It is all about critical mass of people and corporations organised. If there is no project and organisations like the EFF just stick to outreach campaigns nothing happens.
When US people come to European conferences they often present the view of a corrupted regime and parliament in the hands of lobbyists. When you do not even try to get your interests organised you should not blame it on your political system. And inbalance in the political system also reflects earlier inbalance in interest representation. I mean, don't be the lazy guys, do not waste your time in preaching the choir, get organised with likeminded people and contribute. If the policital process is broken, fix it.
We know that patents are bad and unnecessary for software and there is discussion going on in the software industry.
All we need is an incubator like FFII in the United States and Software patents will be history soon. Note that in recent US patent reform discussions it was Microsoft vs. Pharma, no American stakeholder representing the software developer community or Open Source showed up. Get organised and madness will stop in the next few years.
Wine has several problems which inhibit it to take off:
* it is managed in an intransparent and autocratic way
lead developer have no management skills but do the stuff themselves.
* no real communication to the community about what is going on
* weird rocket science
* is is not properly modularised
* no lobbying position of wine to force MS to lay open more interfaces while MS is grilled by the authorities.
* no proper business relations and financial ressources, no real fundraising
I am sure there are people intrested in reverse engineering windows but the wine project is not very open.
So too few people take control of too many code which they will never be able to debug. The result is a buggy incomplete emulator. You do not need a worm or virus to crash Wine. Unfortunately Wine does it for you.
The question is not what vulnerabilities are found. The question is what happens.
No security system = no vulnerabilities. Of course all systems need a proper security review. Here also a role of the governments can be observed: Review code.
In the field of Open source a formal documentation of security reviews leaves a lot of room for improvements. The situation improved over the use of profiling tools but automatic detection of vulnerabilities and problems can still be improved. Test cases for code reviews, safer programming styles and languages, and time and review are key to ultimate security. Software does not get worse.
I would suggest that talks without content contribute to World peace. As long as you talk you do not shoot. So let's talk about how internet bubbles contribute to World Peace.
Before the next internet bubble the china bubble has to burst.
"Every year The Edge asks over 100 top scientists and thinkers a question, and the responses are fascinating and widely quoted. This year, psychologist Steven Pinker suggested they ask "What is your most dangerous idea?" The 117 respondents include Richard Dawkins, Freeman Dyson, Daniel Dennett, Jared Diamond -- and that's just the D's! As you might expect, the submissions are brilliant and very controversial."
My "most dangerous idea": Perhaps this competition is baseless because it includes mostly US-American and English-speaking white persons, not really the edge of the scientific community. Many of these are braggarts. American eloquence beats human intelligence.
Re:the recommended changes require MORE laws?
on
The Patent Epidemic
·
· Score: 1
I would be great to
* get a real US patent reform * let the US sign the EPC * cut budget of WIPO * get rid off the TRIPs inflexibilities.
All this is Libertarian thinking so to speak.
Whatever you want the patent system to be: It is worth to get organised with like-minded people.
Mac OS X is great for some people. But you need to justify the prize. And when you are a Unix geek you have to justify your switch to a GUI system. So here post-marketing takes place. You bought it and they give you a reason why: Because it is Unix (?!)
I think for most Apple users this is no reason to use or buy a Mac.
Because for Apple users it is irrelevant whether Mac OS X is build on foosys or Unix. When you run a C64 emulator on Linux which is distributed as a game console to play games you cannot say "this is a real Linux" only because a techie can open a linux console. For the average use it is C64. And for the manufacturer it it was a rather technical choice what runtime plattform he chose. When you look at a diamond you can also think of carbon and sure it is.
But all these Apple freaks which want to belong to the Unix family do not understand that the essence of Macs is not Unix as it was not PPC. And when Apple switches tomorrow to Intel and from BSD to foosys, Apple users will find other silly arguments to rationalise their apple preference.
In my opinion KDE is more productive for me. But it depends. What is the real problem is hardware drivers and configuration stuff. Not difficult to get beaten by the most proprietary plattform. When you do not have to support the whole hardware cosmos things get easier.
Now KDE wants to support the Apple widgets. Nice, I call it interoperability. You can use KDE on BSD as well and then KDE is a "real Unix". But the fact is, it does not really matter.
What matters is that KDE is great and free and Mac OS X is stylish and proprietary. KDE unlike Mac OS X cannot die. But KDE can assist the survival of some parts of the Mac OS X universe. GNUSTEP is one approach. KDE is another approach. The time for a free Mac OS X is close.
