Sun May GPL StarOffice 235
Lennie writes: "To my surprise I read here: 'Sun Microsystems is expected to announce this week that it will make StarOffice available as open source. Sun plans to release the suite under the GNU General Public License, which is promoted by the Free Software Foundation and is considered by many to be the purest of the open source licenses.'" Despite its reputation as bloatware, semi-free software and as the tack that Sun sets out for Microsoft, StarOffice is probably the suite that has done the most to allow migration from various MS applications, and free is a nice prelude to Free. If Star Office is GPL'd, it could have great trickle-down effects on AbiWord and other Linux office software.
People go after Microsoft? (Score:2)
Kate
Great! (Score:2)
Though personally I'll believe Sun uses the GPL only when I actually see it.
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Staroffice (Score:1)
How about a reference manager? (Score:1)
To my knowledge, there is still no comparable feature in Star Office. This is the dealbreaker, as far as he's concerned. You'd convert yet another chunk of the government to Linux usage if you could point out a program with this functionality that can connect to a GUI word processor in the environment.. How 'bout it?
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Pretty sure now.. (Score:1)
Basically, what this means is that we could get a *really good* free office suite in the forseeable future.
That would be great (Score:3)
I started using it under Windows 2K when I noticed the new licensing scheme for Office 2000. It will force you to register online, or cease to work at all. As I am in no particular urge to feed Redmond's databases, I dumped it and started using SO in a mostly Windows shop (my current client).
I concede that my machine has lots of memory, but StarOffice works fast and well.
I haven't experienced any serious bug and no file-format problem whatsoever. My most serious complain is about StarOffice wanting to be my browser too, and making windows believe it is now offline (in a LAN connected to a T1) everytime SO starts.
If SO goes GPL, I would expect it to get better support and better add-ons, and certanly keep updated with Office file-format tricks (a serious problem in a mostly MSWord world).
Re:Pretty sure now.. (Score:2)
If it's GPL'd and of general interest to Linux users, it probably won't stay crappy for long.
Rather, I should say it will become "less crappy" (cf. "sucks less").
> One last thing, is the GPL really considered to be the free-est license around?
No, public domain is the freeest (sp?!?). The GPL only guarantees that derivatives will be just so free as the original was; no more and no less.
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NDA/Closed SOurce (Score:1)
Comment removed (Score:3)
Re:How about a reference manager? (Score:2)
Is that anything like bibtex? If so, you already have the relevant GUI WP in the incarnation called "LyX".
If not, please elaborate on what Endnote is.
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What does this do to Corel? (Score:1)
This could hurt Microsoft Office (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
A good thing... (Score:3)
1. It stops the not-for-consumer-apps cynics out there who have been spouting off that the gpl is "fine for behind-the-scenes stuff" but will never cut it in the consumer app field where actually selling seats is the prime revenue source.
2. It shows that Sun is actually willing to put some effort into being the "good guy" in the open source crowd. Let's face it, poll your average free software geek about Sun and you get some pretty damning responses: Sun's "open" license is a sham, java's slow and bloated, the hardware is too expensive, Solaris belongs in the Smithsonian... etc. Sun wants to be friends with those people really badly because they're the future CIO's of this world and they want those CIO's to want Sparcs. Simple. The last two years have seen Sun try some half-baked measures to get some respect and, by and large, they haven't worked. Now they're trying a full-baked one. And that's good news for everyone.
3. If you have a lot of spare time on your hands, and want to give StarOffice a bit of zip then maybe we'll all have a serious contender to that "other" office package.
Oops. (Score:1)
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Re:That would be great (Score:1)
Then maybe you can answer my questions.
I use MS Word because I have to (contractual obligations that I can't evade) not because I want to. Fortunately the cost of Word, which if not bloatware itself certainly runs on bloatware, is borne by somebody else. If I could evade using Word, but nobody in the contracting office would be any wiser, I'd do it.
tc>
Huh? (Score:1)
I'm not happy about the totalitarian aspect of Chinese communism, but at the same time I don't want to confuse the P.R.C. government with the Chinese people.
Bruce
Re:That would be great (Score:2)
Also, I haven't investigated if there was any other way to register or if I could avoid the online registering procedure. I dumped and installed SO. I just said No...
Re:A good thing... (Score:2)
Does it? Buying a binary-only office suite with a limited number of users, and then releasing it under the GPL as it fades away is hardly a ringing endorsement of Open Source development... And you said "selling seats" - Sun never sold StarOffice, did they?
I mean, I'm glad it's going to be GPL'd and all, but I'm not sure it proves or disproves any theories about Open Source in general...
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Wow! (Score:2)
Thanks
Bruce
Re:A good thing... (Score:1)
Maybe some freak will optimize the hell out of StarOffice. But you'll never bury the shitty interface.
Look, this could be a Good Thing but until then:
=head
=cut
Filter to PS. Send to publisher.
Re:Pretty sure now.. (Score:2)
I don't mean to say that Mozilla is bad, it's doing really well now. But just dumping the source into open-ness didn't work. It was a mess, it was unuseable and unsalvageable. Essentially it had to be completely ransacked for useable components (note: I'm not in the Mozilla dev effort, so I am interpreting their remarks and the remarks of people associated with it, so I may well be amended. I don't think my interpretation of the reality of the situation is completely off the mark, though.)
