Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 8:06 pm Post subject: NeoOffice and OO 3.0
Like a lot of other people, I just read about some of the features of OO 3.0 upcoming and I'd like to know how that impacts continuing development of NeoOffice, if at all.
I used OO in Linux for many years and only switched to NeoOffice when I moved over to OS X about a year-1/2 ago. I've been extremely pleased with NeoOffice. For me, it is Officially Awesome.
For an end user like me, I think it would be helpful to perhaps have some explanation of NeoOffice's relationship (or not!) to OO on the homepage. Thanks!
Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 8:31 pm Post subject: Re: NeoOffice and OO 3.0
Malke wrote:
Like a lot of other people, I just read about some of the features of OO 3.0 upcoming and I'd like to know how that impacts continuing development of NeoOffice, if at all.
AFAIK, there are no impacts. As long as NeoOffice users continue to donate, we will continue to produce NeoOffice and we have plans to release NeoOffice 3.0 Early Access later this year. Details about this release are here.
We tend to wait a few months before we upgrade to the latest OpenOffice.org release for two reasons:
1. User support - In our experience, major changes in the OOo code as adds a lot of new bugs so we normally wait for OpenOffice.org to fix the most critical new bugs before we expend our limited donations and developer time to upgrade. Unlike OOo, we spend more than half of our donations on support and bug fixing so rushing out to grab the latest, greatest OOo code is not a risk that we can afford to take.
2. Novell - For more than a year now, we have incorporated Novell's enhancements to OpenOffice.org. Many of the new features in OOo 3.0 Beta, such as Excel VBA support and the Solver support were developed by Novell and we have included them in NeoOffice for some time now. Since we value the OOo enhancements that Novell has developed, we usually wait for them to upgrade and test their OOo 3.0 Beta changes.
Malke wrote:
I used OO in Linux for many years and only switched to NeoOffice when I moved over to OS X about a year-1/2 ago. I've been extremely pleased with NeoOffice. For me, it is Officially Awesome.
For an end user like me, I think it would be helpful to perhaps have some explanation of NeoOffice's relationship (or not!) to OO on the homepage. Thanks!
A short explanation of why we are separate from OOo is here.
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 11:45 pm Post subject:
Let me add in my 4 cents...
Again, "we" really means, well, "me", but I figure I'd just put it out there
Support. We have some of the best support in the world. Thanks to our wonderful volunteers, there's nearly always a very experienced person around trying to find a solution. Unlike most companies and most other projects, Patrick and I (the "developers") interact with and support our users on a day to day basis. Sometimes binary patches are even available to fix a problem less than 24 hours after a user first reports it. This is something that most companies do not provide at all, and if they do only because you, the customer, are paying tens of thousands of dollars a month for escalated support. For all the stress trying to do this adds, I think it's always great to hear the thanks that come out of it
We have moved beyond OOo and are focused on making the best Mac OS X experience. In the past we've supported new Mac OS X technologies such as Spotlight and QuickLook, and we keep moving on with media browser, grammar check, and gesture support. We're continuing to look into more Mac OS X technologies, the iPhone, and beyond. We have the same passion for Apple and the Mac our users have, and I think the polish we've been able to add shows our excitement about the Mac.
We have the freedom to incorporate features from everyone and anyone to make the best product. Case in point: we incorporated VBA Excel support over a year before OOo and we have OOXML export thanks to odf-converter, a feature not even available in the forthcoming OOo 3.0. We use Apple functionality to create a better experience from PICT processing to grammar checking and Installer.app. Our agile development and flexible implementation strategy has allowed us to deliver a major software product five years before a Fortune 500 company...and they still have lots of work to go. Our agile development strategy is integrated vertically throughout engineering, product delivery, and support and has allowed us to quickly adapt to user needs and requests. This freedom allows us to be both efficient at the same time as being user driven; not developer or marketing driven. A handful of people have developed and supported hundreds of thousands of users. The freedom to choose our process has allowed this to work, grow, and adapt quickly over time.
We are focused solely on Mac OS X. We only work with Mac OS X users and only program for this one platform. As such over the last 5 years we have been able to respond to the real needs of Mac users from better font kerning to printing to shared installations...you name it. Mac issues don't compete with resources for other platforms...here it's all we deal with.
We love what we do and we love being part of such a wonderful community of people. I always spew product and all that, but in the end the important thing is the really great friends I've made through this entire process. For me Neo isn't a product, it's a social experience, a passion, and a way of life.
Are you sure you're a rockin' engineer and not a slick marketing department?
Seriously, though, the responsiveness of development, the history of commitment, and the ability to focus explicitly on the needs of Mac users will continue to set NeoOffice apart from other offerings.
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
Are you sure you're a rockin' engineer and not a slick marketing department?
Ed can be slick. After all, he convinced me to open source my code and work for no pay for NeoOffice.org back in 2003.
sardisson wrote:
Seriously, though, the responsiveness of development, the history of commitment, and the ability to focus explicitly on the needs of Mac users will continue to set NeoOffice apart from other offerings.
