On 3/7/06, Max G. Kluth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > : Another problem with your thinking is that you assume there will be an > : upgrade for OpenOffice.org. Seriously, who is to say there will be? > > The programmers. With their blood of their hearts.
LOL! OMG! You got to be kidding me! "The blood of their hearts"??!?!? That doesn't even make sense. Do a quick search of Sourceforge - tell me how many projects there are - then find out how many are still in alpha - then tell me how many of those alpha projects are more than 2 years old. Tell me how many active projects there are, and how many inactive. The simple fact is - there have been thousands of opn source projects, and thousands of them just go away. People give up - they change focus - they get married - they get divorced - they get kids - they stop spending hours slaving away at a computer just to write something to give away. In this vary project, I've seen people who devoted 40 + hours a week to OpenOffice.org just quit. They move on to another project. They get their feelings hurt and jump ship. The same stuff can happen with a job, don't get me wrong, but there is a driving factor that keeps people coming back to work, even if a coworker made fun of their accent. It's called a paycheck. It's called "I got to eat this month." It's called greed. It's called self-preservation. Whatever you call it - people work for money. Volunteers can't be *made* to do anything - they are volunteers (it's kinda the definition). The only reason OpenOffice.org has had the success it has had is because it was run by a company from day one. Look at Mozilla - it started as Netscape - a company designed to make money. And it has come full circle, there is now a Mozilla Corporation - a for-profit business that runs the show. OpenOffice.org is run by Sun Microsystems. 80% or more (prolly much more - like 90%) of the coding of OOo is done by paid Sun employees. Even Linux is run mostly by companies - IBM, Novell, Sun. Blood of their hearts - please! <snip a huge rant about why America sucks and we should all be communists, since businesses are evil> If it wasn't for businesses - there wouldn't be an OpenOffice.org. It started life as a business, and is maintained by a business. (From the Wikipedia article on OOo - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org#History Originally developed as proprietary<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprietary_software>office suite > StarOffice <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarOffice> by the German company > StarDivision <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarDivision>, the code was > purchased in 1999 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999> by Sun Microsystems. > In August 1999 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_1999> version 5.2 of > StarOffice was made available free-of-charge. On July 19 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_19>, 2000<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000>, > Sun Microsystems announced that it was making the source code of StarOffice > available for download under both the Lesser General Public > License<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesser_General_Public_License>(LGPL) and > the Sun > Industry Standards Source > License<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Industry_Standards_Source_License>(SISSL) > with the intention of building an open source development community > around the software. The new project was known as OpenOffice.org, and its > website went live on October 13 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_13>, > 2000 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000>. However, despite that business backing, it's not nearly as strong of a backing as Microsoft backs MSO. The reason is layered. MS needs MSO to stay profitable. Therefore it will do everything in its power to support MSO. Sun doesn't need OOo - it may need StarOffice - but not OOo. OOo generates no income for Sun - at least not directly. And it is certainly not it's cashcow. Another reason is most businesses don't know that OOo is primarily run by a business - they just assume, as you seemed to, that OOo is writen by the blood of the hearts of programmers in their garages toiling away for hours for free. You feel free to start your "I'll look up the answers online" OOo support service. Well see how much that puts CEOs worries to rest. Have a good one. -- - Chad Smith http://www.gimpshop.net/ http://www.whatisopenoffice.org/ Because everyone loves free software!
