StarOffice Source Released 219
mprudhom writes: "According to Yahoo!, Sun has today released the source to StarOffice, as promised.
Go to www.openoffice.org and download it, or just grab it with:
cvs -d:pserver:anoncvs@anoncvs.openoffice.org:/cvs login
cvs -d:pserver:anoncvs@anoncvs.openoffice.org:/cvs co OpenOffice ". Okay, people can stop submitting this now.
cvs -d:pserver:anoncvs@anoncvs.openoffice.org:/cvs login
cvs -d:pserver:anoncvs@anoncvs.openoffice.org:/cvs co OpenOffice ". Okay, people can stop submitting this now.
Re:For pete's sake! (Score:1)
Its the 14th here in Darwin Australia
And today at the High Church of Emacs (Score:2)
All together now:
"GPL, GPL, uber alles . .
hawk, not trolling, but not entirely facetious, either
The beauty of open source (Score:2)
For heven's sake, someone tell me that the first thing people are doing is creating a version with no desktop and separate *programs* rather than modules . . .
hawk
Re:Clippy is easy to toast. (Score:1)
Is this thing even useable? (Score:1)
What's new here that wasn't in 5.2? XML file formats, woo-hoo, it's not even the default way to save (yeah, I suppose they want to wait for the rest of the world to catch up, but then it will never catch on)!
At least the "Desktop" is gone, but that seems to be about the only big change I noticed. Oh yeah, and Help doesn't work...definitely not a step in the right direction.
Re:The eventual effects are somewhat obvious (Score:1)
No offense but, why is that so important? I think there's a lot more to be said for being stable, fast, and cheap. I'm still using a version of Office 95, but I'm not even using half of its functionality. I can't believe Joe Consumer can figure out most of these features anyway. He probably just wants to turn them off (Die, paperclip!)
Sure, there will be power users who desparately need every whiz-bang Office feature crammed in there in the last two versions.
But does Mom really need "improved table drawing","intelligent multilingual support", "collaborative sharing", or any of the other buzzwords on the MS Word site? Does she really need to expend the time wading through all these features?
Getting a free version of Star Office bundled with consumer PCs could be a big boon if it could reliably read and write Office formats. It sure might bring Office prices down...
Review of Star Office 5.2 (Score:2)
. .
It's short, but here's a review of Star Office 5.2 on Computerworld [computerworld.com]
Now I'm not knocking anything here, because I use Star Office 5.2 myself and got our office switched to it, but will the current efforts translate into e.g. a review in Business Week print edition (like MacOs-X got one time ages ago) and the kind of coverage which actually pursuades executives without recourse to code analysis or monopolies debates?
Surely given the adspend Sun places these days, a few more mainstream reviewers could be perusuaded / invited to load a copy and write it up?
Anyone seen a good print or online review out there in the mainstream business press?
== Idle Random Thoughts. Usual Disclaimers Apply ==
Re:The site is deader than a very dead thing... (Score:1)
Re:What are the dependancies? (Score:3)
As far as building it goes... well, there is a
Oh well- at least they have binaries out, which is something that mozilla was unable to do for quite some time.
~luge
Re:Propriety X toolkit (Score:2)
Try Tools/Options, then select View.
Look what's in the "Look and Feel" listbox!
Standard
OS/2
XWindows
Macintosh
ALthough, this _is_ 5.1 I'm using since I'm on NetBSD, so OS/2 is probably gone, but still, you _can_ change the look. It's far from perfect though, as maximized windows still have the Windows buttons (why?!), but hey, now you can fix it!
Re: slashdotted into oblivion at 5:45am PST (Score:1)
If Slashdot is running on Central time, that's two minutes latency for the slashdot effect.
I wish Slashdot posted their logs somewhere. I'd like to see how many hits the main page took during the same time period.
Re:OK, I'll Bite this Troll (Score:1)
Long needed ports? (Score:2)
Still, Star Office 5 left something to be desired in the area of contact management.
Koffice (Score:1)
Re:OK, I'll Bite this Troll (Score:2)
You make gross generalizations like this and you expect people to take you seriously?
> Developing OSS sucks much less than developing MS junk.
BAH. Give me an OSS CodeInsight, give me a small portable (across apps) object model (small -- CORBA is not small), give me ERWin and Rational Rose. At the OS level, how about a kernel debugger (for device drivers), and async I/O.
