Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2007 10:13 am Post subject:
Well, at the time it wasn't as much that Sun didn't want to do a native version, it was more that they claimed they were working with Apple on a secret version of a native StarOffice. StarOffice isn't open source and Sun made no mention of the work we had been doing in the community (or that they'd give theirs back), so in a few months Dan and I got the existing native code running and thus Neo/C was born. The GPL ensured that no company could try to "pull a Tony", Sun or otherwise. Go google "tony siress staroffice" and you'll still be able to see the fun PR mess he created. Neo itself was born out of hatred of SISSL and, at that time, hatred of Sun and Sun PR for making my life a real hassle for a few weeks.
I originally worked on the X11 stuff in OOo for years to get a release out because, well, it worked. There were already more than enough compilation errors and other bugs in sal etc. that sticking with X11 removed a major variable and allowed me and Dan to get the code to a point where it was stable and we could integrate the Mac support into the mainline. Plus there were people who really wanted OOo to look identical on all platforms. It eases support
By the time Patrick had come along (and there's some irony there if Patrick wants to elaborate), we were in the OOo 1.1 era, we pretty much had a fully functional native Mac version of OpenOffice already running. Heck, the initial Neo/J releases were already mostly fully functional and were engineered in a much more maintainable fashion than my hack (which duplicated all of OOo CVS...led to some nasty syncing problems when I tried to move the old Carbon+Cocoa stuff to OOo 1.1 from 1.0). I saw no reason to duplicate Patrick's work just for the sake of duplicating it or doing it in a slightly different way, especially when there were only a handful of us even working on the OS X support at the time. So OOo existed for X11 and I directed all of my native work to Neo and its code.
At the end of the day what was true then is still true now: users just want something that works; they really don't care about a name, a license, or the technology.
Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2007 1:04 pm Post subject: OS X Native Openoffice.org
In my very limited testing, I have noticed a few things about the new OS X native Openoffice.org :
1) it does launch faster on my old powerbook, but after that it's pretty much the same speed;
2) it uses more physical memory, but less virtual memory (I don't understand why);
3) it is not usable to do anything serious at this moment.
I guess once it will become more usable, a lot of people will just switch to it. My opinion is that you guys have between 1 and 2 years left before Openoffice.org is on par with NeoOffice. After that, your funding will dry out, and you are likely to become irrelevant since Openoffice.org will have so much more developer time to improve it. That should give you time to either plan your exit strategy or plan killer features that would make Neooffice much more desirable.
I have the most respect for you guys and I have contributed twice to your project. I will continue using Neooffice for the forseeable future, and I hope you guys have great things planned ahead!
NB: Too bad Openoffice.org didn't have a native version ready for OS X 5 years ago when I finally resigned to fork money for a copy of Microsoft Office v. X!!!
Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2007 1:36 pm Post subject: Re: OS X Native Openoffice.org
Boukman wrote:
2) it uses more physical memory, but less virtual memory (I don't understand why);
The extra virtual memory in Neo is due to the maximum memory limit that we tell Java to use. Virtual memory that is allocated but never used really has no performance impact. What really matters is actual physical memory used. I suspect that OOo uses more memory because they are using my old Neo/J 1.1 trick of triple-buffering all of the windows. It makes XOR drawing easy to implement, but uses more memory.
Boukman wrote:
I guess once it will become more usable, a lot of people will just switch to it. My opinion is that you guys have between 1 and 2 years left before Openoffice.org is on par with NeoOffice. After that, your funding will dry out, and you are likely to become irrelevant since Openoffice.org will have so much more developer time to improve it. That should give you time to either plan your exit strategy or plan killer features that would make Neooffice much more desirable.
Ed and I came to the same conclusion a long time ago. In some ways, if our reason to exist was no longer there because there was a well-supported, stable OOo for Mac, then our lives become simpler. Let me be honest here: running NeoOffice is a financial burden and can also be an emotional burden at times. But since no one else has gotten to where we are today, we feel a personal commitment to the project.
The key, however, is that in order to they really need to put someone on this full time. Otherwise, they will get bogged down in the support requests and bug reports. In theory, Sun has dedicated an engineer or two, but it is unclear if that is a permanent thing and if they are dedicated full time.
In the meantime, we will continue doing what we do.
Joined: Nov 21, 2005 Posts: 1285 Location: Witless Protection Program
Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2007 6:25 pm Post subject:
OPENSTEP wrote:
.... StarOffice isn't open source and Sun made no mention of the work we had been doing in the community (or that they'd give theirs back), so in a few months Dan and I got the existing native code running and thus Neo/C was born. The GPL ensured that no company could try to "pull a Tony", Sun or otherwise. Go google "tony siress staroffice" and you'll still be able to see the fun PR mess he created. <snip>
ed
O M G!
I think I'm having Deja Vu - all over again!
The partnership is expected to produce aJava-based version of OpenOffice by the end of the year, followed by a commercial StarOffice release sometime in 2003.
