OpenOffice.org Team on OO.org (and Upcoming v2.0)

Aditya Nag writes "I recently got the chance to ask the OpenOffice.org team a few questions about OpenOffice.org in general, and their upcoming release. The questions were answered by Louis Suarez-Potts and Colm Smyth. Louis is OpenOffice.org's Community Manager, member and chair of the Community Council, and lead of many OpenOffice.org projects including the Native Language Confederation. Colm is a StarOffice Architect, and was responsible for defining the product concept for OpenOffice.org 3.0 (or StarOffice 9). The interview is fairly long and detailed, and there are a few interesting tid-bits, like Louis' assertion that there will come a day when there will be no proprietary file formats for Office Suites." This is the full interview from which excerpts were linked in the recent post about OO.o's beta candidate for 2.0.

Timothy

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the full interview from which excerpts were linked in the recent post about OO.o's beta candidate for 2.0.

You're a Slashdot regular Timothy, if you want to say your articl'es a dupe then don't beat about the bush just say "Yep, this is a dupe".

Anybody using it?

[lottameez]

Anybody actually using open office in a, er, office? How about some real experiences with it?

Fix Microsoft Office

[Anonymous Coward]

Go to Microsoft Office's suggest feature page [microsoft.com] and ask for
"Please add read/write support for the OASIS document formats found in OpenOffice.org 2.0."

OpenSource

[paithuk]

Since everything in the proprietary world of Microsoft and MacOS has to be copied or rejuvinated within the OpenSource community, is it possible that people are forgetting about innovation and focusing too much on mirroring what others do? Apple have come a long way simply through innovating, just like many modern successful businesses but without major goals of innovation, isn't it possible that the OpenSource community may be stuck forever in a game of catch up?

Re:Why use OpenOffice?

[Coryoth]

When Microsoft Office is free[ed2k link]?

Considering the utterly prohibitive costs to a small business should they ever be subject to a BSA audit while using the "free" version of MS Office, I'd say it's actually pretty expensive. Honestly, an audit can be a business changing experience [infoworld.com]. It just isn't worth the risk.

The last small company I worked for was busy transitioning as many staff as they could over to OpenOffice. They weren't doing this because OpenOffice was cheaper, they were doing this because they didn't have to bother with the task of filing and managing licenses - the reduced cost was just a bonus.

Jedidiah.

Can it really be true?

[bmw]

The main focus of our efforts and the most important benefits that customers will see is improved usability and significantly improved interoperability with Microsoft Office formats. This addresses the day-to-day needs of many more end users and makes
OpenOffice.org/StarOffice a real alternative.

I really hope they mean this. Dealing with MS Office formats has got to be insanely difficult and as of yet no one has really been able to do it well (not even Microsoft!). Life would be so much better if there was another office suite that could handle all the MS formats without choking on everything but the simplest of documents. I've got great hopes for OO.org 2.0 but you'll have to excuse me if I'm still a bit skeptical.

Re:Fix Microsoft Office

[Anonymous Coward]

Already did that... But I don't know it was a Good Thing. They would probably allow to _read_ those files, but not write them (or atleast not with some extensions of their own).

This way, this document standard will also benefit them, as people will just treat them as ms-office documents. Then when they hit save, the whole thing will become an ms-office document.

Not only that, but even if you would (should you be able to) install support for _writing_ documents in this standard, a warning would be presented that not all the features in ms-office can be used with this document format. That will discourage people from using it.

However, if ms-office would simply _not_ be compatible with these documents, maybe some will actually get the idea and install OO.o.

Just my $0.02

Re:OpenSource

[Penguinoflight]

Ask yourself what microsoft has done to innovate office in the last 5 years. Fortunately, office software isn't a moving target to compete with. Innovation is only the best thing to do in this case, not the only thing to do.

Personally I'd just like to see OO get a better UI, and move away from JAVA. With all the help from Sun, Java is probably here to stay, but we can hope for the UI improvement.

Re:More uphill than FireFox vs. IE

[zecg]

More uphill? I disagree completely - while Firefox competes against MS's "freebeer" program already installed on most computers in the world today, this one competes against quite an expensive package. And guess what? It fulfills the needs of most users just fine, just as it handles most MS office documents just fine. YMMV, but it's freebeer.

Re:Fix Microsoft Office

[Doc Ruby]

Microsoft keeps its formats proprietary as a stragetgy to keep customers. It also solicits and uses customer feedback to keep customers. Sometimes the two strategies are at odds. It could be helpful to use its conflict against itself, if only to see which is a higher priority. Or it could produce OASIS support, if they prioritize customer demand. It might even have ripple effects of further undermining MS, if they deprioritize customer feedback to protect format hegemony. Helping tip MS to be less in sync with their market will keep the dinosaur's momentum headed for the big thud. This specific instance, though, is so obscure as to probably not register, so it might not be worth the effort.

Re:Until they..

[Seumas]

Well, by all means, let's bitch and moan about the old version without even trying the new version to see that the installation could not be any simpler (and is, in fact, far simpler than even MS-Office).

Re:More uphill than FireFox vs. IE

[hendridm]

I suspect the problem is name recognition. They can probably get Word Perfect or Lotus Smart Suite for pennies a disc. Although OO.org is free, it doesn't have the recognition for lowly end users that Word Perfect or (*gasp*) even Lotus.

That said, perhaps more education is in order. My father in law wanted me to find him a "good deal" on a legal copy of Office 2003. When I showed him what it was going to cost, he balked. I suggested he try OpenOffice. He asked what it was, and after explaining to him what it was he seemed releuctant. He liked Office because he was used to it, and he had a hard time believing something that was free would be any good.

I installed it on his new machine, and he loved it. He couldn't believe you could get something that was just like MS Office for nothing! He was very pleased.

Re:More uphill than FireFox vs. IE

[vandan]

Shouldn't be all that hard.

With IE vs Firefox, the argument about lower costs with Firefox is harder to demonstrate, as IE is free-as-in-beer.

With OpenOffice, people are aware of the obvious cost difference from the start ... without requiring one of us to sit them down and explain it to them.

Once the functionality is at the right level ( OOo 1 was close, OOo 2 might just do it - it's working damned well for us in testing ), people should flock to it.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Feature request: portability

[Anonymous Coward]

It would really be nice if 0.000% of the openoffice.org effort devoted to press releases and promotion went instead to increasing the portability of the code

Two things:

- people that can promote open office != people that can increase the portability of the code
- promotion->more people know about it->more users and developers

Re:What I'd want to ask

[Coryoth]

What strides as 2.0 made in GUI and usability? From the screenshots of the beta, I see none.

What exactly are you looking for? A rough outline of the design goals is here [openoffice.org] with specific target improvements for 2.0 here [openoffice.org]. For very specific improvements actually made not just target concepts you can read through this [openoffice.org] and look for all the "ease-of-use" improvements made. There are actually a lot. Yes, some are small. No, OOo 2.0 is not somehow magically a perfect usability application. It is an issue, and they are focussing on it. It is an incremental process however.

Jedidiah.

Re:More uphill than FireFox vs. IE

[STrinity]

With IE vs FF, the Mozilla Foundation has the superior product. With MS Office vs OO.o it's pretty much a toss up -- they're both slow, bloated, and filled with annoying quirks.

Re:Clueless about DBs

[Anonymous Coward]

It's one of those things that people rant about, either because they're utterly pedantic, or ignorant and contrarian.

Yes, SQL is not a pure relational language. However, it cleaves somewhat to set relational theory, as described by Codd and according to general understanding of set theory. Get over yourself. STFU.