>Because you like competition and you want to knock that "leading FOSS office suite" off its perch.
So, basically spite.
The real competitor is Microsoft Office; that's what all FOSS software is competing against in trying to get people comfortable with using FOSS software and stop being locked-into proprietary software and file formats. You're actually harming the FOSS cause by promoting factionalism and fragmentation over silly issues.
>3. Everybody loves an underdog and here's your chance to be a hero.
OO isn't the underdog, LibreOffice is. Microsoft Office is the reigning champion and bully. OO is just muddying the waters and sowing confusion.
I do appreciate the candor in your response though, but it completely validates all my suspicions about the motivations of the few people still hanging on, much like Mr. Dawes keeps hanging onto XFree86 and refusing to throw in the towel even though everyone has abandoned him.
Not at all. Where did you get that? It's just a basic human desire to compete and win. The same reason people play football, play chess, arm wrestle, compete in spelling bees, etc. And still, all of that said, for me personally the "competition" factor is one of the least important.
The real competitor is Microsoft Office; that's what all FOSS software is competing against in trying to get people comfortable with using FOSS software and stop being locked-into proprietary software and file formats.
Meh... I could care less about competing with MS Office. I don't even think about them at all these days. As long as free software and file formats are available to those who want them, I'm not all that concerned with trying to change the world and make it so that everybody is using F/OSS. That's a challenge I'm happy to leave to rms or whoever.
You're actually harming the FOSS cause by promoting factionalism and fragmentation over silly issues.
Yeah, yeah... same thing they said 16 years about about Gnome vs KDE. But yet there are still Gnome and KDE, and even more. There's always somebody crying "fragmentation" and pleading for the end to something: AOO, BSD, KDE, whatever it happens to be.
I do appreciate the candor in your response though, but it completely validates all my suspicions about the motivations of the few people still hanging on
Please don't make the mistake of assuming that my motives are the same as anyone else's. I certainly don't claim to speak for anybody else on the AOO team besides myself.
Is it? I haven't used any desktop office suite in more than five years, at least. I would think the real competitor is Google Docs, and I don't see any current credible path forward that brings OO or Libre Office to the web.
LO on the web is in progress. It'll have collaborative editing, the one killer feature of GDocs.
GDocs is a terrible word processor (with absolutely shocking OOXML conversion abilities; I don't believe this as a serious objection to LO any more) and a terrible spreadsheet. The one feature it has is live collaborative editing.
I am enormously pleased that LO 5.2 has working two-factor auth to GDrive, which means I can use a proper word processor or spreadsheet with it transparently. Even MS Office still doesn't talk transparently to GDrive out of the box.
So, basically spite.
The real competitor is Microsoft Office; that's what all FOSS software is competing against in trying to get people comfortable with using FOSS software and stop being locked-into proprietary software and file formats. You're actually harming the FOSS cause by promoting factionalism and fragmentation over silly issues.
>3. Everybody loves an underdog and here's your chance to be a hero.
OO isn't the underdog, LibreOffice is. Microsoft Office is the reigning champion and bully. OO is just muddying the waters and sowing confusion.
I do appreciate the candor in your response though, but it completely validates all my suspicions about the motivations of the few people still hanging on, much like Mr. Dawes keeps hanging onto XFree86 and refusing to throw in the towel even though everyone has abandoned him.