I don't use the light version of winstall le since it seems to much of a hassle wrt different configurations.
I use SUS for software updates, and apart from the fact that you need to use a lot of time checking what the updates do before approving it works fine. Most notably some updates still require a superuser to log on for it to install and work properly.
On app's the most important app is the notes client and MS Office, with notes we use smart upgrade, which actually allows users to upgrade the client when needed - MS Office needs updates and this is done manually. Since most of our pc's are the same (ie they are bought in batches) I use an usbdisk and sysresccd for imaging the machines, this is done each half year, and general app updating is done manually.
If we had the money we would probably be using a CA solution.
Just to clarify: In Denmark there are general elections for parliament - we only have one in denmark, no upper house like many others.
This parliament decides on the cabinet (minister of state, minister of foreign affairs etc.).
The parliament also have different working groups - one of these working groups have to do with EU issues.
This group consisting of parliament members from all parties, is the group that gives the minister his mandate for his actions in the council.
So to say that it is undemocratic in denmark is far from the truth, in fact the parliament directly instructs the ministers on what to do in the council, while ie. in the UK the person is free to do as he pleases for his term.
Of course since some parts in the council are negotiation the meeting of this working group in the danish parliament is obviously secret untill after the meeting.
#5: The GPO decides how the software or computer works - so you could setup IE so that it has default security settings you decide upon, make users unable to change these. If you log on to your server and open the "Users and Computers" admin tool, and then right click on a container, choose properties then the GPO's can be set on the right most tab if I remember correctly.
#8: I agree - I've been adamant to my users to only save files on a mapped home dir or on the common drives, informing them that data on their own computer will NOT be backed up and that it will NOT be recreated should they get a new computer or harddrive. That seemed to make most users do it that way.
#9: Windows comes with a set of fonts, and so does Office, acrobat etc. and they will all be installed there - can't really help you more then that - only if you look in the domain security settings you might be able to find an option to let users install their own fonts.
#10: Indeed, took me ages as well.
#11: Not really, concerning registry MS recommends never touching it, but then again lots of their work-arounds require changing the registry. Usually you would need something like "lokal machine/software/name of vendor/name of app" You cannot modify registry security for the domain (afaik).
#13: Yea I think it's crap too and prefer not to use it if I can get away with it.
#18: Indeed - might I suggest another mail client then OE? and maybe imap mail instead of pop3:P
Re scripting: I use kix32 and it works fine - the nice thing about it is you can make scripts that work for all versions of windows. It's simple and easy to understand once you see a couple of examples.
I've not read many books - I like Mark Minasi's books, even though he seems to put a little too much MS pr into them which obviously is annoying when you just want to know how X works. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0782 140807/103-3432103-5046211?v=glance Is likely a pretty good windows reference, I have the 2k version and it's pretty handy.
tried failsafe boot? Also my comp will sometimes kernel panic because of my hpt360 onboard controller since it's a piece of crap hardware - however it is annoying. The point being you might as well have the same problem as the article author with other hardware, such as the monitor.
depending on distro this is a feature, since your user apparently is not in the group which has rights to access the 3d interface. Usually this translates to the video group and most distro's like mandrake, SuSE etc. will make you part of that group by default.
I'd love to mod you up if I had mod-points. Let me dig a little further, since some of the points you express can be circumvented with a little windows knowledge:
1-4: spot on, sad but true.
5: For some this is a good thing - it depends on the situation though. If you use AD and GPO you can control IE's behaviour (though IE will crash more if you do so).
6: OMG this is SO annoying - the MS tool for checking for the jpeg vulnarability is put in as a critical security fix, and insists on running at each log-in untill an admin user stops it.
7: Depends on the app - if it is just an exe and it only accesses the user registry you can run it if it does more then that forget it.
8: Depends on your setup - when I setup winxp the users by default did have rwx on c:\ however not on c:\winX and c:\program files\ and c:\common files where they only had rx or as appropriate. However with this setting you will need to manually change permissions for certain programs, such as MS Office and Firefox. This however can also be true with the registry for certain programs, such as pre- 1.4.x versions of java which needed admin rights for their part of the registry for any user running it. XP is more "hardcore" with rights then win2k - for example the diagram editor for office 2000 only works for admins on winxp.
9: Hmm good point - however not something which has ever come up as a greivance for me. It is possibly to push fonts on all desktops if you want though. With standard tools however you will need to make an MSI package and setup the install in GPO.
