Giving up OpenOffice

Read:

• http://www.osnews.com/story/24808/Oracle_Calls_It_a_Day_Gives_OpenOffice_to_Apache_Foundation
• http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/announce/msg00047.html

Finally Oracle saw some light and decided that OpenOffice could not be continued to be under their governance and had to be given to the community (by handing it over to Apache Foundation). That's one good move but it's way too late. Better late then never.

Edit: Curious, why didn't Oracle simply hand over the rest of OpenOffice to The Document Foundation which already have huge community support and have been working on LibreOffice fork for a long time, whereas, Apache hadn't done much on OpenOffice ?

Oracle's huge mistake on OO.o

Again, Oracle made another huge mistake and this time, it's about Openoffice.org.

Read: http://developers.slashdot.org/story/10/10/17/0210209/Oracle-Asks-OpenOffice-Community-Members-To-Leave

Microsoft have been teasing and attempting to stamp out OpenOffice [here], and Oracle really let us down by being mean and uncooperative. If the situation of OpenOffice doesn't get resolved and parties interested do not stay united, that would be Microsoft's dream. Microsoft's ambitions to stamp out open source would come a step closer to fulfilment and it would be a disaster to the open source community.

Oracle... if you do not wake up, it maybe too late. You would lose support of the people who once supported your products and projects that you bought over from Sun.

Oracle's customers are actually developers and the community, not the corporate world. The real 'invisible' income are from the community. If it weren't for open source advocates and supporters pushing for their organisations and corporations to embrace open source and OpenOffice, there wouldn't be what Openoffice is today. OpenOffice, being the second in market share is all thanks to the effort by those community members, developers and open source users and advocates.

OpenOffice really owe it's success to us, the community. How would a product be successful without any users ?

Oracle, REPENT NOW !!!!!!

Let's all move to GO-OO or LibreOffice as other Linux distributions and Open advocates have done.

Lies about OpenOffice

Watch:

Here are the flaws of Microsoft's arguments:

Num	Time	Comment
1	0:00	Starting... OpenOffice doesn't need you to run it on Linux. It runs on Windows and Mac too.
2	0:13	'Exorbitant' to run a Linux ? It is far more cheaper, mostly you just download for free and install it. Not only is Linux super flexible, it is far more customizable. Ubuntu can even package a windows installer and run on top of Windows or use it to install Linux partition. It can be used as a System Rescue CD that runs with a set of tools not just to partition nearly every format of filesystem but to fix and diagnose your system. Cheap, Powerful, Flexible. This is Linux.
3	0:29	You spend a lot of time servicing open source because you are a NOOB. There's something called Google and IRC. Oh... and Microsoft says that they are committed to open source and now why are they talking bad about it ? Isn't Microsoft talking bad about themselves since they also support open source ?
4	0:35	Are you sure you are allowed to pull words from the Central Scotland Police's mouth ? There's something called 'cron' where you can automate the jobs. NOOB !
5	0:44	Don't blame OO.o for the macros. Microsoft refuse to open up their system.
6	1:02	OO.o has a very consistent format for ODF format but It has been shown that it is Microsoft's close source that makes it hard for compatibility with MS format NOT ODF format. We should support open formats not close formats ! Blame this on MS Office being close.
7	1:11	Purely insulting the senses of users of OO.o. That is considered a personal assualt. Should be flagged on Youtube.
8	1:14	Security ? ODF have the ability to encrypt your documents with encryption. Although it uses Blowfish,times have changed. The Document Foundation created to better OO.o would have the chance to do so rather then the Oracle controlled OO.o.
9	1:22	Don't blame OO.o ! MS Office being close is what that causes OO.o to have a moderate (not lousy) way of handling MS Docs. Come on, MS, open up and open source.
10	1:37	Any substantial proves ?
11	1:46	I think for MS products being close, OO.o is considered pretty good in where it is now.
12	1:55	Admittingly, OO.o's documentations needs better tidying.
13	2:18	If you need to pay for open source stuff like OO.o, you have been badly scammed and cheated. NOOB. Try Go-OO , a variant of OO.o. It has Windows installer too.
14	2:25	Microsoft, you are supporting open source aren't you ? If you ain't you don't need your CodePlex or whatever open source programs. Most open source stuff are mostly free or cheap but yes, not all are free in terms of monetary cost but they aren't expensive as MS stuff either. They could outperform MS products and has been proven to do so.
15	2:39	I rather think it's a wail of MS horror. Going back to closed standards as usual. Why not put the brain power and money on open proven stanrdards like ODF and better it ?
16	2:48	Microsoft smurking about this viewing, thinking it pwnz the Open Team.

