Posted: Wed May 26, 2010 4:36 am Post subject: Re: Comparing NeoOffice with Go-OO, IBM® Lotus® Symphonyâ„
grahamperrin wrote:
It would be neat to see comparisons summarised within the neooffice.org domain.
Where best to do this?
FWIW I expected the FAQ to include a link to a page that offers comparisons.
We list very links to NeoWiki articles from the main www.neooffice.org pages for a simple reason: the NeoWiki articles are volunteer generated content that is frequently out of date. In the case of the NeoWiki's Feature Comparison article, this is particularly true.
While we appreciate the time and effort that volunteers have put in to create the many NeoWiki articles, since late 2008 the number of volunteers updating the NeoWiki articles or providing web translations has dropped to almost zero.
Since our limited donations only cover one full time engineer (me), taking over maintenance of that content would squeeze out our feature development and user support work so it is not something that we can afford to do. So we limit content on the main www.neooffice.org pages to only the most core things such as downloads, what major new features we have added to the underlying OpenOffice.org code, and where users can obtain support when they encounter problems.
As for your links to Go-oo and Lotus Symphony, if some volunteer wants to go through the process of comparing those products, they are welcome to update the NeoWiki. However, it will post my pesonal opinion that that seems odd to me to include either of those AFAICT their Mac OS X versions are unsupported and are thinly used.
The reasoning behind my opinion is that both NeoOffice and OpenOffice.org's Mac OS X version have a pretty large number of Mac OS X users who not only download as well as a large number of people who regularly install any updates when they are released. Also, direct user support is available for both products (donors only for NeoOffice and well-staffed volunteer support for OpenOffice.org).
In contrast, Go-oo provides no support. In fact, AFAICT you are supposed to get support by filing bugs in OpenOffice.org's bug tracking system, not Novell's. Also, both Go-oo and Lotus Symphony do not even provide PowerPC binaries. While those with a newer Mac may not care about PowerPC, 25% of our downloads are still PowerPC which indicates that PowerPC machines are still a significant portion of the Mac OS X machines in use. Note supporting PowerPC is IMO like only providing Windows 7 binaries for your Windows product.
To me, no support and no PowerPC support means that their Mac OS X releases are a bit of an afterthought and including them in a feature comparison might give the impression that their products are a lot more serious about their Mac OS X users than they really are.
Joined: Oct 08, 2004 Posts: 23 Location: Brighton and Hove, United Kingdom
Posted: Wed May 26, 2010 6:51 am Post subject: comparisons
Thanks, all understood.
Personally, I see NeoOffice as
greater than the sum or merger of OOo + Go-OO
(for want of a better expression); at Wikipedia there's a depersonalised key point
Quote:
NeoOffice is based on OpenOffice.org and Go-OO.
which helps to distinguish NeoOffice from those two.
In the comparisons there,
Quote:
Symphony lacks support for databases and drawings.
and I just added a new subsection Levels of support, with references.
AFAICT the history table there is incorrect, currently suggesting that NeoOffice 3.1.1 and 3.0.2 are based on OpenOffice.org 3.2. I don't know the history well enough to make changes there, so might someone else contribute?
Sorry I missed this comment of yours in my last post. I noticed OpenOffice.org version linkage is incorrect too. NeoOffice 3.0.1 and 3.0.2 are definitely based on OpenOffice.org 3.0.1 and NeoOffice 3.1.1 is definitely based on OpenOffice.org 3.1.1.
I am not sure who updates NeoOffice's Wikipedia entry but I know that neither Ed nor I have done any updates in the recent past as I think it might give the impression of bias if we make entries about our own product. Feel free to correct the Wikipedia page. You seem to have some karma in Wikipedia as they have not reverted your recent changes.
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