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IBM Donates Symphony Code To Apache Software Foundation
CWmike writes "Hoping to further sharpen OpenOffice's competitive viability against Microsoft Office, IBM is donating the code of its Symphony open source office suite to the nonprofit Apache Software Foundation. Apache could fold this code into its own open source office suite OpenOffice, on which Symphony was based. In June, Oracle donated the OpenOffice suite to Apache. 'Prior to Apache's entry, there really hasn't been enough innovation in this area over the past 10 years,' said Kevin Cavanaugh, an IBM vice president. 'It's been constrained because we haven't had a true open source community with a mature governance model.'"
10 years without innovation it's an eternity by computer standards. Who is killing innovation, I wonder
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...if just about every major company out there wasn't trying to sue the pants off of some other major company over some generic patents, there might be more properly-driven innovation.
The more you know, the more you have to say and the more you should listen.
It's where all obsolete software goes after the original owner can't make any money on it and doesn't want to do maintenance any more.
The myth of open source superiority has been proven false time and again.
How about WordPress? OpenSource and vastly superior to other equivalent commercial CMSs
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How do you explain the popularity of Apache and Linux on enterprise servers, then?
As much as "big blue" has probably the biggest software patent portfolio and they are possibly only doing out of spite for Microsoft, I applaud IBM for their continued support for the FOSS community, and the Apache Foundation being as good as any representative for it. I hope the resources of IBM are available to support Linux especially, as it continues to face off against patent trolls like Microsoft and SCO (allthough I think SCO is as good as dead). I have nothing against patents being used for what they were intended (protecting the inventor), but when patent trolls use them as an anticompetitive weapon it brings shame to the system as a whole. What would the world be like now if it weren't for the FOSS community (including Apache)? Microsoft would probably rule at least the western world with an iron fist. It would be even more of a mafia organisation than it is today. I use OpenOffice and I'm quite happy with its performance and capabilities (especially since Microsoft brought out those stupid ribbons). I'm sure sales of Microsoft Office are struggling already and would be in dire straits if not for pre-installations and the use of Windows as marketing leverage for OEMs (package deals). Last of all, thanks to Apache for their kick arse web server! I hope you are able to continue your good work till the demise of corporate greed (so till the end of time basically).
10 years without innovation it's an eternity by computer standards. Who is killing innovation, I wonder
Who is promoting it? I'm not sure FOSS is promoting innovation as much as many advocates would like to believe. When the most popular apps are largely described as "a FOSS reimplementation/alternative to commercial/proprietary XXXX" one could argue that FOSS, like many corporations, is not terribly innovative. Just to be clear, a worthwhile project does not necessarily need to be innovative. I've used and supported FOSS projects that I find useful. I'm just arguing that FOSS advocates are not necessarily the best people to be criticizing others for a lack of innovation.
Most of you will probably wonder: Framework? Framework was and in some ways still is the most superior integrated suite ever developed. Unfortunately they where slain by Wordperfect (4.2) and probably some bad marketing from Ashton Tate. It is in the obscure hands of a firm called "Selections & Functions" who really hasn't done much for it. It looks like they have abandoned it all together.
... What would the world be like now if it weren't for the FOSS community (including Apache)? ...
It would probably be pretty much the same as it is now, we'd have to pay a little more for workstations and servers as they would still be coming from Sun, SGI and other traditional Unix vendors. It wasn't Microsoft that killed these platforms, it was Linux. Maybe Mac OS X would have caught on a little faster?
Please tell me you are joking. Linux is huge on enterprise servers. Normally there are windows boxes in the server room as well, but linux is very common in the server room. Do you think oracle is uncommon? What do you think those oracle servers are running on?
Freely available code, be it open source or academic are the original innovators. They seed ideas. They are not constrained by funding or time.
Businesses adopt these ideas, invest into them and produce viable and profitable software. They create products, not innovations. They are restricted by time and profits.
It would have been hard for the internet to be what it is today without freely available code.
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All right, I'll bite. I'm curious. What exactly is it that Microsoft Office gets done? Besides lock your data into a proprietary format. I don't use it myself, so I'm sure there's *some* use for it that I'm not aware of, but here's some of the technologies I use instead.
I only use a word processor to generate blog posts, fiction, and documents where I don't care about layout too strongly, since it's sort of inherent in a word processor that they will adjust the layout somewhat before e.g. printing it. There's very little reason to save in either .docx or .doc as far as I am aware, since the former does not currently conform to the OOXML format and the latter is more akin to a memory dump of Word.
For text that I really don't care about, I use a text editor. I also use this for small notes to myself, or simple lists. I don't need my notes indexed, thank you, grep will do just fine.
For layout documents, I generally use Scribus, InDesign, Inkscape, or Illustrator, and save in svg or pdf, dependent on whether or not I want a working format or a presentation format. If I can count on being the only one to edit it, or that any collaborators will be using the same software, it makes sense to use each program's native format. For bitmaps I use GIMP and Photoshop, and generally prefer GIMP, except for the name and the text-related tools. It runs on more systems that I use, and takes far less time to download and install, and similarly uses a fraction of the disk space. I usually have the most recent version of Adobe's software on a disk.
For my own personal artwork I have found a nice balance of features in the painting program MyPaint, which runs on Linux and Windows.
I do not generate 3D images or models, or animation, or music. Neither, as far as I'm aware, does Office.
I create web pages with Netbeans or Bluefish, or a text editor. If I did not know how to write markup I suppose I might have more use for Word. Similarly, for storing and retrieving and processing data I use a database and a scripting language, or XML if I don't need a full-on database. For keeping track of financial data, an accounting program or package is useful for even small projects, and vital for any business-related endeavor.
I've used web-based email since hotmail became available. I have no idea what, given all of the above, Outlook would be useful to me for. It seems like an adequate if bloated email application, though I've never enjoyed trying to move data out of it.
That's my current toolset. I'm not particularly attached to any of them, and obviously quite used to using both the tools at hand and, when I have the luxury, the best tool for the job. Office has not to date been in the latter category in my experience. Why is Office a good tool? At what task does it uniquely excel at? What combination of features am I missing out on?
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Can't they do that anyway? I thought that was the whole point of "open source".
Lotus Symphony is not open source, it's a proprietary fork from an early version of OpenOffice with a license that permitted this. IBM has been offering it as freeware, so by offering this code to the Apache foundation they're looking to mend the old fork between OpenOffice and Symphony. It still would not mend the fork between OpenOffice and LibreOffice, but as far as IBM is concerned their Symphony code can now be used in both versions under the Apache license. This is a direct consequence of Oracle giving OpenOffice to Apache, IBM wasn't willing to give Symphony to Sun or Oracle, but they are willing to share it as an Apache project. So good move by IBM, another open source contribution from them.
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Oh hell yes!
It's not got any of that old code in it, it's simply the name. It's (as previously mentioned) an OO.o fork ported to the eclipse framework.
Compared to mainline OO.o or Libre Office I'm really not a fan. It seems slow and heavyweight. But apparently it does bring some good stuff to the table, specifically there are supposed to have been a lot of improvements on the way it imports and exports various file formats.