Go-OO OpenOffice.org Fork (Yet Another One!)
OK. So, we have the original (1) StarOffice that used to have a fee associated with it but can now be downloaded free as part of the Google Pack. Then, SUN bought StarOffice in 1999 and later forked (2) OpenOffice.org. That was great. Lacking a Mac OS X native interface version, the much needed (3) NeoOffice fork was spawned to let Mac users have a version of OpenOffice that didn't require X11. Recently, IBM produced its own fork and inexplicably used the old Lotus (4) Symphony name taken from a 22 year old failed MS-DOS product. And, now, we have Novell's Michael Meeks creating yet another fork called either (5) Go-oo or Your OpenOffice.org (I'm not clear which it is or if this is an official Novell project or a personal project of Mr. Meeks.
The site's Discover section lists the features that differentiates it from its parent OpenOffice.org. This includes VBA (Visual Basic for Applications from Microsoft) macro compatibility, Microsoft Works file import, and faster startup. This is all good stuff.
But, does the world really need five OpenOffice forks? This reminds me too much of the UNIX situation back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Remember AT&T Unix System V, DEC Ultrix, HP-UX, IBM AIX, Solaris, SCO UNIX (cough cough cough) and other UNIXes? IMHO competition is good but fragmentation is bad. And, OpenOffice looks very fragmented at the moment.
I've been using NeoOffice
I've been using NeoOffice for quite a while now, and even used it to write a quick document to be distributed to end-users after Word refused to play nice. The only thing that OOo (and its various forks) lack, as far as I'm concerned, is an analog to Word's "Normal" mode.
It's really a pity that Sun isn't trying to do more to accommodate legitimate concerns of developers — which is, ultimately, what's leading to all these forks. I expect that NeoOffice will die on the vine once the official OOo Aqua port gets closer to being finished, which is really a pity since those guys have put serious work into it.
It would be good if they
It would be good if they would all just put all their efforts into one and make one great piece of software rather than splitting up all of their efforts into 5!
NeoOffice is a bit different as I guess eventually that will disappear now that an official OS X port of Open Office is in the works.
As for the VBA, Macros + Works Import support in Go-oo, why doesn't Michael Meeks work on adding those features directly to Open Office so that more users can benefit?
Adam: O'Reilly's ONLamp.com
Adam: O'Reilly's ONLamp.com has a blog items that helps explain this Go-oo vs. OpenOffice.org fork. You can find it at... Michael Meeks on Sun and OpenOffice.org. I encourage anyone interested in this topic to head and read chromatic's blog entry.