Alex Thurgood wrote:
David Warren a écrit :
Hi David,
I am very interested in the Open Office concept and wondered whether
it would be advantageous to convert some of my applications into
Office Base so that they could be used as examples of real business
solutions.
My databases have been designed so that they incorporate the
comprehensive needs of a multi-national company (such as multi
currencies, multi locations, multi languages etc - I was the financial
controller of a large multi national for over 5 years) as well as being
useable by the smallest of businesses whether they be home users or
SMME's.
Please let me know if this is of interest to any of you and whether
you would like to get involved.
Oh, I'm pretty certain that at least some of your ideas would find
takers here. As Frank has said, one thing that Base currently lacks,
compared say to Writer, Calc or Impress templates, are working real
world applications. There are a few out there on the web, but not
many, so I would say to you, welcome on board if that is what takes
your fancy.
( I would like to preface this email by saying that much of it is really
about group dynamics in general, in a loosely structured setting IMO.)
You ask whether folks would be interested in getting involved. Alex,
says that you will find takers for your ideas here. I would say that how
many "takers" you will find depend on how you define the term 'get
involved'.
Without a doubt there is a broad group of people that make up this
forum, the depth and breadth of their experience, and skills, can be
quite extensive. Using the group as a sounding board for ideas you will
find plenty of participation. As a resource for help in addressing
platform specific questions - i.e. understanding what is available in
the OpenOffice.org UI / API and how to apply this in solving particular
problems - you can again expect a good deal of valuable input. This
input is often more then just someone giving advice off the top of their
head ( which is not to say that never happens), there are many times
where it is obvious from the discussion that people are actively working
the problem in order to offer a suggested solution. I would also not
limit that last statement to just this mailing list, rather to a number
of groups within the OpenOffice.org community.
It is worth noting also that this idea of "working the problem" has on a
number of occasions culminated with a formal Request For Enhancement (
RFE ) being filed in the issue tracking system ( or Defect report ).
Many ( not quite all ) the RFE's generated via this process have tended
to find their way into the production code in a timely fashion I might add.
Another form of involvement that you will find readily available here is
a group of knowledgeable and competent testers for work product you
produce along the way. In this regards I am not referring to having
folks that will just 'see it load' and tell you how good it is - there
will be those that will, if asked, give it a good shakedown and offer
useful feedback.
The next step along the line of defining 'getting involved' I suppose
would be - helping produce that work product. ( see first sentence ) The
pool of participation is going to shrink dramatically, not to zero
necessarily - but I would suggest that in deciding if this is something
you want to undertake you first answer the question for yourself. Would
I do it if the number of active participants was just one, me?
I don't really want to end on that last sentence - but I do want to
break for a bit - so I will just add this. If the answer to that
question is a solid no, or not for too long, then I would suggest that
you are looking at having to be fairly proactive in generating interest
and getting people involved, and that the amount of effort needed in
this regards may be a bit more then you might expect.
Now I will take a break - Ray's email regarding Sarbanes Oxley (SOx) has
had my thoughts since I read it but before a reply to that email it is
most certainly supper time here.
Drew
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