Hi Evan 

  I am a minor contributor, so my opinions have no official policy
value. Still:

> I would like to find out, from any of the KOffice team, what effect this
> announcement (if any) has on KOffice. Are there any components of
> StarOffice that you would like to intergate into KOffice in the short
> term? 

  We didn't see the source code, but certainly any component modularly
separatable and better than it's equivalent in KOffice will be
used. Import/export filters come to mind. Maybe fine positioning of
letters for word wrapping and typographic subtleties. 

> Furthermore, does Sun's intention to build StarOffice components using
> Bonobo rather than KParts affect its usability within KOffice? Does it at
> all effect the balance between KDE and GNOME?

  Currently, StarOffice has it's own component technology used internally,
which, although limited in scope, it is mature and stable. Migrating that
to Bonobo and maturing that in the process would probably take as much as
Mozilla took to be remaked (and that is still an open question :-). And it
seems that Sun is doing the same mistake - releasing a hypothetical 6.0
instead of the currently working code. 

  Interestingly, the Mozilla experience showed us that releasing a large,
messy chunck of code to the public is not really helping other related
projects. Almost nothing of that code was reused. 

  As the source code will be available to both KDE and GNOME, I don't see
the fact that Miguel was included in the announcement a major advantage
for the Gnome team here. The K/G balance will be determined, as always by
the quality of the code, and the ability to attract developers and users. 

  The immediate impacts will be probably on the commercial office suite
developers Corel and Applix, although, given the fact that the 5.1 was
around for two years and was free all the time, and I don't see anything
new coming out for a year or so (more than that if they port to Bonobo) 
it will probably not introduce new and immediate trends. 

          Lotzi B. 

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Lotzi Boloni 

boloni@cplane.com   http://www.geocities.com/boloni2
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