On Thu, 21 Jun 2007 02:07:48 -0500, M. Fioretti <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
On Thu, Jun 21, 2007 00:39:26 AM -0600, Larry Gusaas
([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
>>>FOSS is not just about requesting something but doing it yourself.
>>>
>>So are you saying that if I can't program or provide a programmer I
>>shouldn't use FOSS? That is pretty narrow minded.
>
>No, more like: if you can't pay the piper, you can't call the tune
Attitudes like that make one want to quit using FOSS. Obviously you do
not care about the users of OO.org. You seem to believe that only the
people who can program it should use it. Anyone else's opinion doesn't
count. This attitude will drive people away.
I agree 100% with Larry here (see points 5 and 7 of
http://digifreedom.net/node/56). This attitude towards end users, this
language and set of arguments for advocating FOSS made sense in the
80s (when using any software very likely also meant being able to
program). Today they are absolutely uneffective, if not actually
counterproductive to increasing adoption of FOSS.
95% of people are unable to program and simply have no interest, need
or possibility at all of changing this fact of their life. Until the
"traditional" FOSS advocates don't come to accept this fact, and above
all to realize that there's nothing wrong with it, FOSS risks to
remain or become irrelevant. All those who could be "converted" only
with the usual Stallman/FSF arguments and language have already been
reached, already accepted them if they wanted and still remain a very
little percentage of people.
This doesn't mean that OOo *should* have email, calendaring and
everything else, of course. The best and only realistic way to satisfy
these requests of creating one 100% FOSS "fully integrated office
platform" with all and the same functions of MS Office remains to
integrate, them and pre-package OOo, Thunderbird and what not. I also
agree that this is something which is not going to happen without Sun,
IBM, Novell or similar paying a full time staff of professionals.
But telling the end users of a program like OOo (ie something that
everybody must use, something which is not a compiler, web server or
anything else which by its own nature is restricted to specialists)
that they should "do it themselves" is, frankly, pretty naive (even if
it _were_ right).
Marco
Great marco except that someone in the end has to code this things if we
want them to move forward. This is a great answer for the user, but not a
great answer for the product.
If the user is not bright enough to accept the limitations of the current
development staff. The who should develop this pieces in the end? We are
all users of OOo and we all want to see become the best suite, but until
you answer who will be the creator, there is not really a reason to this
conversation.
Having the user with a mentality that only big corporations can provide
any development is naive. Corporations need to make business sense of the
product if they want to put themselves behind it. Eventually all those
developers that Sun employ are payed with the money that the StarOffice
product raise from theri corporate costumers. This ecosystem is not
widespread and reliying that this will always be the same is foolish, or
as risky as the same proprietary platform most users are acostume too.
--
Alexandro Colorado
OpenOffice.org
Community Contact // Mexico
http://www.openoffice.org
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jza
Jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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