But hey vi is enough for everyone isn't it? Leading edge of innovation, that.
It could be worse (Score:3)
I remember when Caldera first decided to open up the product formerly known as DR DOS. It turned out that in order to compile, a person needed something like 7 different commercial compilers, at least 4 of which were different assemblers. You'd thinkt that they could stick to one assembler! The worse part was that the whole thing was stuck inside some sort of in-house database source code control system. ugly! It took months and months to get the code into anything resembling a publishable state.
At 20 hours of compilation time, I wonder why they don't use a cross compiler on some insane mulit-cpu Sun box. That reminds me of when IBM used to refuse to compile OS/2 on the SMP enable version even though it cut down compile time from nine hours to forty-minutes.
Of course hopefully, a developer only needs to compile from scratch once and once the majority of object files are created only has to compile in changes to the current module.
have a day,
-l
Re:slashdotted (Score:1)
Just checked my submission time against my watch. Slashdot is either running Central time or they don't observer Daylight Savings.
Two minutes for the slashdot effect to take down a Sun corporate webserver. That's gotta be some kind of record.
Re:Features... (Score:1)
It was, in fact, Conan O'Brien.
Re:License Issues (Score:2)
Riiiiggggghhhhhttttt (Score:1)
software support != user support (Score:1)
If you don't understand the difference, then I don't think we have much of value to say to each other.
My title is "assistant engineer", by the way.
Comment removed (Score:4)
Don't use CVS (Score:1)
#define X(x,y) x##y
Re:Anti-aliased font support? (Score:2)
Re:Is this also the big improvement? (Score:1)
--
Re:Finally... (Score:2)
Re:6.05 First Impressions (Score:1)
Re:Staroffice sucks (Score:2)
Is anyone going to deny that the lack of Office functionality is the first thing anyone thinks of when someone suggests Linux on the business desktop?
This is exactly the kind of moderation that encourages the parroting of the same old opinions and is turning Slashdot into a very boring place. How about people think before trashing any post that mentions Microsoft without saying how naughty they are?
Re:Shared installation? (Score:1)
alpha release? (Score:1)
--Siva
Keyboard not found.
Re:Split up the apps (Score:2)
~luge
Re:Just so you know (Score:2)
Linux Binary Also Mirrored (Score:3)
Get it. :-)
Links don't work! (Score:2)
... (Score:2)
Broken URIs (Score:2)
Figures (Score:5)
*Sigh*
Re:slashdotted (Score:2)
Enough memory? (Score:3)
Is this also the big improvement? (Score:2)
Actually, it's good for KDE (Score:3)
If it's worth it (haven't looked at the code yet, cvs -z4 co OpenOffice is still running, curse my 64 kBit/s connection!!), you can be sure some of the code will be included in KOffice.
Also, their code is probably pretty much UI independent (because it works on so many different OSes), so it's probably not a lot of work to create a patch to make it KOpenOffice.
Re:self defacing humor or self fulfilling prophecy (Score:2)
No.
Consider Sun's position. They see everyone moving to Wintel boxes because of Office compatibility and the other slew of productivity software available for the Wintel platform. More and more, they see their own cash cow slipping away as MS takes hold of the network effect once again.
In this case McNealy can do one of two things. He can sit idly by as his company is slowly pushed into irrelevance. Or he can fight with all his might to stop the network effect. The only way to do this is to create your own network that is just as big as the other. The people at Sun realize this, and they also realize that the viral nature of the GPL added to the cost advantage will create a network effect that will dwarf MS.
I for one am ready to help them. Whenever you receive a MS doc that won't display in SO, send a reply tactfully:
1) asking for the document in a standard format
2) explaining that it's not the sender's fault that MS makes gratuitious changes to their file formats in order to foil competitors (not to help them)
3) explaining that you use a Office Suite that doens't cost an arm-n-leg or burden IT with licenscing issues (doing audits is expensive and time consuming)
I've done this and have gotten very positive results from my coworkers.
Re:The site is deader... an explanation (Score:4)
Look closeley at the displayed message :
"(...) hits.
We ask your patience while our best people are reconfiguring the server and bringing her back up
(...)"
Yes, look closely : nothing strikes you ?!?!
