Maybe this is insightful. Maybe it is absolutely trivial to set up an international co-operation organization that is in every way totally superior to UN.
Could kaellinn18 or someone give a short introduction to how this is done? I'm not trying to pick a fight: I just really do not understand what you are proposing...
If what you say is true, why don't you include the link to the page?
Now we're left with your (an AC no less) side of the story, with no way of knowing wether you really wrote a good entry... With this evidence, I'll walk away believing you're just a nobody who wrote a bad entry and doesn't really understand Wikipedia -- I'd love it if you prove me wrong though.
I guess you haven't used a decent package manager? I promise that once you 'get' the idea, finding and downloading stuff from the web manually sounds like an exercise in stupidity...
It's not just that the installing is easy:
finding the programs is easy
installing is standard (no million different installer UIs)
It's safer, since you don't have to trust every download site on the planet (you will have to trust the repository maintainer, but that's just one 'background check')
It's even more safe, since apps are always up-to-date. This is really great -- no need to follow mailing lists for every internet connected app you have, to find out about patches to vulnerabilities, because your whole system is kept updated with one command (or automatically if that's what you want)
Sure, it relies on a database, and it's possible that the repository doesn't contain what you need. In practice that seems to be rare -- Ubuntus 18000 packages have been enough for me so far (YMMV of course).
On the other hand, getting from the first log-over-the-river kind of bridge to the bridge building standards you speak of took thousands of years. Digital data formats / algorithms / standards are a few decades old at most.
Looking a little bit further, there might be some very interesting times ahead, since Ximian people have said that it's now possible (a lot of work, but possible) to add Mono support into gcc, to make it generate CIL! If that really became reality it would mean that you could write C, C++, Fortran, Objective-C and Java for Mono.
I realise the blurb says the competitors keep on taking, but if even 1 line of code has been added by someone else, then he needs their permission before he can close the source off surely?
Nope, One line of code is definitely not enough to get you copyright.
...one line of perl perhaps, but nothing else.
Being 'the world's biggest software company' doesn't really help. Serializing sofware development is very, very difficult (read The Mythical Man-Month by Fred Brooks if you don't know what I mean). After a certain point adding more money doesn't really help... Hard software development will still be hard, large projects will still take a long time.
KOffice and OOo are mostly not developed as charity. Maybe there are numerous implementations out there, but frankly, I have not seen other acceptable ones yet. Maybe you can point them out?
I base my analysis on my experience in software development. It tends to be quite difficult even with small projects on small and medium sized codebases... The fact that Office uses XML probably does make the amount of necessary grunt work smaller, but doesn't really help in the difficult problems: Office is bound to have concepts that are implemented totally differently (or not at all) by odf -- these have to be worked around. This is often not pretty, it's definitely not 'just a format conversion'.
Ten? Without trouble? Sorry, but I doubt your expertize in this area. Let's look closer, shall we...
IBM Workplace, docvert, ezPublish and StarOffice all use Openoffice engine.
Last time I checked (two months ago, I think), the developers of the Abiword plugin said it 'sort of works'.
The Textmaker version with odf support is beta, and anyway I doubt they are going to use all the features of odf (not 100% sure of this though)
Last time I checked Scribus was nowhere near complete odf support
Visioo wasn't really ready when I checked it this summer, and anyway it's read-only.
I have no idea how extensive the opendocument support of Knomos is (never heard of it) or how it is implemented, and Googling tells me nothing... From the program description I'm guessing they don't really render odf.
When I read the Wikipedia page, I translated it as 'Currently there are two engines capable of rendering and writing ODF with acceptable support: KOffice and OOo
This is not about 'Office being coded so badly', this is about achieving 99.9% support for a very, very large specification.
Fact is that it would be dead easy for them to wite a filter or plug-in to MS Office that could read or write files in the OpenDocument formats
I wonder... How extensive is your knowledge of these document formats (and their enormous complexity)? My off-the-cuff guess woukd have been that it would certainly be possible, but quite costly, for MS to support about 95-98% of opendocument. Getting full support (while maintaining current UI and feature set) would be very difficult if not impossible.
I'm not refuting your analysis, but I'd like to point out that keeping the code changes hidden is seldom critical... Think about your t-shirt seller -- how is he hurt by having to show the changes he made with the shopping cart? Is the shopping cart really the part of his business that separates him from the competition? (hint: if it is, isn't he in the wrong business...)
What does AJAX have to do with the possibility of off-site backup or saving documents on a server? A normal desktop word processing application could have that functionality as well as an AJAX app... There may well be lots of benefits to AJAX, I just don't think those are good examples.
