On 7/2/06, André Wyrwa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hi Chad, Chad Smith wrote: > First of all, I took the logo off the sitet - so you guys can stop whining > about that. (Even though I have writen permission from the Community > Manager > to use it.) Great move. Hey, if you have the written permission from someone, why don't you quote it? I guess it came by email? Not that i don't believe you - in fact i don't care because i think it is totally irrelevant - but it might stop one of the ridiculous parts of this discussion.
Here is the whole conversation. * Chad Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> * * Sun, Feb 5, 2006 at 1:03 AM * To: Louis Suarez-Potts <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Hi Louis. I just created a blog - http://www.whatisopenoffice.org/ - I used the official OpenOffice.org website as a template (as you can easily tell). I read through the Policies and Terms of Use<http://www.sunsource.net/TUPPCP.html>- http://www.sunsource.net/TUPPCP.html and I didn't see anything about linking directly to images, copying style sheets, or anything like that, nor do I see any copyright warnings on the website as to the content of the website itself. Could you advise me to the legality of what I'm doing. If it's a problem, I'll change it immediately. Just let me know. Thanks! -- - Chad Smith http://www.gimpshop.net/ Because everyone loves free software! ------------------------------ * Louis Suarez-Potts <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> * * Sun, Feb 5, 2006 at 1:14 AM * To: Chad Smith < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> Hey Chad, On 2006-02-05, at 24:03 , Chad Smith wrote:
Hi Louis. I just created a blog - http://www.whatisopenoffice.org/ - I used the official OpenOffice.org website as a template (as you can easily tell).
I just checked it and got a "this site under construction"?
I read through the Policies and Terms of Use - http:// www.sunsource.net/TUPPCP.html and I didn't see anything about linking directly to images, copying style sheets, or anything like that, nor do I see any copyright warnings on the website as to the content of the website itself. Could you advise me to the legality of what I'm doing. If it's a problem, I'll change it immediately. Just let me know.
Gulp. Far as I know, the only dangerous thing would be using a proprietary thing like the CollabNet logo, the Sun logo, or, if you were not a friend of OOo, the OOo logo. Good luck with this! Best, Louis [Quoted text hidden] <http://?view=att&disp=attd&attid=0.1&th=10938a1a3cf3a9c0> *smime.p7s* 3K ------------------------------ * Chad Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> * * Sun, Feb 5, 2006 at 1:21 AM * To: Louis Suarez-Potts <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Hi Louis, On 2/5/06, Louis Suarez-Potts < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I just checked it and got a "this site under construction"?
Oops, sorry. The redirect must not have gone through yet. here's the direct link: http://whatisopenoffice.blogspot.com/ Gulp. Far as I know, the only dangerous thing would be using a
proprietary thing like the CollabNet logo, the Sun logo, or, if you were not a friend of OOo, the OOo logo.
I'm just using the OOo Logo. Which I can replace if you think it's a problem. Good luck with this! Thanks! [Quoted text hidden] ------------------------------ * Louis Suarez-Potts <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> * * Sun, Feb 5, 2006 at 1:25 AM * To: Chad Smith < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> Hi, On 2006-02-05, at 24:21 , Chad Smith wrote:
Hi Louis, On 2/5/06, Louis Suarez-Potts < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: I just checked it and got a "this site under construction"? Oops, sorry. The redirect must not have gone through yet. here's the direct link: http://whatisopenoffice.blogspot.com/
Thanks. It's pretty good!
Gulp. Far as I know, the only dangerous thing would be using a proprietary thing like the CollabNet logo, the Sun logo, or, if you were not a friend of OOo, the OOo logo. I'm just using the OOo Logo. Which I can replace if you think it's a problem.
Not at all. We only keep it as proprietary so that unscrupulous sellers like Luxuriosity don't use it. Cheers, Louis Oh, do you want me to list it with our blogs? http:// www.openoffice.org/editorial/blogs.html <http://?view=att&disp=attd&attid=0.1&th=10938ac1fd8c1eef> *smime.p7s* 3K ------------------------------ * Chad Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> * * Sun, Feb 5, 2006 at 1:27 AM * To: Louis Suarez-Potts <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Howdy, On 2/5/06, Louis Suarez-Potts < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
It's pretty good!