Zoom->in : "bringing _HER_ back"
Sun just leaked yet another ground-breaking technology news : sexed servers. They choosed a female one, because they are so much caring for their users request.
But maybe it's PMS time now. Just imagine a bunch of sysadmin trying to convince the managment that boxes of tampaxes are _mandatory_ to run their web server.
Next dowtime : headaches and baby blues.
(I'still hesitating between flamebait/funny myself)
"real world" my ass... (Score:4)
Not really. This turd was formed in the bowels of proprietary software. It's only now that it's out in the open.
My personal experience with proprietary software vendors (and I've worked closely with their software engineers in some cases, trying to debug problems with their software that were creating major problems for my employer) has been that most proprietary software is complete shit, from an engineering perspective.
I mean that. There is an amazing lack of accountability for the quality of code in proprietary software.
Before I went to work in the "real world", I would never have imagined that large, well-funded companies would produce software with such egregious bugs and flawed engineering methedologies, much worse than any I have personally ever seen in any serious Open Source project (read: one with at least three active members).
Real world example (Windows), with a major EDA vendor (who will remain nameless):
Another fun (Unix+Windows) example:
I've also seen some other absolutely hair-raising things in network/system call traces, like:
seek(), ftell(), seek(), ftell(), ftell(), read(), seek()[back to same block], read()[same amount this time, but in 512k increments], seek(), ftell(), seek(), seek(), ftell(), read()
There was also the wonderful discovery that an app was using the NT equivalent of access() (GetSecurityInfo() + GetEffectiveRightsFromAcl(), which means about 40 lines of support code each time) instead of checking for failure on various operations (open file, etc) ... why?
...because the lack of error handling in the application was so pervasive, they decided to cut their losses and just anticipate all possible errors by explicitly checking for the conditions that might cause them beforehand (never mind race conditions or incomplete coverage, or the fact that it broke some things...). Things were so bad that that was actually less work and less code.
I can go on and on with these real-world accounts if you like. I've come to believe that only with Open Source comes real software engineering accountablity.
Actually my experience has been that those disagrements really fuck up a software project. The Open Source projects I've been involved with, if the disagreements are really serious they usually result in a fork which often means two healthy projects rather than just one. Or the old bastard leaders are deposed and go on to other things.
Very democratic, and usually works nicely.
Only as long as you try to treat a service industry like a manufacturing industry.
Pretty simple: buy the rights to a proprietary product from someone else and release the source code to that. Which is what they did, actually.
(Well, they actually bought the company, as I recall, but same thing)
Now, as far as your description of what you see as the "real world", I do software support for a Fortune 500 company, and have been involved with (and contributed code to) several major Open Source projects. What experience do you have?
Re:Fine print and caveats (Score:2)
And everyone will crowd around the 14' tall bronze statue of RMS and sing the 'Free Software Song'.
Brings a tear to my eye and a rumbling to my bowel.
--K
Come with me and share the software...
---
Re:Just so you know (Score:2)
...the thing about most big projects is that they are NOT fun, NOT particularly maintainable and WELL beyond the understanding of any one coder. That's why it is necessary to PAY programmers to work (with people they might not necessarily like) IN GROUPS under the direction of others (with whom they might not necessarily agree). And the necessity of income to pay those programmers dictates that the product must be sold and that IP laws must be used to protect that income.
The death of Open Source is inevitable. It will be caused by complexity and simple economics. In fact in the real world, outside the insular hive mind of Slashdot, it never really lived. And if you anyone doesn't agree with that, explain how Sun could develop an Open Source Star Office without a thriving business based on proprietary hardware.
Re:Split up the apps (Score:2)
treke
Fine print and caveats (Score:4)
Obviously they haven't read the GPL because it really doesn't suck at all.
In fact it's one of the greater pieces of literature of the 80's.
Some day in elementary school kids will have to memorize the GPL. And they'll have huge picture of RMS on the walls.
:P
Internal Server Error-workaround (Score:3)
big projects (Score:2)
Mozilla should not have been a single project of tightly integrated GUI code and other bits and pieces. It really ought to have been five or six independent open source projects with a few, simple, well-defined interfaces.
The same is true for StarOffice: word processing, spread sheet, presentation, and other bits and pieces should really be stand-alone parts.
