax cruft, and simply run remote instances of OO.o with a suitable client. I could see something like NX (NoMachine) or multi-instanced VNC filling those shoes.

      Or maybe turn the whole OO.o suite into a light-weight browser plugin that can talk back to its host for data storage.

      --
      -Billco, Fnarg.com
    25. Re:Why? by mabhatter654 · · Score: 1

      Google will bring Docs to the desktop with Google Gears backing it in Firfox3 and Safari. That will allow the web app to work offline but primarily be connected. It's a better plan that Citrix because apps should not have problems "dropping out" until time to update with the server.

      I'd like to see and OO.org plugin to directly go to Google Docs... I think there already is one from some third party. If Google goes any further for companies they'll go the "appliance" route. They sell google servers you can set internally to troll your network ...and they can search many more types of data than what the online google can. They'd just add Docs to one of those and allow companies to choose to sync it to the main google Docs or not.

    26. Re:Why? by mabhatter654 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      What's wrong with remote 'X' sessions over SSH? That's what LTSP already does... considerably better than Citrix and less expensive.

    27. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What does OpenOffice offer the average user that Google Docs is lacking? Vertically Merge Cells is missing in Google Docs. I live my life in excel (for better, or for worse). There is still a lot of *basic* functionality missing from Google Docs.
    28. Re:Why? by commodoresloat · · Score: 5, Funny

      You can use google docs to store your files pass US customs and download them again quickly and easily once you have passed customs. Awesome! Can you please post instructions for how to do this using drugs instead of files?
    29. Re:Why? by encoderer · · Score: 0

      Sure, but if you're using Citrix nFuse, you're already accessing any (published) app via the browser.

    30. Re:Why? by Falstius · · Score: 3, Interesting

      So you trust Google with your documents (which aren't encrypted in anyway so far as I can tell) but not the US Border guards? I'm not saying your mistrust is misplaced, just interesting.

    31. Re:Why? by msuarezalvarez · · Score: 3, Funny

      You have to wait till the pills-over-IP protocol RFC is published and implemented...

    32. Re:Why? by vux984 · · Score: 1

      Google will bring Docs to the desktop with Google Gears backing it in Firfox3 and Safari. That will allow the web app to work offline but primarily be connected. It's a better plan that Citrix because apps should not have problems "dropping out" until time to update with the server.

      Yawn. Why would I -care- if I can run 'google docs' offline? I -already- have multiple free offline office suites to choose from for -that-, and they don't run in a ridiculous mess of javascript on a browser.

      GoogleDocs really makes no sense for offline use. If I'm at MY machine then I can have a much more powerful free wordprocessor running (and all I'd like is the option to save it online). If I'm NOT at my machine, than sure a browser based solution is a good idea... but if I'm offline, what the hell good is it?

      If its NOT my machine AND its NOT online, then its not going to have any access to my documents.

      I'd like to see and OO.org plugin to directly go to Google Docs... I think there already is one from some third party.

      Yes that would be useful.

      It's a better plan that Citrix because apps should not have problems "dropping out" until time to update with the server.

      If I'm going offline, I'll use an offline editor. A Citrix solution is a substitute for google-docs online. And a locally installed office suite is a substitute for google-docs offline. And EACH does its scenario much BETTER than google-docs. Google docs is a cruddy offline app, by simple virtue that javascript in a browser is a crappy platform compared to a native office suite. And google-docs is cruddy online by simple virtue that AJAX doesn't hold a candle to remote access to a native app published through citrix for an online app.

      The *only* thing that google-docs really has going for it is that there is no free opensource linux based citrix software, and thus no one publishing KOffice or OpenOffice or whatever for free.

    33. Re:Why? by vux984 · · Score: 1

      I have used Citrix and to be honest, it is horrible. A royal pain in the ass to use on a regular basis. I would take Google docs any day over that torture.

      Citrix, when configured properly by people who know what they are doing is a joy to use.

      Trying to host incompatible software from an under powered server on an inadequate network by people who don't know what they are doing? Yeah, I've wanted to throw my laptop out the window too.

      Citrix done right, and the average user doesn't even really know the app isn't running on their own desktop until they have a power failure and find that once they get back up and running and upon find their document is right there exactly how they left it.

      Citrix can't publish ALL applications equally well, a lot of windows stuff simply doesn't play well on a terminal server. Its just not written with that in mind. Go figure. windows is still primarily a single user OS after all. To publish well, you need software that supports roaming profiles, active directory, runs under a user account with minimal permissions... etc, etc, etc. As we've seen from the launch of Vista a LOT of software doesn't cope well with that. Other apps are just too graphics heavy, or update the screen far more often than they realy have any real need to, causing performance issues when you host them, etc, etc.

      I really am truly surprised that we haven't seen more of a push for this from the Linux world. What better way to migrate to OSS than to publish linux apps online in a platform agnostic way. VNC or remote X sessions are a glimpse of this functionality ... but they aren't even in the same ballpark as the polish and performance of citrix... properly configured.

    34. Re:Why? by JakeD409 · · Score: 1

      Yes, some AJAX is certainly "flaky". Definitely not all of it is though. The AJAX that Google uses for Google Docs certainly isn't.

    35. Re:Why? by ady1 · · Score: 1

      Google Docs, when being run over a fast computer with a decent network connection is just as joy to use.

      Okay maybe not joyful :P but I do get to use it once in a while and never had any complaints.

      I'm sure you would agree that maintaining any kind of servers take a lot of effort and money. Now Google has no former experience or desire to go in application hosting business. They do have a lot of webserver on their disposal though and they can, without investing significant amount, host all sort of web applications (google docs included).

    36. Re:Why? by debatem1 · · Score: 1

      The tab key.

    37. Re:Why? by Firehed · · Score: 1

      It doesn't seem to be in the free accounts (at least I don't see it anywhere), but it sounds like some sort of extension to Google Gears. How well does it work? I'd very much like to see at least an AIR version for local offline work, though it's not as if Google doesn't have the resources to create a very basic word processor for each Win/Mac/Linux that syncs with your Google docs when a connection is available even if it doesn't do the live collaboration.

      --
      How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
    38. Re:Why? by vux984 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Google Docs, when being run over a fast computer with a decent network connection is just as joy to use.

      No. No its not. Google Docs isn't as full featured, and javascript in a browser isn't remotely as powerful or as flexible as what can be done with a native app either run locally, or even hosted via Citrix. There really is no comparison.

      Now Google has no former experience or desire to go in application hosting business.

      Really? I'll buy the no former experience, but pretty much everything they do lately is AJAX application hosting stuff.

      They do have a lot of webserver on their disposal though and they can, without investing significant amount, host all sort of web applications (google docs included).

      If they hosted 'real' applications instead of 'web applications' they could spare themselves all the trouble of actually WRITING web applications. All they'd have to do is write the application publisher... and for linux we ALREADY even have THAT in the form of remote X sessions; it just needs to be polished up a bunch to work over slow high latency WANs.

      If I were at google, and I wanted to make 'online office'... who in their right mind would want to write an office suite from scratch in JAVASCRIPT to run in a variety of browsers that are all buggy to some degree and over which you have little control, and where standards compliance is a fantasy?

      Especially when you could just take an existing free office suite, and the existing remote access provided by X-windows, and polish it up to run robustly and reliably over a WAN link. (And you KNOW this is possible because the guys over at Citrix have ALREADY done it.)

      And when you are done, you have a solution that will work with practically ANY app. You want an online graphics program... publish gimp, you want an online ide? publish eclipse. You want an online mail program, publish evolution.

      The ONLY downside to this solution is the cpu load on the server is higher. But if google figures they can scale up to give everyone on the planet gigabytes upon gigabytes of storage space, I think throwing CPUs at their network to give them some processing capability really shouldn't be an insurmountable problem for them.

    39. Re:Why? by vux984 · · Score: 1

      That's what LTSP already does... considerably better than Citrix and less expensive

      Awesome...Never heard of this project until now. I'll be looking into this for sure!

      One thing I can say citrix has going for it is heavy advertising :)

    40. Re:Why? by vux984 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The AJAX that Google uses for Google Docs certainly isn't.

      It isn't remotely on par with a native app either. And even google's flagship gmail -- it isn't that hard to confuse the UI to the point buttons stop working, context menus won't appear/disappear or render funny, while javascript is just grinding along in the background away slowing it all to a crawl, while the page loading icon spins endlessly...

      Sure I've seen MUCH worse. But really all AJAX 'web2.0' apps just aren't very robust.

    41. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And if noMachine don't work, a good ol' "ssh -XC me@host myapp" usually does the trick!

    42. Re:Why? by ozmanjusri · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Google can't detain me if they find something in my files they don't like.

      --
      "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
    43. Re:Why? by ozmanjusri · · Score: 1
      i am not seeing the point of the article.

      Think of it as a first step towards an open competitor to Sharepoint.

      --
      "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
    44. Re:Why? by cp.tar · · Score: 1

      Dunno about pills, but if they implement condoms, it may prove to be a new antivirus solution.

      --
      Ignore this signature. By order.
    45. Re:Why? by Daengbo · · Score: 1

      O3Spaces already is.

    46. Re:Why? by Daengbo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Dude. I think version 1.0 was released in 2000. X-over-SSH has been usable since the 90's (forgiving the patent on SSH back then)

    47. Re:Why? by cyber-vandal · · Score: 1

      I was going to mention LTSP but I thought you had some pressing reason to use Citrix like Windows-only software. Sorry about that.

    48. Re:Why? by lowey71 · · Score: 1

      What about disconnected sessions, slow links, sound, file sharing

      Really No Machine is the competitor for Citrix

    49. Re:Why? by Clifton+Beach · · Score: 1

      What does OpenOffice offer the average user that Google Docs is lacking? Styles, templates, find across multiple sheets (in Calc), charting,... The list goes on. Google docs if great for simple documents and where formatting is unimportant, but you need to be aware of the limitations.
      --
      42 hidden comments
    50. Re:Why? by richlv · · Score: 1

      it also has quite a lot of features and is very, very robust.
      as a kde and oo.org user, i have no clear preference in which of these would be better for me if a company like google decided to actively work on it.
      koffice, despite lack of developers, has progressed quite nicely. oo.org lately has improved performance. and being huge... well, features don't work without code.

      --
      Rich
    51. Re:Why? by thephydes · · Score: 1

      Have to agree. Citrix = Shitrix

    52. Re:Why? by stonertom · · Score: 3, Informative

      X/ssh is a bit slow for poor network links. Check out NX server, that'll give you a full desktop or app over GPRS. It's also GPL, and you can have NoMachine or FreeNX (the free and hard to use version :) )

      --
      Shameless plugs and inaccessible site design FTW! - www.mistletoestreetmusic.com
    53. Re:Why? by Squeeself · · Score: 1

      Enterprise. That's where Word gets its big bucks. Enterprises just ain't gonna use Google Docs as it is; they want a full office suite, and something a bit more familiar, which OpenOffice gives. All it needs is some marketing and big money, and a big name behind it.

    54. Re:Why? by servognome · · Score: 1

      Awesome! Can you please post instructions for how to do this using drugs instead of files?
      You could take the house swap approach, set up a website so that travellers leave drugs in their home country for others to pick up in exchange for the ability to pick up drugs when they travel to another country.
      This could be setup much faster than waiting for IEEE to pass the 1337a standard.
      --
      D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
    55. Re:Why? by jbatista · · Score: 1

      What does OpenOffice offer the average user that Google Docs is lacking? I'd venture to say: a Formula Editor. (Can't say Equation because of proprietarity.)
      --
      My sig is better than your sig.
    56. Re:Why? by dvice_null · · Score: 1

      Office is the cash cow to Microsoft. Kill the cow and Microsoft has less money to be spend on fighting Google.

