Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on January 12, 2005 05:54 PM
So far, I've been unable to persuade my wife to switch from the world of Microsoft Windows. However, she uses a lot of free (as in freedom) software, because when she misses some functionality I can almost always find GPLed alternatives which brings a smile on her face.
Her laptop came with Microsoft Works, which consists of a word processor, spreadsheet application, a calendar, and Microsoft Outlook Express - an email application. She is annoyed by the fact that the installation is incomplete, promting her to add components all the time, and the lack of integration between the mail application and the calendar. She can't assign a follow-up date to a task sent her by email. She is considering bying the complete Microsoft Office suite with Outlook.
Now, I've tried to convince her to use the latest OpenOffice 1.9.69. However, without an email and a calendar application the features she needs is not available. Glow is not usable, Mozilla Calendar is not usable and Mozilla Sunbird is not usable. All look great, but a simple thing like attaching an email or document to an event or todo item is not possible. Really, I tried last night. One Sunbird developer says Vlad (project leader?) knows about this, and he hoped they would have this functionality by version 0.3. That would be great, but the Sunbird project has no release schedule available, so when are we to expect 0.3?
Now, this brings me to the not-invented-here-syndrom plagueing many projects. This has nothing to do with being a free software project or a proprietary project, but rather the outlook of the project. The project needs to address two questions: - who is this project for? - what can we to for them? If the answer to the first question is "the general end-user", and the second answer is "an office suite" because there is a huge demand, it begs the question: if the point of free software is to give legal access to source code of other projects, then why are there so few doing it in a timely fashion? Is it the not-invented-here-syndrom doing it's dark magic again?
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Re: not-invented-here-syndrom
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on January 12, 2005 05:54 PMHer laptop came with Microsoft Works, which consists of a word processor, spreadsheet application, a calendar, and Microsoft Outlook Express - an email application. She is annoyed by the fact that the installation is incomplete, promting her to add components all the time, and the lack of integration between the mail application and the calendar. She can't assign a follow-up date to a task sent her by email. She is considering bying the complete Microsoft Office suite with Outlook.
Now, I've tried to convince her to use the latest OpenOffice 1.9.69. However, without an email and a calendar application the features she needs is not available. Glow is not usable, Mozilla Calendar is not usable and Mozilla Sunbird is not usable. All look great, but a simple thing like attaching an email or document to an event or todo item is not possible. Really, I tried last night. One Sunbird developer says Vlad (project leader?) knows about this, and he hoped they would have this functionality by version 0.3. That would be great, but the Sunbird project has no release schedule available, so when are we to expect 0.3?
Now, this brings me to the not-invented-here-syndrom plagueing many projects. This has nothing to do with being a free software project or a proprietary project, but rather the outlook of the project. The project needs to address two questions:
- who is this project for?
- what can we to for them?
If the answer to the first question is "the general end-user", and the second answer is "an office suite" because there is a huge demand, it begs the question: if the point of free software is to give legal access to source code of other projects, then why are there so few doing it in a timely fashion? Is it the not-invented-here-syndrom doing it's dark magic again?
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