Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Fri Nov 25, 2005 10:30 pm Post subject: The great "invite" from our friends...
Hehe. I just found this sitting in my junk mailbox...the great invite for us to "join" the OOo team. It essentially offers us the great opportunity to do the following:
1) Give all of our work for the last three years and relabel it as "OpenOffice.org" with nothing in exchange (except maybe adding a Sun Microsystems logo to the splashscreen...) and to immediately be abandoned as a technical approach.
2) Join to help forumulate the steps of a Cocoa based port which we have already abandoned for technical reasons (which are not theoretical, but rather practical as the /C work I've done has shown).
3) Help make our project more credible (since, obviously, a fully functional download doesn't provide any credibility whatsoever)
I'd rant, but I don't think I even need to. Who in their right mind would accept an invitation to kill their own project for no upside whatsoever? I'd rather go work on integrating 2.0 into the existing Neo framework so I can finish the bridges and start the NWF (which won't take too long but just isn't as high a need as x86 compatibility).
ed
Code:
*Important* : waiting for your opinion, I ask you to not publy this mail, because this is a "draft", maybe not complete, or still containing some errors. In this case, I invite you to discuss what is not ok, with a maximum of objectivity and constructivity. Thank's in advance to respect this.
Patrick,
I just am back from Koper, where I presented a conf about the status of Mac OS X port.
To make short, we have a very correct 2.0, but because of very complicated problems to come (new archs, etc..) I proposed to stop with X11 for 2.0, and start immediatly for a native port using Cocoa. The base of the code will be 2.0.
I have invited every Neo Office people / devs to come if interested : the door is open, welcome !
FYI, the actual X11 Team does actually have around 10 people :
For core dev : Stephan Shaefer, Tino Rachui, Florian Heckl, Christian Junker, Eric Bachard (me)
+ Maxime Petazzoni (apache project) , actually managing our tinderbox, is a very good coder too
+ Thorstens Behrens who proposed to join us for some graphical parts of the code
+ another french coder, occasionnaly present (he cannot help us regularly)
Not directly involved in the code : Joerg Sievers for QA, Maho Nakata for official builds/buildfixes, Eric Hoch for builds fixes and website.
Because :
- the change in license : SISSL is no more inside 2.x (IMHO : good idea, really )
- two concurrent ports does not make sense : we could use synergy
- you made a great work for NeoOffice, with 1.1.x
- we made everything for 2.0 (2.0RC is now officially accepted )
- a lot of discussions with a lot of concerned people in Koper,
I decided to propose you to discuss about these two propositions (+ other if you have):
- regarding your work : declare NeoOffice (the name and the code) as official port of OpenOffice.org1.1.x for mac OS X.
- regarding X11 team work : use OpenOffice.org2.x, and the next one as project name and code, and start to organize immediatly the native port, using Cocoa API.
All people of NeoOffice project are invited, and welcome. We are ok to help for 1.1.x too.
This way, it should be possible to associate the two projects for a better synergy, and officially recognize with a great efficiency the work of both (improving the same way credibility and visibility).
Please note : because of SISSL is still in 1.1.x sources (and if needed) I can create a cws to integrate all the changes I have used (including my java changes) to make 1.1.5 build directly. A new milestone can be created specially in this purpose.
Posted: Sat Nov 26, 2005 1:59 am Post subject: Re: The great "invite" from our friends...
OPENSTEP wrote:
Hehe. I just found this sitting in my junk mailbox...the great invite for us to "join" the OOo team. It essentially offers us the great opportunity to do the following:
I'd rant, but I don't think I even need to. Who in their right mind would accept an invitation to kill their own project for no upside whatsoever? I'd rather go work on integrating 2.0 into the existing Neo framework so I can finish the bridges and start the NWF (which won't take too long but just isn't as high a need as x86 compatibility).
Well, that is why I contacted Eric and suggested he, as a volunteer manager, would look at the reason you and Patrick have to keep working on NeoOffice and find an incentive. I gave a lot of the same points you did (nothing of which is new). I hope he got the point and went to talk to Sun before he comes wth a new proposal.
Best wishes,
Oscar _________________ "What do you think of Western Civilization?"
"I think it would be a good idea!"
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Sat Nov 26, 2005 8:21 am Post subject:
I concur. I just think it's a bit unfair for them to say that Patrick declined their invite to "work together" when really the invite was for him to "work for us". Hopefully reading this can put some of those claims in perspective.
Posted: Sat Nov 26, 2005 5:27 pm Post subject: Re: The great "invite" from our friends...
