Re: What is GNOME office?

[jg pa dec com (Jim Gettys)]

> Sender: foundation-list-admin gnome org
> From: Daniel Veillard <Daniel Veillard w3 org>
> Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 15:21:43 +0100
> To: Mike Kestner <mkestner ameritech net>
> Cc: Dick Porter <dick+gnome acm org>, foundation-list gnome org
> Subject: Re: What is GNOME office?
> -----
> On Wed, Nov 15, 2000 at 08:08:52AM -0600, Mike Kestner wrote:
> > 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.
> 
>   Do you speak for one of those companies ? If no please abstain putting
> words in their mouth, if yes can you be more precise about the company's
> your are speaking for ?
> 

And I will point out that unless a company is planning to fund serious 
development of a particular application, the issue doesn't even arise 
in the first place....  

If I (temporarily) put a Compaq hat back on to discuss this issue inside 
Compaq, I'd currently tell my company that it really doesn't matter to 
us at all which WYSIWYG editor there is, or if there are several.  (As 
a board member, I will generally be wearing a gnome hat, rather than a 
Compaq hat: this comes with the territory of having accepted a place on 
the board.).

In fact, I would argue that having open interfaces allowing for components
to be swapped in and out is in fact absolutely vital for the long term
health of Gnome.

So it could be/is an issue for particularly affected companies for particular
applications they see as vital to their own future, but as an aggregate
of companies interested in Gnome, it isn't an issue.

It is the existance of, and the ability for multiple projects and/or 
company's tools to coexist that enables companies like Compaq to be 
comfortable with Star Office from Sun, for example, becoming part of Gnome. 

Large companies are in large part very concerned about a competitor achieving 
a monopoly position that may be expoited to lock them out of markets, 
rather than working with, or even at times depending on their competitors.  

The areas where there can be issues are for those parts of Gnome in which 
it is sensible for there to be "only one" of something: e.g. a file browser. 
In these cases, we'll have to work very carefully.  Nautilus is a good 
example, which comes to mind: thankfully, it appears to me (having kicked 
the tires) that "the right thing" is happening here.  Even here, diversity 
and modularity is absolutely required: I suspect I'm not going to be able 
to run Nautilus on my iPAQ, (at least as it currently exists) for example.

				- Jim


--
Jim Gettys
Technology and Corporate Development
Compaq Computer Corporation
jg pa dec com