On Wed, Nov 15, 2000 at 02:51:42PM -0500, Havoc Pennington wrote: > > Sam TH <sam uchicago edu> writes: > > 1) The current GNOME office suite actually uses GNOME, something OpenOffice > > cannot say. I would be very surprised if GNOME made the decision to make > > non-GNOME software an official part of itself. > > > > 2) Currently, there is not even a procedure by which to submit code to > > OpenOffice (at least, not as far as I can tell). This doesn't sound > > like free software development to me. > > > > 3) To contribute code to open office, the developer must sign over the copyright > > to Sun, a company that has recently shown signs of changing, but has done lots > > of things that make the free software community less than happy. Java standards? > > SCSL? Need I go on? > > > > 4) Sun has stated [http://www.openoffice.org/FAQs/main_faq_new.html] that they > > want their XML file format to be an industry standard, but also that they want > > it to "evolve like Java specifications", that is, with Sun making all the > > decisions. > > > > I feel somewhat bad for being negative about Sun, but I don't think that either > > they or OpenOffice is all that GNOME needs at the moment. > > > > I agree with you that the OpenOffice project would need to address all > of these issues before becoming the "official GNOME office suite." > I don't think we should assume they won't address them, though. First, I wonder about your phrasing there. Are you suggesting that OO will become the GNOME office suite once it does those things? Is this set in stone? Second, I don't think that waiting until OO does all of those things is what Bart had in mind, in the email I was replying to. Personally, I expect OpenOffice to have a ramp-up time at least comparable to that of Mozilla, that is, long. And so GNOME is going to have to make decisions before all of that happens. For example, Sun is going around telling anyone who will listen that the decision has been made, and that OpenOffice is the new GNOME office. And I don't see anyone from GNOME challenging that view. So GNOME, and probably the board, will have to decide what the composition of GNOME office will be, before everything you want to get done gets done. And as to those specific items, I know they plan to address 1 and 2, but the Sun developers I've corresponded with seem to view 3 as a feature. And as to 4, I'll believe it when I see it. sam th sam uchicago edu http://www.abisource.com/~sam/ GnuPG Key: http://www.abisource.com/~sam/key
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