To be honest, I do not care much about which operating system is run on my computer. I just has to work and I take what is best. I have no time for a WinXP or Linux cult. Currently I chose KDE on Linux and on rare occasions I switch to Windows.
Another four years and Brittanica is out of Business.
It is not Brittanica to tell Wikipedia which way to go. I don't see the quality problem, despite that Brittanica gets a new edition every 20 years (?) and is then quality checked. Whatever they do, they cannot compete with the quality of Wikipedia because quality of wikipedia will not decrease, we will not see less articles, articles with lower standards and the core of articles.
One edition of Brittanica is several thousand dollars. Donate the same money to the Wikipedia foundation and we will see more progress with the project.
Well, first you get a very succesful model that will take over the rest. then your opponents bite and spread a dirty media campaign and you take them serious and change your model.
the real answer would be to fully ignore this bullshit.
I mean who cares about the reputation of Wikipedia among non-wikipedians. wikipedia is useful for us and we like it because it is different. I am not afraid of vandalism. I don't care at all about vandalism. And I do not care about these cyber-illiterates who want to continue the old way and raise concerns.
But this reaction of wikipedia is very dangerous.
It is like Terrorism. The terror kills just a few thousand people but the anti-terror measures let us all suffer and limit our abilities.
- Persons who download the SP2 vs. persons who install the SP2
or
Persons who installed the SP2, then finanally decided to abandon WinXP for productive use and switch over to to KDE.
I have XP SP2 on one partition I hardly use. I don't need a "secure" environment. I need a productive environment. And surprise, surprise, I never experienced any security problems with Linux, my system does not freeze and it just works.
> Personally I think Apple has done a quite decent job of building a GUI on top of a UNIX > core (the Darwin flavor of freeBSD).
Well, this is no real option.
Because for Apple users it is irrelevant whether it is build on foosys or Unix. When you run a C64 emulator on Linux which is distributed as a game console to play games you cannot say "this is a real Linux" only because a techie can open a linux console. For the average use it is C64. And for the manufacturer it it was a rather technical choice what runtime plattform he chose. When you look at a diamond you can also think of carbon and sure it is.
But all these Apple freaks which want to belong to the Unix family do not understand that the essence of Macs is not Unix as it was not PPC. And when Apple switches tomorrow to Intel and from BSD to foosys, Apple users will find other silly arguments to rationalise their apple preference.
In my opinion KDE is more productive for me. But it depends. What is the real problem is hardware drivers and configuration stuff. Not difficult to get beaten by the most proprietary plattform. When you do not have to support the whole hardware cosmos things get easier.
I would rather say I am more productive on KDE than on Windows.
All problems I face are not real problems of KDE despite some polishing. Most problems originate from unnecessary distribution differences. Consistency is a huge advantage despite the alleged inconsistency,
- Windows is always perfect when it works?
No, it is not.
Because Windows is also messy and inconsistent, esp. when 3rd party software and hardware drivers get involved. Just install a drive for your digital camera. Integration of components is really a problem of Windows.
So, yes there is the same problem on another scale. But look at the very few applications shipped with Windows which are apparently made using different design philosophies and toolkits. Add to that some applications your hardware manufacturer adds, like Nero, like some picture viewer, crappy multimedia plugins, DVD players etc. When you use KDE for a long time and complained about some former inconsistencies and switch back to Windows you immidiately recognise that XP is worse.
At least you have to make sure that all KDE applications have man pages. This is a quality problem.
The documentation can be improved and standardised. Also a quality problem.
But most problems users face originate not from the desktop environment but from the level below the desktop environment which cause trouble within the desktop environment.
You cannot listen to sound because your sound driver is wrong configured or you need to install a special library.
In fact KDE and Gnome are kind of "subdistributions", the kernel is another.
The problems of Linux are usually not on that "KDE or Gnome" level anymore. KDE serves all my needs, I also like Gnome and I am more productive than on Windows on both.
The comparison is flawed because, I mean, think of webbrowsing. I use Konqui, Gnome users would use Epiphany or Galeon. But here I currently use Firefox on KDE. So what use has a KDE vs. Gnome comparison here?
What me annoys on Windows is that opening a PDF in Acrobat often freezes my system. This is a acrobat reader problem, no Windows problem in the strict sense. And I like KDE because Kpdf does not do that. This is a real productivity issue for me.