Re:This could hurt Microsoft Office (Score:1)
Forget Star - Give us Corel (Score:1)
They are going down the tubes, they know it, we know it. Before the money men come in and try to salvage (ie sell off) all they can I would like to see them gpl all thier software
Kind of like a last stand against the enemy, knowing that thier death might allow the battle to be won, for theire fellows to win the day...
Unfortunatley I belive they really don't care about the idea of OpenSource. Rather it's just another advertisement for them, and likely they would rather thier software die with them than give it away!
Responding as a community (Score:5)
I have speculated for a long time about what might happen if someone decided to take an existing, mature office suite and make it truly Open Source.
I haven't exactly been sitting on the edge of my seat. It has seemed likely that someone would do it eventually, but the event has just never seemed very imminent. It's clear that Microsoft, with 95% market share and over 10B annual revenues, has no incentive to make their suite Open Source. Corel has far too little clue, and IBM/Lotus have far too much.
The only glimmer of hope has been Sun, which seems to have a practice of being smart during the even-numbered years and downright silly during the odd-numbered ones.
An Open Source version of StarOffice would open up a remarkable number of opportunities. In the hope that this rumor is revealed to be true, I would like to applaud all of those people at Sun who contributed to the execution of this bold, visionary decision.
And frankly, I'm insulted that none of those people called me. :-) Granted, I doubt that our little 28-person company is even a blip on their radar screen. However, as founder of the AbiWord project, SourceGear has a lot of experience in the world StarOffice is about to join. In fact, I daresay that there is no one else on earth who knows more about losing money on Open Source office apps than I do. :-)
I think that the response from the Open Source community is an important opportunity, and I would like to offer my unsolicited advice regarding the appropriate tenor of our response:
The point is that Sun is making the only decision which will allow StarOffice to become better. It's never about where you are -- it's about where you are going.
For example, I'm fairly sure that StarOffice is built upon a Win32 compatibility library from Bristol. They can't GPL that. The spell checker is probably not theirs. In fact, most full-featured office suites today are built using a bunch of third-party components. If the first source code tarball from Sun is even buildable, I'll be surprised.
But I won't be complaining about it. Doing so is not going to benefit anyone.
Even in an Open Source world, there is room for multiple efforts. Many of the people who work on AbiWord or Gnumeric are doing so for the enjoyment or experience. StarOffice will meet different needs, and there is nothing preventing both projects from reaching their goals. In fact, the existence of StarOffice is more likely to benefit AbiWord and Gnumeric than it is likely to cause harm.
There was a recent published interview with someone from the Kylix team at Borlaprise. This guy gets it. He said things like, "Our success does not require Microsoft's failure", and, "When television came along, radio didn't suddenly go away."
It is possible that this GPL release of StarOffice will eventually cause some impact to the proprietary players. However, we need to speak not in terms of extinction or annihilation, but in terms of reduction of margins.
And we need to give it time before the effects start to be visible. Microsoft's product manager for Office is not scared, and [s]he doesn't need to be.
-- Eric W. Sink
This is good for me and my company! (Score:1)
Bruce, this would be your "herd of cats" fixing it (Score:1)
It remains a kit of useful parts that Microsoft and others can just include into their code.
Looks like Sun's investment is sunk.
Pretty much proves what others have been saying... that only the dying embrace Open Source/GPL/whatever.
Re: (Score:1)
may address compatibility problems (Score:2)
This is a BAD THING (Score:3)
1. Sun is now admitting that the idea of giving away a free office suite is non-viable and they are opening the source as a way to divest their engineering resources. Don't expect help from Sun in this area.
2. Cross-platform support will die. Open Source projects of significant magnitude just don't happen on the major GUI OSes. StarOffice for Windows will lag far enough behind StarOffice for Linux that it won't be the cross-platform solution that it is touted as today.
3. This might even spell the death of StarOffice. GPL has produces a whole bunch of useful code, but the inevitable branching of the project will kill the corporate acceptability of StarOffice. Branching has proven inevitable on all but the simplest of projects.
4. If all that's not enough, GPL'd projects don't generally produce good end user software in terms of UI. Granted StarOffice pretty well sucks now in this regard, GPL won't help.
Assuming Sun goes forward with GPLing StarOffice, we can all pretty much stop watching it.
Just my controvertial $.02.
Great! (Score:2)
*evil laugh*
Now I can write my own GPL'D paper clip and own the world.
Who Cares What Sun Does (Score:2)
1) A wreck and/or
2)Sun cannot compete in the software space.
I do not know a single person who uses Star Office and by the time Linux gets a working office suite, MS will have moved on to
Once again Linux will be playing a gee wizz thats a good idea catchup game.
Re:That would be great (Score:3)
Well, the computer I use at work is a PIII 500 with 128 MBs of RAM. I can use SO confortably along with JBuilder, IE 5, Outlook Express, sometimes Acrobat Reader, Erwin and Rational Rose. None of these applications are particularly small or memory effcient. The filters work well and I don't think they take all that space.
Does it produce output that MS Word users can include without further massaging? Or does it produce "close, but not quite" results?
As far as I can tell, it produce files identical to Office 98. I haven't really tested it with Office 2000 files, but I think it does well too.
