“Who could have predicted that Micro$haft would jump up just one
day after SUN’s “Star Portal” announcement for Star Office and
fling their own vaporware gauntlet into the ring, announcing a thin
client version of Office 2*** or whatever it will be called by
then.”
“Just like that, everyone in the Known Universe is going to
have the
“Rent-Once-Deploy-everywhere-if-you-got-a-license-ubiquitous-
runs-on-anything (kind
of)-invisible-OS-office-suite-html-portal-tool-bla-bla-bla.…
Sorry, I got lost in all the catch phrases and marketing
memes….whew….give me a minute, will you?”
“What I wanted to say when I started this whole diatribe is that
I wasn’t sure that the Open Source Community NEEDS a “free”
anything from, or the interest of, Big Software. After thinking
about it , I am convinced. If you look at what is currently
available in the Open Source catalog you see the very tools that
comprise the basis of the “Thin-client/office suite that Big
Software wants to sell. There are remarkable projects, like MASON
(based on Perl), ZOPE (based on Python) or MIDGARD (Php3) or the
dozens of other projects/programs that use the browser as a client
interface, complete with database backends, use ubiquitous, Open
Source code and are already up and working quite well…”