In addition to breaking projects up into smaller pieces, they should also use languages and tools that keep them small. If it becomes a 400kloc project in C++, rather than suffering through that, pick some better language that turns it into a 40kloc project.
Re:Actually, it's good for KDE (Score:3)
Keep in mind that StarOffice is big, slow, and buggy.
On the other hand, StarOffice does an impressive job of importing Micro$oft Office files, and so if they wrote that importing code in any sort of portable way at all, that could be very useful!
Re:Consolidating Mozilla, Star Office, and Evoluti (Score:2)
the ONE thing I absolutely hated about star office was the unified desktop.
and it's now GONE!
Each app is it's own window now, just like it should be. Now, if the just allow each to be started independantly, it will be excellent.
I'd put star, er oops, openoffice at least equal to KDE and Gnome to the success of Linux on the desktop. This is one application we need to hang our hats on, and now that it's GPL'd, it's safe to do it.
Whatever your feelings for sun are, buying SO, and GPL'ing it were hugely beneficial to the linux community, and I'd like to thank them for it.
________
Re:How to completely flatten a CVS server NOT (Score:4)
The faster your link is the lower your compression setting should be. That been said, there's not much use going over -z3 though, and if you go to the highest rate you will load the server quite a bit for little or no gain. Morale: Stay at -z3 or lower, and if you're on a fast link go for -z1 or no compression.
TA
Anti-aliased font support? (Score:2)
Both used really jagged fonts and looked horrible, particularly the second one which was unreadable in places. The display that was being used definitly had the resolution, as some bitmaps were very clear. Smooth fonts would have made it a lot better. When using Windows for Work I always ensure that this option is enabled.
May be a good time for someone to add anti-alias support. Maybe I'll give it a go once I can pull it down!
Automated Complaint Generator. (Score:2)
It looks like this troll used the automatic complaint letter generator [uiuc.edu]. It gives different results every time. When I put in Sun, I got this:
This is an open letter, which you are welcome to use as you wish. I want as many people as possible to know that Sun is unable to see any issue in a broad perspective or from more than one side. Read on, gentle reader, and hear what I have to say. Sun not only lies, but it brags about its lying to its spokesmen. When the war against reason is backed by a large cadre of uneducated protestors, the results are even more loathsome. Now that that's cleared up, I'll continue with what I was saying before, that its prank phone calls serve only to safeguard its own power and privilege. If, after hearing facts like that, you still believe that without its superior guidance, we will go nowhere, then there is decidedly no hope for you.
To say otherwise would be oppressive. Is it not positively the distinguishing feature of Sun's activities to descend to character assassination and name calling? There is no inconsistency here; a central fault line runs through each of Sun's statements. Specifically, the law is not just a moral stance. It is the consensus of society on our minimum standards of behavior. I find Sun's policies rather immature, don't you? Of all of Sun's exaggerations and incorrect comparisons, one in particular stands out: "Nonrepresentationalism is a noble goal." I don't know where it came up with this, but its statement is dead wrong.
According to the laws of probability, we were put on this planet to be active, to struggle, and to justify condemnation, constructive criticism, and ridicule of Sun and its huffy reinterpretations of historic events. We were not put here to excoriate attempts to bring questions of emotionalism into the (essentially apolitical) realm of pedagogy in language and writing, as Sun might feel. Words fail me in describing my pure distaste for Sun's positions and abhorrent assertions. I put that observation into this letter just to let you see that Sun should think about how its double standards lead uncompromising vexatious provocateurs to pander to our worst fears. If Sun doesn't want to think that hard, perhaps it should just keep quiet. Sun has stated that the sky is falling. That's just pure hooliganism. Well, in Sun's case, it might be pure ignorance, seeing that Sun frequently avers its support of democracy and its love of freedom. But one need only look at what Sun is doing -- as opposed to what it is saying -- to understand its true aims. I'd like to finish with a quote from a private e-mail message sent to me by a close friend of mine: "Sun believes that everyone and everything discriminates against it -- including the writing on the bathroom stalls -- only because it has a need to believe that".