Does it produce something that would let me be a "stealth StarOffice" user?
Well, that is exactly what I am, except that I warned everybody about what I was doing. I haven't had any problems.
You could probably start isntalling it and trying to read the files you receive. Then try sending them one, and see what happens.
Re: (Score:2)
I'll believe it when I see it (Score:2)
Forgive me for sounding skeptical, but I'm not going to believe this until I've got the source code on my hard drive, complete with GNU "COPYING" file, and had it compile successfully.
Re:Pretty sure now.. (Score:4)
It is offically unimportant to people how bad or crappy a program is as long as it's GPL'd..
Exactly. You have just stated the GNU Manifesto For Dummies (tm). That's because if you don't like the way a GPL'ed program works, you can fix it. And even if you can't, somebody else will conceivably get so pissed off with it that they fix it and let you piggyback. Not so with closed source.
Some other company who realizes that their product is dead and decides to GPL it, would they get big time headlines?
That would depend on the relevance of the product, or rather the nature of the product. A fairly full-featured office suite being GPL'ed is certainly news. YAArkanoidClone probably isn't.
One last thing, is the GPL really considered to be the free-est license around? I am not expert or even that informed, but I was understand that the BSD license took that title??
Both place restrictions on the way the source can be used after opening; that's why they're licenses, after all. The GPL allows the original author to say, "Take this stuff, play around with it, but remember to share afterwards". Since the resulting changes are therefore available to all, the GPL is more free in an utilitarian sense.
Re:That would be great (Score:2)
And I will not even start to argue about the whole "intelectual property" concept here, because I am sure other post in this page will cover it better than I could (isn't it always so when the letter G, P and L appear together in a headline?).
Free-est license (Score:3)
Are you deliberately trying to start a holy war?
Honestly, though, which license is the most free is as much a question of what you consider to be free as it is an objective matter of what each license allows. The BSD license does, in fact, allow people to do more with your software, so you could claim that it is thus more free than the GPL. OTOH, one of the things that it allows is for people to make non-free derivatives of your software, which the GPL does not allow. Some people thus claim that this makes the GPL better because it preserves software freedom, which the BSD license does not.
The real issue about licenses is why you're planning on freeing the software. I think that in Sun's case they're making the software free because they don't want to spend as much on development as it would probably take to make a version of Star Office that's as good as they want. My general impression is that their long term strategy is to develop a version of Star Office that will be managed by an application server- presumably in many cases run on Sun hardware- and replaces the need for separate copies on each desktop. They have probably decided that they want to develop it more rapidly than they can with in-house resources, so they want to open the source and let other people hack it.
With a BSD-style license, though, some of those people could turn around and make a closed source derivative that would compete with Sun's variant, which is presumably what they want to stop. Thus the GPL, which preserves a fixed level of software freedom, is probably better suited to their purpose than a "free-er" license like BSD that would allow non-free derivatives. IOW, the GPL is better suited to their purposes because the way in which it is less free than BSD is exactly the lack of freedom that Sun wants.
The (former?) problem with StarOffice... (Score:2)
With this news, that may change soon.
Re:Pretty sure now.. (Score:5)
Back in my day, we didn't have integrated office applications. If we wanted to plot some data, we wrote a fortran algorithm that created a graph. If we wanted to type a paper, we used LaTeX. Our integrated office suite was VI along with all of the associated compilers.
Nowadays, all these wishy-washy office types think that they need a bloated graphical office suite. I think they need to get off there innovative lazy butts and learn VI. Then they will be productive!
i don't care anymore (Score:2)
so what if star office is GPL? so what if it's coming from sun? the whole point is that it's a tool and we can use it. it has code we'll be able to see and we can fix it. WE, not them.
if sun benefits from us, so be it. we get the code and we use it to help us make better tools. that's what i'm using open source for. to learn and get a hold of my system.
ugh.
Re:A good thing... (Score:2)
I believe the original yiddish would be "Good Guy, Schmood Guy."
I can't bear using MS products
I don't blame you, however the reality is that a biiig chunk o' "society" regards MS Office (that's pronounced Mizz Office, I believe) as being the defacto standard of crunchy office goodness. If they're willing to believe that, then maybe they're willing to accept the "treadless Panzer" that is StarOffice as a reasonable alternative. Remember frymaster's 27th law "what you, as a geek, regard as good software, they, as end users, don't."
I am writing a book with vi/POD and filters
I wrote my first and only book (unpublished, no good) in a stack of staple-bound scribblers with a pen (black, biro-style). Of course, now I can tell my friends that waaay back in '88 I wrote a novel on "a wireless notebook".
Re:Wow! (Score:2)
Hell, I would certanly like to help. If there is something the software base needs now is a application that can seamlessly substitute Word and Excell at the secretary's (or, in political correct terms, "executive assistant for coffe grabbing and bill paying") desk. Which company would then keep paying U$800 a sit for the other package?
A bad omen (Score:2)
Re:That would be great (Score:3)
So, say you write up a "New Manifesto for Violent Technological Overthrow of the US Republic" using Word. Your
Registering is a lot more insidious than you think. If you register at all, use fake information.
Old code? (Score:2)
"What do I care, if life ain't fair,
If you look at me real sore.