Maybe you need to read up on SSH history... Tatu Ylönen designed the first SSH protocol and wrote the original programs as open source (1995 or 96 I think). Later he founded SSH Communications and started releasing the subsequent versions with proprietary licenses. OpenDSB took the last free version and started OpenSSH.
So I guess you mistook the pig for Paris and Paris for pig. Understandable.
Re:Its a matter of perspective
on
Pay vs. Happiness
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Gongratulations! Your post has won the Most-Generalizations-In-One-Post Award. It's a real achievement considering the forum...
You didn't understand. Firefox is the better browser today -- for me, because I let politics affect this. You obviously think that is stupid, but please let me make up my own mind. This was my point from the beginning.
And no, I'm not a Firefox developer, never have been, and probably never will be.
Look, I know a lot of people here are set on Firefox exclusively because its open source and blahdeblah, but don't decide your browser on nontechnocratic grounds.
1. You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.
2. I value the liberty free software gives me. Why should that not affect my decisions?
Slashdot Mirror
Could kaellinn18 or someone give a short introduction to how this is done? I'm not trying to pick a fight: I just really do not understand what you are proposing...
It's pretty much Planet DMCA now. Most of Europe already has DMCA-like laws.
Now we're left with your (an AC no less) side of the story, with no way of knowing wether you really wrote a good entry... With this evidence, I'll walk away believing you're just a nobody who wrote a bad entry and doesn't really understand Wikipedia -- I'd love it if you prove me wrong though.
Alternatively we could just kill all fanatics.
Just say it, no need to soften the blow for 4 pages...
It's not just that the installing is easy:
Sure, it relies on a database, and it's possible that the repository doesn't contain what you need. In practice that seems to be rare -- Ubuntus 18000 packages have been enough for me so far (YMMV of course).
Pretty scary worms you've got, taking over a computer with no internet connection...
Start with http://www.go-mono.com/languages.html, maybe check IronPython and Boo too.
Looking a little bit further, there might be some very interesting times ahead, since Ximian people have said that it's now possible (a lot of work, but possible) to add Mono support into gcc, to make it generate CIL! If that really became reality it would mean that you could write C, C++, Fortran, Objective-C and Java for Mono.
Or if you want someone (arguably) more trusted: ISO (almost at the end of the page).
...one line of perl perhaps, but nothing else.
Being 'the world's biggest software company' doesn't really help. Serializing sofware development is very, very difficult (read The Mythical Man-Month by Fred Brooks if you don't know what I mean). After a certain point adding more money doesn't really help... Hard software development will still be hard, large projects will still take a long time.
I base my analysis on my experience in software development. It tends to be quite difficult even with small projects on small and medium sized codebases... The fact that Office uses XML probably does make the amount of necessary grunt work smaller, but doesn't really help in the difficult problems: Office is bound to have concepts that are implemented totally differently (or not at all) by odf -- these have to be worked around. This is often not pretty, it's definitely not 'just a format conversion'.
- IBM Workplace, docvert, ezPublish and StarOffice all use Openoffice engine.
- Last time I checked (two months ago, I think), the developers of the Abiword plugin said it 'sort of works'.
- The Textmaker version with odf support is beta, and anyway I doubt they are going to use all the features of odf (not 100% sure of this though)
- Last time I checked Scribus was nowhere near complete odf support
- Visioo wasn't really ready when I checked it this summer, and anyway it's read-only.
- I have no idea how extensive the opendocument support of Knomos is (never heard of it) or how it is implemented, and Googling tells me nothing... From the program description I'm guessing they don't really render odf.
When I read the Wikipedia page, I translated it as 'Currently there are two engines capable of rendering and writing ODF with acceptable support: KOffice and OOoThis is not about 'Office being coded so badly', this is about achieving 99.9% support for a very, very large specification.
What do you base your "dead easy" analysis on?
Eh? Of course you can modify it and make public all the changes. Just don't call it GPL afterwards.
I'm not refuting your analysis, but I'd like to point out that keeping the code changes hidden is seldom critical... Think about your t-shirt seller -- how is he hurt by having to show the changes he made with the shopping cart? Is the shopping cart really the part of his business that separates him from the competition? (hint: if it is, isn't he in the wrong business...)
What does AJAX have to do with the possibility of off-site backup or saving documents on a server? A normal desktop word processing application could have that functionality as well as an AJAX app... There may well be lots of benefits to AJAX, I just don't think those are good examples.
So I guess you mistook the pig for Paris and Paris for pig. Understandable.
Gongratulations! Your post has won the Most-Generalizations-In-One-Post Award. It's a real achievement considering the forum...
Umm... You still have her number?
Are you contributing the zillion different devices that are needed for those tests?
And no, I'm not a Firefox developer, never have been, and probably never will be.
2. I value the liberty free software gives me. Why should that not affect my decisions?