OPENSTEP wrote:
Hehe. I just found this sitting in my junk mailbox...the great invite for us to "join" the OOo team.
When was this sent out? I may also have a copy somewhere.
OPENSTEP wrote:
It essentially offers us the great opportunity to do the following:
1) Give all of our work for the last three years and relabel it as "OpenOffice.org" with nothing in exchange (except maybe adding a Sun Microsystems logo to the splashscreen...) and to immediately be abandoned as a technical approach.
Hmm. Does this sound familar? Yes it does and I can say one thing "Microsoft". If you cannot get them to join you, discredit them while you attempt to build something like what they have. This is definately not in the sprit of the Open Source community.
OPENSTEP wrote:
2) Join to help forumulate the steps of a Cocoa based port which we have already abandoned for technical reasons (which are not theoretical, but rather practical as the /C work I've done has shown).
Do I really have to go further on this subject? I don't think so.
OPENSTEP wrote:
3) Help make our project more credible (since, obviously, a fully functional download doesn't provide any credibility whatsoever)
Hmmm. See comment on #1. We don't really need Sun's value added tax (for those of you who do not understand this, simply, we don't need Sun's ok on this and we don't need Sun's ok for NeoOffice to exist.)
OPENSTEP wrote:
I'd rant, but I don't think I even need to. Who in their right mind would accept an invitation to kill their own project for no upside whatsoever? I'd rather go work on integrating 2.0 into the existing Neo framework so I can finish the bridges and start the NWF (which won't take too long but just isn't as high a need as x86 compatibility).
Let's get to it.
Sadly, Eric has sent this letter to several folks asking that we join "HIS" project. He has left several folks out of the loop and those are developers/builders/testers who have many years of experience (I've been at this for a long, long time (I remember feeding punch cards to build programs in FORTRAN.) and actually ruined a system testing a program for OS/2) for a quick shot at fame. In this day and age you should want to maintain a low profile, thank those who helped you and carry on. I definately helped with moving NeoOffice into the 1.2 Alpha generation (or maybe just prodded Patrick and yourself into getting it started) but I don't take credit for producing 1.2 nor should I. It appears that Eric will do just that and already started down that path. In any case, and as I stated earlier, I stand ready to assist anyone that wants to build a true Cocoa version as I do have that kind of time on my hands, but I also realize what it will take and I'm not ready to start that kind of effort just to run into the brick walls that Patrick, Dan and you did (if I'm leaving anyone out of the list, my apologies as I arrived on the scene AFTER NeoOffice/Cocoa was long abandoned). I'm afraid that Eric will encounter the same technical difficulties as you did.
Again, I think Patrick and you made the best decision with your knowledge.
Posted: Sat Nov 26, 2005 6:21 pm Post subject: Re: The great "invite" from our friends...
jjmckenzie51 wrote:
OPENSTEP wrote:
3) Help make our project more credible (since, obviously, a fully functional download doesn't provide any credibility whatsoever)
Hmmm. See comment on #1. We don't really need Sun's value added tax (for those of you who do not understand this, simply, we don't need Sun's ok on this and we don't need Sun's ok for NeoOffice to exist.)
This is a key point. There is a huge tax on our time working with the OOo infrastructure. My updated wording in the NeoOffice FAQ at the end of http://www.planamesa.com/neojava/faq.php talks more about this tax.
jjmckenzie51 wrote:
OPENSTEP wrote:
I'd rant, but I don't think I even need to. Who in their right mind would accept an invitation to kill their own project for no upside whatsoever? I'd rather go work on integrating 2.0 into the existing Neo framework so I can finish the bridges and start the NWF (which won't take too long but just isn't as high a need as x86 compatibility).
Let's get to it.
FYI. I just committed some changes to the Neo HEAD branch so that it will try to build using the OpenOffice_2_0_0 branch. Since TeamOOo is using a variety of patches in different branches, this may not be buildable. Nevertheless, it seemed like a good place to start.
After I downloaded and built the GNU cp and pkg-config commands from DarwinPorts.org, HEAD is building on my Panther machine and is in the OOo stlport build with gcc 3.3. If anyone is interested in seeing if they can get this to build (and adding the necessary patches to the neojava/patches/openoffice for any necessary fixes), go for it as the HEAD branch is now dedicated to OOo 2.0 building.
jjmckenzie51 wrote:
Again, I think Patrick and you made the best decision with your knowledge.