I've paid my dues and you should too,
as a son-of-a-bitch to the core"
Re:That would be great (Score:2)
Puurrrfect (Score:5)
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What's Endnote (Score:2)
Re:That would be great (Score:2)
Are you sure you're not talking about Star Office?
I remember having to get down on my knees and ask nice-like for a serial number before I could even install it on my machine.
If I remember right, it asked for personal information before proceeding.
Re:That would be great (Score:2)
Then again, I suspect I'm talking to someone with a hat lined with aluminum foil... never mind...
Why always take? (Score:5)
Why does the OS community always think of commercial companies opening their software in terms of 'take, take, take?'
I've seen it with Apple, Darwin and OS X first-hand. Apple releases a BSD-license OS and immediately, Slashdot shouts "They should Open Source the Mac OS so we can take X and Y!" Now, Sun decides to GPL StarOffice and the Slashdot comments 'maybe this will help [insert competing OS Office Suite here]'
Maybe the other office suites will improve as a result. I hope so. However, the Open Source community consistently projects the attitude that Free software from corporations presents nothing but a feeding ground for carrion birds.
Why can't you improve StarOffice itself? Why do you flaunt your open hostility to commercial ventures that have chosen to support you?
Of course, the OS community thrives on sharing code, and I'm not criticizing that aspect. I am criticizing its tendency to follow, not lead: How many projects announced on Freshmeat or hosted on SourceForge exist as 'Free' alternatives to already existing proprietary software? Does the OS community all act like buzzards, picking the good meat from commercial open source ventures and leaving the bones when they finish?
I read several of the Darwin development lists and I see that there are a significant number of people who actually do contribute to Apple's open source efforts. The majority of you, however, think only in terms of raiding and pillaging, out of some staunch anticommercialism, even when the company supports your cause.
The Open Source Community will never lead as long as it continues to follow. Shining lights do exist, but the vast majority of Open Source software owes its existence to someone else's innovation, someone else's creative process, and someone else's hard work to develop the idea originally.
Realize that a much more innovative atmosphere can exist when you spend your time exploring new ideas and ways to improve the software that go beyond other's ideas, than when you spend your time stealing ideas and code from the next new OS project to come from Sun.
Re:That would be great (Score:2)
Now, to download it from Sun you need to sign up with Sun and get a login ID. I use an account I set up last year to register for a Java tool kit.
Re:Why always take? (Score:3)
Well, Apple took BSD and Mach from the free software community. If you want sharing, why shouldn't we get something back?
> Why can't you improve StarOffice itself?
In my mind, taking the StarOffice filters or abilities, putting them in a small, GTK-based word processor like AbiWord, and using that, is improving StarOffice. It takes out the bad parts and uses the good parts. It's also helping AbiWord, it's taking out the bad parts and using the good parts.
> Of course, the OS community thrives on sharing code, and I'm not criticizing that aspect. I am criticizing its tendency to follow, not lead: How many projects announced on Freshmeat or hosted on SourceForge exist as 'Free' alternatives to already existing proprietary software?
Hopefully, a lot. Every piece of proprietary software without a free version is an idea for a new piece of free software. Why _shouldn't_ there be clones of them?
> Does the OS community all act like buzzards, picking the good meat from commercial open source ventures and leaving the bones when they finish?
You suddenly jumped from taking ideas from proprietary software to taking ideas from commercial open source software. Big difference.
Remember, it works both ways. If the free software community so rabidly "takes" from StarOffice, why can't StarOffice "take" from the free software community?
> The majority of you, however, think only in terms of raiding and pillaging, out of some staunch anticommercialism, even when the company supports your cause.
I don't see anyone "raiding and pillaging" Red Hat or VA. I don't see anyone "raiding and pillaging" Apple, either - at least, not anymore than Apple did to BSD.
If Apple truly supported free software, we'd see all the code for MacOS. As it is, they're using free software as a base to build their main product off of, returning parts, but not all. That's more raiding and pillaging than taking parts of StarOffice, keeping them free, but putting them somewhere else.
Could work well if... (Score:2)
Why Microsoft will be death by next month (Score:2)
1) As we saw earlier today [slashdot.org], PDC was not so good and the developers were not very receptive to the whole .NET idea (and to the idea of having to learn yet another language). Expect O'Reilly sales to hit the skies during the next weeks and the FSF download sites to scream under the added trafic.
2) The Supremes (the judges, not the 70's disco group) will be back from vacation and will take a look at judge Jackson's work. They will find it worth its weight in kilograms and let the company be broken. Then Microsoft A and B will hit the courts to see who gets .NET, since it is not an operating system nor an application.
3) The free-software community, taken away by its manifest destiny felling, will get Star Office, AbiSource and whatever and make all of them into the meanest office package in town. Every Fortune 2000 company will have to install it or face a class-action suit from its shareholders for spending money in bloated payware.
4)Wishful thinking is one of our better developed mental function. :)
mozilla (Score:2)
Re:Bold? (Score:2)
I rather doubt that Sun can turn StarOffice into a profit center of its own, regardless of what kind of license they use. From that perspective, they didn't risk much, so not much courage was required.