Thanks! Not at all. We only keep it as proprietary so that unscrupulous
sellers like Luxuriosity don't use it.
Makes sense. Thanks for the info. Oh, do you want me to list it with our blogs? http://
www.openoffice.org/editorial/blogs.html
Yes please. Thanks![Quoted text hidden] So, i want to ask you - here where it's quiet - what do you want to
achieve with your site?
When I first made the site, (which again, was 6 months ago), it was merely an attempt to help explain what OpenOffice.org is (hence the title and the URL). At the time I felt that the front page of the OOo website did little to explain whatit actually is, and why one would want to use it. Sure, it gave a one or two sentence description, but I wanted something more meaty than that. I don't think at the time we had started the Wiki - and as I have tried and failed a number of times to get changes made on the official OOo site - I took it upon myself to build my own site to explain it. And hence, WhatisOpenOffice.org was born. At the time, (again, 6 months ago), the Official OpenOffice.org (tm) website openly promoted the use of and support of NeoOffice - including, but not limited to, virtually equal billing with the Mac OOo X11 port on the Mac OOo download page - complete with links, logo, explaination, and download instructions. So, having used (or attempted to use) both pieces of software - I elected to, on my personal site, make it less confusion for users, and just tell them which one to use. This was a message that the Mac OOo download page did not deliever - it was confusing most of the time which was newer, which was more stable, and most importantly, which freaking one should I download? (I mean it seemed to me that it would be confusing to someone who only had *that page* to go on. Being involved on the lists, and having actually visited NeoOffice's website, wiki, and using both - I knew which was which.) Again, you have to remember that I created the site 6 months ago. It was a far simpler time then, a time of peace, and a time of innocence. A time when two open source office suites based on the same source code could coexist, side-by-side, and actually work together in harmony. But that was before the dark times. Before the Empire. I used the look and feel of the official site - with the above quoted permission - in order to make it mesh with the official site. I wanted my site to merely be an explanative portal to the official site. Not to suplant the offical site, nor replace it, nor subvert it, merely to provide yet another link to the site. Could I have done that without copying the CSS? Sure I could have. But I had just been to a web conference where they were teaching brand identity. So I figured, it would be good for people to think "Hey, this is just like the page I was just on. I'm in the right place." The "It's my personal opinion, so you can STFU" argument came only as a direct response to eric's BS attack on my site. You don't tell someone raised to believe in the right to free speech that he doesn't have the right to say anything. I can feel my Patrick Henry mode starting to take over just mentioning it. Was my purpose in building the site to make it seem like a part of the official OOo project? I guess it was, yes. But merely a portal. I haven't made any money off of it. I haven't received any donations, I haven't even gotten one cent from those Yahoo ads. In fact, the site gets very little traffic. I pretty much put it in my sig line, linked to it from my other blogs, and forgot about it. When the " Why.OpenOffice.org" campaign started, I added it, and I may have added a few links in the related sites column, but that's about it. My purpose in mirroring the look and feel of the official site was not some evil plot to foil the Mac team - it as a possibly stupid way for me to promote the project. There is a link on the left hand side where you can see my stats - not very much traffic at all, because I don't promote it - and I know no one else does either. Someone asked what value does my site add? I assume he meant "to the official proper OpenOffice.org project" - not just to the world in general. Well, it's hosted on Blogger - which means Google likes it - so the various links to the website could boost the rankings on search engines and pagerank. I doubt though, that my site does much in the way of that. And even if it does, it could do so without me mimicing the offical site. Also, the few dozen people who actually have stumble upon my site, if they had bothered to read it, could have learned about OOo, ad thus, maybe one or two users may have been added to OOo - (although I have absolutely no way of proving this). Again, that could have been done without mimicing the site. So why did I mimic the site? If for no other reason - it was easier to copy and paste than to do the work myself. And while I don't think that the OOo site is the most amazing design I've ever seen - (someone said I could probably do better on my own) - it's a pretty nice look. Simple, clean, blue and white - I like it. And it is defineately an OOo site. I