10: Usually this is because "run as" is run wrong, the biggest problem here imho is that it's really hard to know what to run and remember it, mostly you need to write it down somewhere. I've managed to install, uninstall, run regedit and install local printers with "run as" atleast. It is however far from as straightforward as SU or SUDO:)
11+12: Se 8, here are some pointers: regedt32: for granting registry permissions. program and subfolder permissions. common files permissions. ini files located at various locations - for example c:\winnt. However some programs, like the diagram editor for office 2000 will NOT work (that particular app problem MS sees as a feature btw:P).
13: There are tools to make MSI's with - a downgraded version of a veritas tool is packaged with win2k, so I suppose you could find it in the 2k3 install somewhere. Can't remember the name though:(
#14: Debugging is detective work - sometimes you will find yourself in the problem that app A doesn't work with update Y while app B will not work without update Y.
#15: Indeed, often by changing desktop settings and not having cd-roms in the drives will speed this up somewhat.
#16: This can in fact be setup by making your own MSI's - though not really perfect it's a work around.
#17: Indeed - my GNOME desktop is IMHO more consistent as well.
#18: The only difference I've found is that Local Settings will not be replicated in roaming profiles.
#19: true.
#20: Indeed - you can do it over the network though: \\computername\c$ as admin will work.
depends on what I ask them - lots of people only know lotus/domino as an e-mail calendaring application to compete with outlook - and untill the 6.x branch the outlook client definitely was easier to use in this regard.
However there is ALOT more to lotus/domino then just mail and caledaring.
I was thinking the same thing - but also considering the "fact" that woman get more girls while men get more boys... somehow the conclusion does not compute.
I'm more likely to believe a japaneese study which gave the following data: On average a normal couple will have a 120 in 200 chance of getting a boy and a 80 in 200 chance of getting a girl. However if one or both parents smoke this is reversed (meaning now its 120 girls and 80 boys out of 200).
I guess they checked on european and one american first to see which spot the american had that was black - sorry, but you americans too often don't get it when europeans make sarcastic remarks.
PS: WTF is up with the code thingy - if you are not logged in I could understand it, but for when you are logged in?!?
Thats all fine and dandy untill the EU and the asian league decides to use that rule too - in all likelyhood the us will loose jobs and money on such laws.
Currently the EU economy is estimated to bypass the US economy between 2010 and 2020 - of course the increased wolrdwide use of the euro and decreased use of the US dollar might speed things up.
True - and for the record I'm not against outlawing billboards in space - I was just arguing that it's not a jab against the US to say that they can't decide this subject on their own as the parent of my comment suggested.
And I agree that the US should try to push this thru international organizations.
"Perhaps the US cannot unilaterally legislate "no billboards in space," but we can say, "nothing advertised in space may be sold in the US" which may be effective enough." If the US really wants a tradewar - they would definitely loose in the international trade organization for doing so.
That would be true if it wasn't that this was not something he was payed to do - he was asked to do a lecture for an event by some groups and complied.
It's like if you where invited to speak about the XBOX at the local gaming club, but the president could only accept a speech about PS3 because Sony sponsored their new building.
Here it's actually worse, since the copyright industries threaten to do all they can to find something to litigate the university, in effect making blunt threats.
Thats hardly the point - rather it would be: Why the hell would a local (US) agency have any authority on this matter whatsoever - the logical place to go for this is via international organisations such as OECD, WITA, UN etc.
It's like the Chineese traffic authority outlawing certain types of boats in international water - even IF everyone can agree that singlehulled oiltankers are a bad idea, the chineese deciding this alone would hardly be applauded.
The long term solution is to put your data into groupware - lotus workplace and domino/notes is the example of how this can and should be done.
Of course workplace has limits to the amount of formats you can import into it, but definitely not the amount of data (well of course hd space, and whatever limit db2 has applies).
The whole idea behind the patent system is the following:
The society noticed, as inventions became increasingly sophisticated that manufacturers where doing all they could to obscure their inventions so no on else could use them. Thus they decided to establish a system, wherein a manufacturer would be granted a monopoly for a limited time on the premise that the invention was fully exposed, so that the society would gain the knowledge of the invention.
So not exposing the knowledge defeats the whole point of the patent system. The patent system is in place because it is deemed the greater good for the entire society.
IMHO it is by far the better option to make the patents apply to a much narrower and more specific thing.
