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The ChatGPT/Codex app bundles a full copy of LibreOffice

simonwillison.net

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Re: The ChatGPT/Codex app bundles a full copy of LibreOffice

#51

Post by verdverm »

tyre wrote: post #48
verdverm wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not computer use or using the tools the user prefers instead? The primary office suites have APIs/CLIs now

Computer use is slow and can take control of the application focus. I’ll be doing things while Claude runs in the background. Suddenly it decides to open the app and try to do something + screenshot it.

That's where the CLIs come in for me, I'm not going to waste tokens on screenshots and input device manipulation

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/microsoft365dev/getting-start...

https://github.com/googleworkspace/cli

Re: The ChatGPT/Codex app bundles a full copy of LibreOffice

#53

Post by alex-moon »

simonw wrote: post #29
alex-moon wrote: post #15

Someone may need to explain to me what is wrong with this sorry. Is it because it bloats the app with functionality that some users will never use? I feel like that is fairly usual for productivity/business apps generally.

I don't see anything wrong with it, I just think it's interesting.

Oh right, yeah I agree. It's the kind of thing I can imagine the harness downloading in the background anyway (or instructing the user to do) at some point so I can see the sense in just skipping that bit. Kind of comforting they just do it the same way the rest of us do - if it ain't broke and so on.

Re: The ChatGPT/Codex app bundles a full copy of LibreOffice

#54

Post by doc_ick »

vb-8448 wrote: post #47
verdverm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

one does not just "throw tokens" at a problem, Ai is not that capable, and we are talking about MS Office file format, likely a NP hard problem

But in case they succeed the return on image will be astonishing.

Can you expand upon this?

Re: The ChatGPT/Codex app bundles a full copy of LibreOffice

#56

Post by [deleted] »

sudo_cowsay wrote: post #5
cpursley wrote: post #3

I still don’t understand why with all their cash these companies dont redo their apps in Rust or native. They are all so heavy and dog slow. There are already some very fast cross platform (wasm too!) libraries that can do what poppler does as well as parse and produce various office file formats. Because 2gb is crazy town, these things could be around 100mb, just throw some tokens at the problem.

Not that easy. Also, they have "priorities." Although their priorities are different than the users'.

[deleted]

Re: The ChatGPT/Codex app bundles a full copy of LibreOffice

#57

Post by vb-8448 »

thesdev wrote: post #50
vb-8448 wrote: post #41

Curiously, I didn't find any reference in the Open source licences section of the codex app. Is this a MPL 2.0 violation?

Copyright violation is the last thing one could accuse ChatGPT of.

Well, this one is particularly obvious, other one are more fuzzy.

Re: The ChatGPT/Codex app bundles a full copy of LibreOffice

#58

Post by justsomehnguy »

mrob wrote: post #36
MattDamonSpace wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

frankly how dare you

How is simonw to blame for somebody else submitting it to HN?

I have a feeling you should learn about Poe's law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law

Re: The ChatGPT/Codex app bundles a full copy of LibreOffice

#59

Post by zamadatix »

vb-8448 wrote: post #41

Curiously, I didn't find any reference in the Open source licences section of the codex app. Is this a MPL 2.0 violation?

Despite the title, I'm not sure it's actually bundled. Some of the skills plugins will download it on the first run. So it depends where they are grabbing it from rather than the presence of the binary on the system, but I haven't checked that deep into where they actually grab it.

Re: The ChatGPT/Codex app bundles a full copy of LibreOffice

#60

Post by zamadatix »

zatkin wrote: post #38
simonw wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure. Someone who hasn't installed the ChatGPT (or Codex) apps yet could confirm this by installing the apps, seeing if that ~/.cache directory exists, then try running a prompt that needs Python or Node.js or LibreOffice and see if it downloads them when needed.

I've never installed the ChatGPT app on my Mac until today. I ran the app, signed in, and I see the same. % ls ~/.cache/codex-runtimes/codex-primary-runtime/dependencies/native/libreoffice-headless libreoffice manifest.json

Notably: this did not exist after I installed the app, it existed after I ran the app and there was the long startup screen. Presumably, and I'm not sure I'm interested enough to redo it all and find out, that long startup screen involves the default skills plugins setting up their environment and one of those pulls it as a general app requirement.

I also saw this present after first run on macOS but not Windows.

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