My most important desktop productivity feature on Windows for me is Google Desktop Search. With KDE KAT and Gnome Beagle now intresting equivalents are developed or with good old locate I have most of that functionality and do not need it that much, as data is better organised on Linux. Now: Google Desktop Search does not belong to Windows, so testing the usability of Windows makes no sense here. You have to test a productive system.
1. Desktop Environments are today not the loopholes of Linux usability. Both are superiour to Windows and easier to use.
2. Linux Desktop is always perfect when it works. The real problems are: It takes to much time to get it to work.
* unsupported hardware and broken hardware detection * what happens if one component breaks, how are problems in hardware handled. (how to get rid off popup annnoyances), e.g. your cd drive is not detected, how does your music player handle the problem and help you, during installation the wrong mouse driver was selected, how do make it happen to switch the mouse driver to default when you only have keys. * installation difficult and what to do when bugs happen * error probability due to complexity * ability to get your simple tasks done because of legal problems, e.g. mps, libdvdcss etc. * internationalisation * packages availability: I do not mean, use a tool to install a package. But say: There is the most recent version of Abiword. Now find a way to install that version on your distribution. * some applications lack maturity or features * api unstable or updated or broken versions break the system
Suggestion:
- usability of software installation: Yast, apt, klik etc. - bugs: Users shall seek bugs. Study could investigate why they are not fixed. - compile a list of past annoyances and look whether the problems prevail. - look how to make users more productive. E.g to reduce time when searching for bugs. Usability of help and documentation to solve problems. Ability to get help on the internet.
When you examine KDE vs. Gnome ask yourself what KDE or Gnome you were talking about. I mean KDE as shipped or some "improved" versions? Please always take the latest original version.
3. The solutions
* better integration of distribution functionality with the DE. DE or both DE are able to set standards and dictate them to all distributions which do not want to hack, they should better do that. * quality checks. E.g. manpages for all applications? Translations 100%? x-projects * system conformity checks. * unify DE registry and standardize setting file data formats. * buildserver * bridge some desktop functionality
Pluto and Xena... finally we found out there might be a few more planets to explore in the kuiper belt. buffy is probably a boring one. > 150 objects. So, no surprise, no sensation.
Anyway, I think SUN recently has realised which path it has to go: Organise a developer conference, support ODF evangelizers...
My personal question would be: what other than "MS Office" can you do with the OO sources. I mean, is the macro language good? Is the widget set good? etc. etc.
All ressources which are not "good" shall better be replaced by proper external Open tools.
> Openoffice is so wierd and often buggy precisely because it follows the closed source mentality.
Well, then look at applications like Abiword. OpenOffice is fine for me. Abiword is fast, looks good at first sight but is a kind of Word 97 experimental.
OpenOffice just works and Word imports are perfect. The speed on Linux is also a GCC problem.
The real question is: how to open up development. How to modularize the thing. How to get people to look at the code? How to fix the remaining bugs and improve design. A first step would be more developer conference talks.
Not bad, I believe the problem is that OpenOffice already was a huge block of software when it became a success as StarOffice. I had SO 4 and it was slow but good back then, overintegrated. When the open source code was released "#define private public" was reported....
The number of bugs or contributors is really irrelevant and the article is wrong here. If SUN wants to encourage OO development, they shall organise at least 10 developer meetings per year. One in Hamburg, one Fosdem session, etc. etc. Inform people how to hack the sources.
But what really concerns is the inability of Sun and the community to modulize the stuff. E.g. enable third parties to produce a file conversion utility. Or reuse code of OO.org for other projects. E.g. the macro language.
OpenOffice 2.0 is fine for me and does 97% of what I want. Speedup would be nice but hardware will scale up faster than software gets optimized. What OO.org is lacking are user communities with sample files etc.
Slashdot Mirror
It is all about critical mass of people and corporations organised. If there is no project and organisations like the EFF just stick to outreach campaigns nothing happens.
When US people come to European conferences they often present the view of a corrupted regime and parliament in the hands of lobbyists. When you do not even try to get your interests organised you should not blame it on your political system. And inbalance in the political system also reflects earlier inbalance in interest representation. I mean, don't be the lazy guys, do not waste your time in preaching the choir, get organised with likeminded people and contribute. If the policital process is broken, fix it.
This is why the original writer is wrong. All respectable users of Slashdot shall fuddle around with Wine to get the tools run.
