Looking Back On a Year of LibreOffice

superapecommando writes "Simon Phipps, former head of open source at Sun and a backer of LibreOffice, looks at a tempestuous year for the OpenOffice fork. 'Once framed as an impetuous fork, LibreOffice has become the standard-bearer for the former OpenOffice community,' he says. 'It's far from perfect, of course. New open source projects never are and volunteer projects lack the corporate resources to make it look otherwise. But I have no doubt that it's working.'"

Comments

Re:It feels too heavy and old

[causality]

Seriously, this is what you answer with when I criticize product honestly and constructively? You honestly think that for example Microsoft would response to my suggestions with a "fuck you"? They would thank me for my input. It's no wonder open source isn't going anywhere if the answer to any criticism is "fuck you".

Sometimes, a decision must be made in terms of which side on which to err. The decision that is made says a lot about the character of the person.

I like the idea of "better for ten guilty men to go free, than for one innocent man to be punished." I really do think the latter is a much greater injustice, particularly since karma (or something like it) is very real. Others have a completely opposite viewpoint. Apparently you have encountered one of those. They would rather hassle you in case you might be an astroturfer/fanboy/etc. They haven't much concern for whether you are a real person expressing a genuine preference.

I'd rather treat you with more civility than that, knowing that you might possibly be dishonest, knowing that you might deserve to receive a hard time that I won't end up giving to you. In the absence of absolute evidence, that's how I like to do things. I'd rather you feel like you pulled one over on me. That doesn't matter to me. But it would bother me to realize that I might have been less-than-courteous to someone who really was honestly representing a real opinion.

When in doubt, I know where I stand. Apparently the other responder does as well.