OGo: No go so far (NewsForge) [LWN.net]

OGo: No go so far (NewsForge)

Posted Jul 14, 2003 23:29 UTC (Mon) by pavlicek (guest, #323) [Link]

To those who can't understand why I'd think the software is ready:

It's not the comments from the website, but the press release which seems to indicate that the software was ready. I quoted a portion of the press release in the story. The problem is that portions of the release are written in the present tense, as if the functionality had already arrived. And if you check many of the other stories written in the past week, you'll find that lots of people receiving the release thought that the software was ready to roll.

Check out the following portion of the press release:

-----

Says Gary Frederick, Leader of the OpenOffice.org Groupware Project:
´Just to be perfectly clear, this is an MS Exchange replacement. OGo is
important because it's the missing link in the open source software
stack. It's the end of a decade-long effort to ´map¡ all the key
infrastructure and standard desktop applications to free software. OGo
offers users a free solution for collaboration and document management
that, despite being free of charge, will far surpass the quality and
level of collaboration found on Windows (through integration of MS
Office, Exchange Server and SharePoint). Today marks the completion of
´OpenStack.¡

Adds Stu Green, Managing Director of Open Source Professional Services,
"The release of OGo means the OpenOffice.org suite is ready for the
enterprise complete with full-featured and mature groupware solutions.
These capabilities once and for all show how free software betters
proprietary solutions that require licensing payments on both the client
and server sides. Also, OGo provides multiple file format filters for
creating, storing and sharing data in an open and flexible fashion. It's
possible now to completely avoid proprietary file formats and
non-standard XML throughout the desktop stack and infrastructure.
Licensing fees and license management are gone. And with OOo + OGo, no
remote activation is required." (www.OSPSnet.com)

OGo has extensive and broad support for XML based APIs: an XML-RPC
´Webservice" API, support for SunONE XML based WCAP, support for
HTTPMail/MS Exchange-based WebDAV, and finally for iCalendar files in
XML notation (according to the xCal drafts). Given the XML based storage
format of OpenOffice.org the OGo document storage will be able to
perform feature rich team based collaboration and content management.
OGo uses a WebDAV-accessible relational database management system to
make document storage accessible from the OpenOffice.org office suite.

-----

Look at the words:

"It's the end of a decade-long effort"
"Today marks the completion of OpenStack."
"It's possible now to completely avoid proprietary file formats"

and there's plenty more.

Those are not words that describe the eventual potential of a project. Those are words which clearly describe present capabilities. They are precisely the words one would use if this were a tested V1 release.

They do not belong in this press release. Maybe they'll be true next month. But not today.

OGo: No go so far (NewsForge)

Posted Jul 15, 2003 7:38 UTC (Tue) by libra (guest, #2515) [Link]

Would you be that much astonished if such a kind of publicity and claims where made by a commercial company anticipating on the stable release of their product?
I guess you wouldn't noticed the claims of a proprietary software company even if they were ten times the ones of OGo with a reliability of half the one of OGo. And you wouldn't notice that because it is far too common nowadays for people to take time to notice.

When I want to know if a product fits my need I read the feature list, relase note, todo and bug lists, technical papers if available, and then I try it to see if it fits our needs.
I'm sure that people who read the article did the same as me and most of them certainly decided that the project was interesting, but could wait a few days before they try it after reading the details on the OGo site.

The benefit of the article is that it attracted our attention on an interesting and emerging project, and it gave us the opportunity to add a bookmark in our browser. For real test we will wait, but I personnaly didn't feel fooled by the article.

OGo: No go so far (NewsForge)

Posted Jul 15, 2003 10:52 UTC (Tue) by flutonix (guest, #12933) [Link]

I think the point is that the press release has a greater change to gain coverage in traditional media. Media that reports the press release in question might not check things like todo and bug lists (which is a bad thing, IMHO). Target audience of such media is usually not so technically oriented and might include people who has power to make a decisions within the organization they are working.

Its not hard to imagine some senior manager to get interested in and eventually disappointing because he/she got the wrong idea about the maturity of the software.

OGo: No go so far (NewsForge)

Posted Jul 15, 2003 13:23 UTC (Tue) by pavlicek (guest, #323) [Link]

>Would you be that much astonished if such a kind of publicity and claims where made by a commercial company anticipating on the stable release of their product?

If a commercial product release included the text I posted above and the product could not even be installed, I would cross that company off my list of potential software providers. I do not work with companies that lie to me as a consumer. Likewise, most folks in the Open Source world take an extremely dim view of liars.

I am willing to believe that the press release jumped the gun and anticipated what will be once the configuration issues are finally conquered. But it was still a grave mistake which could cost them credibility with IT managers who actually read and believed the release. They should have saved the glowing pronouncements until they lined up with the facts. Or at least they should have had the good sense to use the future tense in the release.

Misrepresentation of the facts is a disease in the IT industry. The Open Source world survives on accurate communication between its members. This press release crosses the line.

OGo: No go so far (NewsForge)

Posted Jul 15, 2003 15:19 UTC (Tue) by libra (guest, #2515) [Link]

You are mostly right, and I agree with the fact that "This press release crosses the line."
Anyway as you write "If a commercial product release included the text I posted above and the product could not even be installed, I would cross that company off my list of potential software providers", I guess that you have cross Microsoft from your list of software providers (or never tried some of their products maybe).
My point was mostly to say that even if the press release of OGo is not good, it is not worse than many other in the wild. But true it is something that should not happen in the OSS world, and the fact that others do it in the proprietary software world is not an excuse for them, just a fact.

OGo: No go so far (NewsForge)

Posted Jul 15, 2003 15:50 UTC (Tue) by pavlicek (guest, #323) [Link]

>I guess that you have cross Microsoft from your list of software providers

Personally, I crossed them off in 1997 when I went with a Linux desktop.

But this is worse than just exaggerating the capabilities of the software. If you download the software and follow the configuration instructions, it will not run. Not at all. Totally non-functional. Zero ability to do work of any kind.

With help from the mailing list and with massive time lost poking around, I managed to get it to limp a bit, but it wasn't even working enough to test. This is not a case of the usual commercial fluff and bravado; this is trying to pass off a pre-alpha software kit as "enterprise ready." And that's a practice which must end ASAP.

OGo: No go so far (NewsForge)

Posted Jul 15, 2003 13:40 UTC (Tue) by pavlicek (guest, #323) [Link]

Oh please. There are very few people who have fought as long and as hard to see Linux in the enterprise. I started pushing it in 1997 in Digital Equipment Corporation.

I think OGo could possibly be enterprise-ready soon. Unfortunately, the press release said it was ready now when it cannot even be installed by anyone who was not on the project team. That's not a slam against Open Source in the enterprise. That's a criticism of a press release which is deceptive.

Open Source is not about deception. It relies on true and accurate communication. This press release crossed the line and may cause IT managers to think there is a solution here when it hasn't arrived yet. And that may poison the minds of some in IT against Open Source.

OGo: No go so far (NewsForge)

Posted Jul 15, 2003 21:01 UTC (Tue) by ka6s (guest, #12952) [Link]

I think this one did go over the line.

The press release caused me to go out and download the software and give it a try. Indeed they have a LONG way to go for this software to even install on a normal distribution.

The project uses some "not so normal" tools, i.e. objective C and the GNUStep environment that make even compiling from source difficult.

At the same time, the folks at OGo are trying REAL HARD to support people and fix problems. I imagine they have come farther in the last few days than in the last few months of development just because the software was exposed to environments outside the developer's machine!

So - I think the initial article is essentially correct, yet given a little bit of time the OGo suite will become quite useful!