What surprises me is that OpenOffice.org is not included in the Google Pack despite of the partnership announcement.
We know that patents are bad and unnecessary for software and there is discussion going on in the software industry.
All we need is an incubator like FFII in the United States and Software patents will be history soon. Note that in recent US patent reform discussions it was Microsoft vs. Pharma, no American stakeholder representing the software developer community or Open Source showed up. Get organised and madness will stop in the next few years.
A first step to improve things in the States would be to get subscribed:
http://lists.ffii.org/mailman/listinfo/us-parl
Wine is buggy and brokne and there are a lot of things to get fixed. No need to surpass Microsoft in implementing the latest security fixes.
The reason is simple: security currently has little priority.
What wine really needs is more developers.
Wine has several problems which inhibit it to take off: * it is managed in an intransparent and autocratic way lead developer have no management skills but do the stuff themselves. * no real communication to the community about what is going on * weird rocket science * is is not properly modularised * no lobbying position of wine to force MS to lay open more interfaces while MS is grilled by the authorities. * no proper business relations and financial ressources, no real fundraising I am sure there are people intrested in reverse engineering windows but the wine project is not very open. So too few people take control of too many code which they will never be able to debug. The result is a buggy incomplete emulator. You do not need a worm or virus to crash Wine. Unfortunately Wine does it for you.
The question is not what vulnerabilities are found. The question is what happens.
No security system = no vulnerabilities. Of course all systems need a proper security review. Here also a role of the governments can be observed: Review code.
In the field of Open source a formal documentation of security reviews leaves a lot of room for improvements. The situation improved over the use of profiling tools but automatic detection of vulnerabilities and problems can still be improved. Test cases for code reviews, safer programming styles and languages, and time and review are key to ultimate security. Software does not get worse.
True.
I would suggest that talks without content contribute to World peace. As long as you talk you do not shoot. So let's talk about how internet bubbles contribute to World Peace.
Before the next internet bubble the china bubble has to burst.
"Every year The Edge asks over 100 top scientists and thinkers a question, and the responses are fascinating and widely quoted. This year, psychologist Steven Pinker suggested they ask "What is your most dangerous idea?" The 117 respondents include Richard Dawkins, Freeman Dyson, Daniel Dennett, Jared Diamond -- and that's just the D's! As you might expect, the submissions are brilliant and very controversial."
My "most dangerous idea": Perhaps this competition is baseless because it includes mostly US-American and English-speaking white persons, not really the edge of the scientific community. Many of these are braggarts. American eloquence beats human intelligence.
I would be great to
* get a real US patent reform
* let the US sign the EPC
* cut budget of WIPO
* get rid off the TRIPs inflexibilities.
All this is Libertarian thinking so to speak.
Whatever you want the patent system to be: It is worth to get organised with like-minded people.
For Fighting Software Patenting subscription to
http://lists.ffii.org/mailman/listinfo/us-parl
could be very useful.
As an European I am surprised by the capacity weakness of the US debate. Either you get organised or your get ignored and evil things just happen.
I think this is a Marketing legend.
Mac OS X is great for some people. But you need to justify the prize. And when you are a Unix geek you have to justify your switch to a GUI system. So here post-marketing takes place. You bought it and they give you a reason why: Because it is Unix (?!)
I think for most Apple users this is no reason to use or buy a Mac.
Because for Apple users it is irrelevant whether Mac OS X is build on foosys or Unix. When you run a C64 emulator on Linux which is distributed as a game console to play games you cannot say "this is a real Linux" only because a techie can open a linux console. For the average use it is C64. And for the manufacturer it it was a rather technical choice what runtime plattform he chose. When you look at a diamond you can also think of carbon and sure it is.
But all these Apple freaks which want to belong to the Unix family do not understand that the essence of Macs is not Unix as it was not PPC. And when Apple switches tomorrow to Intel and from BSD to foosys, Apple users will find other silly arguments to rationalise their apple preference.
In my opinion KDE is more productive for me. But it depends. What is the real problem is hardware drivers and configuration stuff. Not difficult to get beaten by the most proprietary plattform. When you do not have to support the whole hardware cosmos things get easier.
Now KDE wants to support the Apple widgets. Nice, I call it interoperability. You can use KDE on BSD as well and then KDE is a "real Unix". But the fact is, it does not really matter.
