[odf-discuss] News on MS pluggin

[Thomas Zander]

The building of a better mousetrap based on the current requirements and user 
requests does not in my mind have to lead to any server side software at all.
In fact, I doubt it should.
The main problem websites solve right now is installation. Its zero install 
and people love that.
Moving any computing to a server ignores open source since no open 
source-office provider is going to have the money for server side computing. 
This leads to companies or groups of friends having to operate a server with 
this stuff and that effectively makes everything had to install again.

What really will stay is communication. People want to have an easy way to 
communicate with each other.  Share docs and all that. I would guess that 
this is the core of your conclusion that things will go server-side.  So I 
really agree with your arguments, just not with your conclusions.
Things are moving more to Peer2Peer. Everyone is a server and at the same time 
nobody is. Here Jabber comes to mind.
The better office mousetrap, then, is one that is not monolithic and is 
flexible enough to be reused in situations where communication is more 
important then being able to produce stunning paper-output.

This is exactly what KOffice2 is focussing on. To have a lot better system 
then any other suite out there for integrating office components in other 
office applications. And I'm pretty sure it will not be limited to just 
embedding in office apps. Embedding the text component in email apps or IM 
apps certainly has value as well.

I won't go into details as its too far off topic, but I'm sure you'll be 
happily surprised when KOffice2 comes out and the months that follow where 
people start to build on top of the component model we created.

Cheers!

On Monday 16 October 2006 13:11, marbux wrote:
> > Kword? AbiWord? The thing about OOo is that a) the code is developed on
> > mono which makes it monolithic and that is not at all easy to change. b)
> > The take up of OOo compared to other FOSS WPs seems to indicate that
> > having something familiar to users is important at least to initiate
> > change.
>
> Kword and AbiWord have some good things going for them. But I suspect that
> if one were to start from scratch to build the better mousetrap, a lot of
> the functionality would be located on the server side. The client-based
> word processor is really more an incident related to its evolution in a
> time when networks were the exception rather than the rule than it is to
> current and foreseeable needs. The sneaker net was the lowest common
> denominator in the market, so we got client-side word processors. No one
> was really looking at a future where networked relational databases would
> be ubiquitous. The IBM Correcting Selectric typewriter was the big
> competitor.
>
> Increasingly, developers are recognizing that there is tremendous customer
> value in collaborative environments located on the server side.  Business
> is booming in web apps. And what IBM is doing with its Workplace
> architecture is really worth watching.

-- 
Thomas Zander
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