    57. Re:Why? by fadir · · Score: 2, Informative

      So far there are no proven reports about Google really abusing its position (to my knowledge).

      But there are quite some reports where the border guards have taken laptops for more than shady reasons and never given back.

      So: Yes, I do trust Google more than the customs.

    58. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      daysbetween()

    59. Re:Why? by fadir · · Score: 1

      Well, that only works cross platform until your management decides that it needs additional "security" and makes the IT staff install a VPN solution that is not properly working with anything but Windows ...

      So whenever anyone with a non-Windows laptop wants to access Citrix from outside the company network he'll be doomed.
      So Citrix is not the solution unless it's embedded into the right environment.

    60. Re:Why? by xtracto · · Score: 2, Funny

      You have to wait till the pills-over-IP protocol RFC is published and implemented...

      Or you could just use RFC 1149 and send them as an attachment.

      p.s. To mods: who the heck modded parent flamebait. You need to get a new sense of humour.

      --
      Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
    61. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Google Docs/Spreadsheets, on the other hand, allows multiple users to edit the same document in real time and have each other's changes pushed to all other editors as they're being made, much more along the lines of SubEthaEngine. Abiword has a feature similar to what you describe, AbiCollab.
    62. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Google Gears for offline Google Docs access. Works fine.

    63. Re:Why? by the_B0fh · · Score: 1

      There is no point. Some people just like talking about nothing. He is just a moron.

    64. Re:Why? by the_B0fh · · Score: 1

      Because OO.o is not the app it was promised to be. It is big fat and ugly, and the only reason a lot of people rally around it is because it is "open source".

      To me, that is not enough. It needs to be more. It was supposed to be the lean mean fighting machine. KOffice looks more like what OO.o was promised to be.

      This is really sad. I still remember all the quotes from SUNW officers about what OO.o could have done for us. Very few of the promised features have actually shown up.

    65. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      With OpenOffice you can work offline. Thats a great advantage as many companies will never allow their staff to write their internal documents online.

    66. Re:Why? by Spittoon · · Score: 1

      yet.

    67. Re:Why? by tehcyder · · Score: 1

      Google can't detain me if they find something in my files they don't like.
      But they know a man who can...
      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
    68. Re:Why? by krewemaynard · · Score: 1

      You can use google docs to store your files pass US customs and download them again quickly and easily once you have passed customs. Awesome! Can you please post instructions for how to do this using drugs instead of files? Dude, forget customs. I get email all the time telling me how to get drugs cheap. I could forward it to you if you like...
      --
      I saw it on Slashdot, it must be true!
    69. Re:Why? by marcosdumay · · Score: 1

      Documents exist on the corporate server. It costs a bundle to license though and I don't know if it supports linux. -- but isn't that where FLOSS shines?

      Like X11? There at least 2 FOSS X11 clients/servers

    70. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Uhm, ok... but, have you even bothered to give google docs a chance?
      I think you'd be surprised.

    71. Re:Why? by linhares · · Score: 1

      It's the men that know that Google knows it.

    72. Re:Why? by linhares · · Score: 1

      I'm bullish on killing the cow.

    73. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Web apps are shit, period. Word
  4. FTW by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Seamless integration between oo.o, gmail and googles online suite of office apps sounds too good to be true.

  5. Basically, they already do by yog · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You can already import and export to OpenOffice from Google Docs. What more do we really need? Furthermore, I doubt that Google would gain much from taking sides. They are the premier provider of web services and that is where they should stay. Desktop applications are the past, web services are the future. Microsoft Office as a desktop application will eventually fade, too.

    Now, if Google wanted to give OOo a nice grant, that would be most welcome :)

    --
    it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
    1. Re:Basically, they already do by KGIII · · Score: 1

      Meh... Color me blind but web services are the past. Am I the only one who recalls getting compute time scheduled and then using a terminal or accessing most everything over the network from a terminal? All that is old is new again.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    2. Re:Basically, they already do by inKubus · · Score: 0

      Yeah, Google doesn't give a rat's ass about anything they can't put ads on and make money.

      --
      Cool! Amazing Toys.
    3. Re:Basically, they already do by greenguy · · Score: 1

      Furthermore, I doubt that Google would gain much from taking sides. They are the premier provider of web services and that is where they should stay. Desktop applications are the past, web services are the future. How is that not taking sides? In the unlikely event web services eclipse desktop apps, Google will have an enormous head start, and they'll most likely allow and even encourage folks to use ODT.

      More likely is that the line between desktop and webtop apps will gradually blur (e.g., "cloud computing"), and... Google will still have an enormous head start. Rather than OOo and Google Docs trying to replace each other, they will probably fade into each other over time.
      --
      What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
    4. Re:Basically, they already do by maxume · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It all goes in a big cycle. If networking were truly ubiquitous and fast, and your cellphone or credit card was a powerful computer and reliable authentication device that could inspect a display for eavesdropping devices and so forth, you would happily run all your applications, everything, over the network, simply for the convenience of never losing any data.

      Since they aren't, we carry bigger devices around and do a poor job securing them, but we live with it, because it makes the most sense given current network costs, hardware costs and hardware capabilities. When network costs, hardware costs and hardware capabilities change, people change their behavior in response to the new situation.

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    5. Re:Basically, they already do by merreborn · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They are the premier provider of web services and that is where they should stay. Desktop applications are the past, web services are the future.
      Off the top of my head, I can think of several desktop applications that google produces:

      Google earth. Google desktop search. Google Chat.

      Their goal is not producing web services, it's making data more accessible. Making it easier to access google docs from a desktop office application may very well fall within that scope.

      As others have noted here, google docs does not perform terribly well. For performance-intensive things, desktop applications are still better solutions than web-based ones. Office applications are one of those things -- they have tons of functionality.

      Google would do well to:
        * make it trivial to save and load google docs docs from within OO.o
        * add real-time collaborative editing of google docs to OO.o

      It's just not possible to get all the functionality of OO.o into a web app, and have it perform comparably on the same hardware.
    6. Re:Basically, they already do by mysticgoat · · Score: 1

      An alternate approach that Google could use is to support continued development of the client-side interfaces to Google Docs.

      That might be part of the reason that 85% of Mozilla's revenues come from Google. It is doubtful that Google can actually do anything more on the server side to improve Google Doc performance. But as Firefox gets leaner, faster, and more extensible, Google Docs will become much more interesting. I also expect that improvements in moving files between OOo and Google Docs will be forthcoming from the Firefox community in the next year: FFv3.0 looks like a sound foundation for such work.

    7. Re:Basically, they already do by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      What a company not putting resources into something that will not evenually make them money. How unheard of!
      You make it sound like it is a bad thing. The reason google comes out with these cool new tech stuff is the fact that they do make money, if they didn't then they wouldn't be able to employee all these people who are give a day a week or so to work on their own projects.
      OpenSource for the sake of OpenSource isn't a business model, and it will most likly kill you. Open Source for the sake of selling value add, faster development times, better compatibility, community support, is a better plan.
      Google is a For Profit Organization. If it is going to take just as long to reverse design OpenOffice to work with Google they might as well just program it themselfs and thus holding all the rights to the applicaation.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  6. What a stunning revelation... by Stanistani · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Imagine the repercussions if a large technology company like Sun Microsystems helped the development and support of OpenOffice.

    They could twin its codebase with their own corporate version and then the sky would truly be the limit.

    1. Re:What a stunning revelation... by snl2587 · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I think the article completely ignored Sun's role in the OpenOffice.org project. Of course, this would be great thing if it wasn't already happening...or was the suggestion to also do a corporate takeover of Sun?

    2. Re:What a stunning revelation... by joeslugg · · Score: 1

      I thought StarOffice began as a proprietary/corporate version, and then Sun opened it as OOo?

      Ah yes.

    3. Re:What a stunning revelation... by n0vu5 · · Score: 1

      That post got a 5 for interesting!?!?!!

    4. Re:What a stunning revelation... by dmmiller2k · · Score: 1
      Perhaps nobody noticed that Google already offers a free full install of StarOffice as part of its Google Pack (regrettably Windows only).

      Google Docs notwithstanding.

      --

      "No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up." -- Lily Tomlin

    5. Re:What a stunning revelation... by bobs666 · · Score: 1

      Imagine Microsoft having no Killer apps, and that an open source operating system was as good, or most likely better then the one MS offered. Do you think the world might change. Just a little.

  7. knockout punch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    this term, it does not mean what you think it does

    Microsoft isn't going to get knocked out by FOSS. Yes, FOSS will eat into its profit margins (and already has), and will give it stiff competition, but let's be real here, mmm-k? Microsoft and it's hundred billion in cash isn't going anywhere.

  8. Re:Sounds like a by pandrijeczko · · Score: 1
    Ssssh! Don't tell anyone else this but a lot of GPL (=free) software runs on Windows and OS X also.

    But please don't tell anyone else, okay?

    --
    Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
  9. OpenOffice just isn't very good. by Wulfstan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I was working with a teacher on Sunday night trying to prepare a presentation in OpenOffice (it was running incredibly slowly) and she said "I hate OpenOffice". She isn't a geek, she doesn't particularly like computers, but to her it was a huge disappointment to have to use OpenOffice instead of being able to use PowerPoint.

    So far from a knockout punch, I think OpenOffice barely registers in terms of it's disruptive influence. I don't use it, my employees don't use it and everyone I know who has to use it hates it. Perhaps it's time as a community we considered alternatives. The "quality" of OpenOffice isn't something I think people are particularly happy with.

    --
    --- Nick, hard at work :->
    1. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by nine-times · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure it's right to call it the "quality" of OpenOffice that people have a problem with. Sure, people dislike qualities of the software, but they don't dislike it for being "poor quality".

      There are probably still people who are stuck on Word/Excel because of some particular feature. The rest of people who aren't happy with it, in my limited experience, it's because it doesn't look great and it runs slowly.

      The first could be done with an interface facelift. Probably not a huge deal, if there's the will to do it. The problem of slowness, I don't know what the problem really is. If they can fix those two things, I'd say the general level of quality is more than sufficient.

    2. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by urcreepyneighbor · · Score: 3, Insightful

      OpenOffice sucks. I'm sorry, but it does.

      Maybe under ideal conditions - like, oh, the same sort of environment that would make Crysis happy -it's "fine", but it's not an Office killer.

      It's a bloated pos that's nothing more than a clone of Office. Not a very good one, at that.

      Show me an Office-compatible suite than I can install on a PII / 300MHz (one of the boxes within my reach), that doesn't have performance issues, and I'll show you The Office Killer.

      --
      "The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
    3. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Impress may be a particularly weak point. I really didn't want to install PowerPoint, particularly for casual use, so I tried Impress twice (v1.0, and then again for 1.1 because everyone was saying how much better it was than 1.0 and how all the bugs got fixed). Both times it immediately struck me as immensely buggy. I don't mean quirks or missing features. I mean bugs like:

            (1) after entering seven slides and deciding to order them, all text disappeared from seven slides. I found it again all on slide 1, off the bottom.
            (2) Arrowheads rendered as squares when I opened a .ppt This just looks stupid, but
            (3) When saved as .ppt, the squared became permanent and were displayed by PowerPoint as well. In this case, the document had to be modified and sent back to customers using PowerPoint. So modifications using Impress were out. It was a read-only tool for this purpose. (But then, MS provides a free read-only tool for PointPoint already.)

      So, I gave up and just installed PowerPoint. PowerPoint isn't buggy enough to drive me to Impress, but Impress was buggy enough to drive me to paying for PowerPoint.