What matters is that KDE is great and free and Mac OS X is stylish and proprietary. KDE unlike Mac OS X cannot die. But KDE can assist the survival of some parts of the Mac OS X universe. GNUSTEP is one approach. KDE is another approach. The time for a free Mac OS X is close.
To be honest, I do not care much about which operating system is run on my computer. I just has to work and I take what is best. I have no time for a WinXP or Linux cult. Currently I chose KDE on Linux and on rare occasions I switch to Windows.
Well, the fact is, comp.
a) How old is wikipedia
b) How old is Brittanica
Another four years and Brittanica is out of Business.
It is not Brittanica to tell Wikipedia which way to go. I don't see the quality problem, despite that Brittanica gets a new edition every 20 years (?) and is then quality checked. Whatever they do, they cannot compete with the quality of Wikipedia because quality of wikipedia will not decrease, we will not see less articles, articles with lower standards and the core of articles.
One edition of Brittanica is several thousand dollars. Donate the same money to the Wikipedia foundation and we will see more progress with the project.
Well, first you get a very succesful model that will take over the rest. then your opponents bite and spread a dirty media campaign and you take them serious and change your model.
the real answer would be to fully ignore this bullshit.
I mean who cares about the reputation of Wikipedia among non-wikipedians. wikipedia is useful for us and we like it because it is different. I am not afraid of vandalism. I don't care at all about vandalism. And I do not care about these cyber-illiterates who want to continue the old way and raise concerns.
But this reaction of wikipedia is very dangerous.
It is like Terrorism. The terror kills just a few thousand people but the anti-terror measures let us all suffer and limit our abilities.
And the problem is:
- Persons who download the SP2 vs. persons who install the SP2
or
Persons who installed the SP2, then finanally decided to abandon WinXP for productive use and switch over to to KDE.
I have XP SP2 on one partition I hardly use. I don't need a "secure" environment. I need a productive environment. And surprise, surprise, I never experienced any security problems with Linux, my system does not freeze and it just works.
And Linux gets better every day.
> Personally I think Apple has done a quite decent job of building a GUI on top of a UNIX
> core (the Darwin flavor of freeBSD).
Well, this is no real option.
Because for Apple users it is irrelevant whether it is build on foosys or Unix. When you run a C64 emulator on Linux which is distributed as a game console to play games you cannot say "this is a real Linux" only because a techie can open a linux console. For the average use it is C64. And for the manufacturer it it was a rather technical choice what runtime plattform he chose. When you look at a diamond you can also think of carbon and sure it is.
But all these Apple freaks which want to belong to the Unix family do not understand that the essence of Macs is not Unix as it was not PPC. And when Apple switches tomorrow to Intel and from BSD to foosys, Apple users will find other silly arguments to rationalise their apple preference.
In my opinion KDE is more productive for me. But it depends. What is the real problem is hardware drivers and configuration stuff. Not difficult to get beaten by the most proprietary plattform. When you do not have to support the whole hardware cosmos things get easier.
What we know very little about is how systems are really used, what options are used, what options are never used.
So a real progress would be to develop a talkback system. Something like WWW statistics.
All that is needed is a patched software run by volunteers which phones home.
I would rather say I am more productive on KDE than on Windows. All problems I face are not real problems of KDE despite some polishing. Most problems originate from unnecessary distribution differences. Consistency is a huge advantage despite the alleged inconsistency, - Windows is always perfect when it works? No, it is not. Because Windows is also messy and inconsistent, esp. when 3rd party software and hardware drivers get involved. Just install a drive for your digital camera. Integration of components is really a problem of Windows. So, yes there is the same problem on another scale. But look at the very few applications shipped with Windows which are apparently made using different design philosophies and toolkits. Add to that some applications your hardware manufacturer adds, like Nero, like some picture viewer, crappy multimedia plugins, DVD players etc. When you use KDE for a long time and complained about some former inconsistencies and switch back to Windows you immidiately recognise that XP is worse.
At least you have to make sure that all KDE applications have man pages. This is a quality problem. The documentation can be improved and standardised. Also a quality problem. But most problems users face originate not from the desktop environment but from the level below the desktop environment which cause trouble within the desktop environment. You cannot listen to sound because your sound driver is wrong configured or you need to install a special library.
In fact KDE and Gnome are kind of "subdistributions", the kernel is another.
The problems of Linux are usually not on that "KDE or Gnome" level anymore. KDE serves all my needs, I also like Gnome and I am more productive than on Windows on both.
