freeopenoffice

Posted Sep 30, 2004 1:35 UTC (Thu) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]

No kidding. A recent article compared code base sizes. OOo is said to
have more code than /all/ /of/ /KDE/ put together. I can't verify that
claim as I've not checked (I don't need or use any office suite), but as I
run Gentoo, it's well known that compiling OOo requires /five/ /gigs/ of
free temp space to build and merge the main OOo ebuild, which source is
pretty much straight up. That's certainly far more than any Linux kernel
would be, even in my wildest nightmares.

Personally, I consider that simply far to code bloated. Of course, it
should be said that much of the code size owes to the fact that OOo pretty
much implements its own UI and widget sets from the ground up. However,
it's still comparable to QT and all of KDE in size, and that's an entire
desktop environment, not just an office suite.

The Ximian OO edition is rather smaller, requiring "only" ~3G of free temp
space for compiling. That sounds rather more reasonable to me, certainly
in comparison to 5G. Of course, it's probably the MSWormOS compatibility
stuff that they cut among other things, so I doubt it's as cross-platform.

That brings up a question I've been wondering about for a few weeks, tho.
If we are talking a fork, how far from that is Ximian? I think they
intend to remain synced to the main version, but would forking from it, if
a fork is being considered, be more reasonable? If I'm right about the
MSWormOS compatibility stuff above, and MSWormOS compatibility remains a
goal, than I suppose I've answered my own question. However, it's
something those considering a fork may wish to look at, anyway.

Duncan