Re:How will this effect the non-geeks... (Score:2)
Downlooad Site (Score:2)
http://a1376.g.akamai.net/7/1376/2064/OpenOffice6
Enjoy
Irony (Score:2)
Re:Actually, it's good for KDE (Score:2)
Also, their code is probably pretty much UI independent (because it works on so many different OSes), so it's probably not a lot of work to create a patch to make it KOpenOffice. ;)
.. and GnOpenOffice, of course.. *sigh*
(posted using Opera for Linux 4.0b1Re:self defacing humor or self fulfilling prophecy (Score:2)
I also don't know what kind of bulk discount M$ gives on Office licenses, but it is quite possible that Sun has considerably less invested in OpenOffice than they would pay to legally license Office2000 for all of their employees. I'm pretty sure that the ongoing costs of running OpenOffice, even with several dozen programmers assigned to it, would be less than paying M$ for upgrades every couple of years.
I think this just might be a testament to how greedy M$ licensing practices are. It's quite possible that it's cheaper for Sun to write their own office suite than it is to license M$'s "mass market" office suite.
Re:NT Sever == Lan Manager (Score:2)
So Microsoft doesn't have to pay IBM for OS/2 tech, and IBM doesn't have to pay MS for, uhh, Windows 3.0 tech.
--
Re:Is this also the big improvement? (Score:2)
Their Technical Overview document describes ruefully describes how it used YA component model, something Star developed called Universal Network Objects, and that there is no standard between Gnome/KDE/XPCOM/COM/and so on.
Their short term solution is a bridge between component technologies. I have a feeling that that's probably also the permenant solution, baring a major rewrite, or the unlikely complete victory of one of the 10 open component models. How well a bridge works depends, but it's an ugly solution.
--
Re:Propriety X toolkit (Score:2)
Riiiiight. (Score:2)
<XML>
...meaningless gibberish follows...
<OBJECT TYPE="Word Document">
</OBJECT>
Not the most useful thing, is it?
Re:6.05 First Impressions (Score:2)
Bruce
Re:The site is deader than a very dead thing... (Score:2)
~luge
Re:Features... (Score:2)
Then it cut to a word processing screen, with the cartoon paperclip in the corner. A hand holding a revolver came in on the other side of the screen, and blew Clippy to bloody gibs.
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
Re:Before OpenOffice was slashdotted... (Score:2)
Actually, StarOffice's browser really isn't anything in and of itself. On *NIX, it uses the Netscape 4.x engine; on Win*, it uses IE.
So you're really not missing anything.
"If ignorance is bliss, may I never be happy.
Before OpenOffice was slashdotted... (Score:3)
I checked the site thanks to a link from LinuxToday. It looked nice and it did have a source download plus you could log on to mailing lists.
Anyway, the code doesn't contain the browser, mail and news. Sun's waiting for the community's opinions on including them as Mozilla is available. I also remember reading how all the commits will go through the project leaders aka Sun's employees. Unless Sun'll do as good a job as Netscape, I doubt that OpenOffice will remain the center of StarOffice development.
Re:Internal Server Error-workaround (Score:2)
C.
Distributed/Cached OpenOffice downloads. (Score:3)
oo_605_src.tar.gz [akamai.net]
linux_install_605.tar.gz [akamai.net]
winnt_install_605.zip [akamai.net]
solaris_install_605.tar.gz [akamai.net]
solver605_linuxintel.tar.gz [akamai.net] ;
solver605_solarissparc.tar.gz [akamai.net]
solver605_win32intel.tar.gz [akamai.net] ;
Re:Is this also the big improvement? (Score:3)
~tieguy
Features... (Score:4)
We could have a little popup Tux penguin.
"It looks like you're writing a letter slagging off Microsoft. Would you like me to make it anonymous for you?"
--
Re:How to completely flatten a CVS server (Score:2)
--
Re:Split up the apps (Score:2)
treke
Finally... (Score:3)
In the wild. (Score:3)
Of course, source kept for so long in captivity is quite unable to fend for itself once released. It may appear domesticated and timid, but do not treat it lightly! It needs to learn to survive in the real world. It is entering a harsh, peer-reviewed environment that it is not familiar with. Approach it fearlessly and improve it.
BTW, Sun, StarOffice - a coincidence?!?!
Well...yes, probably.
Good for Emacs! (Score:5)
> on a 500Mhz win32 box, according to
> openoffice.org. Yikes
Yup. Thanks to the joint efforts of OpenOffice, Mozilla, and a few others, Emacs officially entered the category of lightweight utilities.