Still, it's hard to overstate the level of inertia inside companies that are as old and large as Sun. (Yes, I know that in the context of the market as a whole, Sun is terribly young and small, but we're talking about tech companies here). I'm certain that someone made this decision over a substantial amount of internal opposition.
-- Eric W. Sink
Re:This is a BAD THING (Score:5)
It is likely true that they see they can gain engineering resources that they wouldn't otherwise have because of usage of the GPL. Whether or not Sun will help, remains to be seen.
"2. Cross-platform support will die. Open Source projects of significant magnitude just don't happen on the major GUI OSes. StarOffice for Windows will lag far enough behind StarOffice for Linux that it won't be the cross-platform solution that it is touted as today."
Hmm.. you mean - like Mozilla, Crystal Space, GCC, and Abiword? These are all cross platform, and all major projects, the non Unix versions may sometimes lag in the features, but they tend to propogate to all of the differnt platforms with significant speed.
"3. This might even spell the death of StarOffice. GPL has produces a whole bunch of useful code, but the inevitable branching of the project will kill the corporate acceptability of StarOffice. Branching has proven inevitable on all but the simplest of projects."
Yes projects do fork, but there tend to be major official branches, and if support is offered for a specific branch, that is the one that the suits will go with. Also, forks can, and often do remerge. Whether forking is corporately acceptable, remains to be seen.
"4. If all that's not enough, GPL'd projects don't generally produce good end user software in terms of UI. Granted StarOffice pretty well sucks now in this regard, GPL won't help."
That is a traditional failing, one that is being addressed in both KDE and Gnome. Traditional Unix/Linux GUI's were difficult to make and modify, and handrolled by each new programming needing a GUI. With programs like Glade, good GUI design and prototyping become much easier and consistant. Thus we are likely to see Linux apps become more user freindly and usable as things progress.
LetterRip
Re:Why always take? (Score:2)
There's an important flip side to this; look at how many pieces of proprietary software started out as clones, or even descendents, of free software. The idea of taking ideas from one world and applying them to the other is a very, very old one, and its hardly a one way street. If anything, it's been a lot harder to make free versions of proprietary software than vice versa because the proprietary companies can start on the backs of free code (what the GPL was intended to stop).
Re:This is a BAD THING (Score:4)
>1. Sun is now admitting that the idea of giving
>away a free office suite is non-viable and they
>are opening the source as a way to divest their
>engineering resources. Don't expect help from Sun
>in this area.
Giving away a free office suite was not gaining them much in the way of hardware sales, which doesn't do Sun a lot of financial good. I don't think that was ever the reason they did it -- I think they did it to annoy Gates. This move should annoy Gates even more -- thousands of programmers working on a GPL office suite that is fairly mature has to be scary for MS. MS Office is their Killer App. -- the only other thing they have is Exchange, which is facing increasing competition from Domino and OpenMail.
The UI sucks. It made sense to take over the desktop some years ago, but let's face it the desktop is becoming homogenized pretty fast. The heavy interface is no longer necessary.
Maybe Sun wants to divest their engineering resources -- have them go work on Java, XML, Solaris, whatever. That's ok. I bet the people most familiar with the design will continue guiding and contributing to the open side.
>2. Cross-platform support will die. Open Source
>projects of significant magnitude just don't
>happen on the major GUI OSes. StarOffice for
>Windows will lag far enough behind StarOffice for
>Linux that it won't be the cross-platform
>solution that it is touted as today.
Tell you the truth, I think the cross platform support will increase. XFree and Gnome have spread far beyond the X86 platform at this point. If the basic UI of SO gets fixed, and Gnomified, this could be a cross-platform bonanza, at least on the free side. Perhaps somene will use one of the free crossplatform toolkits (like wxWindows) to do the platform dependent work. That would keep things stable.
In all honesty, I don't think a lot of places would seriously consider using SO on a windows machine if thay already had Office. But I do think a lot of places might consider running SO on Linux if the whole ASP/online registration thing continues.
I don't think people realize, the way Bill Gates realizes, that internet software could become like the video store -- your company uses MS Office for $.50 cents an hour, etc., and you get "popups" for security patches, upgrades, etc. that prompt for your credit card number -- Net connection required to even use the S/W. I suspect a lot of companies will switch entirely to Linux and SO when this stuff hits the 'net.
Sensitive parts of the government will have to switch to something standalone to do their work, for example. I don't know of any security model that would let someone do analyses on advanced military aircraft or nuclear weaponry over an ASP based web app model. The security people just can't allow that.
>3. This might even spell the death of StarOffice.
>GPL has produces a whole bunch of useful code,
>but the inevitable branching of the project will
>kill the corporate acceptability of StarOffice.
>Branching has proven inevitable on all but the
>simplest of projects.
Funny, I know of only a couple small projects that have branched, and they only branched because the Author wouldn't accept patches or didn't like the mods. In one case, the Author stopped working on the project, refused to answer emails about bugs, and took the GPL code off his webpage. Someone else took over, on a new webpage, and the original author started screaming "branch!" -- but that's not really a branch, IMHO.
If you mean that GPLing SO will make Sun lose control of SO, I agree. But I see no reason for it to branch that heavily. There are no Gimp branches, for example. This was always a behind-the-scenes project for Sun, it's not that big of a deal.