      (And before the usual crowd chimes in with the "you have the source; why didn't you fix the bug yourself, you leech?" line, it's of course because I've got a job to do, and those slides are just a means to an end. My job isn't to singlehandledly build all the tools I need to do my job; it's to do my job, and even hundreds of dollars for a commercial tool is cheap compared to the time it would have taken even to begin to set up to modify the Impress code.)

    4. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by Tubal-Cain · · Score: 1

      Anybody try Lotus Symphony yet?

    5. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by blazer1024 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I hate OpenOffice because of its quality.

      I'm not a heavy office user.. I mainly use it to write an occasional report... maybe draw a diagram.

      But it's SO damn buggy I can barely use it! For example, I was illustrating a graph algorithm with Draw, and it was working quite nicely until I had to undo several levels.. then the alignment of everything went screwy. Nothing that moved during the undoing was anywhere it should have been. A redo didn't fix it either. (Not that alignment is ever quite right in that thing...)

      Writer's a bit better, but I've seen problems with it too... and almost all of my problems involve undos and redos... stuff which I do ALL the time.

      I was quite dissapointed, because overall I like OO.

    6. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Lotus Symphony is from the OpenOffice 1.x codebase.

      I'm hedging my bets on KOffice.

    7. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by TerminalOldFart · · Score: 2, Informative

      I've written integration software for Office, and then ported it to support OpenOffice. The performance of OpenOffice was literally 10x faster. Things were happening so quickly I had to check to make sure that the code did in fact run. While there may be some feature/function support missing in OpenOffice that is present in Office, I find that as a casual user it meets my needs, and the price is right. I seem to recall a Time Magazine letter to the editor (if I'm remembering this right) where a legal secretary wanted to condemn Bill Gates to writing a precisely formatted several hundred page legal document in Word. I have to admit though, I sure miss the old reveal codes capability in Word Perfect.

    8. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by dave562 · · Score: 2, Informative
      I have to admit though, I sure miss the old reveal codes capability in Word Perfect.

      I used to use WP 5.1 and I'm not sure what you're talking about. Word will show you all of the underlying formatting for your document. In Word 2003 you can simply Shift+F1.

    9. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by zx-15 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Mod me down as troll but OpenOffice Impress was kind of pathetic. Last time I needed to prepare presentation in it, Impress was really bad - it would use about 50% of the CPU when I was editing text, do something really annoying every two minutes, and crash every fifteen minutes. However, when I tried to reproduce that stuff with my old presentation using OpenOffice 2.4, these bugs got all fixed.

      Also Impress seem to be the worse part of OpenOffice, Write and Calc are pretty good, at least for the last two years of using them I didn't notice any significant problems.

    10. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by BoChen456 · · Score: 1

      I've written integration software for Office, and then ported it to support OpenOffice ... I find that as a casual user it meets my needs I'm sorry, but thats a oxymoron.
    11. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm not sure it's right to call it the "quality" of OpenOffice that people have a problem with. Sure, people dislike qualities of the software, but they don't dislike it for being "poor quality".

      There are probably still people who are stuck on Word/Excel because of some particular feature. The rest of people who aren't happy with it, in my limited experience, it's because it doesn't look great and it runs slowly.

      The first could be done with an interface facelift. Probably not a huge deal, if there's the will to do it. The problem of slowness, I don't know what the problem really is. If they can fix those two things, I'd say the general level of quality is more than sufficient.

      The problem and the main reason why OpenOffice is so damn slow is because its written in Java.

    12. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      True enough. I tried OOo for 3 months while writing a book chapter. It was good at many things, and useless at some of the crucial things. I then spent another week looking for an alternative to Word, because it too is good at many things, and rubbish at some crucial things, like maintaining the styles and formatting I set. None of the other word processing software did the trick. It was either a steep learning curve (Pagemaker, LaTex), rudimentary (AbiWord), or had other issues (WordPerfect). So I started writing in HTML. Much easier. A bit more time required for writing tags, and none of the fancy features that are also such headaches in Word and Writer. No difficulties fomratting pictures or captions. No sudden reverting to the default dictionary/language/template.

      I don't expect to go back to OOo until it has developed generations beyond what it is now.I certainly wouldn't start using Google Docs on that basis.

    13. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by junner518 · · Score: 2, Informative

      OpenOffice Impress is not powerpoint. It just isnt. It doesnt have some of the cool templating/artsy fartsy stuff powerpoint has. However, it is usable. And for something that costs nothing it does its job. At least the presentations can be saved as ppt files for interoperability, and recently I did a presentation and everything transferred correctly. And I had pictures, animations, sounds, etc.

      You could say I'm impressed :p

    14. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by h4nk · · Score: 2, Informative

      I totally agree. I start to moan whenever I see it firing up. Large spreadsheets and docs are particularly painful as I often get the scroll-lag-of-death where the screen is about 5 seconds behind every click. I've given up on dragging the scroll bar completely.

    15. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by Thai-Pan · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I'm glad I'm not the only one.

      When I was a student, before getting assimilated by MS (I am now a MS employee), I ran Linux exclusively on my school laptop and used OpenOffice full time. There's no way around saying it, it was a terrible experience. When it wasn't crashing, losing my documents, or in some other way completely failing to function, it was painfully slow, bordering on unusable.

      I stuck by it and fiddled with it until one day in a lab I had to do some extensive spreadsheet work. Specifically, getting data out of a tab-delimited file, approx 15,000 rows and ~5ish columns. Every way I could possibly attempt to open, paste, import this file would throw OpenOffice into a seemingly endless loop. I'd wait 20, 30, 40 minutes, but it couldn't handle this 100kB file no matter how I diced it. I made all sorts of excuses as other students were doing the same thing in mere seconds on their Windows PCs or Macs. It was the last straw for me and I gave up, and used the lab machine with MS Office to do the same thing in about 5 seconds. A similar lab experience only a few weeks later, and I ended up dual-booting my laptop "just for Excel", and before I realized it, I liked the whole Office suite better than OpenOffice. I still used Linux primarily at that time, but every time I needed anything remotely Office related, I simply found OpenOffice to be inadequate.

      Sorry, I'm really not trying to be a troll about this, and I know many folks will scream bloody murder at me for even posting because of my bias. But before I had such a bias, I tried so very hard to love OpenOffice, and just couldn't. Like Wulfstan said, the quality of OpenOffice is just not very good.

      If I were Google, I'd be working hard to carve out this niche market for online services and stay out of desktop apps beyond perhaps plugins for better online integration. OpenOffice doesn't fit with Google's business model, and frankly, I think Google could probably crank out something superior to OpenOffice from scratch anyways.

    16. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by jadrian · · Score: 2, Interesting

      KOffice has lots of potential. Quite light, the code is much cleaner and very modular. It's also going to be multiplatform. I wish a fourth of the effort being put in OpenOffice was being invested in KOffice instead.

    17. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by caseih · · Score: 4, Informative

      Wrong again. OpenOffice is written primarily in C++. It's surprising to see this myth perpetuated. Certain things like Base and various import export plugins require Java, but certainly not OpenOffice itself. Please stop spreading this kind of untruth. Besides being untrue, it's not relevant.

    18. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by zeroduck · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Did you file a bug report?

    19. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by siwelwerd · · Score: 1

      I was working with a teacher on Sunday night trying to prepare a presentation in OpenOffice (it was running incredibly slowly) and she said "I hate OpenOffice". She isn't a geek, she doesn't particularly like computers, but to her it was a huge disappointment to have to use OpenOffice instead of being able to use PowerPoint.

      Really? My non-geek fiancee has used Open Office on my laptop to do presentations for school and hasn't had any complaints, other than the default save format is not ppt (which I think I could change if the hard drive on that laptop didn't die).

    20. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by oddaddresstrap · · Score: 2, Informative

      I'm running AbiWord and Spread32 on an XP Pro eeePC. Not a suite, but fast and small.

      OpenOffice is too big and slow compared to MS Office 2003. Office 2003 ran fine on the eeePC, but it was way too big for what I actually need.

    21. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by AnyoneEB · · Score: 4, Informative

      Needing MS Office is a bad reason to switch away from Linux. It runs quite well on wine.

      Personally, I do not use either because latex covers almost everything I would use an Office suite for. In the rare occasion I need a spreadsheet, I use gnumeric because it works a lot better than OOo Calc. That said, Excel is a great piece of software. A good replacement for it would be quite a project.

      --
      Centralization breaks the internet.
    22. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Lets see after nearly 10 years of predicting the second coming of SAAS the fish still are not stupid enough to bite.

      Now we have google inventing an office suite that sucks compared to the MS offering. We have other people touting free office suites which still suck compared to the MS offering.

      Unless a whole lot of people put a whole lot of effort into a single office solution instead of constantly reinventing the wheel MS will continue to have their way with the market.

    23. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by Goaway · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Tracking down and properly documenting a most probably intermittent and random bug in order to file a big report that is actually useful is not really the kind of task one feels like doing when one just wanted to draw a diagram.

    24. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by merreborn · · Score: 3, Informative

      I stuck by it and fiddled with it until one day in a lab I had to do some extensive spreadsheet work. Specifically, getting data out of a tab-delimited file, approx 15,000 rows and ~5ish columns. Every way I could possibly attempt to open, paste, import this file would throw OpenOffice into a seemingly endless loop. I'd wait 20, 30, 40 minutes, but it couldn't handle this 100kB file no matter how I diced it.
      I used OO.o for years for manipulating the exact same kinds of files, and found it vastly superior to Excel. Excel struggles to correctly read many varieties of CSV files, and loves to mangle data -- try opening a CSV full of ISBN numbers, and watch Excel helpfully mangle them to floats. Whatever you do, don't save the file, or Excel will *overwrite* your 10+ digit integers in exponential notation!

      Regarding performance, years ago, when I voiced the same complaint here on /., someone suggested disabling Java in OO.o. It made a big difference. I was using a 1.x version at the time; I don't know if this is still the case in 2.x.

      The performance may not be stellar (although I really don't recall noticing a substantial difference), but in terms of functionality, there are many areas where OO.o outshines MS Office.
    25. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by davidsyes · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Try Lotus SmartSuite... Get hold of a $7.00 to $30.00 unopened, resold CD. Unfortunately, 1-2-3 has some mouse issues in scrolling in Win4Lin and in VirtualBox (maybe even in windoze), but the STARS of SmartSuite have to be Word Pro and Approach, the WYSIWYG, end-user, no-programming skills-required front end.

      I'm creating a screenplay/dialog management tool in it, and the regrettable thing is there is no stand-alone executable, and no way to simply run the finished files by end-users unless they have the full suite disk and then deselect installation of the other components.

      Table linking is simplistic, but works. Similar to how FileMaker used to be.

      Unfortunately, Approach has not got horizontal sliders for detail tables, but it has filters, constraints, and sliders. There is a large, vibrant end-users group at IBM and elsewhere:

      http://jabrown.customer.netspace.net.au/approach/official.htm

      http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/ssforum.nsf/0/d361cd261211b1e485256e24004dcd75?OpenDocument&Click=

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Approach

      BTW, the form shown on the Wikipedia site does an injustice to the things the forms CAN do. It would be nice if /. could resurrect image/file-posting (safely...)... I could submit some screen shots or actual working tables. But, you can also just go into the "Extras" and the SmartMasters (templates) folders and check out the checkbook, movie rental, and other tables.

      See:

      http://www.bluechillies.com/details/9317.html

      See Built For Employees 1.0

      SmartSuite has some 20+ application templates, numerous forms files... THAT is what BASE should have been emulating, but unfortunately, NIH syndrome STILL pervades, even after my circa-2001 pleas for them to peruse Lotus Approach. All we end up with is a hodgepodge of tepidly invented and release, hi-geekoid, no-beauty apps the make me feel my stomach was kicked in.

