Of course if Oz government IT peoples had been following Slashdot they'd also know that there is a big fork of Open Office to Libre Office where there seems to be no real guarantee that either will be around in 3 years time (some of the code might be, but can you imagine trying to explain byzantine Open Source politics to a PHB?)
"You should standardize on Libre Office"
"How long has that been around?"
"Well that's a question with a complicated answer...."
They should dump the stupid LibreOffice name and call it OOXMLOffice.
Au contraire. Your vote implies your consent to their authority. Refusal to vote means refusal to consent. The government will assert its authority regardless, but not voting is a perfectly legitimate form of resistance.
"Much conventional wisdom about Microsoft written by shills is wrong. The authors took money for research from Microsoft, long the arch- enemy of the open-source movement— although they assure readers that the funds came with no strings attached -- wink, wink, nudge, nudge) Proprietary programs are not always better. To be sure, the upfront cost of proprietary software is higher (although open-source programs are not always free) and getting timely fixes is difficult and expensive. But companies that use such programs support the cadre of Microsoft engineers and legions of independent programmers who "fix" and "augment" Microsoft offerings. Think of their children; move out of you mom's basement."
In the US, it was Mexicans smuggling wheelbarrows across the border. I suppose every culture has a similar cautionary tale about the dangers of misdirection.
Why does the OP mention the Ubuntu package when the project releases a tarball?
There is no need to make news distro-centric when it does not need to be. The submitter should check to see what other binary packages are available or not mention them at all.
Since the focus of CDE seems to be to share scripts used by researchers that often have unusual dependencies, perhaps CDE should just collect dependency info and URLs for non-mainstream libraries. Then the CDE wrapper script could query for the deps and suggest what is needed and offer a URL for download. Not as end-user friendly, but that would avoid the licensing issues.
At some point some open source projects developers may go in a direction that the distribution vendors and end uses may disagree with. It is the licensing which allows a fork of the project to develop that sets the open source development model apart from the pure proprietary development model. Apache, X.org and even the current version of the GNU GCC compiler toolset have been all derived from an outside fork of an existing open source project. No vendor or open source software developer can block development for any substantial period of time without the risk of the development being taken over by a descendant of the same project -- it's called evolution.
Every time the leading members/developers of each of those original projects complained bitterly about the interlopers.
The longer the original team remains entrenched in their design/implementation choices, the less the original team control has over the successor project and the less original product's market share of total users.
This will remain true for all freely licensed source code that Oracle has purchased or inherited. Even for the forks of the GPL licensed Java.
In the end freely licensed source code can have no dictators, only obsoleted dickhead.
lol, as a European I usually find it painful to discuss with, or read, with/from an American because of their constant wittyness and irrelevant crap that they have to say, I blame Americanization for this painful-to-read chat log;)
No, it's the failure of Europeans to grasp American idioms and learn the simpler English grammar rules that make it painful to read Euro-English. Stop translating European idioms directly into English my little cabbage, and it will make my better sense. Correctly, it seems.
The interesting question is how much developers are in each group. X.org was more successful than XFree not the least because a huge chunk of actively contributing devs was with that project.
So has XFree withered and died? Does anybody use it? Does development continue?
So far, OO.o is distributed under the same license. I seem to recall that Fedora (Red Hat) and Ubuntu (Canonical) will support LibreOffice for now, but do they have any obligation to do so? If LO doesn't draw other support, then what will stop them from running, hat in hand (so to speak), back to OpenOffice?
I thought many distros used Go-oo anyway, not OO.o proper. So they already supported a fork.
What if Oracle throws lots of resources behind OO.o, overshadowing the efforts that LO makes?
That sounds just like Oracle to sink massive resources into a FOSS codebase.
LibreOffice is a fork of OO.org that was started because of Oracle's buyout of Sun. They asked Oracle to donate the OO.org name to their fork, and now Oracle has kicked them out of the OO.org community counsel. Hard to say if it's good or bad, but it looks to be the start of a fight.
FuckYouOffice would be a good name given the turn of events. And very counter-culture/rebellious.
In everyday usage, it could be shortened to FuckOff, like:
"What's that Open Source office suite you are using?"
"FuckOff."
"Wow, thanks. Gotta get me some of that." or
"How can I convert this mysterious ODF document into Word format to read it on my Win98 computer?"
"FuckOff."
"Thank you, helpful person."
It's a name that could work well for FOSS.
But perhaps UpYoursOffice might be better because that sounds more like European-bastardized English and less Japanese than FuckYouOffice. But it's not as much fun.
Almost anything is better than LibreOffice. Obviously LibreOffice did not wind up with any of the marketing people in the divorce.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course if Oz government IT peoples had been following Slashdot they'd also know that there is a big fork of Open Office to Libre Office where there seems to be no real guarantee that either will be around in 3 years time (some of the code might be, but can you imagine trying to explain byzantine Open Source politics to a PHB?)
"You should standardize on Libre Office"
"How long has that been around?"
"Well that's a question with a complicated answer ...."
They should dump the stupid LibreOffice name and call it OOXMLOffice.
Win!
A: You can see their mouths moving.
Right back at you.
iPhone 4 Liberation Kit
http://www.ifixit.com/iPhone-Parts/iPhone-4-Liberation-Kit/IF182-019
It is by not voting that you "enable" them.
Au contraire. Your vote implies your consent to their authority. Refusal to vote means refusal to consent. The government will assert its authority regardless, but not voting is a perfectly legitimate form of resistance.