Ed really captured what I feel: support drives everything that we do. Support is not sexy or cool work, but IMHO it is 70% or more of the work required to make good software. Putting out the first release is fun and exciting, but that is usually just the beginning of the work.
More importantly, support is what keeps us responsive. Ed and I are both problem solvers by nature so the stream of issues and problems that users report does motivate us to continually find ways to fix as many of the most commonly reported problems that we can.
What it comes down to is that over time, our limited donations and time caused us to stumble on a way to create a software application whose free support is better than what you get with most high end support that corporations will charge you for.
The really cool part is that NeoOffice users, by donating time and funds, have really helped steer the course of NeoOffice. Basically, volunteering or donating tells Ed and I that you value what we do. If people stop volunteering or donations dry up, then it is a pretty clear signal to us that we are not meeting the most critical needs of our users.
Like Ed said, that keeps us focussed on the our needs of our users. For us, there is no other concern. We aren't employees of a big corporation who have to worry about pleasing the bosses or implementing some unrelated marketing plan dreamed up by the executives. This is the crux of the problem with corporate open source: the open source product makes no money so to maintain funding, it must serve the parts of the corporation that does make money.
Fortunately, we aren't beholden to a corporation's budgeting whims and that eliminates a lot of the overhead and barriers between us and our users.
Awesomely said, all. Thanks for the thoughtful and considered answers. I now have a much better picture of where NeoOffice fits into the computing universe. I also must concur that the support for NeoOffice is wonderful. And the suite is great.
i should know better than to read the comments on any OO.o3 article.
JAKE DON'T READ THE COMMENTS
but i did.
how is speed of start up more important than all the other things? you'd think that start up speed was the most important aspect of the entire thing.
AND
WHY THE HELL is the fact that oo.o is on a BETA for 3.0 make Neo BEHIND?? Oh, i guess the fact that you TWO didn't DROP EVERYTHING and update on EVERY FUCKING MILESTONE means, well, you suck. obviously.
unstable, quick start up > tons of features and ed's beard.
ok ok, i know the beard actually wins, but they don't seem to know that.
oh and the best part is "wow, now it has VBA and Docx!!" uh. how long has Neo had that?
We should make a wiki page called "why your comment is assinine" and start by listing the features that Neo had BEFORE 3.0. And then list the ones that it has that OO.o doesn't have.
and then just a picture of the beard for good measure. Tho that may bring down the RMS...
ok, i feel better.
you know, it is ok if someone likes oo.o3.0 beta better, just no FUD, please? pretty please? sugar and.. ah to hell with it.
Joined: Apr 25, 2006 Posts: 2315 Location: Montpellier, France
Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 7:41 am Post subject:
jakeOSX wrote:
sigh.
i should know better than to read the comments on any OO.o3 article.
JAKE DON'T READ THE COMMENTS
but i did.
how is speed of start up more important than all the other things? you'd think that start up speed was the most important aspect of the entire thing.
AND
WHY THE HELL is the fact that oo.o is on a BETA for 3.0 make Neo BEHIND?? Oh, i guess the fact that you TWO didn't DROP EVERYTHING and update on EVERY FUCKING MILESTONE means, well, you suck. obviously.
unstable, quick start up > tons of features and ed's beard.
ok ok, i know the beard actually wins, but they don't seem to know that.
oh and the best part is "wow, now it has VBA and Docx!!" uh. how long has Neo had that?
We should make a wiki page called "why your comment is assinine" and start by listing the features that Neo had BEFORE 3.0. And then list the ones that it has that OO.o doesn't have.
and then just a picture of the beard for good measure. Tho that may bring down the RMS...
ok, i feel better.
you know, it is ok if someone likes oo.o3.0 beta better, just no FUD, please? pretty please? sugar and.. ah to hell with it.
you know, it is ok if someone likes oo.o3.0 beta better, just no FUD, please? pretty please? sugar and.. ah to hell with it.
I seriously pay zero attention to marketing hype. IMHO, it isn't really FUD in their case as I think they actually believe their code is more stable, better feartured, etc. When you only meaure your progress against your own work, it is easy to have tunnel vision.
All that I read from their marketing materials is that they are very proud of what they have accomplished. Good for them. Even if their primary motivation is still "stamp out NeoOffice", I am OK with that as I feel that by finally releasing their OOo 3.0 Beta, there now is real choice.
Let the people who like using the bleeding edge features of OpenOffice.org use OpenOffice.org. Some people really like using the latest code. Kudos to them as they help find the general OOo crashing bugs early in the process so that all users benefit.
As for us, we aren't going anywhere. Just because Microsoft is a huge corporation hasn't "stamped out" Apple or Linux. I think the same applies here so there is no reason for us to change what we do. We will keep our nose to the grindstone and continue to fix bugs, provide support, and add enhancements that help our users improve their productivity.
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