      That's ANOTHER topic, but Open Source needs companies like IBM, Google, & Sun to shell out beautification money so Open Source developers can have their warez evaluated and transformed into wares. I dare say that most would-be converts are put off by sheer UGLINESS of many Open Source apps that never got any real polish for non-developers. Yeh, I know TheKompany has an app (Rekall), and they have some former Approach users, but their interface approach left me feeling I'd had a combination of Approach and Abscess melded. I would have stuck with Omnis's (since become Raining Data) stuff, but I hate the overhead, the licensing schemes, and the need to CODE to get done what I want to get done.

      What somebody NEEDS to do is:

      Take SQLite or MySQL as back ends and Lotus Approach's FRONT END for it's WYSIWYG interface, and update it to the CAPABILITIES but not the COMPLEXITY of FileMaker, and THEN, THEN, THEN Open Source will have a worthy database application for end-users who want to open all the current database files Approach can access, and have the ease-of-use of Approach...

      (steps down from soap box)

      --
      Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
    26. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Agreed, I use Linux, OSX for everything. But if I ever have to develop a document. MS Word is my first choice. Much thanks to codeweavers implementation of wine.

    27. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      (1) When you say you're an MS employee, you've pretty much ruled your own opinion out.

      Its like a Sith saying the Dark Side is better.

      (2) When you were at school? When was that? What version of OpenOffice did you use? Was it the latest one? (ver 2.4 or ver 3.0 Beta?)

    28. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by spandex_panda · · Score: 1

      Well I use it all the time, I even use OOo portable at uni, rather than use microsoft word! It is a matter of choice, I like OOo better, 'cause I have used it more, if you and your staff and everyone you know used it all the time, they would like it better than word too. The best thing about it is taht it's free, funnily enough this fact makes it hard for some people to see the value in it too!

      --
      like phosphorescent desert buttons singing one familiar song
    29. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by stubear · · Score: 1

      Perhaps you should learn to use cell formatting and tell Excel EXACTLY what type of data is being placed in the table. You should also look into using a database for storing information like this. Excel is NOT a database app, it's a spreadsheet app. They serve different purposes.

    30. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Wrong again. OpenOffice is written primarily in C++. It's surprising to see this myth perpetuated. Certain things like Base and various import export plugins require Java, but certainly not OpenOffice itself. Please stop spreading this kind of untruth. Besides being untrue, it's not relevant. "OpenOffice.org has been criticized for slow start times and extensive CPU and RAM usage in comparison to other competitive software such as Microsoft Office. In comparison, tests between OpenOffice.org 2.2 and Microsoft Office 2007 have found that OpenOffice.org takes approximately 2 times the processing time and memory to load itself along with a blank file; and took approximately 4.7 times the processing time and 3.9 times the memory to open an extremely large spreadsheet file. Critics have pointed to excessive code bloat and OpenOffice.org's loading of the Java Runtime Environment as possible reasons for the slow speeds and excessive memory usage."

      Java is definetelly one of main factors for its slowness. There isn't a single Java GUI program that doesn't suck majorly when it comes to speed and responsiveness.
    31. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by PCM2 · · Score: 1

      Needing MS Office is a bad reason to switch away from Linux. It runs quite well on wine.

      My understanding is that Office 2007 doesn't even install properly under WINE (which, IMHO, is the version you'd want).

      --
      Breakfast served all day!
    32. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by PCM2 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Java is definetelly one of main factors for its slowness. There isn't a single Java GUI program that doesn't suck majorly when it comes to speed and responsiveness.

      To reiterate what the GP said, OpenOffice.org is not a Java GUI program. What Java components it might [optionally] use have nothing to do with screen rendering.

      Of course, the downside of my point is that OpenOffice.org manages to be sluggish on its own, with or without Java.

      --
      Breakfast served all day!
    33. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You should try a recent version before posting i.e. I'd not comment on MS office as I've not used it for a long while.

    34. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by Cochonou · · Score: 1

      Still, using LaTeX beamer for presentations is what I would call an endeavour. While LaTeX lack of WYSIWYG editing makes sense for professional looking documents, it's really a pain for slides.

    35. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by mysticgoat · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I like OOo since Writer and Calc do what I need, Base is rock-solid where it counts, and Draw is at least adequate.

      But I am one of the few clear seers who know that the first and biggest step to improving an organization's performance is to ban the use of PowerPoint. (The second step, which would also result in a significant boost in efficiency, is to limit the use of MS Access to persons who have the training to know when it is actually the right tool for the job-- which, in corporate America, is roughly 3.72% of its current usage.)

    36. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      SoftMaker Office 2008

      http://www.softmaker.com

    37. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by Random5 · · Score: 1

      I'm rather unhappy with the quality of open office too. The interface is just plain unintuitive at times, partially because they seem to try to make their product as different from MS Office as they can even where MS got something right and they shouldn't be changing anything. An example of both of these at once is the key binding options, you have a LIST of key combinations, you have to scroll down a list, select key combination and then go through two other lists to find the function you want to bind it too! All this to get something like increase/decrease font size set up as it should have been originally. Even then the key bindings don't support the same keys as MS Office uses so I have to learn new combinations, it's like deciding to use Crtl+u for cUt instead of Ctrl-X. Then I had to manually install the package for my localised version of English and change several settings just to get spell checking (one of the most basic features of a work processor) to work at all. I've been using AbiWord a fair bit, it's has nowhere near the backing of open office but still delivers similar if not better functionality as a word processor.

    38. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, that was then. I am now working on a project that requires me to fiddle with HUGE DBF files. I'm talking megabytes of data here. Guess which app handles it for me? That's right OO.org Spreadsheet. Excel doesn't even come close to being able to at least open files I'm working on. So, yeah, that's my piece of anecdotal evidence. Now, let's all post anecdotes! Yay!

    39. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by zaivala · · Score: 0

      I know that I cannot use it for my work as a professional editor -- it keeps screwing up the formatting, without me doing anything. Word never does this. It is also a bitch to grab text from a website to OOo, whereas Word handles it without a gripe. I truly hate to say something good about a M$ product, but OOo still has some distance to go before it is a major player.

    40. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by mangwills · · Score: 1

      The problem I encountered is that, unlike OpenOffice.org, Excel does not ask first before assuming the format of each column. For example, columns that have leading zeroes will be treated as numbers. If I have to edit CSV files with those columns in Excel, I have to add back the zero prefix to those columns again. OpenOffice.org on the other hand allows you to specify the format of the columns so that it can correctly open the CSV files.

    41. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      excel is the worst pos software ever invented. you can't even type in a number in one of the cells there without it being refomatted into something unintelligble

    42. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by Kjella · · Score: 2, Informative

      Needing MS Office is a bad reason to switch away from Linux. It runs quite well on wine. Office 2007: Bronze
      Office 2003: Garbage (apps at Gold but doesn't install)
      Office XP: Silver
      Office 2000: Bronze
      Office 97: Garbage (apps at Gold but doesn't install)
      Office 95: Garbage (apps at Bronze but doesn't install)

      May I ask what you consider "quite well"? The AppDB guys at wine seem to disagree with you.
      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    43. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by Icarium · · Score: 1

      Free and Non Free software seem to go in opposite directions when it comes to product cycles.

      Non Free Software often starts out as a good piece of software (it needs to be, to get people tp buy it) and either stagnates or gets worse as time goes on (people carry on paying for it either because it used to be good - name awareness - or because they're locked in - too expensive to retrain/relicence).

      Free software often starts out pretty crappy and gets better as time goes on, as more people use it and more people get involved in it and it goes from being someones pet project to a fully supported and developed app.

      I also used to have having to use OO for anything, even though I rarely used it, simply because it was a resource hog and often didn't work properly. I do find that many of my original gripes have been sorted out and these days it's a lot less painful to use (admittedly the hardware it is being run on is a lot more powerful than when I started, so I can't comment on whether the resource management has improved or if the hardware simply outpaced it).

    44. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by DMUTPeregrine · · Score: 1

      It may not be a java gui program, but it loads java for those plugins. That is just as bad, since the whole "java is slow" thing comes mostly from loading the jvm. Java itself is fast, starting the jvm is slow. If you already have the jvm running, OO.o isn't nearly as bad. If you turn off all java plugins, it's also not as bad. Still slow, but closer to acceptable. That said, Emacs + LaTeX.

      --
      Not a sentence!
    45. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by mgblst · · Score: 1

      You can select the column in Excel, choose Format Cells, and change it to Text.

      I agree, I have the way that Word and Excel make these stupid assumptions about thing you are trying to do. I spend a lot of my time overcoming these stupid things that Microsoft has decided to do to my documents for no good reason.

    46. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by Dan100 · · Score: 2, Insightful
      OpenOffice is a dead end for a FOSS competitor to MS Office. I've used OOo since before it was bought by Sun, back when it was product of the German company StarDivision and had a funky "workspace" faux desktop thing going on. I used it at uni because it was free, but it was crap and ended up doing all my work on uni workstations as they ran MS Office.

      I've tried using OOo on and off since, including quite a major project recently. It's just so buggy! Write would never apply my user-defined styles properly, seemingly forgetting changes I'd made at random.

      KOffice has much more potential. It's cleaner, faster, and with the new version based on Qt4, cross-platform.

    47. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by mangwills · · Score: 1

      Oh... Last I knew, by the time you do the Format Cells, and change it to Text, the leading zeroes are already gone. So it didn't help any. I can't test it now, as our company has been free from Microsoft Office for the past 4 years.

    48. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've been using "OpenOffice" since it was StarOffice and defaulted to German and I've never understood the performance complaints, except when using Impress. Yes, Impress is a piece of garbage. I'm interested to see how it performs now that DirectX is turned on, but I know that on my Core2 Duo, it was unusable. I found editing them to be ok (well, the random lockups when saving were a pain), but playback was a bitch. I found that even in Linux it was faster to play the presentation in PowerPoint Viewer under Wine than to use Impress. Granted, this was with a series of presentations imported from PPT files, so that might have contributed.

      I've never noticed a significant difference between Writer and Word, especially after turning off Java and fiddling with the memory settings, which decreases startup time so significantly that it is baffling that OO.org doesn't change the defaults. Anyway, Writer works fine for me on those rare occasions when I want to punish myself by using a word processor instead of LyX. I've also never had a problem with Calc, though I prefer Gnumeric when I'm in Linux. Though nowadays, my spreadsheet use is so infrequent and basic that I tend to just Google Docs. Maybe Google Docs should integrate with Oo.org? :)

    49. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We've had this exact same experience with word where I used to work previously. Word so badly screwed up it's own documents that many of my colleagues lost several days of work many times because word saved blank documents. This used to happen on a regular basis on files stored on network drives. Often word wouldn't open documents saved the previous day no matter what anyone tried. However openoffice was able to open those corrupted documents easily and I could resave them so that word would open them again.

    50. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by n0vu5 · · Score: 1

      like what? Vim? (Don't get me wrong I love vim, but it doesn't have the formatting I need.) Emacs? KATE?!! Unfortunately I think Openoffice is our front runner, unless you /.'ers can point me elsewhere.

    51. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by Bananas · · Score: 1

      I can understand all of the commmentary about how it is slow, how it has display glitches, etc. But what I don't understand is how everyone glosses over the complete, utter steaming mound that is Office2007. It runs just as slow, has just as many display glitches, and I have to use a fucking cray to power it.

    52. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by dmmiller2k · · Score: 1

      So far from a knockout punch, I think OpenOffice barely registers in terms of it's disruptive influence


      At home, we have one Windows PC (with MSOffice) and three Macs of varying pedigree, only one of which came with MS Office for the Mac. The other two Macs have OO.o because I am basically a cheapskate and refuse to pay for Word, let alone Office. The Windows box also has OpenOffice 2.x for document interchange purposes.

