On 1/25/2011 11:34 AM, Joseph Apuzzo wrote:
LibraOffice is free as in beer (aka Libra) and Open as it allows the
contributions of the community to be accepted without corporate
oversight of Oracle.
The reason why OpenOffice is not progressing is mainly do to the fact
that Oracle is gate-keeping every new feature.
Also Oracle is looking to monitise parts of OpenOffice when used in a
business and or school situation.
Well... a "heavy corporate hand" is not always a bad thing. One of my
gripes about OO, at least in older versions, was the lack of finish and
polish on the product. This seems to be common in informal/semiformal
open source projects. There is no one at the corporate helm to make sure
several things happen:
1. well written, properly edited, and consistent documentation
(including Help and other online documentation). Most developers are not
good at writing and editing, and lack funds to hire real Technical Writers.
2. prevent inconsistent interfaces across different functions, and
interfaces that don't obey well established GUI rules (such as, "never
rearrange a given pulldown menu when in different modes -- either just
disable (gray out) actions that shouldn't be used, or restructure your
menu architecture"). Too many developers just do what they feel like
doing, and no one is devoted to making things consistent.
3. ride herd on developers who just work on the "fun" stuff, and neglect
important but un-sexy functionality. Someone has to do backup functions,
and someone has to do proper install/uninstall, and someone has to come
up with full test coverage, and someone... Sometimes you need a
corporate directive to make sure that someone actually gets assigned to
do these things.
If Oracle is willing to address such issues while keeping OO free for
most users (say, free for all with no support, or charge in order to get
support), I won't be quick to condemn them.
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