On Wed, 2011-09-28 at 13:05 +0100, Ian Lynch wrote: > > > > or why not just shake hands and part as friends. > > > > Of course we can but that makes inefficient use of the resources and is less > good for Open Source in general.
Well, as you can guess I disagree - it's only inefficient if one doggedly holds to the idea that the two projects should (nor need to) share a common code base going forward - by why would that be? > Fine strategy if we had thousands of > developers in each project and a MS size budget. well there isn't thousands of developers on the two projects combined now, and as for potential developers it isn't thousands, it's millions. > > > > > Two projects and two applications. > > > > - if AOO wants to get on desktops they need to produce an application > > that better addresses the needs of their target user base then LibO > > > > Given the number of full time developers now at AOO it is really just a > matter of time to get a good desktop product out. Really - remember Chandler? Money doesn't guarantee success! > Whether it is better or > not than the LibO version will always be debateable. With all due respect you are again assuming that the two applications must retain some semblance of likeness - and again I ask, why? > (I suspect for most > users it will never be more than a marginal decision since most don't use > most of what is there now). Rather than taking the competitive option and I feel that people in the FOSS world have a knee jerk response to the word competition, the enemy is not mere competition, rather it is an attitude of 'win at any cost'. > why > not the cooperative? The real competition is MS Office and there are already > other open source office suites such as Koffice to provide some diversity. > > - if LibO wants desktops they need to better addresses the needs of > > their target user base then AOO. > > > > Of course on that logic why not fork every FOSS project to increase > competition in the market? Not at all - this is about this situation, about this particular set of facts on the ground, right now. //drew