MICROSOFT, DO NOT THINK DOING THIS VIDEO COULD UNDERMINE THE OPEN COMMUNITY !!! YOU ARE DEAD WRONG !!!

Microsoft patent storing docs in XML

Read "http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/08/microsoft-granted-patent-on-xml-word-processing-files.ars".

Imagine how much implication this patent can cause ? I think it's time for some international organization to yank Microsoft back to court and add another charge on Microsoft for this kind of manipulative moves.

By creating a patent for storing docs in xml, it literally is used as a spear to kill of competitors like OpenOffice's ODF format which does the same thing and it's trying to undermine the open source community because ODF is one of the famous symbols of the efforts of the open source community.

I think it's time Microsoft should be given a very hard and serious slapping for creating such an evil patent and the USPTO should wake up and not just blindly give patents. Such misuse of patent power by organizations like Microsoft who is well known for manipulating technology through it's powers should not be given to them.

Does USPTO ever consider the effects of giving patents or just give patents because someone's gonna pay you whatever amount you specify for the patent and you get to earn some good money and that's all you care ?

I really wonder if such patent offices really consider the impact of their actions !

OpenOffice Ribbon-like UI

Refer to the link "http://lifehacker.com/5331438/openofficeorg-screenshots-preview-a-ribbon+like-toolbar".

"This is not how OpenOffice should go..." as many OpenOffice users and supporters would criticise the latest OpenOffice Impress screenshot. This is the same comment I would use for the latest screenshot. Ribbon-like UI is for MS Office and let's leave the sucky and hard to navigate Ribbon-like UI for MS Office. I have tried MS Office a few times and the UI just sucks and is hard to understand and navigate.

While MS Office tries to make itself more unique, it also makes it's UI more unfriendly. Would it be better if you have the traditional menu bars and tool bars where everyone is accustomed to or the latest supposedly revolutionary Ribbon UI ? I prefer the more conservative and traditional yet easy to use menu bars and tool bars. Yes, it's outdated but it's been in use for so long and everyone is accustomed to it already.

Another danger of the Ribbon UI is that you have no idea what patents or stupid copyright stuff Microsoft have for it. You never know until it bites hard and bad.

So why not let's go to the traditional UI and don't ever touch the Ribbon UI because Ribbon UI is for Microsoft use as we have no idea what patents and hidden or open agenda Microsoft have installed and we have no idea what is out there waiting for us to walk into it's traps.

Anyway, from a GUI design point of view, Ribbon is unintuitive and sucks. Imagine you have such a huge 'Paste' , 'Copy' and 'Cut' button... like as though the user is a total idiot. The bar for containing the Ribbon UI takes up so much of screen space, I rather dedicate these space for a small button with a simple icon and then put a tool tip text to it. You can put stuff inside the right-click menu as well and it's more effective as people are used to right-clicking and expecting to see a list of options drop out from a menu.

The problem with most software is that the top menu bar, tool bar ...etc... are just hogging up space and the workflow is always disruptive. How does it become disruptive. Imagine you are typing and you have to move your mouse and look through some menus or tabs for some options or tools to use. Why not design something like an intelligent tool bar where as you type, certain valid options like bolding of changing text size is available and appears in a small translucent menu beneath the text. In Java, this can be done using a glass pane. Can you imagine having a bold tool for text available when you are trying to insert an image or a sound or video file in your document (i.e OO.o Impress) ? As you run into different scenarios, the menu would update itself showing you the possible options you can use rather than flooding the menu and tool bar with every thing. This is a better and more intelligent design isn't it ? Yes it requires better processing powers on the machine but these days, technology are advance and so are the processing powers with processor cores like Core 2 Duo ...etc...

I think we shouldn't try to ape someone's design blindly like OO.o(OpenOffice.org) did. We should use rationality instead of trying to ape MS's Ribbon UI.