Re:It could be worse (Score:2)
TA
Re:about time (Score:2)
efforts for increasing speed in this code
i'll go over those 9 million lines of
code for ya. expect a speed increase of
about 40% in 2 or 3 weeks.
This whole project will take at least as long as
Mozilla needed to get running. Don't expect any
results in the near future and don't expect
BIG results in the not-so-near future as well.
Bibos
Re:sucker (Score:2)
*shrug*. I don't have a pressing need to spend years writing these tools myself when I'm otherwise perfectly willing to drop a few thousand to have them now. Only free if your time is worthless and all that.
My point was, these products make development less painful than a pure-OSS solution which can offer me nothing but mediocrity, if that.
What are the dependancies? (Score:2)
I expect that "Open Office" isn't quite so challenging, but I sure it does depend on some stuff. Does it need Lesstif? How about other such stuff?
And MS Office even earlier (Score:2)
--
Re:Finally... (Score:3)
self defacing humor or self fulfilling prophecy? (Score:4)
Is Sun trying to say that this is something that they do not really believe in or do they just have one or more project managers with a black sense of humor?
I hope its the latter, but it would not altogether surprise me if the former was the case.
Speaking of which, does anyone see the release of StarOffice as GPL as anything other than an attempt by Sun to kill off Microsoft's cash cow, Office? Sun spent buckets and scads and tons of money on buying StarOffice, giving it away for free and then hiring CollabNet to clean up the code and modularize the CVS tree. I don't think that Sun is making enough on its SunRay thin clients to justify the expense. OTOH, a high quality, multi-platform, free Office suite might take away Microsoft's ability to subsidize W2K development with Office revenues. The question with this strategy is whether or not ms.net will be available and functional to make the desktop office suite irrelevant before a working and spectacular Star Office 6.0 for Windows is ready and available.
Hmm. Are any of the developers for this project are going to make Star Office into the free equivalent of .net? That would be funny. Hmm. Maybe the MS investment in Corel is an attempt to come up with an alternative to a free Star Office.
The most encouraging thing for me is that, to a certain extent, it seems that Sun has learned from AOL/Netscape's mistakes with Mozilla:
They made things organized and pretty and split things up into well defined sub-projects. This will make it much easier to (1) part out the useful parts of Star Office for other projects, (2) graft in new systems to fix Star Office's deficiencies, (3) keep the ball rolling, and (4) get new people involved.
Maybe after a few days and the CVS server comes back to life I'll download the code and look at it out of curiosity. I've always wondered how much of Star Office was written in Java. It's certainly slow enough at times for the whole thing to have been.
One thing is for certain, this will be an adventure....
have a day,
-l
Re:munch, munch, munch (Score:2)
Re:6.05 First Impressions (Score:2)
I think the problem is that it will not be a big deal as soon as people expect. I've been playing with it all day, and it is pretty solid, but it will still take a long, long time before it is really on par with Office. And by then Office will have voice recognition.
~luge
The big news here... (Score:3)
I'd say something here about the irony that a long-time closed source, cathedral-style project is the one being raided for this source to help the OSS projects, but that wouldn't be politically correct, would it? I wouldn't want to start the whole "OSS just plays catch up" argument all over again...
See it as a survival move (Score:2)
I'd rather think that they want to end the MS dominance on document standards. No one else has been able to get around all of the coppies of Office that MS dumped on every new computer that got sold with that forced MS OS. By putting this out as free they can rest assured that someone will be able to match every little twist and turn MS tries to put into their nasty specs. This way StarOffice users can follow MS faster than MS Office users! What a burn. More than that, with enough users reasonable and open document standards can be implimented to provide not just a compatible product but a better product. The hold will be broken. No commercial software has been able to compete, and none can do what this will.
Why is this a survival move? It will keep MS's dirty hands out of the server market that Sun serves so well. You don't need that Win2k server when your workers can communicate with the rest of the world without it. Sun has learned that market forces and dumping can be more important than superior technology. If they sat back, they would have watched MS leverage their desktop hold. They've gone to the root cause and faught back better.
MS's other cash cow, OS sales is down too. This is in part due to PC sales slow downs, but it might also have something to do with "naked PC's" getting a better OS stuck on them.
If this product is even close to stable, I can't imagine recomending MS to any student. As the students go, so goes the future. Sun will keep it's place in it.
