On Thu, 2005-12-01 at 23:51 -0600, Randomthots wrote: > I think it's been talked to death on this forum and a lot of the *nix > crowd simply doesn't get it. How you can trash-talk a program like > Outlook without knowing what it does is beyond me.
I use Outlook on Windows XP and Evolution on Linux side by side. I can't say I use any feature in Outlook that is not in Evolution with the advantage that Evolution files are all much easier to deal with because they are plain text. No doubt there are some features in Outlook that some people think they must have and as resources become available these will be addressed. > The other thing that I think is that there isn't a real clear vision for > OOo post-2.0. On the one hand, you have the "disruptive technology" > paradigm that Mr. Enfeldt has been touting lo these many months (years). > You know, the whole Clay Christiansen thing, where Linux, OOo, and > open-source in general is supposed to erode the market leader's position > for the bottom. They vave been soing for years. Certainly the last 10 but accelerating over the last 3. These things take time. It took 30 years for Bell to take over Western Union. > Linux, OOo, etc. is supposed to be "good enough" It is for many people, it certainly is for me and a growing number of others. I'm going to Spain for the second time in a couple of months because they seem to think its good enough for them. It'll never be good enough for die-hard Windowsphiles. > But now we have this whole ODF thing. THAT'S being marketed to the > upper-tier (government and enterprise) The upper tier is worth tackling when it has a reasonable prospect of success. Governments in developing countries are not upper tier though and a lot of the basic government institutions eg schools are not either. > as a means to ensure > inter-operability, data archival, and a whole lot of other things that > don't mean as much to the lower and middle tier customers. So we have some advantages over classic disruptive technologies as well as some disadvantages ie piracy helping maintain the status quo. > Problem is, > we don't have the upper tier applications to utilize the format. OOo 2.0 > is good... very good, but it doesn't yet meet the functionality of my 5 > year old copy of MSO 2000, much less the current product offerings. So your 5 year old MSO2000 can do pdf export then? Your 5 year old MSO2000 has an XML file format? You can selectively choose features to prove just about anything, What matters is whether or not the "upper tier" people adopt the software. With each improvement more do but improvement takes time. If you want to go and do the work or pay someone to do it fine, otherwise like the rest of us you are going to have to be patient. > So what's the strategy? Is there one? That is a good question, and it would have been a better focus to start with. My personal preference would be to make the code more efficient, and capable of running on PDAs etc. before starting on major projects like an E-mail client that others are already working on. Better to contribute to those projects if you think they are the key. -- Ian Lynch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ZMS Ltd --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