The comparison is flawed because, I mean, think of webbrowsing. I use Konqui, Gnome users would use Epiphany or Galeon. But here I currently use Firefox on KDE.
So what use has a KDE vs. Gnome comparison here?
What me annoys on Windows is that opening a PDF in Acrobat often freezes my system. This is a acrobat reader problem, no Windows problem in the strict sense. And I like KDE because Kpdf does not do that. This is a real productivity issue for me.
My most important desktop productivity feature on Windows for me is Google Desktop Search. With KDE KAT and Gnome Beagle now intresting equivalents are developed or with good old locate I have most of that functionality and do not need it that much, as data is better organised on Linux. Now: Google Desktop Search does not belong to Windows, so testing the usability of Windows makes no sense here. You have to test a productive system.
1. Desktop Environments are today not the loopholes of Linux usability. Both are superiour to Windows and easier to use.
2. Linux Desktop is always perfect when it works. The real problems are: It takes to much time to get it to work.
* unsupported hardware and broken hardware detection
* what happens if one component breaks, how are problems in hardware handled. (how to get rid off popup annnoyances), e.g. your cd drive is not detected, how does your music player handle the problem and help you, during installation the wrong mouse driver was selected, how do make it happen to switch the mouse driver to default when you only have keys.
* installation difficult and what to do when bugs happen
* error probability due to complexity
* ability to get your simple tasks done because of legal problems, e.g. mps, libdvdcss etc.
* internationalisation
* packages availability: I do not mean, use a tool to install a package. But say: There is the most recent version of Abiword. Now find a way to install that version on your distribution.
* some applications lack maturity or features
* api unstable or updated or broken versions break the system
Suggestion:
- usability of software installation: Yast, apt, klik etc.
- bugs: Users shall seek bugs. Study could investigate why they are not fixed.
- compile a list of past annoyances and look whether the problems prevail.
- look how to make users more productive. E.g to reduce time when searching for bugs.
Usability of help and documentation to solve problems. Ability to get help on the internet.
When you examine KDE vs. Gnome ask yourself what KDE or Gnome you were talking about. I mean KDE as shipped or some "improved" versions? Please always take the latest original version.
3. The solutions
* better integration of distribution functionality with the DE. DE or both DE are able to set standards and dictate them to all distributions which do not want to hack, they should better do that.
* quality checks. E.g. manpages for all applications? Translations 100%? x-projects
* system conformity checks.
* unify DE registry and standardize setting file data formats.
* buildserver
* bridge some desktop functionality
Pluto and Xena... finally we found out there might be a few more planets to explore in the kuiper belt. buffy is probably a boring one. > 150 objects. So, no surprise, no sensation.
And the patent problem?
Anyway, I think SUN recently has realised which path it has to go: Organise a developer conference, support ODF evangelizers...
My personal question would be: what other than "MS Office" can you do with the OO sources. I mean, is the macro language good? Is the widget set good? etc. etc.
All ressources which are not "good" shall better be replaced by proper external Open tools.
> he criticizes OO for having no support desk - is he serious!?
I guess there is a SO support desk.
If there was demand SUN or anybody else would start as a business. Support desks are for stupid users which shall pay.
> Openoffice is so wierd and often buggy precisely because it follows the closed source mentality.
Well, then look at applications like Abiword. OpenOffice is fine for me. Abiword is fast, looks good at first sight but is a kind of Word 97 experimental.
OpenOffice just works and Word imports are perfect. The speed on Linux is also a GCC problem.
The real question is: how to open up development. How to modularize the thing. How to get people to look at the code? How to fix the remaining bugs and improve design. A first step would be more developer conference talks.
Not bad, I believe the problem is that OpenOffice already was a huge block of software when it became a success as StarOffice. I had SO 4 and it was slow but good back then, overintegrated. When the open source code was released "#define private public" was reported....
The number of bugs or contributors is really irrelevant and the article is wrong here. If SUN wants to encourage OO development, they shall organise at least 10 developer meetings per year. One in Hamburg, one Fosdem session, etc. etc. Inform people how to hack the sources.
But what really concerns is the inability of Sun and the community to modulize the stuff. E.g. enable third parties to produce a file conversion utility. Or reuse code of OO.org for other projects. E.g. the macro language.
OpenOffice 2.0 is fine for me and does 97% of what I want. Speedup would be nice but hardware will scale up faster than software gets optimized. What OO.org is lacking are user communities with sample files etc.