I’m not sure which is the second-largest of the projects supported by Software in the Public Interest, but I thought that OpenOffice.org was up there with them. It’s been a bit of a surprise to me that SPI hasn’t done more for them since they joined back in March: only about $1,000 has been donated that way, none spent and I’ve not noticed their liaison being very active yet. Following the release of OpenOffice.org 3.0, I took a bit of a closer look.
Stuff Michael Meeks is doing: Measuring the true success of OpenOffice.org suggests that the project is much smaller than I thought:
“In a healthy project we would expect to see a large number of volunteer developers involved, in addition – we would expect to see a large number of peer companies contributing to the common code pool; we do not see this in OpenOffice.org. Indeed, quite the opposite we appear to have the lowest number of active developers on OO.o since records began: 24, this contrasts negatively with Linux’s recent low of 160+. Even spun in the most positive way, OO.o is at best stagnating from a development perspective. “
OpenOffice.org is a project that produces something I don’t use much, but I recognise the significance of it. I’ve looked at contributing a couple of times in the past (nothing major, just bug reports and offers of help), but got utterly lost in the maze of websites and copious verbose descriptions written in management buzzspeak. (I spotted a “Report a Bug” link taking me to a page titled “Submit an Issue” for example.) Looking again now, OOo doesn’t seem much easier to navigate. I did find that SPI doesn’t appear to be listed on their donation page yet, which probably explains the low donation amount.
Another confusing thing: they don’t use bugzilla, but a less accessible fork called Issue Tracker. Even simple contributions seemed to want multiple registrations to websites, mailing lists and whatnot – that seemed to contradict a claim that “Joining OpenOffice.org is purely optional” – and a confused email question to an address listed on the website got a rejection/error in reply.
I’m sorry to say that I got confused, discouraged and moved onto other, easier things that I’d use more. Anyone else looked at contributing? How did it go for you? Anyone understand how this associated project works?
I just about gave up reporting bugs in OpenOffice.org, because they never get fixed even if they are very serious from a compatibility standpoint. Among the bugs I reported that didn’t get fixed, the most ridiculous one would have to be a bug in the bug reporting system itself (which, for obviously reasons, need to be a high priority item); it took them, iirc, a whole year to even get to my report (without a fix).
That said, I use it every day out, but it’s rather just out of a lack of alternatives.
As alternatives, I tend to use groff (for document layout) and Emacs’s ses-mode (for spreadsheets), but I started back when Wordstar seemed sophisticated, so I don’t mind the dot codes and the need to click “MSPreview” to see it laid out. Most users do want a WYSIWYG office suite, so I recognise its significance though.
I don’t have a ready alternative for the presentation software (is that impress?) although I have used a web browser in the past. My presentations tend to be simple graphics these days, so as long as there’s no outrageous bug, I’m OK with OpenOffice.org.
I’m disappointed but not surprised that bugs in the bug tracker are slow to fix. That’s the danger of forking, isn’t it?
Reading http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/Join, it seem that they are just saying that joining is only useful if you want to help Oo.o, but not if you only want to use it. They probably want to protect themselves from having lot of user to join when they don’t want to contribute.
What forking? There are bugs I reported harking back from OOo 1.0 days (maybe even 0.x days, but in any case long before the forking days) that are still unfixed, but are essential for compatibility. Maybe the recent forking can force them to actually address these bugs.
The most puzzling thing about OOo is the lack of EPS support. Is OOo truly open source and have its roots in Unix? It is really hard to believe that EPS, once the ONLY way to do scalable graphics interchangeably (at least as an import/export format) in open-source Unix software, is still not properly supported by OOo. You can’t believe the attitude they have when I reported back then that EPS was not working; it was as if they have never used LaTeX and tgif before, nor have they ever used Microsoft Word or PageMaker, nor have they even read the EPS documentation.
OOo doesn’t really work properly whether you view it as its own thing or a Microsoft Office alternative, and their way (speed, or maybe priority) of fixing bugs makes any kind of contribution look like a very frustrating exercise in futility; I won’t be surprised at all that people don’t want to join to contribute anything.
From reading the Debian user list I gather we’re actually using go-oo (go-oo.org) instead of vanilla OOo in Debian. I’m not sure if they’re any friendlier to developers, but it might be worth looking into.
Drew, I saw go-oo this week and I’m not sure how they relate, or the relative merits of the two groups. That was something else that confused me a little.
Ambrose, I meant forking Issue Tracker from bugzilla. I agree about the disappointment about Encapsulated PostScript support. Sadly, OO.org isn’t the only multi-platform software which seems to forget Unix/GNU/Linux support a bit sometimes: Mozilla installations, anyone?
I don’t think the forking from bugzilla is any issue or impediment to contribution; there was (and still is) sourceforge, which uses something that is not bugzilla which was even harder to use than OOo’s Issue Tracker. Yet sourceforge hosts some of the most active open-source projects.
Yes, Mozilla was quite bad too (I don’t know whether it still is), but as its own thing it generally works. OOo doesn’t even work very well as its own thing =(
Go-OO is kind of a fork, in a sort of Debian/Ubuntu way I guess. It is supposed to be much easier to contribute to.
I’ve reported bugs to OOo a number of times, and not a huge amount appears to happen. I’m faintly allergic to all the ‘Collab.net’ stuff they’re using, and trying to follow the build notes is virtually impossible as an outsider.
A related discussion popped up in LWN’s snippets today: Why OpenOffice.org Failed – and What to Do About It (ComputerWorld UK).
AH, I don’t see what the Debian/Ubuntu split has to do with ease of contribution. They’re both fiddly, in different ways. I also don’t like Collab.net stuff much: is that the problem at OOo?
Ambrose, broadly agree with those points. And I’ve a rant about Sourceforge.net’s sins written, but it needs some tweaks before I post it, so it will be at least a week, probably more.