Re: What is GNOME office?

[Gregory Leblanc <gleblanc cu-portland edu>]

> Dick Porter wrote:
>  
> > Surely "what is GNOME Office" should be "all GNOME applications that do
> > officey things". If we have more than one candidate for a particular role,
> > then include them all. Choice is good (particularly when they all interoperate)!
> 
> Unfortunately, this thought process doesn't work well in the current
> GNOME corporate expansion.  Corporations that are considering investment
> into GNOME will want to know which application is the "official"
> component of GO, when two or more exist.  Companies need to assure that
> their payroll dollars are being invested in the most productive manner
> possible, and this means a single sanctioned suite in most cases. 


I don't think so.  There will be multiple implementations of some parts
of GNOME office, because that's  what's called for.  For example, we've
go Abi Word (StuDlY CaPs?), which looks like a very nice word-processing
component, and we've got the components that are available in
OpenOffice.  Both fill the same role, but they have some different
features (I can't say what, as I haven't used a word-processor in a long
time).

> The only deviation from this that I consider likely would be if
> companies have plans that make licensing an issue.  For example, it is
> unlikely that Sun would directly fund gnumeric as they have plans for
> the office suite which evidently include proprietary extensions, based
> on the dual licensing they've applied to OpenOffice.  A purely GPLd
> package like gnumeric is unlikely to receive many Sun dollars even if
> adopted by the foundation board.  This type of duplication, where
> corporate interests are served is still quite possible, if the board
> doesn't choose to just adopt OpenOffice in its entirety. 


I happen to think that the board would be completely and totally out of
their minds to adopt OpenOffice as GNOME office in it's entirety, but
that's just me.  The hackers of the GNOME office components and the Open
Office components will decide what gets done, and it's just up to the
board to find/pick the most complete/best implementations.

> While it is arguable that duplication of effort is even more harmful in
> a resource constrained environment, reasons like education, choice, and
> simple enjoyment can make it acceptable to have duplication when money
> isn't involved.  The survival of alternatives will be based on whether
> individual hackers determine there is personal payback in extending and
> supporting a non-sanctioned app.


Are you saying that you think the board should sanction development of
applications for the GNOME office suite?  I don't believe this is part
of what the board is designed to do.  I think that they will decide
which applications consist of GNOME Office, when there are enough
components and enough integration to make this worthwhile, but I would
be somewhat worried if they said (at this point) that gnumeric would be
the GNOME Office spreadsheet, as it's clearly not a finished program (no
offense intended, but the todo list has a lot of items that need
completion before 1.0).
As always, everything I say here is just my opinion, and you're entitled
to disagree with me.

    Greg