>4. If all that's not enough, GPL'd projects don't
>generally produce good end user software in terms
>of UI. Granted StarOffice pretty well sucks now
>in this regard, GPL won't help.
We had a 400 pg. Word document at work that was BSOD'ing NT on a P3/500/128 mb. machine. I was able to load and scroll fwd. and backward through the document with SO on a P1/200/32 mb. box using SO. Mangement still wouldn't let us use SO -- and I admit some of the formatting was wrong.
Gnome and KDE seem to be decent user interface software, and both are GPL'd. Both are improving rather strongly, I'd say. Some of the g[fill in the blank] programs -- gphoto, gimp, gnumeric, etc. -- don't have bad UI's at all. gimp could use some work
I've never throught the SO interface was "bad" -- at least not at the level of the child apps. The MDI thing that wraps all the child apps has to go! Only a few people I know actually like that.
I think GPL will help the UI. I just bet that within a few releases of a GPL'd SO, the root interface will be completely redone.
>Assuming Sun goes forward with GPLing StarOffice,
>we can all pretty much stop watching it.
...and start using it.
>Just my controvertial $.02.
...your $.02 has been "controvertally" raised to $.04.
Re:Why always take? (Score:2)
As to your comments as to 'vultures of commercial software'. True, there is a great deal of immitation in free software - but largely, this is making available equivalent software on Operating Systems for which that software is not available (and thus provide potential users with one less objection as to why they cannot use said operating system...). Or, it is providing software for those who have moral qualms with using nonfree software (as in speech and/or as in beer.)
You state "The majority [...] think only in terms of raiding, and pillaging, out of some staunch anticommercialism, even when the company supports your cause."
While it is true that there are those who are "staunch[ly] anticommercial". I don't feel you have a basis for claiming a majority of those interested in free software/linux/slashdot readers, fall into this category. If you were to characterize as "staunchly antifree" then I'd be more inclined to agree, but those are not one and the same. Incidentally, I am neither, but given a choice I prefer free (mostly as in speech) software, because I have the potential/opportunity to fix and/or enhance that software as the need arises. Something that I can rarely do with commercial software.
LetterRip
Comment removed (Score:3)
Re:Why always take? (Score:2)
Re:An interesting question... (Score:3)
AFAIK, most of SO is written in C++.
I tried running SO on Linux about three years ago, when the JVM pickings for Linux were rather slim, but it ran and the performance was almost acceptable.
I seriously doubt any major portion of SO is written in Java.
Re:Responding as a community (Score:2)
Even in an Open Source world, there is room for multiple efforts.
I love it. Ask an Open Source advocate why all software should be free and he'll say "to avoid duplication of effort". Ask him to explain why the release of a superior product won't destroy his business and he says "there is room for multiple efforts".
Re:Responding as a community (Score:2)
If there's one thing I really don't think we have to worry about, it's that this will cause Slashdotters to start predicting the death of Microsoft. :-)
A *clarion* call not a *carrion* call! (Score:2)
Whoah!
I can't flaunt open hostility toward anybody at all about Sun GPLing StarOffice, because I save my hostility for my zen-rock-garden social life! ("25y/o SWM, reasonable looking and employed, seeks curious, down-to-earth pixie with" -- oh never mind) I'm happy / pleased / surprised / impressed that they're even thinking about releasing it under an other-than-closed license.
As to it helping other projects, well
Re: Leading, not following -- this may be a glass half empty glass half full type of issue, but it seems to me that a GPL'd star office will possible inspire several / many other efforts the same way Mozilla has -- perhaps it will provide the glue that an otherwise stuck project requires (as someone else has pointed out, import filters would be very helpful) or the inspiration to one-up SO in one or more vital aspects. No more harmful than WOrdPerfect and Word jockeying by adding things they think users will like. (Except with Free software, if you think the result is overburned, you can fix it to the limit of your time and inclination). Your description makes software sound like more of a zero-sum game than I think it really is, particularly with sharing-encouraged licenses.
Standing on the shoulders of giants and things like that is the end result I hope emerges, because I selfishly want to find / contribute at least some kvetching to a good Free word processor. I mentioned AbiWord because I like it's style and speed, but it would be even better if the unimplemented featuers *were* implemented. If I'd said "perhaps now SO can inherit some of the great design and ease of use of AbiWord," would that have jarred the same nerves? To me, they're morally equivalent ideas, I just see one as being closer to my ideal than the other. ymmv
From the vultures' nest,
timothy
Re:Minor clarifications (Score:2)
Sorry. It was unfair to label you as the archetype for the Open Source Advocate. In fact, it's unfair to do that to anybody.
Nevertheless, such a character does exist. Much like the "average joe" he is nobody yet everybody in the Open Source movement. At least, that is the way me and many others perceive it.
I'm intrigued. If AbiWord doesn't make money, what enables you and your cohorts to continue producing it? What is SourceGear's insentive to transfer revenue from a source (which must exist) to a sink?
SUN: Open source = abandon? (Score:4)
I hope this doesn't happen to Star Office. It's needed.
PLEASE, somebody build a project around this (Score:3)
I have noticed that without organization and project support of GPL'ed code, the codebase dies and we all get upset.
