On 04/20/2014 11:53 AM, Louis Suárez-Potts wrote:
On 20 Apr 2014, at 14:02, Hagar Delest <hagar.del...@laposte.net>
wrote:
IMHO, most users just take what's provided by default. Unless it is
too buggy. So I think that basically, we are back to the question:
why AOO is still not available in the standard packages?
There are several ways of answering your question. I'll take the high
road, and presume, for argument's sake, that the main Linux
Distributors (the "distros") are acting in good faith and chose to
align themselves with what they believed to be a sustainable
community organization ca. 2011.
These main distros that most in the West think of when they think of
Linux, I'd guess, include Canonical's Ubuntu, Red Hat's Fedora
Project, and KDE.* (I didn't check SuSE.) None includes Apache
OpenOffice.
Well KDE is a window system and not a distro. It is used on a variety of
distros including openSUSE, Fedora, Ubuntu (Kubuntu), etc. But, your
statement is true enough that no major Linux distribution includes
Apache OpenOffice.
(KDE's office apps,
http://www.kde.org/applications/office/, differ from the seemingly
more advanced—I don't know—Calligra Suite,
http://www.calligra-suite.org/, which just released 2.8.2 16 April;
there was a fork a few years ago.) Fedora Project office
applications, https://fedoraproject.org/en/features/#office, include
LibreOffice, as do Ubuntu's. Getting Apache OpenOffice and replacing
the default suite is, to my mind, more difficult than it ought to be.
(When i first started using Linux, it was KDE and I was excited that
I could select the packages I wanted installed and that it was
actually really easy to do so. About the only equivalent I can think
of now that recaptures that sort of ease and also excitement, is the
process for installing packages on jailbroken iOS devices.)
Once upon a time—before the LibreOffice fork, all save KDE included
OpenOffice.org axiomatically. Sun's, and then Oracle's missteps and
the LO fork put in place a strategic realignment. It's main
effect—Linux users are the losers, if only because "choice" and "free
markets" have been deprecated--has probably not been the primary
advocates' wished-for outcome.
At least, I hope not.
Getting the primary distros back to supporting choice and free
markets for users would be nice. But I believe that, however loudly
we hear the cry of community, what really determines things for
Ubuntu and Fedora is what the sponsoring corporation wants and thinks
is in its best interests, or at least those of its financial
backers.
...well this is an interesting statement.
Getting back to both this and Hagar's response. If we see that getting
AOO back into distro repositories is our job, then that's that.
Many Linux distros maintain "community" repositories and perhaps its
easiest to use that sort of mechanism for reintegration.
FWIW, I maintained a program of reaching out to Linux distros around
the world to include OO. These included (but were not limited to) the
very big and popular ones in Russia, Turkey (Pardus), Africa, Japan
and of course China. (I later also tried with South East Asian Linux
efforts. What mattered hugely was having localized builds of OO; that
made a telling difference in India, for instance, but also Brazil.) I
have no idea what these regional distros are carrying now.
However, a program that would *now* reach out to Linux distros—and
also other open source centres and repositories—would be, I think,
useful to would be users and also us.
In this sense, it's good that our binaries are hosted on SourceForge --
a very well known and accessible open source repository!
"Would-be" is not an immaterial
consideration. It's been repeatedly estimated that in the next ten
years billions more will start using computers. They'll be using
versions of Linux, probably—Android. But they'll also be using
versions of other free software for regular productivity, and that
free productivity software could very well be a good enough ODF
editor able to run on a variety of devices. Could even be us.
cheers Louis
Thanks for the insights.
* An interesting academic study would be to evaluate the effect
Google has had in popularizing open standard formats, like ODF, which
for unconscionably long it referred to as "openoffice" format, as
well as in popularizing Linux, albeit sans any prominent community
engagement (Android). My guess is that the effect has been: who
cares, represented by, "I just want it to work!" which of course is
what we all want, especially those of us really very interested in
open standard formats.
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