"Sourcecode for a working implementation should be supplied and available when locating the patent application"
The reasoning for this is obviously also so that the invention is in fact public, since the legal lingo in patents is all but useless when it comes to software (atleast for a car engine they need to provide printouts of how to engine functions etc.).
You make an interesting and well thought out argument.
Consider the following: no proof has ever been established to show that patents makes more innovation possible. Some research suggest the opposite might be true.
In software the opposite has been proved true. Microsoft is the perfect example - they have for the last 10 years often said that they would invest more in research, and yet what has happened is that almost all of the extra research investment is going to lawyers.
Also, if the true culprit was the patent system - why let patents cover MORE things if the system is as clearly inadequate as most people can agree it is.
I considered the problem of accepting software patents and ensuring the patents where in fact proper patents (this part is important, since if this is not done patents ARE a hindrance to innovation and conducting business - and also one of the main arguments for the pro-sw-patent lobby that the european system is not like the american system because we check the patents more thoroughly - this however is sadly less and less true).
To do this my unscientific conclusion was that it would demand so many ressources that the system would only be open to the extremely big corporations because getting patens would be very prohibitively expensive (or the state would pay thru the nose to pay for the patent administration and thus give higher taxes).
I'm not really convinced for the case of patents - but if patents incorporating software was to be allowed by law (as opposed to the current practice in the EU of approving SW patents which by the letter of the law shouldn't be patentable), then at the very least the following 2 things should be applicable:
Copyright should not apply for the original patented implementation of said invention
Sourcecode for a working implementation should be supplied and available when locating the patent application
This, at the very least would restrict the patentowner from exerting his patent on related inventions and would also limit the patent to the exact prototype showed - whereas today software patents cover ALL possible implementations of the invention.
The most oft used analogies are the car motor analogy where we have gas and diesel engines and one manufacturer can have a patent on the gas engines and enother on diesel engines - where as in software the patent would cover "engines" as a whole, including but not limited to rocket engines, jet plane engines etc.
You are right - I just had to vent a little after having seen this discussion several times over here and other places.
I can also appreciate that using SUN Java can pose problems for some people. Personally I use Gentoo and SuSE so it's not really a problem for me, but I can still appreciate it.
However my subtle point is this, SUN needs to develop features in OOo in order for StarOffice to be competitive with other office packages.
Novell/Ximian also wants the most competitive package they can get.
The most argued point with OOo 2 is the fact that Base will only work with java - where before most of the java reliance did not directly affect usage here it actually degrades the "total experience[tm]".
I'm sure SUN and OOo coders like all the usage feedback - however StarOffice uses it's own dictionaries and translations, and they are completely seperate from the OOo ones (atleast that was the case when SO 6 and 7 was released).
So much for that part - then for the general stuff: The OOo project faces some difficulties. Firstly, the codebase is apparently a mess (I don't know how to code, but even the OOo developers have stated this so I'll take their word for it). Secondly the codebase has always relied on java (version 5 did, which was the version SUN purchased).
Now what I've been ranting about is, that since this seems to be a big issue for a lot of people with the OOo java dependency, why not help the OOo developers in 2 ways - help convert the java dependent code, and help clean up the code so it is more modular and less messy.
This will obviously take a long time (just think how long it took to make XUL:P) - but I'm sure the end result will be a better, leaner package that even the FOSS movement will like.
Regarding novell: I don't know if any of the coders they have are java coders - generally that is the problem, if the coder who can take on the project codes in java then what? Tell him to bugger off? With the limited ressources OOo has it's no surprise they are not going to say that.
Oh come on - there are 4 (!) community developers on Open Office, 40 developers from SUN and 10 from Novell [Ximian].
Of course they'll choose java if the choice is between getting the feature or not.
It's perfectly fine if the community wants a java free OOo or a free java - then go work on it. Stop bashing SUN or Novell for contributing code to OOo.
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I don't use the light version of winstall le since it seems to much of a hassle wrt different configurations.
I use SUS for software updates, and apart from the fact that you need to use a lot of time checking what the updates do before approving it works fine. Most notably some updates still require a superuser to log on for it to install and work properly.
On app's the most important app is the notes client and MS Office, with notes we use smart upgrade, which actually allows users to upgrade the client when needed - MS Office needs updates and this is done manually. Since most of our pc's are the same (ie they are bought in batches) I use an usbdisk and sysresccd for imaging the machines, this is done each half year, and general app updating is done manually.
If we had the money we would probably be using a CA solution.
With the scripting, yes I mean http://kixtart.org/
Just to clarify:
In Denmark there are general elections for parliament - we only have one in denmark, no upper house like many others.
