Hi everyone, 2010/9/5 Ian <[email protected]>
> On Sun, 2010-09-05 at 14:24 +0530, Vikram Gaur wrote: > > Hi All, > > > > Community should have another derivative with all features and > > compatibilities > > The community needs the resources to support and maintain a code base > that is complex and difficult to develop and maintain. That is the > reality. There has been no evidence so far that there are the resources > to do this outside a large company such as Sun or Oracle. Until the > community finds a way of generating sufficient resources to maintain a > fork that is sustainable long term and can compete with the Oracle > version and releases, any attempt at a fork will at best generate a > small niche version that is to all intents and purposes identical to the > "Oracle version". That is why several years ago I proposed finding ways > of providing an income that could support development without having to > raise money selling licenses and make the community less dependent on > Sun. It needs a business that can raise at least a few million Euros a > year. Developing an OOo foundation that could do this should not be > impossible but it will still require a lot of initial unpaid hard work > to start with. > As I see it, if we're serious about forking OpenOffice.org, we need some place to gather, so that we know how many people are interested in contributing and which skills these people have. This could be just a simple, free-hosted website with a forum or a mailing list or a wiki... Then, as a community, we need to brainstorm ways to support the project (e.g. adding interoperability with web services like Ubuntu One, Google Docs, and Office Web to OOo and auctioning off "preferential treatment" to service provides, à la how Firefox gets money from Google) and approach larger companies that may be interested in supporting the project. Raising several million euros a year, however, doesn't seem too plausible. Alternatively, and this is what I'm leaning towards, we could support another open-source office suite. KOffice looks promising enough, although I'm not too keen on KDE projects. GNOME Office seems a bit less promising, although I do like the speed of both AbiWord and Gnumeric. Feng Office is, I believe, the only online open-source office suite. I think there's a much brighter future for online office suites than desktop ones, as online ones guarantee compatibility across modern OS's like Chrome OS, iOS, Android, and others, and have numerous other benefits, like being usable right away from any computer, better collaboration features, etc. Feng Office doesn't seem to support standard office files, but then if both viewing and editing can be done on the web, and if offline storage is added (along the lines of how Google Docs worked with Gears), there will be no need to. And perhaps if Go-OO harbors enough supporters, it may branch off Oracle completely. > > -- > Ian > Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications > A new approach to assessment for learning > www.theINGOTs.org - 01827 305940 > > You have received this email from the following company: The Learning > Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 > 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] > For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected] > > -- -------------------------------------------- Q: Why is this email five sentences or less? A: http://five.sentenc.es
