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SubjectRe: StarOffice 5.1a problem
Honestly speaking I whole-heartedly agree with you. For me also
the strive for technical excellence is what make things and
Linux in particular attractive. Moreoever, I spent all my life under
Unix, and have no desire to deal with Windows.

However, what I wanted to stress is that StarOffice (in my opinion)
is currently the single most important software which allows MIGRATION
from Windows to Linux. On example of my proverbial wife - she has 10 years
worth of work in Word and all people she communicates with require Word.
Moreover, there is no format to which even to convert Word documents to.
even if we'd like to (yes I use LaTeX myself).

As a remark, if I'm not mistaken Linux kernel does contain workarounds for
specific hardware (firmware) bugs/imperfections (correct me if I'm wrong)?
At the cost of technical purety ?
Is there a principal difference with keeping important software working ?
Replacing any buggy piece of hardware for a Linux-compatible one is at
most $200, while replacing your life's work which happen to be in
different format just cannot be done.

But again, I actually agree with you :). And will recompile the kernel if
needed (never did it yet, so a bit scared), or edit the binary. But will
everybody do ?

Anyway, I got too philosofical where the issue seems to be really minor.


On Thu, 11 Nov 1999, Mike A. Harris wrote:

> On Wed, 10 Nov 1999, Dmitry Pogosyan wrote:
>
> >Well, can I add few words, as an ordinary user, to StarOffice 5.1a
> >dicussion.
> >
> >For example at my home, without StarOffice there will be no
> >Linux running. And not that I need it personally, but my wife
> >does, and she spends 5 hours a day with computer doing work,
> >and I'm just having fun with Linux. So as long as
> >StarOffice/kernel combination does not work, at best I cannot
> >upgrade to new kernel version, at worst I'll be back to
> >Windows.
>
> Thats unfortunate. Note, that nothing forces you to upgrade your
> kernel and break StarOffice. Linux is an open source OS in the
> open source community. If StarOffice was open source GPL as
> well, then the problem would be easily fixed allready, however it
> is a commercial binary only program - so using it on a Linux
> system comes with all of the bad side effects of binary only
> software.
>
> >With all respect to kernel developers crowd (after all I follow
> >this mailing list !) I don't think one should just off hand
> >break StarOffice (even if it their portability problem) and
> >just let end-users to fix it (or submit bug to Sun, which is
> >similar). If kernel changes which breaks important software on
> >which many people depend are required (or desired), it would be
> >good policy that developers contact software vendor and inform
> >them about required changes.
>
> The developers of Linux care about the technical issues with
> Linux, and can't possibly track down 10000 software vendors and
> bug them. Bugs in Linux get FIXED. That is one major reason why
> I use Linux. We are not held back by kludges and backwards
> compatibility issues.
>
> Microsoft Windows crashes so often - partly because of bugs that
> are in the code. They know about a lot of them or most of them,
> however if they fix them, then perhaps thousands of userland
> applications (commercial and otherwise) would break. This would
> cause people to either not upgrade, or to upgrade, and then
> upgrade their applications as well.
>
> You can't have both. Do you want a stable OS, buggy apps, or
> buggy os, stable binary-only apps?
>
> Linux development is focused on fixing bugs, and making things
> technically correct. At no time does Linus or any other top
> level core developer care about binary only module compatibility,
> or binary only software that relies on a bug in the kernel.
>
> Thus Linux stays stable, and moves on.
>
> Since Linux is GPL, and open source, it doesn't stop anyone at
> all from removing the "patch" that fixes a bug and breaks
> staroffice, and then redistributing the resulting kernel source.
>
> So, you are free to upgrade your kernel source to the latest,
> patch it to be Star Office compatible, and then go on having a
> happy day. If Sun cares about fixing SO, then they will provide
> new binary upgrades on their site.
>
> The day that the Linux kernel starts keeping bugs in so that
> broken or badly written commercial binary-only applications
> continue to function is the day that *I* stop using it.
>
> Of course you can always try out other open-source replacements
> for Star-SLOWBLOATEDSTATICALLYLINKED-Office.
>
> --
> Mike A. Harris Linux advocate
> Computer Consultant GNU advocate
> Capslock Consulting Open Source advocate
>
> Join the FreeMWare project - the goal to produce a FREE program in
> which you can run Windows 95/98/NT, and other operating systems.
>
> http://www.freemware.org
>
>


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