"LibreOffice and the Document Foundation are for sure a hot topic today here at OWF," wrote Red Hat's Jan Wildeboer this morning.
“[W]hy does the steering committee and founding member list have only two developers?”
--Aaron Seigo, Plasma developerAaron Seigo, one of the most prominent voices from KDE, has voiced his opinion in Identi.ca by writing: "best of luck to Libre Office, as Oracle's ship of F/OSS sinks faster and faster ... though somehow i doubt they care... though i have to say .. "Document Foundation"? really? contender for "Poor Foundation Name Of The Year", subcategory "Vague and Misleading"... and why does the steering committee and founding member list have only two developers? (inc one guy who worked on the KDE integration)... are there really that few developers left, or are the local(ization) teams for OO.o the managerially savvy ones?"
For reasons we explained this morning, Oracle is not a safe company to trust. Can KDE explain why it has not added itself to the list of supporters, or at least not yet? Might it be because the KOffice team collaborates with OpenOffice.org on some code?
Interestingly enough, 2 years ago we mentioned "LibreOffice" based on this post ("It is time we had a 'LibreOffice'"). ⬆
Comments
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2010-09-30 18:44:16
Dr. Roy Schestowitz
2010-09-30 20:02:32
Dr. Roy Schestowitz
2010-09-30 20:03:02
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2010-09-30 22:10:06
Oh now look what you have done! I use Open Office every day and am happy that it liberated the legacy Microsoft documents that came with my job. Now, I had to ask myself why I don't use KOffice, Gnumeric or even Abiword. The whole point of liberating these documents was to give myself the choice of using those relatively lightweight tools. It seems that even the 3.5 branch of KDE gives acceptable formatting from OO converted documents. It's not perfect, but that is probably due to the document's perverse, Microsoft origin. With a little work, those problems will be fixed.
Dr. Roy Schestowitz
2010-09-30 22:20:18
"well, perhaps #kde users prefer #koffice ? :-) anyway, the more #odf implementations (free and commercial) the better :-)" -Bart Hanssens
"I could argue that either way. More choice is good. But getting critical mass on a project is good also. Can we have both?" -Rob Weir
I take Weir's side but also accept Hanssens' which is why I mentioned KOffice.
Pete Daniels
2010-09-30 23:49:29
That's not fair on either side. KDE's office suite is no way rudimentary. It's certainly not at the level of spit-shine that OOo/LibreOffice is, and I wouldn't claim otherwise, but it is just as certainly the #2 office suite in the free world. For cryin' out loud, KOffice predates OOo by almost five years. They've been around.
And to call what Gnome has a "suite" is misleading. Abiword and Gnumeric are individually fantastic and lightweight programs, and I don't have a bad word to say about either of them, but they're not a suite.
I was going to address your general point seperately, but I feel like I already have. KDE has a mature office suite built on their native technologies, representing an investment of more than a decade's worth of work. There's no other group in the free software world that can say anything like that, so it makes sense for Canonical, the Gnome foundation, et al, to throw their weight behind the liberation of the de facto standard, OOo/LibreOffice. KDE doesn't really stand to gain much of anything from that.
So with my obligatory defense of KDE out of the way, let me say that I'm really excited about LibreOffice, and I really hope this move breathes new life and enthusiasm into the project. This could be pretty cool.
best wishes, p.daniels
Dr. Roy Schestowitz
2010-09-30 23:54:49
cyrille
2010-10-01 06:31:52
I find this comment very insultive, and out of line. We collaborate with every open source project, we will collaborate with the same respect with OpenOffice.org and with LibreOffice, or Abiword, or Gnumeric.
And if you want an answer to your question, I suggest to contact the KDE ev directly on the subject http://ev.kde.org/contact.php (instead of using a blog where you have to register to answer).
Personnaly, I have yet to see a reason why KDEev should be listed as a supporter of a software that does not use KDE technologies, its goal is not the defense and promotion of Free Software (for this, we have the FSF), it is the defense and promotion of Free Software using KDE technologies. Since LibreOffice does not qualify, there is no reason to be listed.
Dr. Roy Schestowitz
2010-10-01 10:03:13