OpenGoo is no competition for Google Docs (Update)
There are times when I think open source is an unstoppable force. And then there's OpenGoo.
OpenGoo declares its mission to be to "make the best Web Office. Period." But then it proceeds to undermine every benefit that a true Web office productivity application, like Google Docs, provides to its users. Like the Web, for starters.
That's right. The first thing that struck me when trying to use OpenGoo (aside from its rather unfortunate name, which is yet another reminder that marketing is an essential function, not an afterthought, for open-source projects) was the download page.
Download page?!? I thought this was a Web office productivity suite. Why would I want to download an application?
I never found out. Once I had downloaded and unzipped the file(!?), I was greeted with this:
(Credit:
Matt Asay)
I tried finding the application launcher, but couldn't. More pertinently, why should I? It's a Web application, right?
I finally gave up and used the demo, instead. It works fine, though it's nowhere near as polished as Google Docs, and still left me wondering, "Why do I care, as a lay consumer, that this is open source?"
Yes, there is value in having access to source code should OpenGoo go down (particularly as it appears one is meant to install and run OpenGoo inside the enterprise firewall, which sort of defeats the purpose of it being a "Web Office," but...). But would open source make OpenGoo a more resilient service, in the way that some are (wrongly) claiming open source would make Twitter more impervious to denial-of-service attacks?
Of course not.
The OpenGoo site brags that by using OpenGoo, "you are free of vendor lock-in." But I would gladly trade a little lock-in for some ease of use.
There is tremendous value in open source, but the OpenGoo developers have mistaken where it begins and ends. Open source should be invisible to the end users that care about a Web-based office productivity suite. By making it a feature, OpenGoo demonstrates misunderstanding of its audience.
Zoho also uses a lot of open source, but it doesn't sell open source as a feature. This is probably why you've heard of Zoho but, until this article, you likely hadn't heard of OpenGoo.
UPDATE @ 12:12 PT on 8/18/09: My post above was written in some haste, which prevented me from adequately explaining my points. I apologize for the confusion. I understand (and clearly implied) that OpenGoo is not a direct competitor to Google Docs, as it's meant to be run behind the firewall (i.e., it's an on-premises installation, not a cloud application).
But this, as I noted, is its biggest deficiency (well, after the name). It is neither fish (locally installed Microsoft Office) nor fowl (cloud-based Google Docs), and so it's unclear what value, if any, it provides, simply on architecture/installation alone.
No one is going to beat Microsoft Office with a light upgrade in deployment options, least of all OpenGoo, which I continue to find underwhelming in its UI and feature set. Open source is unlikely to improve on this. Given how much OpenOffice has struggled to attract significant development from outside Novell and Sun, in part because the development community isn't interested in rebuilding Microsoft Office (why would it? I doubt many developers have a Microsoft Office "itch" to scratch).
So, OpenGoo isn't Google Docs and doesn't want to be. What does it want to be? The premier Web Office, according to its website. It's not, as I note above and underline emphatically here, because it's light on Web and not innovative in its approach to Office.
I apologize for my hastily written post, but OpenGoo doesn't get any better on further reflection.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
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That is, I unsubscribe to your twitter and dont bother much about your writing anymore. Should have done it earlier.
This is why I happily pay money to use Microsoft Office and Windows. Both of those products provide a far superior experience for me to any competitor at any price.
Use open source if it provides a better bang for the buck, not because you're on some anti-capitalism crusade.
FYI the www is a result of Open Standards ....
I suggest (you lay consumer) step back a bit. USE YOUR BRAIN and think & then express your ideas !
I should agree that you can write funny articles !
2. You're too lazy to even see that this is something you install on your own web server. It therefore gives you control of your own data.
This entire article is a joke.
I've been using OpenGoo for awhile now and also eyeos. These two products are not equivalent, but are both cloud platforms. I like controlling my own cloud. If you want to try eyeos, you don't need to host it yourself as they offer a hosted (free) version. Not sure if OpenGoo has any hosts available yet.
It's like laconi.ca vs. identi.ca, and the distinction is in the Wired article you link to. And while it might not be the greatest name, it's a noble enough goal -- to provide software for running your own private Google Docs-like web app. There are a lot of different reasons you might want to do this, but I'd agree it is more about not trusting your private documents to Google and/or the "cloud" in general than "vendor lock-in" (as Google Docs can export to OpenDoc, right?).
But yes, the distinction between software and service should be made here.
Open source can be a good thing but too often people involved in the projects and people blindly advocating them often have blinders on preventing them from seeing the big picture.
OpenGoo is meant to be hosted on your own server? Why? Because Google is the place to store your vacation itinerary, not your legal documents or PII information. It's where you put your highly proprietary designs or not-yet-copyrighted materials that are still being revised.
Yes, it's an instant set-up, but to be fair, I wouldn't hand OpenGoo off to a lawyer to have it installed. That's a job for a sys admin.
