The vast majority of OS-independent OOo code (and most of the Windows and X11-specific code, too) is written by a small-company-sized contingent of Sun employess in Hamburg, by small groups of employees of Novell and other Linux vendors, and so forth, who are paid by their employers specifically to work on OOo as their full-time job. So the "engine programmers" most certainly are getting paid for their work.:-)
If you want to help offset some of Sun's costs or to support the other community developers who also contribute their time, skills, and code to OOo, please do so! If you appreciate having a native, more Mac-like version of OOo, please also contribute to NeoOffice, because unlike the "engine programmers", these 2 developers are not paid by large companies to bring you NeoOffice and the work required to bring you Mac OS X integration, while not as large as writing an entire office suite, is still quite significant in its own right.
Fortunately, the NeoOffice Intel code is already in CVS, the Intel binary is currently available in Early Access, and the Intel binary will be publicly available in a few weeks.
Most of what was posted/discussed publicly in Bugzilla and Bonsaiseemed to be some endian issues in old Mac-specific code (that evolved from the Classic-era codebase) and updating the build system to use the latest version of Xcode. Whether there were more issues not discussed publicly, I don't know.
OpenOSX has a mixed reputation. There are a couple of other developers out there who have stories to tell, but the only one I could find quickly was Fink.
Most or all of the new database component in 2.0 is Java. I still don't think that constitutes "heavily"--but it probably does mean that OOo 2.0 has more Java in it than NeoOffice/J!;)
The final app is a standard.app package, but because of OpenOffice.org's Unix/Windows roots and build system, Neo/J can't just be dragged from the.dmg. That's why there's an Apple Installer.pkg. (OpenOffice.org for Mac (X11) does not use a standard Mac installer and many people do not like that installer.)
Yes, you are missing something. If you've used (or read reviews) of the Mac (X11) version of OpenOffice.org, you'd know none of these features are present in OOo. Maybe that's not a big deal for the Slashdot crowd, but for the average Mac user who's looking for a fully-featured and/or free/Free alternative to Microsoft--especially if the person has tried to use the X11 version or has read reviews--these are important features to tout. It all depends on the audience....
And five years is the total time since the first work on porting OOo to the Mac began. NeoOffice/J has really only been in development for two years, primarily by one developer in his spare time....
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The vast majority of OS-independent OOo code (and most of the Windows and X11-specific code, too) is written by a small-company-sized contingent of Sun employess in Hamburg, by small groups of employees of Novell and other Linux vendors, and so forth, who are paid by their employers specifically to work on OOo as their full-time job. So the "engine programmers" most certainly are getting paid for their work. :-)
If you want to help offset some of Sun's costs or to support the other community developers who also contribute their time, skills, and code to OOo, please do so! If you appreciate having a native, more Mac-like version of OOo, please also contribute to NeoOffice, because unlike the "engine programmers", these 2 developers are not paid by large companies to bring you NeoOffice and the work required to bring you Mac OS X integration, while not as large as writing an entire office suite, is still quite significant in its own right.
Heh, that's one of Apple's dirty little secrets: there are certain classes of application that Rosetta will not translate, and NeoOffice falls into one of those classes (apps which embed a JVM). See http://developer.apple.com/documentation/MacOSX/Co nceptual/universal_binary/universal_binary_tips/ch apter_5_section_16.html and http://developer.apple.com/qa/qa2005/qa1295.html for more info from Apple.
Fortunately, the NeoOffice Intel code is already in CVS, the Intel binary is currently available in Early Access, and the Intel binary will be publicly available in a few weeks.
Most of what was posted/discussed publicly in Bugzilla and Bonsaiseemed to be some endian issues in old Mac-specific code (that evolved from the Classic-era codebase) and updating the build system to use the latest version of Xcode. Whether there were more issues not discussed publicly, I don't know.
OpenOSX has a mixed reputation. There are a couple of other developers out there who have stories to tell, but the only one I could find quickly was Fink.
Most or all of the new database component in 2.0 is Java. I still don't think that constitutes "heavily"--but it probably does mean that OOo 2.0 has more Java in it than NeoOffice/J! ;)
Last I'd heard, NeoOffice/J and OpenOffice.org hated each other's guts.
Oooh, look at the hate; they haven't updated the page yet!
Or see this post, which was featured on the OpenOffice.org homepage for a while.
The final app is a standard .app package, but because of OpenOffice.org's Unix/Windows roots and build system, Neo/J can't just be dragged from the .dmg. That's why there's an Apple Installer .pkg. (OpenOffice.org for Mac (X11) does not use a standard Mac installer and many people do not like that installer.)
Yes, you are missing something. If you've used (or read reviews) of the Mac (X11) version of OpenOffice.org, you'd know none of these features are present in OOo. Maybe that's not a big deal for the Slashdot crowd, but for the average Mac user who's looking for a fully-featured and/or free/Free alternative to Microsoft--especially if the person has tried to use the X11 version or has read reviews--these are important features to tout. It all depends on the audience....
And five years is the total time since the first work on porting OOo to the Mac began. NeoOffice/J has really only been in development for two years, primarily by one developer in his spare time....