I think this bickering about other related open source projects is
appalling. Because Sun doesn't value the Mac market, it is limiting
the penetration of OpenOffice.org. Macs serve a very important role
in businesses in their workflow, so not having OpenOffice.org
available as a native application is slowing down open source
adoption. There is a reason why Microsoft Office is availble for the
Mac - not only does Microsoft make money off of it, but it allows Mac
users to share documents and further entrenches Microsoft Office. It
is not due to antitrust regulations because they just pay off the
judges so they never get any penalties that make a difference. I
know people blame Apple for not doing this themselves, but they don't
want to kill the Microsoft Office for the Mac product, because they
don't want to gamble and Microsoft is very vindictive even if it
loses business because of it. A Mac is much more productive because
it isn't designed like Windows or Linux and because Sun wouldn't put
in the time, people volunteered out of the goodness of the their
heart. And because it is a slightly different code base and slightly
different license, many Mac users are turned away from it because of
the negative things said about this very useful product.
On Mar 22, 2007, at 12:12 PM, Mathias Bauer wrote:
Chad Smith wrote:
Why can 2 guys in their spare time do 4 years ago what
the entire of OpenOffice.org and Sun Microsystems hasn't been able
to do in
as many years with full time employees?
First: I totally agree with you in this point: if you want to have an
OOo that comes as close as possible to a native look and feel on
the Mac
*now*, go for NeoOffice! But IMHO you should wish the best to the
brave
(still volunteer!) developers that are heading for the "real thing".
Why the "real thing"? NeoOffice is *not* a native Mac application, it
mostly looks like one and also mostly feels like one, but it isn't.
Obviously some people (like Guy) would like to get a real native
version, so it is good that people try to achieve that.
And Guy also mentioned another reason why people would prefer a real
port inside OOo: NeoOffice is a fork and the history of forks has
proven
that they rarely succeed in the long run, let alone the risk that the
developers of the fork quit working on it and leave their project back
as an orphan. Forks always have to catch up with the main trunk
development and in case there are some major changes ongoing the whole
fork is put at risk if the changes don't fit well to the additional
code
of the fork.
Please let me add a comment to your question I have quoted above.
Sun has never worked on a native Mac port. So your question just
doesn't
hit the point. It's not a question of "not being able to do" but a
question of "not wanting to do". Of course other developers would have
been able to do the same thing as the NeoOffice developers did (make a
fake native port by using the platform mimicry capabilities of Java
that
BTW are really great). But why should they do that? Why create another
NeoOffice?
The real question is: why can't other developers provide a real native
version in the same time where the 2(?) developers implemented
NeoOffice? The answer is simple: because this is much more work to do
and much more complicated work that needs much more Mac expertise. Why
did the developers that created NeoOffice not do the real native port
themselves? Guess why.
So you shouldn't talk bad about the ongoing work for the "real" native
Mac port. It is correct that there has not been a lot of progress in
that area for a long time but my impression is that this has
changed in
the last months. If more people advertized this effort and the ongoing
work of the developers the bigger the chance would be that more
developers jumped up and helped. In the meantime they can happily use
NeoOffice and hope that this fork stays alive and kicking until the
port
will be done.
Ciao,
Mathias
(who tried out NeoOffice on the last OOoCon and really liked it)
--
Mathias Bauer (mba) - Project Lead OpenOffice.org Writer
OpenOffice.org Engineering at Sun: http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS
Please don't reply to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]".
I use it for the OOo lists and only rarely read other mails sent to
it.
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