This parliament decides on the cabinet (minister of state, minister of foreign affairs etc.).
The parliament also have different working groups - one of these working groups have to do with EU issues.
This group consisting of parliament members from all parties, is the group that gives the minister his mandate for his actions in the council.
So to say that it is undemocratic in denmark is far from the truth, in fact the parliament directly instructs the ministers on what to do in the council, while ie. in the UK the person is free to do as he pleases for his term.
Of course since some parts in the council are negotiation the meeting of this working group in the danish parliament is obviously secret untill after the meeting.
I love MS logic.
1. We are working on security, first we will do XP SP2 and then backport to 2K SP5.
2. Our customers don't need 2K SP5, we will give them a security roll-up to make their system safe.
3. IE7 will not come out for 2K since it does not have the OS features that XP SP2 has.
Hurray!
I for one, would have liked that 2K SP5 btw - it's not like there aren't patches to download after SP4 even with the newest security roll-up.
#5: The GPO decides how the software or computer works - so you could setup IE so that it has default security settings you decide upon, make users unable to change these.
:P
2 140807/103-3432103-5046211?v=glance
If you log on to your server and open the "Users and Computers" admin tool, and then right click on a container, choose properties then the GPO's can be set on the right most tab if I remember correctly.
#8: I agree - I've been adamant to my users to only save files on a mapped home dir or on the common drives, informing them that data on their own computer will NOT be backed up and that it will NOT be recreated should they get a new computer or harddrive. That seemed to make most users do it that way.
#9: Windows comes with a set of fonts, and so does Office, acrobat etc. and they will all be installed there - can't really help you more then that - only if you look in the domain security settings you might be able to find an option to let users install their own fonts.
#10: Indeed, took me ages as well.
#11: Not really, concerning registry MS recommends never touching it, but then again lots of their work-arounds require changing the registry. Usually you would need something like "lokal machine/software/name of vendor/name of app"
You cannot modify registry security for the domain (afaik).
#13: Yea I think it's crap too and prefer not to use it if I can get away with it.
#18: Indeed - might I suggest another mail client then OE? and maybe imap mail instead of pop3
Re scripting: I use kix32 and it works fine - the nice thing about it is you can make scripts that work for all versions of windows. It's simple and easy to understand once you see a couple of examples.
I've not read many books - I like Mark Minasi's books, even though he seems to put a little too much MS pr into them which obviously is annoying when you just want to know how X works.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/078
Is likely a pretty good windows reference, I have the 2k version and it's pretty handy.
tried failsafe boot? Also my comp will sometimes kernel panic because of my hpt360 onboard controller since it's a piece of crap hardware - however it is annoying. The point being you might as well have the same problem as the article author with other hardware, such as the monitor.
depending on distro this is a feature, since your user apparently is not in the group which has rights to access the 3d interface. Usually this translates to the video group and most distro's like mandrake, SuSE etc. will make you part of that group by default.
I'd love to mod you up if I had mod-points. Let me dig a little further, since some of the points you express can be circumvented with a little windows knowledge:
:)
:P).
:(
1-4: spot on, sad but true.
5: For some this is a good thing - it depends on the situation though. If you use AD and GPO you can control IE's behaviour (though IE will crash more if you do so).
6: OMG this is SO annoying - the MS tool for checking for the jpeg vulnarability is put in as a critical security fix, and insists on running at each log-in untill an admin user stops it.
7: Depends on the app - if it is just an exe and it only accesses the user registry you can run it if it does more then that forget it.
8: Depends on your setup - when I setup winxp the users by default did have rwx on c:\ however not on c:\winX and c:\program files\ and c:\common files where they only had rx or as appropriate.
However with this setting you will need to manually change permissions for certain programs, such as MS Office and Firefox. This however can also be true with the registry for certain programs, such as pre- 1.4.x versions of java which needed admin rights for their part of the registry for any user running it. XP is more "hardcore" with rights then win2k - for example the diagram editor for office 2000 only works for admins on winxp.
9: Hmm good point - however not something which has ever come up as a greivance for me. It is possibly to push fonts on all desktops if you want though. With standard tools however you will need to make an MSI package and setup the install in GPO.
