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OpenOffice.org To Be Given Back To the Community
An anonymous reader writes "Oracle has stated they will give back the OpenOffice.org productivity suite to the community. Edward Screven, Oracle's Chief Corporate Architect, said the company intends upon 'working immediately with community members to further the continued success of Open Office.' Because there was a 'breadth of interest in free personal productivity applications,' the company believes the OpenOffice.org project would be 'best managed by an organization focused on serving that broad constituency on a non-commercial basis.'"
Its really is time to fork Gnome Join the effor!
Its is really time to fork Gnome!. Join the effor!
Its time to fork Gnome. Join the effor!
Not exactly a high bar to jump, is it?
Its too late. you should have thought it before going 'oracle' on your community. now there's libre office.
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Because that is like saying "My horse costs much less to feed now that its dead"? I'm sorry but that Office suite sucked when it was Star Office, it sucked when it was Open Office, and it sucks now that it is Libre office or whatever artsy fartsy name they want to call it. Sure it is fine if you are little Billy and just need to write a word doc, but for businesses? it stinks on ice.
Its not their fault really, trying to reverse engineer a moving target has GOT to suck, but in the end MS Office rules the roost, and anything that tries to replace better be more than just "good enough". Writer is okay, not great, with still too many broken formats if you do anything fancier than basic fonts, Calc is a giant pile of shit compared to Excel, You try handing Calc to an Excel jockey they'll laugh you out of the building, and I hate to say it but I find Access less of a PITA than Base.
As for Oracle? The lesson here is, and I'm sure I'll get hate for pointing it out, but the lesson is FOSS is "free as in worthless" if you are a corp because you actually buy nothing for your money. they should have waited until Sun flatlined and picked it up for a song and ditched the FOSS and kept the IP copyrights and patents. Because as Libre Office proved it doesn't matter how much you pay for something if the FOSSies get their panties in a wad it quickly becomes not worth the effort. From what I saw oracle didn't do a damned thing different than sun before them, but because Sun was the "good guys" and Oracle was "One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison" it didn't really matter.
So if I was Oracle I'd cut it loose, not allow another cent spent on development, and see how long it lasts. My guess is it'll flounder around without corporate support for a year or two until it goes tits up. Because whether anyone cares to admit it or not its the corps paying the devs not a bunch of RMS wannabes sitting in their basements writing all this stuff. And whether you care to admit it or not MS Office is the defacto standard and having to keep up with that size of a development team will take some serious money. Just passing a tip jar or a few devs "scratching an itch" (have you seen the OO.o code? Man that is some big thick mess to wade through) will cut it. If Oracle cuts funding I'm betting it'll die hard.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Notice I got modded down for daring to speak the truth? here let me break it down: If I buy a proprietary company I get the software and if I buy a F/OSS company I get....what? The Office furniture? gee, thanks a lot. I could have saved a billion and gone to Office Max.
The simple fact is this: The ONLY ones who will get any real "value" for their money without having to kiss some major community ass when it comes to F/OSS is IP trolls, which is what I'm betting you'll be see a hell of a lot more of, especially when companies like Mandriva go tits up.
All the Sun sale showed the business world is as far as they are concerned F/OSS is "free as in worthless" because if you don't pucker up buttercup they'll just take everything you bought thanks to forking and you can't do shit about it pal. So why in the hell would a corp waste money "buying" that which can't be bought?
Whether the folks here like reality or not, hiding their heads in the sand won't change it. 2/3rds of new servers are now being sold with...dum dum dum...windows. All the new hotness personal devices are made by...dum dum dum...Apple. To compete with two companies that could literally buy most of the third world with the change in their couches you better have some hardcore corporate backing and I'm betting after seeing how Oracle got pretty much the office furniture that backing is gonna dry up and blow away like a fart in the breeze.
In a way that is how RMS has always wanted it, reading his writing he is about as anti-corporate as one can be without coming right out and claiming to be a communist. But while the geeks at /. might like to hang onto old beliefs I hate to break the news but it ain't 1979 anymore and a couple of guys in their basement aren't gonna write the next great OS.
To compete you are gonna need Billions with a B, where is it gonna come from? Not Red hat, because the community is screwing them raw, what with over 34% of the servers out there running NOT RHEL but CentOS. Novell? Practically tits up. Mandriva? Life support. Apple? Moving away from any GPL code as fast as they can. So who is left? Can't just join hands and wish upon a star you know. Devs need to eat, have a roof, etc. Can't all be MIT bums.
You mark my words and mark them well:Without Oracle dough OO.o will fall behind and it WILL fall fast. Because part time coders just can't keep up with full time development teams, sorry.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.