Communication Breakdown
Communications from the world of, er, communications. And other stuff.
Monday 29 December 2008, 3:28 PM
OpenOffice.org, the 'dying horse'
A very interesting post from OpenOffice.org contributor Michael Meeks makes the whole OO.o project look rather shaky - according to him, the total number of active, core developers is currently 24:
Crude as they are - the statistics show a picture of slow disengagement by Sun, combined with a spectacular lack of growth in the developer community. 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.
Urgh. I love the idea of OO.o, and I happily use it at home, but the problem is fairly serious, it would seem. So what does Meeks propose as a solution?
Kill the ossified, paralysed and gerrymandered political system in OO.o. Instead put the developers (all of them), and those actively contributing into the driving seat. This in turn should help to kill the many horribly demotivating and dysfunctional process steps currently used to stop code from getting included, and should help to attract volunteers. Once they are attracted and active, listen to them without patronizing.
That, and generally "distance the project from Sun". Meeks doesn't hold much hope for either of these options getting wholeheartedly implemented, though. And he calls OpenOffice.org a "dying horse". Not pleasant.
Personally I think Openoffice.org is great - it's free and it does pretty much everything I want it to. Of course, it has to keep moving on, and I hope it does so. These crunched times are certainly an environment in which such a suite should flourish.
Crude as they are - the statistics show a picture of slow disengagement by Sun, combined with a spectacular lack of growth in the developer community. 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.
Urgh. I love the idea of OO.o, and I happily use it at home, but the problem is fairly serious, it would seem. So what does Meeks propose as a solution?
Kill the ossified, paralysed and gerrymandered political system in OO.o. Instead put the developers (all of them), and those actively contributing into the driving seat. This in turn should help to kill the many horribly demotivating and dysfunctional process steps currently used to stop code from getting included, and should help to attract volunteers. Once they are attracted and active, listen to them without patronizing.
That, and generally "distance the project from Sun". Meeks doesn't hold much hope for either of these options getting wholeheartedly implemented, though. And he calls OpenOffice.org a "dying horse". Not pleasant.
Personally I think Openoffice.org is great - it's free and it does pretty much everything I want it to. Of course, it has to keep moving on, and I hope it does so. These crunched times are certainly an environment in which such a suite should flourish.
PreviousComments on this post
Oh damn. I've been using OpenOffice since version .6 I think, mostly the document and HTML editor and Calc.
I've had to use MS Office 2007 at work for the last couple of months and if you can hate a not-living entity, that's a piece of software I hate.
I know where Meeks is coming from having been involved in a couple of volunteer organizations myself. Its not the funding that makes a difference, its the people's interactions. Sounds like things have gotten sour. Time to fork the code.