Remember how excited we all got when they open-sourced mozilla? We all downloaded the source, went through the basic compile process and got a flimsy piece of crap (no offence Mozilla folks). Encouraged and motivated, we... Sat on our hands.
What happened? The management of the project was basically weak, and lacked community buy-in IMHO. The whole thing suffered (and still suffers, to some degree) from lack of leadership and a solid and focused development effort. Where is that great open-source browser we hoped to achieve? And after how many years of being open-sourced? (clue: it's been out there for nearly 30 months)
Contrast this with well-managed, truly noteworthy open-source project such as the linux kernel, apache, etc.
I swear people, MS will bury soffice if this is handled badly... It's a given. Where will MS Office be in two-and-a-half years?!?!??!!?!!! soffice will be a non-issue if we assle around with it for two-and-a-half years.
We need excellent project management and an organized development effort for this to succeed. I have never seen it mentioned anywhere, but I suspect ESR was embarrassed as hell after he talked Netscape into releasing the source, and the community dropped the ball (or at least that's how it seemed to me). It was setup very nicely, the quarterback had the ball, made a beautiful pass straight into the endzone... But nobody was there to catch it for the touchdown.
Everyone whip out your copy of The Cathedral and the Bazaar, turn to page 75, and read the section titled Epilogue: Netscape Embraces the Bazaar. Specifically, read the last three paragraphs of this section on pp. 77-78. I personally regard the last paragraph as "We will get other chances." Well, this might be it, boys and girls.
Sorry if I sound negative; but honestly, I want to see this succeed, and I take it very, very seriously. PLEASE, somebody figure out how and where this will be managed, and fast, or it will be another mozilla.
IANAD (I am not a developer), but I'll do all I can to support this (bug reports, OS-level admin stuff, etc.) and to make this work. So should we all, because we have to, if we're gonna win.
Thanks for reading,
DragonWyatt
Re:A filter is a driver like a library or module (Score:2)
Re:yeah (Score:2)
Were I not completely at a loss for free time, I might put some work into that...
Re:Pretty sure now.. (Score:3)
What we really need are open API and file format specifications, and preferably file formats based on XML. If there were some competition where individual suite components are concerned, you might not see Access, an app that's almost too buggy even to load itself into memory, stuffed in with Excel (which is fairly stable) and Word (somewhat less stable).
While I'm certainly eager to see M$ dismembered by the DOJ, I'd also be happy to see them forced into publishing their APIs and file format specs.
Re:An interesting question... (Score:2)
Steven E. Ehrbar
Re:Puurrrfect (Score:2)
So, you can't just "tear out that annoying Win98-clone WM". SO essentially is a Windows application running on top of its own incompatible flavor of Wine; porting it to gtk or Qt would be as much work as moving an MFC app to gtk or Qt.
Steven E. Ehrbar
Re:Responding as a community (Score:2)
Huh? I have never heard this. Here is what I have heard.
"So that software won't suck", "all bugs are shallow to a million eyes" and my favorite "because freedom is better"
Less Duplication Doesn't Mean One Project (Score:3)
I'm quite glad that GNOME and KDE and GNUstep are using different tools and languages to try to solve the "GUI problem," as they can find different aspects of the solutions thereof, and can be more aggressive in their experimentation as they do not risk "disaster for all" should they try something and fail.
And the above two points ignore the factor that despite their duplications of effort, they may all the same be avoiding larger multiples of duplication of effort. After all, in the MS-DOS world, there were literally dozens of spreadsheet and word processor packages, and it is really only out of quite rapacious behaviour on the part of Microsoft that package counts on Windows fell to more like a half-dozen. (MS Office, MS Works, Lotus Suite, Borland/WP Suite, with, likely, some others that few bother thinking about...)
Duplication of effort does diminish; there used to be about a dozen "Quicken Clone" projects, many of which have consolidated into working on GnuCash. [gnucash.org] There used to be two GCC projects, which have consolidated to one.
Re:Minor clarifications (Score:2)
Ok, that answers the how, but not the why. If SourceGear was just sick and tired of dealing with proprietary MS file formats, and had enough spare developers lying around to do something about it, I can certainly empathize with that (while maintaining my long-standing preference for non copyleft licences of course, but that is another kettle of fish).
Re:Less Duplication Doesn't Mean One Project (Score:2)
For the record, I personally don't think duplication of effort is a bad thing at all.
It sometimes goes by another name: Diversity.
Re:Responding as a community (Score:2)
So, being in high school implies a "non-intelligible" type?
That kind of sucks. Because I thought I had a chance at being of the intelligent posters if posted intelligently. I am glad you straightened that up for me, because I was just about post more garbage on this forum, you know; one of them "non-intelligible" posts.
Otherwise, I agree with you about the downhill trend of slashdot. That is, once you ignore the bigotry.
Best Regardsm,
Kevin Holmes
Re:Pretty sure now.. (Score:3)
One last thing, is the GPL really considered to be the free-est license around? I am not expert or even that informed, but I was understand that the BSD license took that title?
After considerable investigation, I've decided that the license underwhich you received your education is the most free license.
To date, I have yet to hear of any school asking you to sign a EULA or even read any kind of an agreement at all pertaining to what you could or could not do with your education. You can even claim that what you know is your own knowledge, unless it's a famous piece of knowledge like the theory of relativity.
