On Wednesday 02 November 2005 06:13 am, Jack wrote:
--- Jim Herrmann wrote:
Leo Mauler wrote:
Oh great. Any FOSS CD with OpenOffice.org on it
would
need a non-FOSS Java installer on it too for a lot
of
things (and I presume that Java has restrictive redistribution licensing...):
My new Kubuntu installation uses a JRE from the Free Software Foundation in OOo. I'm pretty sure that would not be license encumbered.
I don't know why people are so concerned about Java, or surprised to find java code in Openoffice. It's sort of like being upset when someon includes PHP in a php shoppingcart application. Openoffice was written by Java coders from Sun, people tend to reuse code they've written for other application when writing new ones. I also have never seen anything so restricvtive in Java licensing. Sure it's not as open as GPL, so what? There are GPL Java RE versions out there. Use one of them if you are so against Java licensing. Only, be aware these are not as well supported and functional ... yet.
Well, all the hubbub is about the "Java Trap" which RMS has written extensively about. This OpenOffice.org move to require Java has prodded the FSF Java implementations along quite a bit. So without all that complaigning, that might have never happened.
All this attacking those bearing gifts is a bit over the top. Someone makes a really sophisticated office application, albeit a bit heavy on resources, available for free (as in beer and as in speech), and what thanks do they? I'd like to see someon else write such a sophisticated app and do it in a less resource intensive way. It's not easy write a million lines of code and do it in a way that is the most efficient. While Koffice is great, there are things OO can do that aren't possible to do in KWord or in MS Word for that matter.
I hope that people don't think we're attacking. Clearly the OO.o guys are doing the best they can with the crappy StarOffice 5.2 code-base they had to start with. The grumbling is trying to get someone to pay attention to just /how/ bloated it is. As a comparison, OpenOffice is 5.2 million lines of code; the entirety of KDE (with Konqueror, all its video games, the window manager, KOffice, a full email, contact and calendar suite, and a plethora of other tools) comes in at only 4.2 million lines of code. So, clearly, someone here is doing more with less. And that's what we want.
See here for a better breakdown: http://www.valdyas.org/fading/index.cgi/2005/10/29#kloc http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2005/10/november-travel-halloween-qt4-easter.html