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LibreOffice - A fresh page for OpenOffice

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Re: LibreOffice - A fresh page for OpenOffice

#51

Post by gaius »

rbanffy wrote: post #49
gaius wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh please! How many months, or years perhaps, working at it every day, would it take a normal, not-particularly technical end-user to get their C++ to a level they could add meaningful features to a full blown office suite? Or at a typical hourly rate, how much would it cost to hire a C++ programmer who's never seen this code before to do it, and how long would it take? Weeks probably. You might as well say, there ar…

> Oh please! How many months, or years perhaps, working at it every day, would it take a normal, not-particularly technical end-user to get their C++ to a level they could add meaningful features to a full blown office suite? OOo plug-ins don't need to be developed in C++ http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Extensions_developm... And it also depends on what you call meaningful. And then, you are completely ignor…

Like, umm, a commercial software company?

Look, this is about power. In the commercial world, the power ultimately, albeit indirectly, lies in the hands of the end user who decide what he or she will and will not pay for. In the "free software" world the power is in the hands of the high priests who are beholden to no-one, and users are expected to be grateful for whatever they're given.

Do you think the average user wouldn't want something for free? But the cost can't be avoided in software - it only depends what currency you want to pay in.

Re: LibreOffice - A fresh page for OpenOffice

#52

Post by joeld42 »

Names are really important. This is a bad name.

Gimp, the image editor, is another victim of OSS naming. I know many serious artists who won't give it a try simply because of the name. They don't take it seriously. The fact that it's free is unimportant to them. With a better name a decade ago, Gimp could be a serious competitor to Photoshop now, instead of a footnote.

In this case, the developers are putting a clumsy emphasis on the price and "freedom", which is unimportant to someone who just wants to write a letter or make a presentation.

Read "LibreOffice" literally .. "A free alternative to MS Office". Which is not untrue but this immediately raises the question "Can you afford the REAL MS Office? And are you worth it?" Most people will answer, "Yes, I can and I am certainly worth it". Starving students may answer "No, but it's less work to pirate it than to install this weird thing."

My belief is that for an OSS office suite to dethrone MS Office, it needs a clear focus, and one other than "free".

Brainstorming some directions they could have taken:

LessOffice - A streamlined office suite, fast and bloat-free, that never crashes. (Of course, OpenOffice is pretty far from this in reality)

CopyDesk - A word processor for writers, not for bureaucrats.

DeFacto - An office suite that interoperates seamlessly with every other system. It never asks what format something is in, it just works.

BloatOffice - Has every feature from every other office suite. Combined. The most complete office suite on the planet. (A bit self-deprecating, but could turn a perceived weakness, bloat, into a feature, completeness).

Folio - An office suite without the learning curve.

In any case, this market is long overdue to be disrupted. Google Docs isn't going to do it. I'm a writer, and I can't even get it to do proper manuscript format. A typewriter can do that.

Developers: If you REALLY want to help the free software movement break MS's stranglehold on Office, don't write another office suite. Write a self-contained, standalone library that reads and writes .doc files, that works perfectly for the features it supports and clearly indicates to the caller when it's going to break and what it's breaking on. Once you can write a 200 line example program that converts most docs to nearly identical .pdfs, you've won. Not that that's easy.

Re: LibreOffice - A fresh page for OpenOffice

#53

Post by rbanffy »

gaius wrote: post #51
rbanffy wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oh please! How many months, or years perhaps, working at it every day, would it take a normal, not-particularly technical end-user to get their C++ to a level they could add meaningful features to a full blown office suite? OOo plug-ins don't need to be developed in C++ http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Extensions_developm... And it also depends on what you call meaningful. And then, you are completely ignor…

Like, umm, a commercial software company? Look, this is about power. In the commercial world, the power ultimately, albeit indirectly, lies in the hands of the end user who decide what he or she will and will not pay for. In the "free software" world the power is in the hands of the high priests who are beholden to no-one, and users are expected to be grateful for whatever they're given. Do you think the average user…

> Like, umm, a commercial software company?

Just hire them and demand their work to be licensed to you under a free license.

Re: LibreOffice - A fresh page for OpenOffice

#54

Post by cabalamat »

joeld42 wrote: post #52

Names are really important. This is a bad name. Gimp, the image editor, is another victim of OSS naming. I know many serious artists who won't give it a try simply because of the name. They don't take it seriously. The fact that it's free is unimportant to them. With a better name a decade ago, Gimp could be a serious competitor to Photoshop now, instead of a footnote. In this case, the developers are putting a clums…

I'm not a big fan of some of those names:

LessOffice - people with think it does less. CopyDesk - is is a photocopier?

BloatOffice - calling something bloated is an insult. If you want to emphasize completeness, how about PowerOffice, and use the slogan "PowerOffice -- it does it all".

Re: LibreOffice - A fresh page for OpenOffice

#55

Post by ars »

krakensden wrote: post #44
thristian wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe one of the first actions of the new organisation was to apply all the changes from Go-oo, so it's not like they're completely splitting...

Michael Meeks and other Go-oo developers are on the board, as well.

So why do they need another name and another project?

Re: LibreOffice - A fresh page for OpenOffice

#56

Post by rabelaisian »

ars wrote: post #55
krakensden wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Michael Meeks and other Go-oo developers are on the board, as well.

So why do they need another name and another project?

go-oo.org wasn't a fork. It is an alternative build of the upstream code that includes missing plug-ins that were excluded from the oo.o build because the developers hadn't assigned the copyright to Sun. The go-oo build has been the default for most Linux distributions since whenever.
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