      Given the choice (on a machine that has both), I will ALWAYS choose Word over OO.o, simply because it seems to follows a philosophy I first heard in relation to Perl: it makes easy things easy and hard things possible. As for the functionality that is duplicated in OO.o, Word (and Excel) are usually noticeably faster. I think the rest of my family concurs with me on this.

      Also, importing Office documents (from a Windows machine) into OO.o (on a Mac) seems to ALWAYS result in formatting problems with any formatting more complex than font attributes, which seem to render differently in OO.o, particularly tables and columns in Word docs.

      Having said all that, there is a distinct advantage to being able to edit complex documents at all on a machine without MS Office, however slow and cumbersome it may be. Also, document formatting that originates in OO.o seems to survive importation into MS OFfice better than in the opposite direction.

      Also, I've noticed that OO.o Calc supports twice as many spreadsheet rows as does Excel. Last time I looked, Excel's limit was 16,384 rows and Calc's was 65,536 rows. (Not an issue unless you find yourself trying to import a 18,000 line CSV file.)

      In addition, all OO.o can directly convert into PDF format with no additional software. Admittedly, this is no big deal since there are a number of free packages for Windows that support "printing" to PDF form, and also MacOSX directly supports built-in PDF functionality in the print dialog box, but at least in the Windows environment, there's one less thing to install if you need this functionality.

      So I guess my point is, what's all the fuss about? OO.o does for free what would cost at least in the $300 range (for MSOffice) and that's pretty good.

      Also, for Windows only, Google Pack offers a free full install of StarOffice, the commercial version of OO.o ($70 from Sun, I think, but noticeably quicker).
      --

      "No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up." -- Lily Tomlin

    53. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by labalicious · · Score: 1
    54. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by linhares · · Score: 1

      I hate OpenOffice because of its quality. ... I was quite dissapointed, because overall I like OO. Son, are you SURE you have taken your medication today?
    55. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by AnyoneEB · · Score: 1

      I should tell my friend who recently installed Office 2003 with only minor difficulties to update AppDB then.

      --
      Centralization breaks the internet.
    56. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. by caseih · · Score: 1

      What are you saying? The wikipedia entry confirms OpenOffice.org is not written in Java. It uses Java for a variety of increasingly important things. So to reiterate. No, java isn't the sole cause of its slowdown. There are lots of other factors that can and should be dealt with. Java is just a strawman.

  10. OpenOffice.org as a web service? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    What a ridiculous idea. I mean -- it's a good idea to get a mature office suite online but OpenOffice.org is StarOffice and StarOffice is desktop software that goes back 20 years. It's desktop software -- it can't move to the web easily. OpenOffice.org has VCF files that provide a GUI abstraction layer but it's not like they could write a web version with an interface.

    I mean if they just want a conversion system then use docvert software... but OOo isn't web software.

  11. Are you kidding me? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If Google provided it's own document editor ala OpenOffice sure, but OpenOffice itself is klunky junk. The only reason open source people tout it is because it's the only game in town -- not because it's a Microsoft Office killer. It clearly isn't yet.

  12. Re: Why Google Should Embrace OpenOffice.org by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    OOo needs to be redone from ground up like Netscape 4 needed to be redone years ago. It's slow, ugly and buggy. ODF is a great format. That piece of junk does it serious injustice.

  13. quality? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    you have a very poor standard for quality if open office meets it.

    1. Re:quality? by pandrijeczko · · Score: 1
      Hands up all you home users using MS Office... yep, millions of you.

      Now hands up all you home users using MS Office that have legally purchased a copy rather than copying it from work or downloading a torrent... anyone?

      I rest my case.

      --
      Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
    2. Re:quality? by joelwyland · · Score: 1

      I purchased a copy 3 months ago. I'm very happy with it. I decided to purchase it because I think OO.o is a piece of crap (ugly, slow and buggy) and I got tired of pirating software years ago.

    3. Re:quality? by pandrijeczko · · Score: 1
      Good on you. But you're one of the few who has.

      In my experience, a lot of MS Office home users conveniently forget that they're using illegal free copies of MS Office when they make comparisons to Ooo.

      Also, I don't see how "ugly" is relevant - an office suite is a tool, designed to get a job done. If it's laid out logically and is easy on the eye, what's the problem? A desktop environment is for me to work in, not to proudly display to everyone else.

      Yep, Ooo does not compete with MS Office on the integration or macros front - but please don't accuse Ooo of being buggy when Microsoft can create a 200MB-odd service pack (3) for Office 2003 and neither forget that MS Office invariably "cheats" by loading a big part of itself into memory when you start up (even if you need that memory for something else) in order to start quicker.

      I've used both packages extensively and I can't really see a great speed difference - if anything, if you compile Ooo (in Linux) for the CPU platform you're using, it's a bit faster. Yes, it doesn't have all the "bells and whistles" MS Office has but 90% of MS Office users use about 10% of its features - and for that Ooo is more than adequate.

      --
      Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
    4. Re:quality? by secolactico · · Score: 3, Funny

      Hands up all you home users using MS Office... yep, millions of you.

      Now hands up all you home users using MS Office that have legally purchased a copy rather than copying it from work or downloading a torrent... anyone?

      I rest my case.


      So... your point is that OO is so crappy, people would rather break the law than use it?

      --
      No sig
    5. Re:quality? by pandrijeczko · · Score: 1
      Do you own any music CDs? Can you download any of them on BitTorrent?

      I suggest that you probably can which means, by your argument, that your music collection is crap.

      Sorry, but I really don't get you people that constantly criticise free software for not giving you what you want - yet you're more than happy to pay good money for an OS or game that you constantly need to update from the Internet in order that it will do the job it says on the packaging.

      It's FREE software - so if you like it, it's a great thing; if you don't, then you've not wasted any money. In which case keep that strength of conviction and PAY for commercial software rather than pirating it.

      --
      Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
    6. Re:quality? by secolactico · · Score: 1
      Who's criticizing free software? Not me. At least not in the post you just replied to.

      I'm just trying to make sense of your reply to the original post in this thread. The AC (not I) on the original post stated:

      you have a very poor standard for quality if open office meets it.


      to which you replied with a post about millions of people pirating MS Office. What's that got to do with the quality of Open Office?

      Do you own any music CDs? Can you download any of them on BitTorrent?
      I suggest that you probably can which means, by your argument, that your music collection is crap.


      *My* argument? I stated no such argument on my post. In fact, I stated no argument at all. Mine was a single line post with a question.

      Sorry, but I really don't get you people that constantly criticise free software for not giving you what you want - yet you're more than happy to pay good money for an OS or game that you constantly need to update from the Internet in order that it will do the job it says on the packaging.

      It's FREE software - so if you like it, it's a great thing; if you don't, then you've not wasted any money. In which case keep that strength of conviction and PAY for commercial software rather than pirating it.


      See? This is what was missing on your reply to the OP: your point.

      BTW, the only proprietary software I use on my personal machine I bought and paid for (Windows XP and some games). I have no need of an office suite at home, but I do have Open Office installed plus several other free utilities.

      Sorry if I came off as flippant on my post. Like you, I should have elaborated more. Plus I'm a bit of a jerk.

      --
      No sig
    7. Re:quality? by david@ecsd.com · · Score: 1

      Are you serious? I can purchase MS Office 2007 through my employer for (iirc) around $40. They send me a DVD and all the other hoo ha. Of course, in my field, I have no use for Office, so I use Openoffice, though it was tempting to get it for my wife so I can bring an end to the whining every time she has to open up her boss's Monday memo he distributes in a .doc that makes openoffice crash.

    8. Re:quality? by joelwyland · · Score: 1

      Also, I don't see how "ugly" is relevant - an office suite is a tool, designed to get a job done. If it's laid out logically and is easy on the eye, what's the problem? You even included "easy on the eye" in your very own description. A house may shelter me from the elements, but if the living room is ugly I won't want to spend time in it.
    9. Re:quality? by Killjoy_NL · · Score: 1

      I purchased Vista and Office 07 NL cheaply through the educational institution where I work, so yes, I have legally acquired it thank you very much.

      Consider your case unrested!

      --
      This is the sig that says NI (again)
  14. Nope, thats a bad idea by Gat0r30y · · Score: 1

    I like OOo but would rather not see ads integrated into it. Google selling support for it? I don't see that happening - they aren't in the selling support business, they are in the search and targeted advertising business. The idea of integrating OOo and google docs is nice, but selling support isn't a good model for individual users, ads are.

    --
    Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
    1. Re:Nope, thats a bad idea by jonaskoelker · · Score: 1

      Or they could mine your documents for data. We, the slashdot collective, has already agreed that "Do no evil" doesn't hold. However, this might be even too much for the evil parts of Google.

      Just a random thought. Now, take that tin foil hat off.

  15. you mean like this? by nguy · · Score: 4, Informative
  16. simple question by ionix5891 · · Score: 1

    why would they do such a thing?

  17. google rulez!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    google rulez!!

  18. Knockout punch? How about 10% market share first? by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 1

    If Google really wanted to deliver a knockout punch to Microsoft...
    A knockout punch? As we all saw in the "anonymous PDF" thing the other day, even Google can't get off Microsoft Office for basic business documents. I think a lot of people would be happy if Google even started to edge up toward 10% market share in the next couple of years.
  19. uhhhhhhhh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    openoffice wasn't meant to be a web app, and google docs was. this doesn't make any sense.

  20. Not quite by dread · · Score: 1

    There's a whole lot more to corporate networking and considering that a LOT of the guys out there in the IT departments know nothing about other OS:es (imagine getting them to get kerberos working without Active Directory to help them) not to mention a whole load of other pieces of software that people use and need.... Well, let's just say it will take longer than you think.

    --
    I've had a wonderful time, but this wasn't it -- Groucho Marx
  21. businesses lose their documents by TenBrothers · · Score: 1

    Google claims that section 11.1 of their ToS doesn't mean they control copyright on all docs created with Google Docs, but then again, I'm not going to take legal advice from the people shoving me the document I'm going to sign. Would you take legal advice from your spouse's divorce lawyer when arguing who owned your house?

  22. Google docs - pdf tags. by bmsleight · · Score: 1

    File -> Download File As -> pdf

    Used to give OpenOffice.org as the pdf creator (within pdf tags), it now gives "Prince 6.0 (www.princexml.com)". So IMHO Google docs are moving away from OpenOffice.org
  23. so... by piemcfly · · Score: 1

    ... when will they scrap Impress and just start from scratch on their powerpoint clone?
    I mean, all just praises for the OOo and all hypothetical future popularity-dreams aside, they don't stand a chance at competing with MS Office if they don't actually deliver a solid software package.

    I really like Writer, but Impress is a nightmare. The controls don't function well, the interface is messy and unintuitive, the design functionality is rubbish, it's conversion to .ppt doesn't work properly under powerpoint 80% of the time, etc.

  24. Quality? Obviously none of you has ever... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    tried to print labels or envelopes in OpenOffice. That is a common administrative function in most offices, yet OpenOffice sucks royally at this simple task compared to MS Office.

    1. Re:Quality? Obviously none of you has ever... by pandrijeczko · · Score: 1
      Well, then I really would welcome your advice in Office 2003.

      Because whenever I try to print labels (especially at Christmas) in MS Office 2003 on standard Avery label sheets using the included (or officially downloaded) label template, it never prints a sheet of labels (say on a 2x8 sheet of 16 labels) as they are on the screen. The screen shows all the addresses nicely centralised on each label but you waste half the packet adjusting the printer sp that they're not printed over the edge of labels - even then it's hit or miss on any of the three printers in our house.

      I spend hours every year messing about with page setups, margins and printer setups and I have never once got it to work properly without using the "hit or miss" method of inserting a few extra lines between labels.