Use compression when downloading... (Score:5)
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anoncvs@anoncvs.openoffice.org:/cvs co OpenOffice
Note the -z3
This will save a little on bandwidth...
Re:The site is deader... an explanation (Score:2)
Zoom->in : "bringing _HER_ back"
Simpler explanation:
When something goes down, men wish it were a woman.
6.05 First Impressions (Score:5)
ReWrite? (Score:4)
LMAO, they have finally gone down for good ;) (Score:2)
At about 5:45am PST, our web server was brought down by a veritable tsunami of hits. [translation: "we were slashdotted into oblivion"]
We ask your patience while our best people are reconfiguring the server and bringing her back up; we are working as quickly as possible and we will keep all openoffice.org community members apprised of the situation via our general discuss and announce lists. [they are (or WERE) running the newest development version of Apache. I wonder if they will release the logs so we can see what kind of punishment this new version of Apache can take
Of course, this could have all been averted if people had been using that <a href="http://www.opera.com">OTHER</a> browser and disabled the loading of pictures, like I did. I found the site quite snappy and responsive up until the time they finally took it down.
Oh, well. You live, you learn.
-inq
Well, actually, yes. It *IS* a great idea. (Score:2)
OK, I'll Bite this Troll (Score:2)
Why is there so much software on MS platforms? Because developing for MS once sucked less than developing for Apple, or IBM etc. MS dumped OSes and tools once upon a time, and there was some gain to be had in using their tools. This made for a flood of developers. In other words there's more user level software for MS because there were move devolopers working on it.
What's wrong with this picture? First, it ignores the stagnation at other software levels for MS. Win2K=32bitDOS. MS innovation is close to zero these days, and some people would aregue that it always has been. Second, it's a static picture. OSS does have some user level catch up to do, but that's what happens when you have to cut out all the propriatary stuff and start from scratch. This does not preclude developers from leapfrogging MS and other commercial houses. It's happened before, (sendmail, and apatche come to mind) and it's going to happen much more.
Developing OSS sucks much less than developing MS junk. The tools are free for the most part, and you can share your work. The strength of a platform is geometric to the number of developers and the amount of code available.
Standard X toolkit?! (Score:2)
So what you're saying is make one dialog use Motif-look widgets, another use Windows-look, another use MacOS-look, another use Xt-look, and another use GTK flavor-of-the-day, no?
Sounds like it'd look right at home on any Linux desktop!
--K
It's funny. Laugh.
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Re:self defacing humor or self fulfilling prophecy (Score:3)
Have you heard the rhetoric coming out of Redmond lately? It's Sun this, Sun that, Sun Sun Sun Sun Sun. Microsoft doesn't seem to have a care in the world about Mac or Linux or any other Unix or mainframes or anything, except for Sun. They just rolled out some 32 proc boxes running Windows which is a pretty naked attempt to kill off Sun's cash cow.
So, if you are Sun, and you've got money to spare, what do you do? They know that Others have just sat there and taken it while Microsoft came and "got the loot". No, if they are coming at your cash cow, the smart thing to do is go back at their cash cow, even if it's just a minor distraction to them.
So what becomes of this when Sun gets bored and stops dumping resources into StarOffice? Well, at the very least the OSS guys got a fairly decent office suite just gifted to them, and when it's finally decided if people want hosted rent-a-application, that will be out there also as open source, as opposed to pay Microsoft.
I'll be interested to see what the code looks like Star has been ported from OS/2 to Windows to Unix to Java and then back to OS/2. Apparently (like NS4.x), it has a big ugly cross-platform runtime engine. We'll see if this makes the Unix programmers out there totally sick, or if a Mozilla-like "total rewrite" is necessary, or if everyone can live with the current state of the beast.
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Just so you know (Score:3)
Source comments are in german (woohoo) (Score:2)
On the other hand, when star office came first out a couple of years ago, it was regarded as quite a software engineering feat, because they published it on all operating systems at the same time. Everything is in C++ and they went out of their way to make sure star office had a very clean and abstract design that would be easily portable to other platforms. That's also one of the reasons it's not as bloated and buggy as M$'s stuff. I'm really looking forward to have a peek at the code. This is finally an open source project where the quality of the code is not on a hobbyist's level.