Comments on: The problem with (Not so) OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice and other open-source projects are hobbled by their corporate masters. It's time to open up OpenOffice for its own good.

[bonesbautista]

Matt, thanks for the article - good to know. As a Mac user, I have waited *years* to get a decent port of OO. I'm not a programmer, however, I tried contributing feedback through use of the NeoOffice port but it was hard getting behind a product that would go away eventually, when OO would come out.

After four years of hoping, I became more dependent on MS Office (Mac & Win) and then iWork came out. Keynote and PowerPoint are absolutely better than OO's offerings, and Pages and Word beat OO as well for interoperability.

After several years of letting the then-awesome StarOffice languish in extended repose - and it's still in "beta", I see little reason for Sun to waste any more time working on OO. I downloaded the latest Mac beta just a few days ago - same old bugs, same old incompatibilities. Sigh.

[all-usernames-in-use]

Hey, check out Shuttleworth's latest blog entry...Asay fodder for sure. Even mentions Alfresco.

[alegr]

Matt, I hate to play grammar nazi, but "it's" means "it is", and if you want to say "of it", that will be "its".

[neilellis]

I've watched a few commercial open-source projects deal with this and it's interesting :) Basically it seems to come down to respect. If the project owners respect the community, then the community grows if they don't it shrinks. Respect is the volition of the owners and it manifests in many ways, examples:

*) FInancial - members of the community are given the chance to receive some profit from the success of the product, directly or indirectly.
*) Recognition - the developers who actually contribute are recognized for the efforts publicly.
*) Social/Philosophical - the ethos of a 'community product' is respected and that is the licenses remain open (even if there is a dual option), the community remains open and communication remains open.
*) Intellectual - the product owners don't expect the community to do the intellectual dirty work only (testing etc.).

I don't actually know the Alfresco community so I can't comment on how you guys are balancing this. But I believe from my own personal experience that community respect is really important to keep an active community going. I'm sure there are lots of other factors like the 'cool' factor of course, just how cool is it to be a committer on project X, but I reckon the foundation is respect.

SpringSource for example was certainly initially was able to keep most of these factors strong, I'm interested to see how they will fare in the future as commercial pressures strengthen (read that as 'new VCs are onboard').

Of course there are negative examples, but flamewars are not my thing :)

[The_Decider]

How much openness does Alfresco really have? How is it different than how open office is run?

And does it really matter?

Cloud computing is a fad that idiots flock to yet will find out how dumb their move is once their precious business data starts leaking out or they lose days of man hours when they can't access it. There will always be a strong market for desktop applications.

The best work in open office is usually from Novell, not Sun. It is a complex enough project that few people will be able to significantly contribute outside the core developers. That is no different than any other large open source project.

The problem is your posts are increasingly advertisement vehicles for your company.

[odubtaig]

Where in this post does he mention Alfresco exactly?

I await your well thought out and considered reply yo both this and Matt's followup post but, given the amount of well though out and considered content in this comment I won't hold my breath.

[The_Decider]

I didn't say he specifically mentioned them. In your bout of self-righteousness you forgot to understand what I was saying.

His company does pretty much what he is complaining about, so it is in play.

How difficult is that?

[odubtaig]

The words 'copyright reassignment' mean anything to you? They don't apply to Alfresco's contribution agreement which is more directly comparable with Novell's.

Which was part of my point.

Now, starting from the top, is there any point at which you've actually known what you're talking about? Is there any point at which you're going to look at the study regarding OSS community building?

[oneoclock]

Well, Sun could always set up a not-for-profit OpenOffice Foundation and transfer the rights in the software to that foundation. Use similar bylaws as Apache or other such non-profits and it should be doing well.

[fooldog01]

OO being free was a real draw for me. Unfortunately I deteremined it was actually worth the hundred bucks to use Office 2007. Office is just a FAR superior product. Its a shame too. OO has so much potential.

[The_Decider]

What exists in Office 2007 that use actually use that is not in open office?

[Lerianis]

OpenOffice is just not a good product as of yet. It does not support .docx (which I save all my files in today because it is a VERY robust format, that is almost impossible to corrupt).
It also has some problems still where features that are exceptionally easy to find in Microsoft office are almost IMPOSSIBLE to find in OpenOffice.