Ian Lynch wrote:
I think the whole idea of producing megalithic software edifices is a
bad idea in principle. Here are the reasons.
I agree. For essentially the same reasons.
Since many large FLOSS projects such as OOo started life as closed
source there is a legacy which I doubt we would consider desirable if we
started from scratch.
Well, I doubt that StarDivision was expecting to create a monopoly with
SO. But point taken. If we had built OOo from scratch, we probably wold
have made UNO a separate set of libraries without requiring OOo itself
to be installed. I have hopes this might still happen one day.
Defining an open document format based on XML is a step forward
in this respect because it encourages third parties to develop
applications to integrate with each other.
Did you get a chance to talk to Garry in San Diego? He has some great
ideas about OpenDocument. He sees it as the natural evolutionary step
after XHTML, and hopes that the web of the future will use OD as its
medium of exchange.
A good next step would be for Firefox to be able to display
OpenDocument. That would be fantastic. It would start out as an OD
"viewer", but it would set the stage for OD to become the document
exchange medium of the future.
Cheers,
Daniel.
