On Fri, 2005-05-27 at 14:11 -0400, Daniel Carrera wrote: > 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.
No but they probably thought they would not be trying to get many contributors from further afield. > 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. There is plenty of time for things to feep improving and evolving. They will if there is an incentive to produce good quality code rather than simply marketing fodder. > >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? Briefly. > 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. Quite possible but if that happens I think there will be some fierce competition for media of exchange. I think there will be a range of tools and choice but I think most will be open source and those that aren't will be free or bundled as free with some other service. It will be so competitive no-one is going to survive in that arena trying to sell licenses. > 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. Yes it would also solve all the demands for an OOo viewer ;-) -- Ian Lynch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ZMSL
