Hi John, I truly get where you with this. Let me put the OpenOffice history in perspective. I will not discuss LibreOffice although others may.
A preamble about the history of Apache OpenOffice. In 2011 Oracle donated OpenOffice.org to the ASF through the Apache Incubator. IBM hired a number of the Oracle developers who were being let go and allowed a number of developers and QA personnel to contribute. They also contributed code from Symphony which was based on OpenOffice.org. This is the sidebar. There is also a volunteer effort at l...@openoffice.apache.org where volunteers can help translate the UI, Help, and Website to a language. Volunteers have supported over 41 languages! If yours is not then you can volunteer if you are so inclined. > On Feb 12, 2018, at 1:10 PM, John Hart <jh...@testra.com> wrote: > > On 2/12/2018 8:01 AM, Dave Barton wrote: >> -------- Original Message -------- >> From: Gary Madine <gary.e.mad...@gmail.com> >> To: users@openoffice.apache.org >> Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2018 08:18:21 -0500 >>> I’m trying to prepare an important business letter in a hurry. >>> >>> How the hell do I disable your automatic "guessing-ahead-of-time" what >>> words I want to type? >>> >>> >> First a note to list subscribers: Please recognize that Garry (not >> subscribed) has written his message in a frustrated and irritated frame of >> mind and as a list moderator I would request that you please resist the >> temptation to respond in a way that might be inflammatory. > > Many novice users have similar problems. This is no doubt true. Since the inclusion of the Sidebar in general the OpenOffice developers have taken the position that very little change to the UI is what are users want and need. > The reason is volunteers spend a lot of time designing and > coding powerful features, and they want to show off their work so they make > them the Default. It's understandable > why, if they don't, how will anyone know the feature is available? Yes this can be what some developers do, we are avoiding this for the most part. If you have an example of UI that has changed since 4.0 then please bring it up. > What goes wrong is the majority of > users want something that's easy to use from the start, and all it takes is > one snag and the feature turns into a > nightmare. When one has time this isn't as frustrating as when one is in a > hurry, but when the new car won't > start, people get angry. Please do not move anything from where my muscle memory tells me it is. > OO is good software, written by talented people, but the lack of focus on > marketing > causes this type of problem to occur. If OO cost the same as MS Office, it's > doubtful many would use it, or > there'd be enough profit to pay 'volunteers' a living wage. Well Microsoft is one of the largest companies in the world and they have been investing in Excel and Word for 35 years … OpenOffice was developed by Star since 1990 and purchased by Sun and then Oracle then you can add in the IBM contribution. So you then have 23 years of development by corporations. It may not be the same order of magnitude, but it is closer to 1000 to 1 than a 1,000,000,000 to 1. Right now we are doing what we can to support are millions of users to protect them from issues. > > Open source software is necessary to prevent corrupt people from using > computers to rip people off, The > only way I see to make it viable is to give tax credits to individuals and > corporations that support it. Given the global nature of Open Source how would these credits work? We don’t need government. Right now the ASF can be funded. Here are some links: http://www.apache.org/foundation/contributing.html http://www.apache.org/foundation/thanks.html https://community.apache.org/contributors/ > In the > present system, those who support OSS are at a considerable disadvantage in > the market place because > work they fund can be used by competitors for free! Money going into OSS > projects would enable things > essential to success, that volunteers can't do, like writing tutorials and > providing on line technical support. Well, we have volunteers. If you want to contribute then volunteer directly, or found a company, hire some developers and have them contribute to the project. Yes, I’m not Bill Gates or Larry Ellison either. Regards, Dave > > jrh > >
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