On Tuesday 29 March 2005 07:30, Johan Vromans wrote: > Enrique <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > The name is OpenOffice.org. Let me stress *Open* and *org* > > The FLOSS community is not "just another" target. > > > >> and that possible losses in the FLOSS community will be > >> reverted when, in some later stage, OOos requirement for Java > >> can be fulfilled by GCJ. Additional advantage is that GCJ can > >> compile to native code. > > > > I see this quite possible and indeed a breaktrough > > BTW, an example more of the power of open development: The > > community doing what proprietary vendors seem unable or not > > motivated to do. > > Caolan McNamara already replied with some technical details that > will make this argument moot in short term. The community seem to > have (almost) accomplished "what proprietary vendors seem unable > or not motivated to do."
+1 One hopes that this discussion over Java will help us wean ourselves from our primary corporate sponsor. I am grateful to Sun for open sourcing OOo, but I am concerned about the visceral reaction of many community members against Java. Hopefully, those folks who don't like Java who have the skills to go forward with a more open solution will do so. IMHO, competition is a good thing. Richard Stallman was motivated to help start the FSF by his disdain for the lockdown around him. Hopefully, this increased emphasis on Java Runtime Enfironment in OOo will similarly motivate developers to provide some competition to Sun. In response, the Sun developers will probably want to show their skills, and the Java solutions will also improve. I must admit that as a simple end user who really loves OOo, I find myself worried that knowledgable programmers are concerned. On the other hand, I also see that one person commented that Apache uses Java, or can use Java, and so I'm not sure whether the concerns are overstated. At any rate, I was also impressed by the strength of the comments to the effect that open source will tend to route around obstacles. This tends to bring us once again back to the notion of competition helping incent people to try harder to do better. From a business perspective, it seems that Java is in the process of being commoditized by Mono and gcj, and so maybe Java is at the end of the operational cycle. Maybe now is the time for Sun to head Eric Raymond's call to let Java go. Let the community do the work of end-of-life support for Java, thereby improving it in the process. Some of the commentors talked about Koffice and AbiWord, etc. IMHO, Sun and our community leads should remember that as OOo's features become more slick, and our demand on memory resources increase, we might be leaving behind our best customers, those who are interested in price, and convenience of use and acquisition. Koffice and AbiWord could end up becoming disruptive technologies relative to OOo. OOo is leading the field in open source office suites now, but if our quest for performance leaves behind our emphasis on providing solid office suite functionality cheaply and easily, we might find that the momentum behind OOo dwindles, and adoption and resources start migrating toward Koffice or AbiWord. We are not irreplaceable. Christian Einfeldt 415-351-1300 --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