How's that working for you so far?
I thought so.
"Much conventional wisdom about Microsoft written by shills is wrong. The authors took money for research from Microsoft, long the arch- enemy of the open-source movement— although they assure readers that the funds came with no strings attached -- wink, wink, nudge, nudge) Proprietary programs are not always better. To be sure, the upfront cost of proprietary software is higher (although open-source programs are not always free) and getting timely fixes is difficult and expensive. But companies that use such programs support the cadre of Microsoft engineers and legions of independent programmers who "fix" and "augment" Microsoft offerings. Think of their children; move out of you mom's basement."
Geez, guys. Mental age should be at least 16, mental altitude should be at least a foot above the gutter.
On Slashdot?
The discourse is usually at basement level, not upstairs with mom.
A highly-developed and technological Knight Industries Two Thousand series motor vehicle.
What does The Hoff have to say about it?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hasselhoff
Sounds like a modernized version of an old Sufi tale, where Nasrudin is smuggles donkeys across the border.
In the US, it was Mexicans smuggling wheelbarrows across the border. I suppose every culture has a similar cautionary tale about the dangers of misdirection.
If "weird" includes Ubuntu's adoption of Wayland, I have bad news: Fedora is also dumping X for Wayland (eventually).
If only because Fedora and now Ubuntu are producing desktops for the corporate world instead of the traditional geek users.
Lightweight.
Limited.
Locked-dowm.
Evidence of Cheetos-based lifeforms found in Mom's basement?
We totally meant to do that cool thing you guys thought we didn't mean to do ... and stuff.
And "by design", they mean "accidentally".
Embrace
Extend
Destroy
Why does the OP mention the Ubuntu package when the project releases a tarball?
There is no need to make news distro-centric when it does not need to be. The submitter should check to see what other binary packages are available or not mention them at all.
Since the focus of CDE seems to be to share scripts used by researchers that often have unusual dependencies, perhaps CDE should just collect dependency info and URLs for non-mainstream libraries. Then the CDE wrapper script could query for the deps and suggest what is needed and offer a URL for download. Not as end-user friendly, but that would avoid the licensing issues.
Typical government arrogance. They tell us what to do, not the other way around.
So yeah, it's dead Jim. Everybody moved to the Xorg server, including OSes and distributions and development community.
And I'll bet the folks in charge of XFree86 still maintain that holding out against Xorg was the right thing to do.
Is Oracle's goal to piss off the Open Source Community? Taking on Android AND Open Office...two beloved open source projects!
You assume that Oracle cares in some way other than as an annoyance about the FOSS community ...
Understandable move from Oracle. Anyone finding out that their wife/husband/life partner is having a side affair would ask them to move out.
A poor analogy for /. readers.
Can you provide a car analogy? We understand cars; relationships, not so much.
Quoting myself
Every time the leading members/developers of each of those original projects complained bitterly about the interlopers.
The longer the original team remains entrenched in their design/implementation choices, the less the original team control has over the successor project and the less original product's market share of total users.
This will remain true for all freely licensed source code that Oracle has purchased or inherited. Even for the forks of the GPL licensed Java.
In the end freely licensed source code can have no dictators, only obsoleted dickhead.
(Score:6, Insightful)
Exactly. Just like your post, their chat messages were incomprehensible and irrelevant.
But the grammar is better. +1
lol, as a European I usually find it painful to discuss with, or read, with/from an American because of their constant wittyness and irrelevant crap that they have to say, I blame Americanization for this painful-to-read chat log ;)
No, it's the failure of Europeans to grasp American idioms and learn the simpler English grammar rules that make it painful to read Euro-English. Stop translating European idioms directly into English my little cabbage, and it will make my better sense. Correctly, it seems.
The interesting question is how much developers are in each group. X.org was more successful than XFree not the least because a huge chunk of actively contributing devs was with that project.
So has XFree withered and died? Does anybody use it? Does development continue?
So far, OO.o is distributed under the same license. I seem to recall that Fedora (Red Hat) and Ubuntu (Canonical) will support LibreOffice for now, but do they have any obligation to do so? If LO doesn't draw other support, then what will stop them from running, hat in hand (so to speak), back to OpenOffice?
I thought many distros used Go-oo anyway, not OO.o proper. So they already supported a fork.
What if Oracle throws lots of resources behind OO.o, overshadowing the efforts that LO makes?
That sounds just like Oracle to sink massive resources into a FOSS codebase.
LibreOffice is a fork of OO.org that was started because of Oracle's buyout of Sun. They asked Oracle to donate the OO.org name to their fork, and now Oracle has kicked them out of the OO.org community counsel. Hard to say if it's good or bad, but it looks to be the start of a fight.
FuckYouOffice would be a good name given the turn of events. And very counter-culture/rebellious.
In everyday usage, it could be shortened to FuckOff, like:
"What's that Open Source office suite you are using?"
"FuckOff."
"Wow, thanks. Gotta get me some of that."
or
"How can I convert this mysterious ODF document into Word format to read it on my Win98 computer?"
"FuckOff."
"Thank you, helpful person."
It's a name that could work well for FOSS.
But perhaps UpYoursOffice might be better because that sounds more like European-bastardized English and less Japanese than FuckYouOffice. But it's not as much fun.
Almost anything is better than LibreOffice. Obviously LibreOffice did not wind up with any of the marketing people in the divorce.
How about StarOffice for a name?
Sounds bloated and slow.