10: Usually this is because "run as" is run wrong, the biggest problem here imho is that it's really hard to know what to run and remember it, mostly you need to write it down somewhere. I've managed to install, uninstall, run regedit and install local printers with "run as" atleast. It is however far from as straightforward as SU or SUDO
11+12: Se 8, here are some pointers:
regedt32: for granting registry permissions.
program and subfolder permissions.
common files permissions.
ini files located at various locations - for example c:\winnt.
However some programs, like the diagram editor for office 2000 will NOT work (that particular app problem MS sees as a feature btw
13: There are tools to make MSI's with - a downgraded version of a veritas tool is packaged with win2k, so I suppose you could find it in the 2k3 install somewhere. Can't remember the name though
#14: Debugging is detective work - sometimes you will find yourself in the problem that app A doesn't work with update Y while app B will not work without update Y.
#15: Indeed, often by changing desktop settings and not having cd-roms in the drives will speed this up somewhat.
#16: This can in fact be setup by making your own MSI's - though not really perfect it's a work around.
#17: Indeed - my GNOME desktop is IMHO more consistent as well.
#18: The only difference I've found is that Local Settings will not be replicated in roaming profiles.
#19: true.
#20: Indeed - you can do it over the network though: \\computername\c$ as admin will work.
depends on what I ask them - lots of people only know lotus/domino as an e-mail calendaring application to compete with outlook - and untill the 6.x branch the outlook client definitely was easier to use in this regard.
However there is ALOT more to lotus/domino then just mail and caledaring.
I was thinking the same thing - but also considering the "fact" that woman get more girls while men get more boys... somehow the conclusion does not compute.
I'm more likely to believe a japaneese study which gave the following data:
On average a normal couple will have a 120 in 200 chance of getting a boy and a 80 in 200 chance of getting a girl. However if one or both parents smoke this is reversed (meaning now its 120 girls and 80 boys out of 200).
I guess they checked on european and one american first to see which spot the american had that was black - sorry, but you americans too often don't get it when europeans make sarcastic remarks.
PS: WTF is up with the code thingy - if you are not logged in I could understand it, but for when you are logged in?!?
Thats all fine and dandy untill the EU and the asian league decides to use that rule too - in all likelyhood the us will loose jobs and money on such laws.
Currently the EU economy is estimated to bypass the US economy between 2010 and 2020 - of course the increased wolrdwide use of the euro and decreased use of the US dollar might speed things up.
sounds like you need a workflow system.
If you don't mind proprietary systems you might consider Lotus Workplace (based on websphere and DB2).
It has advanced workflow systems and of course everything essential to groupware.
Ontop of that the Workplace product line has clients for Linux, Mac and Win32.
It also has replication features so you can have your data with you when traveling, and syncing the next time you go online.
With their express offerings IBM has made the product relatively affordable too for a small organization as yours.
Also you wont be betatesting technology since both the websphere and lotus side is pretty tested by now.
Otherwise you should look at workflow systems with replication - I'm not really sure if bug tracking systems are enough for the problem you described.
Well thats your problem isn't it?
Best tool for the job and all - the Lotus products are the best groupware tools thus far.
True - and for the record I'm not against outlawing billboards in space - I was just arguing that it's not a jab against the US to say that they can't decide this subject on their own as the parent of my comment suggested.
And I agree that the US should try to push this thru international organizations.
"Perhaps the US cannot unilaterally legislate "no billboards in space," but we can say, "nothing advertised in space may be sold in the US" which may be effective enough."
If the US really wants a tradewar - they would definitely loose in the international trade organization for doing so.
That would be true if it wasn't that this was not something he was payed to do - he was asked to do a lecture for an event by some groups and complied.
It's like if you where invited to speak about the XBOX at the local gaming club, but the president could only accept a speech about PS3 because Sony sponsored their new building.
Here it's actually worse, since the copyright industries threaten to do all they can to find something to litigate the university, in effect making blunt threats.
Thats hardly the point - rather it would be:
Why the hell would a local (US) agency have any authority on this matter whatsoever - the logical place to go for this is via international organisations such as OECD, WITA, UN etc.
It's like the Chineese traffic authority outlawing certain types of boats in international water - even IF everyone can agree that singlehulled oiltankers are a bad idea, the chineese deciding this alone would hardly be applauded.
The long term solution is to put your data into groupware - lotus workplace and domino/notes is the example of how this can and should be done.
Of course workplace has limits to the amount of formats you can import into it, but definitely not the amount of data (well of course hd space, and whatever limit db2 has applies).
Alot of people have dvd players, and by this time next year, the amount of SACD players will have multiplied several times (PS3 handles SACD).
