Hi André. On 7/23/06, André Wyrwa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Since I don't understand what you mean by forcing users to create a style and forcing them to follow a template - I will drop that debate. I just know that I don't want to have to follow some predeteremined sytyle sheet that I didn't create - and I don't want to have to create a style sheet just to write a report on the budget last month. Did you blame me for restricting people, above? But if Steve Jobs is
restricting people it's the right way to go? Your "Mac OS X is controlled" talking sounds somewhat like the argumentation of Microsoft against OpenSource, of Bertelsmann agains Wikipedia. Also, it is right to introduce yet another eMail client but it's wrong to introduce yet another Linux distro? Is it maybe because of the same reason that people are reinventing the wheel so many times - because they think they'll do it the right way? Just as you are thinking that an OOo email client would be the right one?
I've heard this arguement before - that adding something to OpenOffice.orgtakes away choice. It's as much hogwash now as it was before we added a database. By adding an OpenOffice.org email client - that erase Thunderbird, Outlook, Evolution, or any other email client from existance. It doesn't make people stop using them either. It *ADDS* a choice. Right now, I, Chad W. Smith, cannot choose to use the OpenOffice.org email client, because it does not exist. If it *did* exist, I, as an end user, would be *GIVEN* a choice that I've never had before. If all those people agree with me, then maybe they have a point. :) What I am talking about is control. There has to be control. In OpenOffice.org - an open source, free to hack the code, free to sell, free to copy, free to fork, free to give away, etc. project - there is control. Look at the annomousity between OOo and NeoOffice, or, even more so, between OOo and Luxuriosity Office. Why do people get upset at Lux. Office? Is it because they are breaking the law? No. Is it because they stole something that didn't belong to them? No - we give OOo away - you can steal it if it's free. Is it because they are breaking the liscencing agreement? Well, there is some question about that, since they aren't giving the source, but I don't know if the LGPL or the SISSL requires that. Why are people upset with Lux. Office? Because they aren't playing with the rest of the "team". They aren't a part of the group. They can't be controlled. They can say or sell or claim whatever they want, and there's nothing we can do to stop them. Some fear that bad customer service or a messed up product from Lux. will reflect badly on OOo. And we can't stop them. They are free, due to constitutions, laws, and our own liscencing agreement, to do as they please. And that could be bad for us. We, as a community, control what OpenOffice.org is. We can't control, quality control, marketing control. or otherwise, what Lux. Office does. And that bothers us. Look even more closely and more recently at the Marketing Project's attempt to control my personal website. All because of one little sentence - my whole site had to be redesigned. I say "had to be" - in all honesty, the marketing project had and has no direct control of me or my site - but because I want to play nice with the community - I changed the site. I caved to let the "project" control my right to free speech. After all, OpenOffice.org has a rep to protect, right? What if I started selling a copy of OpenOffice.org with a bundled hacked/cracked/stolen/buggy version of Outlook? And I just called it OpenOffice.org. I didn't do anything to the code of OOo - I wouldn't know how. I just didn't mention that Outlook wasn't part of OOo - nor that it was an illegal copy. Let's assume for a moment that my business took off, and now hundreds or even thousands of people think that this email client called "Outlook" is a part of OpenOffice.org - we start getting tons of users writing in complaining of bugs in the email part of OpenOffice.org. That would be bad, right? Or, heck, let's take out the fact that Outlook is buggy and that it would be stolen. Let's say I took it upon myself to write OOo Mail and just added it to my CDs. I didn't submit the code. I didn't tell anyone on the list. I didn't set up any kind of BugZilla. I just did it myself. And, as I'm sure it would be if I did it, since I can't code, it was a piece of crap. But again, my business takes off, due to the usefulness of OOo, and in spite of my add-on. People would get upset with me - not just because my email client was crap - but because it wasn't "approved" by the community. It's about control. Like it or not - in many ways, OpenOffice.org is propriatary. Just like Linux is. The official Linux kernal is a tightly controlled product. It has to be approved by Linus himself before it can be called a "Linux kernal". What people add to it or whatever is up to them - but the official Linux kernal is controlled by a small group. It has to be to ensure quality control, cross-distro compatibilty, branding, and whatever else. The difference between yet another email client and yet another distro is simple. OpenOffice.org doesn't have an email client. The world has plenty of distros. Adding another distro doesn't "Complete" anything. It doesn't add to a set of anything. It just throws more choices out there to confuse people. There's a difference between a couple of guys saying "hey, let's make our own distro" and an established Linux maker saying "we need a firewall edition of our distro." The later adds to a group. The former just adds to the chaos. In the same way, I wouldn't promote the idea of some guy or some group creating yet another email client. But adding an email client to OpenOffice.org is a good thing - it completes the suite - (or heads in that direction) - if AbiWord wanted to come out with an email client - that would be cool. If Chad Smith wanted to - that would be dumb and a waste of time. ... an all in one OpenSource Office Suite. What is the benefit of that? Why
don't we not stick with Microsoft then? We already have that scenario, only that it isn't OpenSource. Surely that would add a little benefit. But working together on standards and better interaction between different applications is the far better way if you ask me.
Cross-project, cross-suite, cross-program, cross-platfrom, cross-environment, cross-whatever compatiblity is great. it's wonderful. It is a Good Thing (tm). And it should be a goal. And, of course, it is. But that's not going to unseat Microsoft. That's not going to help promote OpenOffice.org. That's not even going to promote Open Source in general. If your only goal is cross-whatever-ness - then why bother promoting OpenOffice.org at all - just join the OpenDocument Fellowship or Tango or whatever else you listed, and stop wasting time on just one tiny piece of the puzzle. I want OOo to succeed. I want it to succeed for a number of reasons. Not the least of which is I don't want to have to pay for an office suite - and I don't want to have to steal one either - and I want that office suite to be as powerful as anything else out there, and I want it to "just work". There are a lot of people in the world who use OpenOffice.org for just those reasons. A great number of users don't care about open source or open format or open foo. They just want something that works for free. OmniOpenOffice.org would do that (I just made that up - meaning the OpenOffice.org with everything.). You ask the benefit of an all-in-one open source office suite? How about an easier to "sell" solution to SMB / end users to get them away from MS Office and it's vendor lock in? How about a wider net for ODF adoption? How about a platform for ODF based emails (as opposed to HTML ones)? How about a way to implenent your plan for a enter-once-publish-everywhere solution? How about even if OOo was as much a monopoly as MS - they would be using an open format - an ISO standard - so the monopoly wouldn't be enforcable - just a natural one. -- - Chad Smith http://www.gimpshop.net/ http://www.whatisopenoffice.org/ http://www.chadwsmith.com/