mean, if promoting OOo, then looking like OOo can't hurt. Do I promote other sites / projects? Yes. Firefox, NeoOffice, Gimpshop, Songbird... But I kinda thought the open source movement was fighting properitary software - not each other. I guess it's okay for OOo to work with Mozilla, since Mozilla doesn't make an office suite. But not NeoOffice. Although, I seem to recall postitive things being said about KOffice and AbiWord... But they aren't crossplatform. Oh, wait, AbiWord is. But it's just a word processor, and not an office suite. But, um, NeoOffice isn't crossplatform either. So I don't really understand when it is okay to crosspromote, and when it is not. Especially when OOo did crosspromote NeoOffice up until last month, or was it last week? The Mac port fiasco, (and yes, I just said fiasco) has been a thorn in my side for years. Sun doesn't seem to give a rats ass about Macs, (as evidenced by their refusal to release StarOffice for Mac), and the use of X11, even eric agrees, is/was a mistake. However, for over 2 years, I have been told "officially by the community" that X11 was the way to go, and was the way of the future. Which I see now, was bullshit. Again, overall, OpenOffice.org the program and OpenOffice.org the project are great! And if it wasn't for OOo Prog and OOo Proj, there wouldn't be a NeoOffice. But as long as I've been here, and as far back as I've been able to dig up about the project, Mac users have been second class citizens and back burner priorities. With their own "Special" download page - and their own "Special" bus that's just a little bit shorter than the bus the normal... er um, not-special, people get to ride. Despite eric's claims, as a Mac user I can tell you NeoOffice opens a lot faster and a hell of a lot smoother than X11 OOo. Plus, it doesn't open 3 other windows and a special program to do so. I mean, why in the world do I want a terminal window to open when I want to type a letter? The point is, just because some jerk (and yes, eric was very much a jerk to me) tells me the official port will be more Mac Native than NeoOffice "soon" - don't be surprised when I don't wet myself with joy. Especially when he does so in such a arrogant jack-off manner. See, you are supporting OOo but then at the same time those OOo guys
consider your way of supporting non-supportive. It's an unfortunate situation and i personally surely find the whole NeoOffice totally off, but still, it's a bit twisty and considering the concerns of these OOo guys might be a good thing to do, anyways. (Because i also think they have a poin in their argumentation.)
Maybe they do - (again, "they" seems to be eric and bernard) - but I'm not going to change it for them. I may change my site - but I'm not going to stop promoting NeoOffice. I've been burned too many times by the "official OOo" Mac-stance to think that they'll get it right this time. As I've said before, I'll believe it when I see it. Until OpenOffice.org is better than NeoOffice - I will not promote it's use to Mac users. Well, here indeed you might wanna take care of not sounding
disrespecting in terms of some peoples work. It surely has gotten more Mac-native internally. Although you don't get anything to see of that because there's no release.
See above, the proof is in the pudding. There have been other people who said "Let's fix this Mac thing!" and --- nothing. I truly hope it is better. I truly hope it is truly Mac Native (and UniBin MacNative at that). I would love to be able to tell anyone, no matter what operating system they use - Grab a Copy of OpenOffice.org. I don't think NeoOffice is perfect. It's not as fast as it could be. It's not Universal yet (but will be in a few days). But doesn't make me install something off my OS X DVD. It doesn't open 10 windows before I see anything close to an office suite. It doesn't disappear if I quit that weird jumping X in my Dock. It puts the menus at the top of the screen where they belong (not the top of the window). If OOo can fix all those problems - then I'd promote it to Mac users. But not before. Not as long as there is a better way. I do support X11 open source programs for Mac - like GIMPShop - but only because there is no better program out there that is Mac native. If Seashore had all the power that GIMP or GIMPShop does - then I would promote it. But it doesn't, and even though it's Mac Native, it doesn't replace GIMPShop.
You know, if someone had said "Hey Chad, we're working on a Mac-native port > of OpenOffice.org - something far better than the X11 port, and even better > than NeoOffice! Would you like to tell people about the work we are > doing?" > - Then I might have done that - I probably would have been excited about > it. Here you go. Exactly how i wish it had happened. That's basically all I'm talking about here.
Yeah, well, that's not how it happened. And maybe this makes me just as guilty of playing politics as eric - but I'm not going to pretend that it did happen that way. -- - Chad Smith http://www.gimpshop.net/ http://www.whatisopenoffice.org/ http://www.chadwsmith.com/