Thanks for the support. I will admit that there were many times in the Java 1.4.x upgrade that I hit some nasty bug and thought that maybe I should ditch Java and go native. What stopped me has been the one thing that I have learned in my many years of experience: reuse other people's code. In the case of NeoOffice, using Java 1.4.x essentially means that we are reusing the Cocoa code that Apple's JVM engineers wrote. Sure, their code isn't perfect but given that several Apple engineers get paid to write Cocoa fulltime and they have access to the Cocoa engineers within Apple, odds are that their code will in most cases be better than the code that we would have written.
*Important* : waiting for your opinion, I ask you to not publy this mail, because this is a "draft", maybe not complete, or still containing some errors. In this case, I invite you to discuss what is not ok, with a maximum of objectivity and constructivity. Thank's in advance to respect this.
Can we try to keep the technical development stuff in the devel forum? The barriers to entry are high enough as-is without having to discover that some of the talk on build errors and what-not is going on, of all places, in the Ranting forum!
(I wish phpBB would let you split a post in half or duplicate it in a new, split thread....)
One of the things that I've been trying to do over the past few months is pull bits of useful info out of the various fora and threads and collect them on the supplemental build instructions page in the wiki. The importance of "trial by fire" notwithstanding, having more "developer documentation" to make sure interested developers don't hit a brick wall before even starting to compile surely must be a good thing....
(One other thing that would be useful for that page is a more detailed list of dependencies for the build--things that don't get delivered via a stock Mac OS X install, XCode install, the Neo checkout, or the OOo checkout--and the version needed, e.g. libfoobar, v1.3.5 or newer. If someone with a clue about this and had some time (i.e., porbably not Ed or Patrick) could add that to the wiki, that would probably be helpful.)
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
Can we try to keep the technical development stuff in the devel forum? The barriers to entry are high enough as-is without having to discover that some of the talk on build errors and what-not is going on, of all places, in the Ranting forum!
I moved the relevent parts to the NeoOffice Development fora.
sardisson wrote:
(I wish phpBB would let you split a post in half or duplicate it in a new, split thread....)
It does allow you to move selected posts from one topic to another.
sardisson wrote:
One of the things that I've been trying to do over the past few months is pull bits of useful info out of the various fora and threads and collect them on the supplemental build instructions page in the wiki. The importance of "trial by fire" notwithstanding, having more "developer documentation" to make sure interested developers don't hit a brick wall before even starting to compile surely must be a good thing....
Thanks. I don't wiki, yet.
James
{back to our rant on Eric's e-mail, please.}
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Mon Nov 28, 2005 10:48 pm Post subject:
fabrizio venerandi wrote:
Quote:
*Important* : waiting for your opinion, I ask you to not publy this mail, because this is a "draft", maybe not complete, or still containing some errors. In this case, I invite you to discuss what is not ok, with a maximum of objectivity and constructivity. Thank's in advance to respect this.
Was it a private o a pubblic message?
f.
It was semi-private as it was sent to a lot of people, but now some folk on the originating side are talking about their "invite" publicly without providing details as to what it really was. If someone's going to talk smack, I'd rather folk have access to the dry goods for themselves.
It was semi-private as it was sent to a lot of people, but now some folk on the originating side are talking about their "invite" publicly without providing details as to what it really was. If someone's going to talk smack, I'd rather folk have access to the dry goods for themselves.
It's been almost two months since that was sent (presumably; OOoCon where the then-forthcoming invite was first mentioned was in late September), which I think is a fair time to keep it private while the "invite/rejection" issue is being framed completely by one side.
So it's nice to see the tenor of what was really proposed to Ed and Patrick (listening to the webcast of the presentation, I had some idea of what might be proposed, although I expected something a little less "out there"--but then I've been at trinity for a while and have heard Ed and Patrick's concerns/complaints/issues with the OOo structure for a while), and now everyone can read both sides and decide for themselves.
(I'm also quite fond of their description of OOo2 being "very correct"; the problems mentioned in abundance on trinity, and the bugs I reported before I gave up, seem to suggest otherwise and, indeed, that 2.0RC3 has fewer Mac-specific features/fixes than 1.1.2....)
BTW, I'd also like to go on record that I believe if TeamOOo produces an X11-free, working, and fairly-stable, relatively bug-free Aqua OOo, Sun will announce a Mac OS X version of StarOffice
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
BTW, I'd also like to go on record that I believe if TeamOOo produces an X11-free, working, and fairly-stable, relatively bug-free Aqua OOo, Sun will announce a Mac OS X version of StarOffice
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The barriers to entry are high enough as-is without having to discover that some of the talk on build errors and what-not is going on, of all places, in the Ranting forum! 
info out of the various fora and threads and collect them on the 