[odf-discuss] Microsoft and Novell cooperate on document formats

[marbux]

On 11/2/06, Nicu Buculei <nicu_ooo at nicubunu.ro> wrote:
>
> Do not be so dismissive about Novell's ability to undertake major work
> on OOo, counting the developers, thy are the second corporate entity
> involved in development:
> http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/DomainDeveloper
> Their expertise dates back from the Ximian days and talking about
> relevant expertise, one of their recent accomplishments is the filter
> for Lotus 1-2-3.
>
> Sorry, but I've been a Novell watcher for years. They dumped WordPerfect
because of the "cultural clash." They dead-ended a bunch of other really
good WordPerfect Corp. tools (e.g., DataPerfect and WordPerfect Shell)  and
managed to run Groupwise into the ground despite product superiority. The
company has never understood the market for office productivity software
and  I'd be really intrigued if you were to describe how they suddenly
acquired that understanding and expertise.

Yes, there are still quite a few ex-WordPerfect Corp. staffers in the Provo
area, but they've been located in new jobs for years now. Corel pink-slipped
the last of them in 1998. And there's still a fair bit of bad blood between
them and Novell, which has never been forgiven for selling WordPerfect to
Corel and scrapping most of the other software WordPerfect Corp. developed.

Major software projects require more than just throwing money and developers
at them, particularly for high end office software. It requires expertise
not only in programming but also in office procedure and workflows. It isn't
something that can be picked up overnight or even in a couple of years.
WordPerfect is a good example; it hasn't seen a major feature added since
the WordPerfect Corp. developers were laid off by Corel.

And being number two in the number of developers committed to OOo isn't
saying a lot when it comes to the magnitude of the work that would have to
be done on OOo to fully implement MOOX. See e.g., <
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2006/10/ass-backwards-compatibility.html> (and
don't miss the linked article on self-deprecating standards).

I suspect you're missing just how big a job it would be for OOo to fully
implement MOOX.

Best regards,

Marbux
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.opendocumentfellowship.com/pipermail/odf-discuss/attachments/20061103/759fec62/attachment-0002.htm