Seriously? Public Domain is usually considered the most free license, followed closely by non advertising BSD, then advertising BSD. There are several other advertising licenses that permit use in both closed and open sourced applications (such as the IJG license). Then we have copyleft licenses that allow closed-source linking, such as LGPL. Then we have pure copyleft (GPL). Then we have restricted open source (SCSL, MSRL), closed source, military projects, black military projects, "I could tell you but I'd have to kill you", and "you're dead".
A lawyer was recently consulted to see where the Artistic License might fit on this spectrum. We'll get back to you as soon as he stops laughing.
Missing the entire point of free software (Score:5)
Being the most innovative kid on the block may look good on the resume, but it only really matters in a world of restrictive intellectual property laws. The whole point of free software is to demolish IP boundaries so that the collective creativity and intelligence of the world's developers and users can be pooled to the benefit of all without being hindered by proprietary restrictions. If the free software community did nothing but plunder the work of other people and use it to build the cheapest, most flexible, easiest-to-use, and most reliable software around and did it without coming up with one idea of its own, well, mission accomplished.
Anyone who wants to get into a pissing match with Sun, MS, or whomever about creativity and innovation is certainly free to do so, but the main purpose of both the Free and Open Source software communities is the sharing of knowledge. Hot-dogging is a personal imperative, and really irrelevant to the world at large.
OS/2 version (Score:2)
I wonder if a GPLed one could be ported again to the platform. Sun blamed IBM compilers for not being able to compile 5.2.
__
Re:Pretty sure now.. (Score:2)
all these ... office types ... that ... need a bloated graphical office suite ... need to ... learn VI. Then they will be productive!
Yes, all those business types, spending their time trying to get their three data points into excel, then into a chart, then the chart into a powerpoint slide show*, when what they really need is a piece of chalk, a blackboard, and training in voice projection! It seems** that the only tangible result of the office app madness has been office colleagues swamping each other with reports.
Too many reports about nothing that nobody has time to read. Instead of writing a concise three paragraph statement, people spend twice the time fiddling with presentation.
Your post has been moderated 'Funny', but it's a real issue. I guess ms poured those $2Bn research dollars*** into writing reports in their own office app. about their research....
* Does office even do this..? I've never used office... :-) /. post...
** See Landauer, Thomas K. "The Trouble With Computers"
*** A statistic 'quoted' somewhere in a
StarView? (Score:2)
For example, I'm fairly sure that StarOffice is built upon a Win32 compatibility library from Bristol. They can't GPL that.
Didn't StarDivision use their own library called StarView? If Sun bought this along with StarOffice, StarView might be in the deal as well as SO.
This would be rather interesting - a cross-platform GUI lib, for Windows, Mac, Linux/Unix plus formerly OS/2 (don't know if it's still supported). And it's been show to work rather well...
I'm sure people will tell me how much it sucks as compared with GTK or Qt, but do they support as many platforms?
My personal f1rst p0st to /.
Re:Responding as a community (Score:2)
So presumably there would be no problem at opensourcing that.
However, back when I saw this, I don't think it supported X yet, so they may have chosen to use Bristol's library, yet that would have been a somewhat strange decision to take.
Re:Missing the entire point of free software (Score:2)
My comment was that innovation can and should exist here in the Open Source community as well. We should all strive to move the computing world forward, not for the mere benefit of hot-dogging but for the benefit of the users.
Again, I am impressed tremendously by the OS community. It has done many great things, but if it ever were thrust into a position of leadership (strange to think about, being a collective and not an individual) in the industry, the community would need to innovate in order to keep the industry afloat.
That's all I'm saying there.
Re:Staroffice (Score:2)
s/any desktop functionality//g;
s/any underdone window manager functionality//g;
s/do it all in one place//g;
And use what is left. Which is not that bad.
Re:Free-est license (Score:2)
Molog
So Linus, what are we doing tonight?
Now you do (Score:2)
This is news??? (Score:2)
After all, by definition the GPL should include the source code; given that we're seeing StarOffice included as part of a number of commercial Linux distributions they should have done this months ago.
It's going to be very interesting to see how well StarOffice does against WordPerfect Office in the Linux market.
It will be great for non-Intel Linux (Score:2)
Re:Missing the entire point of free software (Score:3)
In my opinion there is room for both cathedrals and bazaars and they complement each other.
Re:Puurrrfect (Score:2)
--
Re:Missing the entire point of free software (Score:2)
That is very true, but also only relevant to the individual developer(s), not to the community of users. C has been very useful to me and to many other programmers; the arc of Kernighan and Ritchie's careers affects the usefulness of C in no discernable way, however significant it may be to them, personally. My point wasn't that innovation doesn't matter, just that while it may matter a great deal to a developer, it is often a secondary consideration for his or her users.
Re:Puurrrfect (Score:2)
Thanks for volunteering.
--
Re:Why Microsoft will be death by next month (Score:2)
But then again I was just joking...
Re:That would be great (Score:2)
Star Office is very configurable. Now, I've not tried to not install everything (i.e. remove major components) but I know you can uncheck them if you don't want them installed. I spent quite a bit of time checking and unchecking very specialized components of the StarOffice family...
Maybe you need to go through the custom install again?