The whole idea behind the patent system is the following:
The society noticed, as inventions became increasingly sophisticated that manufacturers where doing all they could to obscure their inventions so no on else could use them. Thus they decided to establish a system, wherein a manufacturer would be granted a monopoly for a limited time on the premise that the invention was fully exposed, so that the society would gain the knowledge of the invention.
So not exposing the knowledge defeats the whole point of the patent system. The patent system is in place because it is deemed the greater good for the entire society.
IMHO it is by far the better option to make the patents apply to a much narrower and more specific thing.
"Sourcecode for a working implementation should be supplied and available when locating the patent application"
The reasoning for this is obviously also so that the invention is in fact public, since the legal lingo in patents is all but useless when it comes to software (atleast for a car engine they need to provide printouts of how to engine functions etc.).
Consider the following: no proof has ever been established to show that patents makes more innovation possible. Some research suggest the opposite might be true.
In software the opposite has been proved true. Microsoft is the perfect example - they have for the last 10 years often said that they would invest more in research, and yet what has happened is that almost all of the extra research investment is going to lawyers.
Also, if the true culprit was the patent system - why let patents cover MORE things if the system is as clearly inadequate as most people can agree it is.
I considered the problem of accepting software patents and ensuring the patents where in fact proper patents (this part is important, since if this is not done patents ARE a hindrance to innovation and conducting business - and also one of the main arguments for the pro-sw-patent lobby that the european system is not like the american system because we check the patents more thoroughly - this however is sadly less and less true).
To do this my unscientific conclusion was that it would demand so many ressources that the system would only be open to the extremely big corporations because getting patens would be very prohibitively expensive (or the state would pay thru the nose to pay for the patent administration and thus give higher taxes).
I'm not really convinced for the case of patents - but if patents incorporating software was to be allowed by law (as opposed to the current practice in the EU of approving SW patents which by the letter of the law shouldn't be patentable), then at the very least the following 2 things should be applicable:
- Copyright should not apply for the original patented implementation of said invention
- Sourcecode for a working implementation should be supplied and available when locating the patent application
This, at the very least would restrict the patentowner from exerting his patent on related inventions and would also limit the patent to the exact prototype showed - whereas today software patents cover ALL possible implementations of the invention.The most oft used analogies are the car motor analogy where we have gas and diesel engines and one manufacturer can have a patent on the gas engines and enother on diesel engines - where as in software the patent would cover "engines" as a whole, including but not limited to rocket engines, jet plane engines etc.
You are right - I just had to vent a little after having seen this discussion several times over here and other places.
:P) - but I'm sure the end result will be a better, leaner package that even the FOSS movement will like.
I can also appreciate that using SUN Java can pose problems for some people. Personally I use Gentoo and SuSE so it's not really a problem for me, but I can still appreciate it.
However my subtle point is this, SUN needs to develop features in OOo in order for StarOffice to be competitive with other office packages.
Novell/Ximian also wants the most competitive package they can get.
The most argued point with OOo 2 is the fact that Base will only work with java - where before most of the java reliance did not directly affect usage here it actually degrades the "total experience[tm]".
I'm sure SUN and OOo coders like all the usage feedback - however StarOffice uses it's own dictionaries and translations, and they are completely seperate from the OOo ones (atleast that was the case when SO 6 and 7 was released).
So much for that part - then for the general stuff:
The OOo project faces some difficulties. Firstly, the codebase is apparently a mess (I don't know how to code, but even the OOo developers have stated this so I'll take their word for it).
Secondly the codebase has always relied on java (version 5 did, which was the version SUN purchased).
Now what I've been ranting about is, that since this seems to be a big issue for a lot of people with the OOo java dependency, why not help the OOo developers in 2 ways - help convert the java dependent code, and help clean up the code so it is more modular and less messy.
This will obviously take a long time (just think how long it took to make XUL
Regarding novell: I don't know if any of the coders they have are java coders - generally that is the problem, if the coder who can take on the project codes in java then what? Tell him to bugger off? With the limited ressources OOo has it's no surprise they are not going to say that.
Oh come on - there are 4 (!) community developers on Open Office, 40 developers from SUN and 10 from Novell [Ximian].
Of course they'll choose java if the choice is between getting the feature or not.
It's perfectly fine if the community wants a java free OOo or a free java - then go work on it. Stop bashing SUN or Novell for contributing code to OOo.
yes it's different since the options does not appear in the right click menu, and it used to - and yes that never was my problem.