>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 advocateJoin the FreeMWare project - the goal to produce a FREE program in which you can run Windows 95/98/NT, and other operating systems.
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