      --
      Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
    2. Re:Quality? Obviously none of you has ever... by everphilski · · Score: 1

      I'd check your printer, or check that you aren't inserting the paper up side down. My wife uses Avery labels all the time with no problems in Word 2k3, we've been through 2 printers recently, a Lexmark 3-in-1 and an Epson. Neither had centering issues.

  25. I'm not an openoffice fan by hairykrishna · · Score: 1

    It annoys the hell out of me trying to use it as a 'real' office suite. The excel and powerpoint clones just aren't up to the task. It's ok for quick, casual tasks but so is Google docs. I don't see the advantage for google in adopting it.

    --
    "Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman
    1. Re:I'm not an openoffice fan by pembo13 · · Score: 1

      Stop considering them as clones, but applications on their own

      --
      "Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
    2. Re:I'm not an openoffice fan by thePowerOfGrayskull · · Score: 1

      Stop considering them as clones, but applications on their own If we do that, we have to question the horrible interface decisions -- to all appearances, the reason a lot of them were made was to ease the transition from Office.
  26. core business by fermion · · Score: 1
    What a business should be doing is continuously reinvigorating it's core business to meet future needs. Google is the business of selling ads. It could get into the business of selling support, but then it is going to have a problem like MS, where it will do many things, few very well, and the things it does do well will get done less well. Therefore, any discussion about google and openoffice.org has to address how such work will help google sell ads.

    The article mentioned IBM. IBM is in the business of selling solutions to businesses. Clearly selling support falls within that definition. They are supporting a client they developed because they support total solutions, not random mix and match. IBM was able to climb back up and deliver a blow to MS in this area because MS was busy building monopolies, not supporting customers.

    Google likely has little to worry about from MS. Google is about selling ads, and that is it. It is like TV. Provide a simple to understand product, sometimes useful like the news, sometimes fun, and people will watch the ads. It works. MS, OTOH, is only interested in monopoly positions. They want to take over the living room. They want to take over the search space. They want to take over the web. Nothing is said of providing customer with solutions, or competing within a space. So they go the search route by figuring out how to leverage the desktop monopoly to force people to use thier search engine, rather than building a search engine people want to use, never realizing that search is not the issue, but ads are, and maybe there are other ways to drive ads, other than search, like, i don't know, office apps. But who was there first in office apps on the web? Google. Because google gets it, and MS does not.

    --
    "She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
    1. Re:core business by Enderandrew · · Score: 1

      The point of diversifying is that one business can dip, without hurting the company on the whole. That is part of the reason Microsoft won't disappear any time soon, even if a major product flops.

      Google is primarily an advertising company, but they have all kinds of differnt products and services.

      --
      http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
    2. Re:core business by sbulut77 · · Score: 1

      Good observation.

  27. lowest common denominator software by sentientbrendan · · Score: 3, Insightful

    >What does OpenOffice offer the average
    >user that Google Docs is lacking?
    Why should we ever improve on software? Why should software ever do more than perform basic tasks poorly?

    These are the attitudes behind your statement. Google docs is not as good as open office. Open office is not as good as microsoft office.

    The arguments that people usually make are, "do you really need those extra features?" and to some extent it is true. I don't *absolutely* need everything that Microsoft Office has to offer, and so I save myself some money and download Star Office via the google pack.

    Indeed, a lot of free and open source software tries to succeed, not by being the best software of its kind, but by being the *cheapest* software of its kind. Sometimes that strategy works, and sometimes it doesn't, but as a *developer* I'm always kind of disgusted by it.

    Really, what's the point of being a software developer if all you ever aspire to do is put out crappy software that people will only use because it is free?

    1. Re:lowest common denominator software by pablochacin · · Score: 1

      "Really, what's the point of being a software developer if all you ever aspire to do is put out crappy software that people will only use because it is free?"

      Good question. Just before making this post, I was working with openoffice and wondering about exactly that!

      I think that most people in this forum uses OpenOffice not because it is a better software but mostly because it IS NOT Microsoft Office.

      Let's face it, OpenOffice is not a good software. Its interface is difficult to understand (putting the language settings under character format is anything but intuitive) and sometimes is really annoying. A brief example: hiding columns/rows in Calc. If you select an area with hidden columns/rows and copy it, the content of those columns/rows is not copied, but if you erase the area, the content is erased! Looks like something logical?

      Now, go and try to convince openoffice developers that besides them, nobody else in the world understand that as an expected behavior. Most likely than not, they will take the usual open source developer attitude: if you don't understand that, then you are stupid and don't deserve to use our program.

      I've been giving a change to OpenOffice for 5 years by now and still have to use MS Office a lot even for the simplest tasks.

    2. Re:lowest common denominator software by rtb61 · · Score: 1
      I would think for most people the main reason to swap from M$ office to openoffice.org is to get away from forced upgrades via document compatibility, to escape tacked on interface changes trying to hide unnecessary upgrades, no I don't want to and never will use f**king M$ visual basic for macros so M$ can charge other companies for visual basic licences, escaping extra help, assistance and automatic features that actually kill productivity rather than help it, to gain access to complete manuals available for free online, to use an office suit that works across most operating systems including Linux, it is open source and as such openly and publicly audited and, and to gain access to the open document format as the naturally used format.

      To be blunt, people who can't get open office to do the simplest task are either idiots or liars, gees, quite some number of years ago I managed to get visicalc and wordstar to perform quite complex tasks and after that I somehow managed also do the same with M$ Word prior to the windows GUI and even M$ Multiplan. Personally I was quite content with M$ Office 97 but M$ eliminated that as a choice so it was either keep making costly upgrades to the latest version of M$ Office or make a single upgrade to OpenOffice.org with simple incremental upgrades there in after plus all the other benefits, easy choice.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    3. Re:lowest common denominator software by pablochacin · · Score: 1

      "To be blunt, people who can't get open office to do the simplest task are either idiots or liars"

      Here we go again . . . sometimes I don't know what I hate the most, if MS trying to suck all the money they can't while killing competitor or this elitist attitude of open source advocates.

      By the way, I'm neither a lair (what I reported in my previous post is factually true) nor stupid (man, I'm doing a PhD thesis in computer science) i just have more important things to do than waste time with unintuitive user interfaces.

    4. Re:lowest common denominator software by afabbro · · Score: 1

      I would think for most people the main reason to swap from M$ office to openoffice.org is to get away from forced upgrades via document compatibility, to escape tacked on interface changes trying to hide unnecessary upgrades, no I don't want to and never will use f**king M$ visual basic for macros so M$ can charge other companies for visual basic licences, escaping extra help, assistance and automatic features that actually kill productivity rather than help it, to gain access to complete manuals available for free online, to use an office suit that works across most operating systems including Linux, it is open source and as such openly and publicly audited and, and to gain access to the open document format as the naturally used format.

      That's quite a few main reasons ;-)

      The main reason people use OpenOffice is that it's free and is "close enough". That's the main reason 90% of people use any open source product - it's free and close enough (or as good). "Most people" do not care about licensing and don't know what source code is, much less that it's publicly audited.

      Open source software succeeds because it's free as in beer.

      --
      Advice: on VPS providers
    5. Re:lowest common denominator software by linhares · · Score: 1

      What about that little talking clip? Hah? Openoffice doesn't have that, now, does it?

    6. Re:lowest common denominator software by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      I believe you completely missed the point that spreadsheets, word processors etc have been out for at least 20 years, a lot of them considerably, including the ones I mentioned, more primitive than what is available in OpenOffice.org and all completely functional. Claiming qualifications on anonymous postings is beyond silly, believe me I'm the 'Pope' ;D.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    7. Re:lowest common denominator software by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      Well, what can I say, I made a much more carefully considered swap, taking into account the productivity losses in swapping over application interfaces and that I would likely be using OpenOffice.org for the rest of my life, hopefully a considerable number of years to go ;).

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    8. Re:lowest common denominator software by pablochacin · · Score: 1

      and what does it have to do with may comment about the utterly flawed user interface of OpenOffice? That was my point. OpenOffice is not a great piece of software. Is is not even better than MS Office. People uses it because is free.

      And by "annonimous posting" what you mean? I use my slashdog user name wich by the way is my real name. Unless you are called "rtb61", what is beyond silly is to criticize other for what you are doing!

      What is clear is that you don't have any point and then proceeds to attack the person instead of the arguments!

  28. The Problem with OpenOffice by Enderandrew · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Get your -1 Troll points ready, but unfortunately this is the truth. Sun has a stranglehold on OOo, which often stops developers from contributing code, or playing nice. Because of that, there are a variety of OOo forks out there. China's RedOffice has an Office 2007 ribbon-type sidebar that looks very promising. Symphony's UI is a huge step up over OOo. Go-oo.org and OxygenOffice provide many often requested features, templates, fonts, clip-art, a better solver, etc. NeoOffice seems to be the only one really focusing on solid Mac integration.

    All these improvements could be contributed upstream, but because of Sun's tight gripped control, they won't be. Sun isn't just going to hhand it over to Google, and I doubt Google is just going to sell Sun's product, unless Google felt like they had a strong-enough influence in the product's development.

    I agree that Google Docs is poor in its execution, but I doubt that OOo is the way to go for them. I see a product like Zimbra, that was developed with the web in mind, not an app forced into a browser, and that is where the future lies.

    When Google has an office suite that was designed with a web interface in mind, that works as fast as Zimbra, please let me know.

    --
    http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
  29. Google and OpenOffice.org already happened by ikeleib · · Score: 4, Informative

    Google hired developers to work on OpenOffice.org, but found it difficult to fill all the vacancies. They seemed unwilling to work on the project understaffed and the people they hired now work on other things.

    You can see a C|Net article about their hiring from a while back:
    http://news.cnet.com/Google-throws-bodies-at-OpenOffice/2100-7344_3-5920762.html

  30. Re: Why Google Should Embrace OpenOffice.org by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    That won't happen.

    KOffice is cleaner -- there's more hope there.

  31. Re:Sounds like a by i.of.the.storm · · Score: 2, Informative

    Also, since when is Google Docs under the GPL?

    --
    All your base are belong to Wii.
  32. Alternatives like... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Google Docs?

  33. OpenOffice as a web service by JoshJ · · Score: 1

    I'm not affiliated with these guys:
    http://www.ulteo.com/

    You have 1GB of storage with the free account and can use OO.org as a webservice. They also have a "Virtual Desktop" which is a stripped-down KDE environment with OO in Windows thanks to CoLinux.

    I tried it out and found the Virtual Desktop fairly impressive- the sort of thing that Joe Schmoe can use well; but unfortunately adding programs to it is a hassle which makes it unsuitable for my (admittedly fairly specific) needs. Their "online desktop" has other apps besides just OO.org- I think it's just the exact same set of applications that are available in the Virtual Desktop.
    Some of you may be interested in trying it out.

  34. Re:Sounds like a by pandrijeczko · · Score: 2
    It isn't.

    But this article isn't referring to Google Docs per se but the widgets that allow desktop integration - which is what the OP was whining about.

    Okay, they're not released under the GPL, I'll give you that, but they are released under the Apache License which is still pretty much "here's the source code, have a play with it".

    I just don't get you people that moan about getting stuff for free - who gives a shit? If you don't like it then either contribute some useful criticism or piss off and try something else. You've not lost anything in the process...

    --
    Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
  35. I'd rather they developed a word processor... by argent · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'd rather they (or anyone else) would develop a word processor that doesn't make me want to cut my hands off and write raw HTML by whistling morse code into a telephone because it would suck less.

    I am SO tired of every word processor out there, including the one by the white kool aid clan, mimicking the worst drawbacks of word because it makes it a bit easier to roundtrip documents to and from Word. I'd rather have the native format something like Docbook, but I'll take HTML if that's the only way to get real nested document structures and markup as THE native format.

