Comments

• konfusedkiwi

  2006-12-05 02:50:27

  Your quote: Did you catch that last part about “free download for their registered users”?
  
  You clearly do not understand the difference between open source and proprietary commercial software. Businesses charge money for commercial software. Yes, that's right. This might be a new concept for you, look it up sometime - lightweight.
  
  Obviously, this is not a "royalty payment to Microsoft for their Interoperability IP" as you assert, it is simply commercial software.

• Draconishinobi

  2006-12-05 04:43:50

  The LGPL (like the GPL) requires that the source (in this case OpenOffice) be published. However, because it is the LGPL, not GPL, "programs that link to the library may be licensed under terms of your choice, so long as the library itself can be changed." (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/LGPL/2.1/)
  
  Another reason to use GPL not LGPL. (of course, there are reasons for using one over the other, but if you want truly free software go with GPL)

• Joshua Bergland

  2006-12-05 07:42:05

  This is insane ...
  
  Is there anyone on this site that has actually followed Novell before the deal?
  
  The Windows version of OpenOffice 2.0.2 on Novell's website has been there for months. Its part of the Open Workgroup suite of products, but if you register a free account on their site you can download it and use it. It just lacks the support that is part of the Open Workgroup product.
  
  The Linux version is included in SLED and OpenSUSE, also for free with the source code of Novell's additions. Novell is simply extending the product and making their enhancements available to the OpenOffice community for inclusion.
  
  OpenOffice already supports Microsoft Office documents, what's wrong with them supporting the format in Office 2007? It's called business. What company would switch to an office application that couldn't guarantee compatibility with their clients?
  
  As much as you would like to pretend otherwise, Novell has lasted many years being the underdog. The problem (and its always been their problem) is that they are going to continue having poor press relations and marketing and let sites like this publishing opinions take down the company.
  
  Are you guys so anti Microsoft that you would take down any company that might try to work with them?
  
  Please actually use Open Enterprise Server and SLES 10, then tell me that Novell hasn't worked to take Linux to the next level of corporate readiness.

• Draconishinobi

  2006-12-06 22:37:44

  "Are you guys so anti Microsoft that you would take down any company that might try to work with them?
  
  Please actually use Open Enterprise Server and SLES 10, then tell me that Novell hasn’t worked to take Linux to the next level of corporate readiness. "
  
  Well, I don't know about anyone else here, but for me ...
  
  Yes, any company that joins the evil empire (M$) becomes a part of that empire and aids in its propagation. Thus, Novell must die ! And if any other company chooses to take the same path ... they must die as well ! The evil empire will be destroyed no matter what it takes. Besides, there are plenty of other distros that work better than SUSE and Novell.

• Juan Fermin

  2007-04-04 03:30:52

  I'm in the process of "Selling" a customer to swich over 20 desktops from XP to Suse Linux. One of the biggest selling points of Novell's product was the fact that it came with a version of Open Office that's compatible with Office 2007. This particular client gets a lot of documents, and many of them are beginning to come in on the new format, and they want to stay with the times, but can't afford to switch to MS Office, and pay $6000.00 to get everyone switched over. They like the fact that once they go with a Suse server, they can switch their Exchange Server to Scalix, and not only save a ton of money, but also have a much more stable system that's not subject to "How Good the Anti-Virus" is. Would you have preferred that Novell not offer this great product and they would have been Forced to buy more MS stuff? Get a Grip and wake up.

• Rico

  2007-07-03 14:34:01

  Well Draconishinobi, you sound more like a fundamentalist Muslim then someone with an actual working brain. Saying a company must die just because you don't like the software. So in fact you want all those people get fire just because you don't like the software.
  
  Who was it that once said: If you can beat them, join them.
  
  If you don't want it, don't use it. Now go get a life...

• nox

  2007-11-30 12:30:30

  Care! Seems that some other distros are silently adding the Novell patches into OOo, for example with mono and gstreamer support (and most of them are the same distro who complained about binary drivers, nonsense!!!!!).