"I think you can see OpenOffice running solid on OS X by the end of this calendar year," said Tony Siress, Sun's senior director of desktop marketing solutions.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-946714.html
I had no IDEA that this happened, or all this had been predicted, and promised, back in 2002!
I would think that something like this would make a person Very Gun SHY / paranoid!
Philip ( feeling ... dizzy from spinning in circles! )
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2007 8:46 pm Post subject:
Nope, it's good to remember these things. And good to give people the correct background on why I have a nice personal hatred of Sun and several people in the OOo Mac community. It's something I learned from my ex-girlfriend...you gotta always remember how you've been screwed, and never ever get back into bed with someone who's screwed you over 'cause it won't have a pretty ending.
Some very interesting things are being said in the OOo mailing list with regards to NeoOffice. (Two messages can be found here)
I won't quote directly into here, butt it definitely seems like a growing number of people are genuinely interested in rebuilding the relationship between the development teams, and rightly so. After all, there is amazing talent on both sides - NeoOffice is outstanding, and the Aqua OOo alpha is impressive in its own right, though nowhere near as mature.
That being said, I understand how many bridges have been burned, and how much animosity remains between all parties involved. In all reality, the two teams will probably never be united, combining their talents to produce a spectacular product. It's unfortunate that Mac users the world over will be the ones to suffer.
(Please note that I'm not placing blame on either side here, just in case my post reads like I am).
I refuse to work for a project that has treated me like dirt, and I want no person or company that has the moral compass to do so to work for me either. I'm an asshole, and each organization can only have a fixed number of assholes in it before it becomes utterly intolerable for everyone.
I wish them all the luck in the world and hope they succeed so I can move on and focus on more important things with my life.
I couldn't have said it better myself. Ed's words really get to the heart of why I have no desire, nor see any real benefit, to working with the OOo Mac project. I do respect Phillip, the Sun engineer recently assigned to the project. Hopefully, he can clean up much of the code that the OOo Mac team has thrown together so haphazardly, but I have no intention of funding their "reinvent the wheel" project. Ed and I already (and continue to this day) fund a fully supported stable Mac OS X port. Why in the hell would I sink more of my already limited funds into a project that took 2 1/2 years to get to where NeoOffice/J 4 years ago?
I am the X11 lineage for OOo Mac. I burned my sweat and code to get that fer working and made the first public installer. Scott Huntiger (sp?) was the immediate caretaker before me, and before that Patrick was at Sun in 2000. After I got X11 compiling Dan joined in and started to do the majority of the X11 work. After Dan got his job at RedHat that pulled him more into linux and eventually into OLPC, Kevin Hendricks started to come on in as a more major role for the X11 1.1 releases (and rewrote the installer I had written). After Kevin lost interest, the torch passed to Eric Hoch and to Eric Bachard when no one else wanted to care about the X11 release, and they feel no need to acknowledge the years of work done by all those that came before them.
These punks need to get their own ducks in a row and learn the history of their own project and the people that made it able to be where it is today.
If you want history don't believe everything you read. Take the time to go hear it from the horse's mouth.
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2007 11:08 pm Post subject:
PS, anyone want to buy an autographed poster from the WWDC 2002 booth for the OOo OS X (X11) Developer Build? Signed by me, Scott Hutinger, Martin H., and Zaheda B. I'm starting to get tired of it hanging on my wall.
Zaheda's now at google, Martin's still at Sun/Star calling us criminals to our faces, and who knows where Scott is. And I'm still a lush. Not surprising, eh?
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2007 12:41 am Post subject: Put those names to those faces!
From OpenOffice.org @ WWDC 2002
Left to right:
Scott H.
Martin Hollmichel (mh at openoffice dot org, now thinks I'm a crook)
Louis Suarez-Potts (louis at openoffice dot org, still at collabnet, brilliant, should have been an English professor)
Danese Cooper (at Intel last I knew, was at sun at the time, the open source diva, fun to hang out with, haven't seen in years)
Me (30 lbs lighter than today, man I gotta lose weight, still a lush)
Zaheda Bhorat (at Google now, post NetBeans & Sun, still owes me a back massage from 2003, gave me a free T-shirt and pen in France, let me & Dan crash on the floor of her apt. in Cupertino (?) for WWDC 03)
Plus when WWDC was in San Jose much closer to the Apple Campus for the bash (tho that's not a prob. this year...) and much cheaper hotels Bummer the NRA had to book the SJ convention center the same time as WWDC one year and, blamo, it moved to SF and left the attendees with nothing but bins of useless Hawiian Punch by Friday.
Oh yeah, did I mention I paid not only for my own hotel rooms all those years, not to mention all the CDs for the booth?
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2007 7:15 am Post subject:
A variant of the code for the spotlight plugin is incorporated into the OOo CVS repository in an external module, but I don't believe it's yet in shipping OOo code.
All times are GMT - 7 Hours Goto page Previous1, 2, 3Next
Page 2 of 3
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum You cannot attach files in this forum You cannot download files in this forum
)
>
