Subject: Re: implications of GPL'd StarOffice
From: Tim LaDuca (mail@timl.org)
Date: Sun Jul 23 2000 - 13:05:51 CDT
Uncle Meat wrote:
> If more can be done to improve AbiWord, I'm for it. But, I don't consider
> endless addtional bloat to be improvement.
>
> My distatse with SO is that it absolutely insists on loading everything it
> can fit into memory when it starts. If I want to read or write a document,
> I have no use for all of the graphics and internet crap along with it.
>
> I have it installed only because of some filters it has for imports. I also
> have WP8 and AbiWord for similar reasons. I default to AbiWord more and
> more since it has much smaller footprint. If the filters ever reach my
> needs (both import and export), SO and WP will disappear.
>
> PLEASE!!!!!!!! Don't create another office suite that has every imaginable
> feature that will never be used by the vast majority of users just so that
> we can have everything all in one package. We already have more than enough
> of those! If more functionality is needed, make it modular (as in Siag),
> not as so many others (SO, koffice [kde period!] M$, offix, etc) have
> thrust upon us!
Which is why I believe more and more that we need a diffrent way of
distributing/installing programs. At least MS does allow a fair amount of
choice as far as what additional features are installed, but there is no way
to change how the program is compiled, that was already done by MS. What
I would like to see is a distribution system, where everyone gets the source
and in an interactive setup program decides how the program gets compiled and
more importantly, how much gets compiled into the program. Kind of like those
GUI tools that let you compile the Linux kernel. Of course for the "Rest of
the World", they can still have there binaries. But the End Result that I am
after is that John Light can have his 1.4 MB abiWord on his 10 year old
computer and Big Ben can have his 500 MB AbiWord that has everything but the
kitchen sink and runs well on his Pentium 7 with 2 GB RAM.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Sun Jul 23 2000 - 13:06:43 CDT