What other advantages does OpenGoo bring to the table? You can bring in your own encryption scheme, if you're paranoid. You can make custom document types if need be. You can do whatever you please, since you have the code. The purpose of Open Source is not just to get free stuff, but to be free.
Matt just doesn't understand what he downloaded-- it's a piece of software that needs installed on a web server, not already hosted web application (like google docs) or a desktop app. He's best he's missed the point, and worst he's being willfully ignorant.
And OpenGoo is never for *end users* but for a third party. It likes Gforge vs Google Code.
Open source has its advantages. While less useful for individuals as they often have to wait on programmers, if your business has its own team, you can get a head start on a project by taking an open source codebase and have your own programmers debug, extend, and customize it. Open source development, aside from the largest projects such as Apache and the larger CMS's (Plone, Drupal, etc), isn't always a good idea if you don't have your own programming skills. Developers abandon projects all the time leaving you with an eventually insecure product. But even a business without a development team can hire temporary coders to continue a project for them and this may be more cost-effective than keeping a programmer on staff or buying into a large license agreement.
They are the company behind OpenGoo. OpenGoo is a great solution for companies looking for more control on their office suite.
Unless the whole point was to be really subtly humorous and point out what the average non-web dev user might go through. If that's the case, OK, bravo. You win at teh internets.
Matt, do you think the idea of private corporate clouds has merit running corporate-wide services? Or do you only believe that a public cloud will work for all applications?
What's your take on IBM's private cloud services initiative? What's your take on the private-public cloud bridge approahc that Eucalyptus Systems is taking? There seems to be a lot of interest in private clouds, what sort of services did you think those clouds would be running?
And more importantly do you trust the public cloud to hold sensitive information?
You throw the term "end user" around very liberally here. The "end user" is not the person who is going to download this program. The "end user" is the person who is going to use this application after their IT department has installed it. Is there no reason for Drupal to open source either? Because I have several installs of that on my home server and I LOVE being able to throw it around. Not as a website, but as an improvised cloud computing platform for myself. Very limited functionality, but I am able to save documents and organize information for myself and my friends very easily.
Maybe my having a "home web/ssh server" and enjoying the "command line" makes me something other than an "end user", but quite honestly I have wanted a Google Docs like platform that I can deploy on my own server for a long time. This is EXACTLY what I want. While I am a firm believer that open source programs, and for that matter ALL programs should be user friendly at the point that the end user gets to it, you also have to understand that different end users have different technical skills. For the end user who doesn't know how to code having access to the OpenOffice code, or the Firefox code is about as useful to them as having access to the code for this program. That doesn't mean that giving more technical users access to this code doesn't have advantages for the market, and for the way the software develops. That conveys benefit to the end user in the finished environment that they will finally utilize this software in.
OK, here's how you do it.
1. Get one of your web server savvy buddies to setup a XAMPP (it's a full featured web server, but with training wheels) install on your machine or maybe on a Virtual Machine - you decide.
2. Extract the contents of the OpenGoo archive to your htdocs folder.
3. Keep your web server buddy around. Have him show you how to use phpMyAdmin to setup a MySQL user and database for your OpenGoo install.
4. Fire up a browser and point it to the opengoo folder on your web server. On a vanilla XAMPP install on your own machine, this would be http://localhost/opengoo
5. Make sure your reading/writing privileges are good.
6. Fill in the username and database settings on the OpenGoo form to match what you put into phpMyAdmin.
7. Setup an admin account.
8. Log in.
9. You're ready to go.
10. Reassess OpenGoo and rewrite the article before your boss sees this. It's cool man. Everybody fubar's now and again. We won't tell anybody.
Office is indeed a more feature rich product than anything out on the market, and that's awesome and all IF YOU USE THOSE FEATURES. Sorry for the all caps, but this is just kind of a necessary emphasis. I have never used a feature in an office suite that isn't available in OpenOffice. Ever. Period. There are power users who use the more advanced Office stuff, and bully for them. They are getting their money's worth, for the rest of us every cent over the price of OpenOffice (the entire price of office) is wasted. That's just the plain truth.
I will not pretent that Google Docs is to where I need it to be 100% of the time yet, and I looked at the Goo thing, and well it's not even halfway to Google Docs yet. I'll keep my eye on it, maybe someday. But Office, really?
Most open source projects have a download page, that's how people gain access to the source code, hence the 'open' in the name. do some homework then rewrite, and next time please, PLEASE, read the manual before you start badmouthing something.
- by pentest August 17, 2009 5:26 PM PDT
- Unless GoogleDocs has radically improved over the past 10 months(last time I tried it), it is a steaming pile of spyware feces. The table and list functionality is atrocious and its format conversion is pathetic. It auto-saves and moves the cursor to the top of the document for crying out loud!
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