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List:       opensolaris-discuss
Subject:    Re: [osol-discuss] : - (
From:       "W. Wayne Liauh" <wp () HawaiiLinux ! org>
Date:       2010-09-29 18:44:53
Message-ID: 2038561618.01285811124789.JavaMail.Twebapp () sf-app1
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> > Not to mention more detail on a much earlier
> > departure:
> > 
> > 
> http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Application-Development/Java-
> 
> > Creator-James-Gosling-Why-I-Quit-Oracle-813517/
> > 
> > Keeping in mind that one tends to only hear one
> side
> > at a time, nevertheless,
> > it doesn't sound like Oracle wants creative people
> > unless they're good
> > cogs in the impersonal corporate machine.
> > 
> > I just don't see how that approach is supposed to
> be
> > sensible or sustainable...
> 
> that is bad...Oracle low balling devs and cutting
> projects off a  the knees. 
> well... I think it was a great idea then for
> OpenOffice.org devs to split from oracle and create a
> fork called libreoffice. bad news is it does not run
> on solaris, but ill be happy once there is a gentoo
> ebuild of libreoffice and Openindiana adds it to
> their IPS repo:-)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> * OpenOffice.org Leaves Oracle, Becomes LibreOffice
> ttp://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2369885,00.a
> sp


LibreOffice ("Free Office") is, at least at the present time, pretty much a \
re-branding of Novell's Go-Office.org.  Since most of Linux distros, including the \
big three--Ubuntu, Fedora, and Novell's SuSE, are already using the GO.o version \
(i.e., patches) of OpenOffice.org, the transition, if at all, should be much smoother \
than what might have otherwise been expected from a major "forking".

(Those who are not interested in whining should stop here; the following discussion \
has nothing to do with OpenSolaris.) 

I don't know if anyone has mentioned this, but the update 9 of Solaris 10 has finally \
switched to OpenOffice.org.  Thus, it seems that Oracle also silently RIP'd \
StarOffice (actually the decision was already made during Sun's time).  While \
StarOffice has a stronger appeal among "potential" corporate users, the cost to \
maintain two different brandings simply outweighs its (again, "potential") revenues.  \
Only the old Sun had the tenacity to maintain two (actually three) relatively \
complicated office suites while with no possible revenue in sight.

For trans-Pacific users like myself, use of StarOffice also presents a very difficult \
problem.  Unlike OpenOffice.org, which allows its UIs to be changed on the fly \
according to the selected locale, StarOffice--at least its Solaris version--does not \
allow its UI to be in Chinese or Japanese.  To do that, the user must uninstall \
StarOffice and install the Chinese (there are two versions of Chinese) or the \
Japanese version of "StarSuite".  Then, after you have installed a particular \
language version (say simplified Chinese), there is no easy way to switch to other \
language versions short of another uninstall-and-reinstall.

There are a bunch of other much more horrible war stories about the \
Solaris/OpenSolaris version of OpenOffice.org, but I don't think anyone here is \
interested.  Thus I will stop for now.  But my point is, since the primary goal of \
LibreOffice is to help distribution builders to build their own packages, instead of \
the old mentality of trying to manage a product that Sun had hoped to eventually be \
able to sell (but had no infrastructure of selling it), the development of \
LibreOffice should be a good news for Solaris users.  (Until fairly recently, I was \
not able to install OpenOffice.org development packages on OpenSolaris--it turned out \
the install script depends on Java, and the integration of Java in OpenSolaris was \
                not updated with each nv update).
-- 
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