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LibreOffice and the art of overreacting

blog.documentfoundation.org

31–40 of 152 posts

Re: LibreOffice and the art of overreacting

#31
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Same applies to Mozilla. Not Thunderbird. It is just a poor abandoned child. Mozilla, maybe.

What ongoing work does an email client need, though, besides fixing bugs and very occasionally adding new login protocols?

If you ever try to write a email client, you will immediately realize how difficult, if not impossible, to fix all the bugs for a email client. It is a multi-different-protocol-version-async-client-handling-same-database-with-thousands-of-race-condition backwards compatibility nightmare.

Writing a email client with support of just up-to-date protocols and assume it is the single client that will operate that account is trivial, write one that covers all corner cases is a totally different story.

Re: LibreOffice and the art of overreacting

#32
post #19

I disagree with take on Wikipedia or Wikimedia there was a lot of trash talk because they were totally obnoxious with their fundraising. I donated once to Wikipedia and then I was getting Jimmy Wales in my mailbox basically like everyday. That actually drove me away from ever wanting to donate to them. Then there was a lot of talking if they really are so much in need of money but that's different topic. In contrast…

Yeah, having Jimbo staring creepily in my face made me never want to donate to Wikipedia ever.

Re: LibreOffice and the art of overreacting

#33

Why can't governments fund LibreOffice as part of their effort to wean themselves away from Microsoft? This seems like such an obvious thing for governments to fund for their own use and bequeath as a gift to their citizenry.

Anyway, most people don’t want to interact with office type documents, right? The only reason I have it installed is to deal with a problem usually generated by some big organization: documents that aren’t available in an accessible format like Tex, markdown, or html. Let the people generating the problem pay for it.

Re: LibreOffice and the art of overreacting

#34

Why can't governments fund LibreOffice as part of their effort to wean themselves away from Microsoft? This seems like such an obvious thing for governments to fund for their own use and bequeath as a gift to their citizenry.

1. A lot of people aren't even aware of the alternatives;

2. There is a lot of backlash from people afraid to learn new things;

3. Even in IT departments, people who are used to administering MS networks will fight against it;

4. Does LibreOffice have a marketing department?

I wholeheartedly agree that governments should not only use Linux/LibreOffice in their bureaucracies, but that they should also finance and promote it, especially in peripheral economies.

Re: LibreOffice and the art of overreacting

#35

While the donation banner doesn't seem like an issue to me, the WMF comparison is extremely inappropriate if they want to talk about appropriate means of fundraising. The WMF is notorious for its donation banners making wildly exaggerated claims about the state of the Foundation (it needs some money to be operational, it is however not by any real stretch of the imagination in financial trouble or losing its independ…

If anything I think the WMF approach is why people are upset with the LibreOffice banner.

They have been breeding bad will and it is overflowing onto others.

That said, the failure of this post to recognise the problem of the WMF approach does not build confidence in the ability to recognise when users might have a legitimate complaint. That leads them to wonder where LibreOffice is headed.

Re: LibreOffice and the art of overreacting

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What ongoing work does an email client need, though, besides fixing bugs and very occasionally adding new login protocols?

If you ever try to write a email client, you will immediately realize how difficult, if not impossible, to fix all the bugs for a email client. It is a multi-different-protocol-version-async-client-handling-same-database-with-thousands-of-race-condition backwards compatibility nightmare. Writing a email client with support of just up-to-date protocols and assume it is the single client that will operate that account…

I don't know about the rest, but surely the race conditions are the fault of whoever designed the concurrency part. An email client does not inherently have race conditions.

Re: LibreOffice and the art of overreacting

#38
post #34

Why can't governments fund LibreOffice as part of their effort to wean themselves away from Microsoft? This seems like such an obvious thing for governments to fund for their own use and bequeath as a gift to their citizenry.

1. A lot of people aren't even aware of the alternatives; 2. There is a lot of backlash from people afraid to learn new things; 3. Even in IT departments, people who are used to administering MS networks will fight against it; 4. Does LibreOffice have a marketing department? I wholeheartedly agree that governments should not only use Linux/LibreOffice in their bureaucracies, but that they should also finance and prom…

I think OP's point is that certain government agencies have already transitioned or are in the process of transitioning. As such it would make sense for them to fund LibreOffice, given that they now depend on it.
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