--Bill Gates

People are encouraged not to use Go-OO because it's controlled by Novell, it contains Microsoft traps and it discriminates against non-Windows platforms (also see [**] below). However, on the upside, the Go-OO team has just done something right.

“DRM is not about rights. It’s about taking people’s right away and Sun should know better.”OpenOffice.org developers added DRM capabilities to PDF without consultation involving users. Does that not contradict Sun's stance on DRM? It did, after all, denounce Windows Vista and Microsoft for some of this. The explanation from a developer was that "the implementation of PDF import has been done according to the PDF specification, there is no plan to change this."

So, Sun Microsystems once again shows a level of cowardice. It refuses to challenge an unethical -- some would say "criminal" -- system. DRM is not about rights. It's about taking people's right away and Sun should know better. Either way, Go-OO developers have removed this disease from the code. This means that the very latest openoffice.org-pdfimport package (in Go-OO) can open DRM-protectedinfected PDFs. There is no 'add-on' disablement imposed on access. There are no unnecessary antifeatures.

Sun loses points for supporting DRM. Novell earns point for tossing DRM where it belongs. What a refreshing change. ⬆

Go-oo is actually the OpenOffice.org build used by Ubuntu, so if you install 8.10 it comes with the Go-oo edition of OO.o 2.4.1 This led me to go dig up the Windows build and try it out, and after some quick and dirty (and wholly unscientific) testing, I'm really impressed. It's fundamentally the same program, but faster -- visibly and noticeably faster to start up, even without the launch-accelerator app.