  36. hmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Haha, this is so naive, its like one of batmans rants!

  37. That's not how it works. by westbake · · Score: 0, Troll

    M$'s revenue was down 24% last quarter over the last year. The knock out punch is putting something out that convinces the market NOT to buy M$ Office. The prospect of platform independence, lower cost and higher reliability can convince wavering corporate IT managers that an upgrade to M$XML and ten more years of file format lock in is a bad idea.

    Don't feel bad for the Soft, it's something they have done again and again to other companies, even when the other company's tech was better. The SCO, Get the Facts, and patent attacks are all evidence of the same kind of behavior. They deserve to fail.

    --
    I am a name troll of Westlake. Visit my homepage to learn why.
  38. Ugh. no. by pdusen · · Score: 1

    Personally I'd rather Google developed a whole new desktop office suite... preferable one that wasn't a total hog.

  39. If selling support makes money... by MSTCrow5429 · · Score: 1

    ...isn't that an implicit admission that the product you are supporting is buggy, flawed, and/or has insufficient documentation?

    --
    Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
    1. Re:If selling support makes money... by ZerdZerd · · Score: 1

      Sure it is. That's why I never test my code.. It's perfect. No need for unit testing, bug reports etc. And we don't do QA... because we know it's good!

      Anyone who even thinks about supporting anyone with their app should have written better code in the first place!

      --
      I'm not insane! My mother had me tested.
    2. Re:If selling support makes money... by MSTCrow5429 · · Score: 1

      I'm not saying there shouldn't be support available, I'm saying that selling only support raises questions about the quality of your product. Imagine a car dealer giving away cars, but selling maintenance and repair services. Wouldn't you be rather concerned about the car?

      --
      Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
    3. Re:If selling support makes money... by ZerdZerd · · Score: 1

      Oh, you mean if they force you to buy support, bundled? Because both software and cars are going to crash some time, given the right time and usage, and then need service.

      --
      I'm not insane! My mother had me tested.
    4. Re:If selling support makes money... by MSTCrow5429 · · Score: 1

      Oh, no, try getting support on a good deal of the products you buy, not going to get any.

      --
      Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
  40. Exactly by R_Dorothy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's analogous to using $your_favourite_mail_client to access Gmail via IMAP. You still have the web interface if you want/need to use it but you can also take advantage of a familiar application running locally that's specifically designed for the task.

    --
    Stupid flounders!
  41. No Ads in My Office Docs by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 0, Redundant

    No ads in my Office docs, please. And if they're all going to be stored at Google, I'd rather they're stored encrypted with a password I enter into the page, decrypted on my machine inside the local page's Javascript, rather than encrypted and searchable at Google. I don't want to trust some secret code at their servers. But the local clientside Javascript would be open source, so experts can inspect it for snooping. Maybe just let me store selected metadata, like tags, for searching at the Google servers.

    Now that would kill Microsoft. Not just the accessibility, but the trustworthiness. Microsoft is totally lost on that valuable feature.

    --

    --
    make install -not war

    1. Re:No Ads in My Office Docs by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 1

      Moderation -1
          100% Redundant

      If TrollMods had to point to the posts before mine about Google Office ads, and local encryption of stored encrypted docs, and how Google can be more trustworthy than Microsoft to beat it, they wouldn't be able to post these ridiculous mods.

      --

      --
      make install -not war

  42. Re:Sounds like a... BUTT, will they dream Ero... by davidsyes · · Score: 1

    Umm, eLECtric SHEEP as they await the emergence of GOOPENOffice.org(#sm*)?

    (Sorry, I just HAD to... release... that one...)

    --
    Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
  43. resume problems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The fact that a few potential employers complained of not being able to open my OO.o drafted resume was reason enough to switch back to MS permanently.

    1. Re:resume problems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      PDFs are better for that use case anyway.

  44. Re:Sounds like a by i.of.the.storm · · Score: 1

    Moan? I wasn't moaning, I was just questioning the OP's statement about it being a GPL fanboy's wet dream. Where in my post did I complain that it's not GPL? You're confusing my pedantism with whining, which is totally different. I use Google Docs every day, in fact it just saved my ass today because my new laptop doesn't have Office and I needed to finish up a presentation for a class. I don't think anyone's whining here, especially not the OP or me. And by widgets, do you mean API? I'm kind of confused by that statement.

    --
    All your base are belong to Wii.
  45. Why should Google care? by SEE · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Seriously, why should Google want to focus on delivering a knockout to Microsoft? Google doesn't need to do an office suite, and Google doesn't need to do an OS. Google's doing just fine being Google.

    Were there a lot of people running around in 1980 saying Apple Computer had to start building mainframes in order to knock out IBM? I mean, that would make just as much sense.

    IBM tried to knock out Microsoft with OS/2. How'd that work out?

    Novell tried to knock out Microsoft with its purchases of Unix, Digital Research, and WordPerfect. How'd that work out?

    Sun has been trying to out Microsoft with Java and StarOffice and whatnot. How's that working out?

    And now, Microsoft's been obsessively focused with trying to knock out Google, pouring billions more into MSN. How's that working out?

    1. Re:Why should Google care? by mgblst · · Score: 1

      What an idiotic post.

      Yes some businesses tried to compete with other businesses in a sector and failed, so therefore no businesses should ever stray again.

      Why don't you go back in time and try telling Sony to not release the Playstation, Apple to not release the Ipod, IBM to not release the PC, Google to not release there search engine.

      I mean why ever try to compete, that is just stupid

    2. Re:Why should Google care? by SEE · · Score: 1

      Entering a business because you think you can make money doing it sensible. Entering a business just to attack another company is idiocy. The only reasons anybody's giving for Google to do anything with OpenOffice.org is to attack Microsoft.

      My examples were all of companies who competed in a market for no more reason than "somebody else is in those markets, and we need to fight that somebody else". Your examples were mostly of companies who entered a market to make money. Sony didn't start selling Playstations for no more reason than to crush Sega; Apple was not trying to destroy Creative; and Google was not motivated by a desire to destroy DEC.

      The IBM PC, on the other hand, was motivated by an attempt to destroy potential competition from microcomputer companies. And the long-run result was IBM losing money and selling off its PC business. Did it crush Apple? Well, Apple seems to be in okay shape today. Did it stop a flood of rival microcomputer companies? No. Did it preserve IBM's dominance of the IT world? No, it midwifed the dominance of Microsoft. Yeah, that worked out well.

      "Google can make a lot of money selling OpenOffice.org support contracts" is a good reason for Google to do it. "Google can knock out Microsoft" is not.

  46. I wonder why they didnt name the extension... by beakerMeep · · Score: 2, Funny

    ooo2goo

    --
    meep
  47. Re:Sounds like a by ElizabethGreene · · Score: 1

    Am I the only one that thinks this article a bit presumptuous? Google has been in the internet business "for a while", and has been "mildly successful". I _think_ they can set their own business plan, and doing support on a desktop multiplatform application is a bit of a stretch from "search".

    -ellie

  48. Re:What a stunning revelation... Considering by davidsyes · · Score: 1

    Wulfstan's comments, imagine the re: PERCUSSIONS if IBM chimed in with Lotus SmartSuite to:

    -- bring more sanity to OO.o,

    -- collage or commingle or merge the two, and

    -- merge the best of the two to Google's things.

    THAT could probably kneecap msoft, or ankle-cap them (either is FINE, as long as msoft is hobbling with it's ass ever-precariously closer to its bone-shards on the ground...lowering the PUCKER and still raising the FACTOR...)

    Sun could be the Hammer (put a cap in ms' ass) and IBM could be the Sickle, (cut them down to size)... imagine the gory glory... it would be gorious and glorious...

    (hold on.... somebody's knocking the door...)

    --
    Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
  49. Not that difficult to implement, actually. by IGnatius+T+Foobar · · Score: 1

    Wow, in the comments posted so far I'm seeing a lot of Microsoft sycophants trying to convince us that OOo is some sort of buggy amateur project. I guess when you threaten a cash cow like MS Office you're going to get a lot of pushback.

    Anyway, given the architecture of OOo it really would be easy to get its full functionality running inside a web browser. Remember that in order to be cross-platform, OOo contains a UI layer that abstracts and decouples the operating system's widget set from the core application logic. (It even has a "headless" mode that has no UI at all -- this can be used when all you need is to do some scripted tasks, etc.)

    So it would theoretically be pretty easy to have a bunch of application servers running the OOo core and then, instead of displaying the UI using a traditional widget set (like GTK on Linux, for example), it could remote the UI out to a thin layer running on the user's browser. It would be simple using Flash, but I'll bet the Google wizards could even build it using AJAX and get something pretty functional.

    Kicking and screaming will the obsolete idea of "desktop software" be dragged away, but it's inevitable that something like this will eventually replace it.

    --
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  50. I would rather buy MS Office than use OOo for free by cras · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I hate it that OpenOffice is so often associated as "one of the best open source software" among with Linux and Firefox. Every time I've tried OOo (on Linux) I've immediately hated it. It's slow, bloated and annoying to use. Disabling its annoying "helpful" features takes a lot of time. So a while ago I bought MS Office 2008 for Mac, in part just so that I can say I would rather buy MS Office than use OOo for free.

    (And no, I won't try to help them make it better just because it's open source. I'm busy enough as it is with my own open source projects.)

  51. Re:Sounds like a by maxume · · Score: 5, Informative

    Google is an advertising company. They might make a little money providing search, but they make most of their money selling advertising (which is why the spend so much time developing products that people will want to use, it gets them eyeballs).

    --
    Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
  52. There are other open source spreadsheet softwares by va.va_va.va · · Score: 1

    GNUmeric was always able to handle everything I've throw in it's way.

  53. Re:I would rather buy MS Office than use OOo for f by urcreepyneighbor · · Score: 1

    And no, I won't try to help them make it better just because it's open source. I wouldn't even entertain the thought. It's a massive, messy project. Like all massive, messy projects... I'm sure there's a ton of politics, in-fighting, and general hostility to any outsider that wants to shape things up.

    Office 97 was the power/performance peak, for me at least.
    --
    "The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
  54. Sure, why not? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sure, why not add another non-money maker to Google's stable of non-money makers. I'm sure Ballmer would love it, and possibly suggest a few other projects they can buy into. Maybe Google can buy out AOL, too! And how about drkoop.com? Or Global Crossing? Or Worldcom?

    It's a whole new economy! Bubble 2.0, baby!

  55. Google should embrace Office by ASMworkz · · Score: 1

    OpenOffice is nice, but I hope Google embraces it and improves it to the point that we don't need Word anymore!

    --
    Learn about Programming (C++ ASM) and Web Design and Development (PHP, CSS, Photoshop) from InfernoDevelopment.com
  56. Anonymous Coward by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ed > ooo

  57. The quality of open office? by thePowerOfGrayskull · · Score: 1
    Let's revisit that when it can load in under 5 seconds on a modern machine -- without needing a 'preloader' resident in memory. This is something that the various MS Office suite products have been able to do (though I have not tested this with the latest versions of office) since 2000 or so.

    I use openoffice.org (can't beat the price), but let's not kid ourselves -- this is just one way of many in which it's simply not there yet.

    1. Re:The quality of open office? by cyber-vandal · · Score: 1

      Isn't a significant chunk of MSO loaded at startup too?

    2. Re:The quality of open office? by thePowerOfGrayskull · · Score: 1

      Optionally - if you disable it, it still loads quickly though.

    3. Re:The quality of open office? by Seraphim_72 · · Score: 1

      Thats because you can't completely disable it.

      --
      Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
  58. Google should follow Apple's footsteps by melted · · Score: 1

    ... (like they did with Android) and roll their own office suite. The first versions don't have to be terribly sophisticated. OO.org is a writeoff at this point I'm afraid. It's slow, bloated, buggy and annoyingly incompatible (nothing major, just an occasional incompatibility here and there). This new suite should focus squarely on online, maybe considering offline story more as a V2 feature.

  59. Open Office Sucks by jigsawhacker · · Score: 1

    Open office is 100 time worse than MS office and 50 times worse than google docs.

  60. OOo still lags behind MS Office 2000 by Antiocheian · · Score: 1

    Unless OOo

    1) gets real table styles
    2) stops garbling flowcharts when resized
    3) fixes the ancient "hyperlink bar" relic from Star Office
    4) stops asking for Java to run a Basic macro

    I am not using it again.

  61. Have you tried printing labels? by cheros · · Score: 1

    Go on, I dare you. Take a sheet of labels, and print a number on them from 1..10.

    Create a data source which has a column with numbers 1..10 (you will find OOo MS Office compliant to the point of being unable top handle anything but a line starting at cell A1 as column titles but I digress), and then get that on one label at the time so you end up with label 1 "1" right up to label 10 with "10".

    If you manage with 2.4 or 3.0, well done. It starts with not being able to handle a data source until it's registered. Admittedly, that is a very powerful facility but it's a freight truck approach to transporting an egg, i.e. total overkill which nukes usability. You don't stand a chance unless you start again from scratch and register your spreadsheet as a data source, a joyful process in itself, and then you're still not out of the woods. Better buy lots of window envelopes. And don't send any end of year presents.. Oh, and for extra fun, try to go back a step when you realised you made an error.

    In Word you must start up the mail merge wizard, also not terribly obvious but the process is at least manageable. It is plain stupid in OOo as far as I can see, which is a royal shame because the rest just works. On Linux I have yet to see it crash.

    --
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  62. Hated Openoffice till I tried 3.0 beta -very fast by ami.one · · Score: 1

    Have always hated open office for its slow speed (even after disabling java) but I recently tried OpenOffice 3.0 Beta and its extremely fast - no difference from MSO 2003. Plus a lot of new features incl office 2007 document support some new eye candy. Do try it once before dismissing OOo. You'll be surprised. - http://download.openoffice.org/3.0beta/

  63. OpenOffice? by miffo.swe · · Score: 1

    I dont particulary like OpenOffice since i have never liked how MS Office works. They both tend to be everything instead of doing one task and doing it good and flexible.

    Personally id rather have it that spreadsheets, databases and presentations became uncoupled. Someone confused being able to copy data between formats to be able to edit a spreadsheet in a word document in a presentation that lies in a word document.

    --
    HTTP/1.1 400
  64. OO not a competitor to Office by superdx · · Score: 1
    As much as I dislike using MS products, the fact of the matter is OO is not ready for day to day usage. The following are true:

    - It is slow
    - It is at times unstable
    - If a user cannot achieve their tasks in OO in less or equal time to Office, then OO has failed

    Our company prefers to implement open source solutions, simply because it means the customer's budget can be allocated more towards services and customization rather than license fees.

    That being said, trying to wrangle with OO when you're doing simple tasks such as drafting documents, contracts and presentations becomes a technical debugging exercise... means that this software goes out the window.

    I tried to like it, but they really need to focus on getting performance and core functionality polished until it's so reliable day to day users can get their tasks done without thinking about the tool. Adding feature after feature and increasing bloat is the same direction that MS is taking the next version of Office, but at the very least, the performance and basic functions are working. The same definitely cannot be said of OO. If they want to be a MS Office alternative, they should not emulate MS's path of counting the # of features. Core functionality and reliable performance would definitely at least win this user's usage.

  65. Re:Sounds like a by Skrapion · · Score: 1

    The point, I believe, is that Office is Microsoft's biggest source of revenue, accounting for 90% of the revenue from its business division.(ref)

    If Google killed MS Office, it would be a huge blow to Microsoft.

    --
    The details are trivial and useless; The reasons, as always, purely human ones.
  66. Programmers as casual users by Per+Abrahamsen · · Score: 1

    Not really, I have written integration software for tools I have never used (not even for testing, the "other side" did all the tests).

    You can be a programmer an casual user at the same time.

  67. OOo sucks by menace3society · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Seriously. Everything[1] Google does, they do well. Internet search, desktop search, usenet, picasa, Google Earth/Maps, browser applications like Docs and Gmail, all phenomenal successes.

    OOo is a piece of crap. No, really. I do not think you could come up with a worse productivity suite without specifically designing it that way, and you certainly wouldn't have as much adoption.

    OOo is a (bad) clone of Word, mixed in with XML-pedantry and a really bad case of the second-system effect (made all the worse because none of the people involved had anything to do with the first system, which is Word itself).

    It, in a nutshell, shows the reason why getting free software onto the desktop has been so difficult: half the community is focused on feature-for-feature competitiveness and replication of the original product, and measures its success in market-share, and the other half of the community just hates MS software and tries to do the exact opposite, under the guise of "doing it right the first time." As a result we get something that actually manages to be slower than its MS equivalent in every respect, because on top of all the original features we copied without trying much in the way of procedural abstraction or optimization, we have even more stupid ideas bolted on, like using compressed XML files for the native data format, questionable default parameters that someone decided are "more correct", and the occasional bizarre bug.

    The same sort of thing is starting to happen to Firefox, too. It started out just trying to be fast, but then a number of advocates got on board and decided that more people should use it, and in order to get them to do that the browser should try to be all things to all people. Now Firefox is getting bigger, more bloated, and slower, and in a few years will just be another bald, fat, middle-aged, useless browser program that got passed by.

    All this is a long way of saying that Google shouldn't touch OOo with a ten-foot pole. It goes against everything they stand for: simplicity, usability, obviousness.

    [1]: Except Orkut. Sorry.

    1. Re:OOo sucks by jigsawhacker · · Score: 1

      I'm with you.

  68. What is the fascination with WYSIWYG? by FranTaylor · · Score: 1

    We developers know the value of separating the content from the presentation in developing software, why do we then insist that they be intermingled in developing documents? I don't give a damn about what my documents look like until I present them, it's the content that matters while I'm editing them. I'd rather edit text in emacs than in a word processor.

  69. Re:Sounds like a by Daengbo · · Score: 1

    Well, in reality, Google already has quite a few desktop apps that don't really get them any advertising but just increase their product image

    The real problem with this idea is the lossy nature of an OO.o document on GDocs. Docs doesn't have anywhere near the document fidelity that OO.o has -- in fact, it's really more like HTML. You could actually edit the HTML by hand until recently (which I used to do quite often in GDocs early days).

  70. Maybe Zoho do the run by Errorcode408 · · Score: 1

    Hi, anyone noticed www.zoho.com by the way ? Its far better than GoogleDocs and already available as Webservice with OpenOffice Import and tons of other Features and Applications! Take a look, maybe Google is interested in this great Service... Greetings from the Errorcode408

  71. Because of mobiles... by GennarinoParsifalle · · Score: 1

    What does OpenOffice offer the average user that Google Docs is lacking? Not running in a browser on AJAX, the stupidest application 'platform' ever congealed? Working reliably when offline? Working reliably with large documents, with embedded images etc? Performance? Even if you thought OO.o was slow, you'll be amazed at how badly you can bog things down if you implement it in mighty javascript, inside a browser. If you have something really mobile you'll be amazed at how badly OO.o can be on it (assuming it will work on it for RAM reasons). Google Docs is a reasonable compromise to edit a doc while you're not on a full fledged computer. Or when you're on a computer without your usual applications.
  72. "Open"Office has no future ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sun is strangling it to death, quite rapidly. No-one in their right mind would consider investing in it - particularly not Google. They refuse to accept contributions under the project's own license eg. just to keep their "mine, all mine!" code ownership.

  73. why does everybody so fixiated on Openoffice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    especially these self-proclaimed "smart" people here in /.? Remember the day when you guys use every imaginable negative adjective to derive bloatware of which Openoffice is a perfect embodiment?

  74. Re:I would rather buy MS Office than use OOo for f by DMUTPeregrine · · Score: 1

    If you want to help an office suite, help Koffice. It's a massive project, but much cleaner.

    --
    Not a sentence!
  75. Re:Sounds like a by somersault · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You're confusing my pedantism with whining, which is totally different It's not that different, unless you're a pedant.
    --
    which is totally what she said
  76. Re:Hated Openoffice till I tried 3.0 beta -very fa by Dan100 · · Score: 1

    Jesus, 145 mb for Windows? Good to see that the OOo code bloat is alive, well, and growing...

  77. Re:Hated Openoffice till I tried 3.0 beta -very fa by Dan100 · · Score: 0, Troll
    What's going on with the announcement notice?

    http://marketing.openoffice.org/3.0/announcementbeta.html

    This is version 3 and one of main new features is "a new zoom control on the status bar"?? The other big "improvement" seems to be shiney new icons. That's pathetic.

    No mention of performance improvements at all.

  78. Wouldn't they have to end OpenOffice to support it by Bigmilt8 · · Score: 1

    Just a thought, but wouldn't they have to standardize some OpenOffice in order to offer support?

  79. Plugin equals software by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I remember looking to the sonicwall vpn applicance a ways back and I found a couple of things that I didn't like about it.

    The sonicwall VPN appliance requires a plugin for it to work with your browser, and I'm not sure if they make plugins for non-IE browsers or not. Also, I'm pretty sure that the plugin requires admin access to install, so it really doesn't add much benefit for IT over a typical VPN client.

  80. One picture ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
  81. Re:Sounds like a by i.of.the.storm · · Score: 1

    That was kind of the point. I guess no one got it until you spelled it out.

    --
    All your base are belong to Wii.
  82. Already there... by Count_Froggy · · Score: 1

    Google already offers a free copy of Star Office, the Sun proprietary version of Open Office for free as part of Google Apps on Windows. The support business is left to Sun for making it available thru Google. Since the Online Google docs are compatable with the Sun (and OOo) product, it is already there without the overhead of support.

    --
    If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?
  83. Re:Sounds like a by rugatero · · Score: 2, Informative

    You're confusing my pedantism with whining

    I believe the correct term is pedantry.

    </pedantry>

    --
    This comment is for entertainment purposes only. Any similarity to real insight or information is purely coincidental.
  84. Re:Sounds like a by Hobbs114 · · Score: 1

    The license may give you a lot of freedom now; however, Sun still has the power to change it.

    Look at all the great things Sun has developed in the past; however, they attempt to push their control over it and ruin great things. Java comes to mind; Sun decided M$ was taking too many liberties with it so they put their foot down. M$'s response was to develop C#, which only helped drive a divide from Java, and hinder its spread and mass appeal.

    On the other hand, I'm willing to bet that Sun would embrace a collaborative effort to take on M$ with Google. However, at the end of the day I lack any sort of respect for the management at Sun and think they are dead set at sitting in the middle, or bottom, of the pack.

  85. Re:Sounds like a by i.of.the.storm · · Score: 1

    Good game sir, good game.

    --
    All your base are belong to Wii.
  86. Re:OpenOffice just isn't very good. Inadvertent... by davidsyes · · Score: 1

    I think i inadvertently might appear to have slighted "TheKompany". That was not my intent. I bored ahead in my drivel, but TheKompany's products are not in the "unpolished" category. I was referring to the majority of things that are rushed out the door without polishing for end users.

    --
    Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
  87. I love NeoOffice for the mac by linhares · · Score: 1

    I installed it, and got my PhD thesis written in 2001, and everything, everything loaded perfectly: huge images, tables, equations. So I, for one, welcome our new openoffice overlords.

  88. Re:Hated Openoffice -but 3.0 beta very fast.. by ami.one · · Score: 1

    Umm, MS office 2003 is around 400 MB.