The following was an exchange between me and NeoOffice co-developer Edward H. Peterlin:
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Posted: Sun Feb 06, 2005 8:07 (on NeoOffice Forum
http://trinity.neooffice.org/)
Post subject: Enlisting Able (but unwilling?) Help For NeoOffice Programming
Greetings!
I'm going to show how naive I am here since all my non-programmer expertise can offer NeoOffice is a couple of strapped bucks, but with all the half-idle Mac shareware and freeware writers there are out there, can't they be recruited to help Ed and Patrick out? Maybe a token gift like a Sun sweatshirt or baseball cap to entice them over? When I see Mac share/freeware authors valiantly spinning wheels on fine but on life-support efforts like iCab, these guys ought be lending that sweat and talent to a project that benefits the Mac masses, not merely a tiny niche.
At city and community colleges all over this nation there's new and seasoned talent just lolling around waiting to have their name emblazoned in the credits of a major software project (can you spell resume fodder?), and I can't imagine too many mega-projects with OpenOffice's stature outside writing Space Shuttle code. Can't this request be broadcasted on MacAddict and MacWorld and others Mac fan organs? (I'm REALLY disappointed by the tepid support the Mac mags have given NeoOffice. I guess they believe AppleWorks works well enough for Mac people - I mean REAL serious people use non-grade school grade MS Office, right?) Whatever happened to this famous Mac sense of maverick community and charity?
I just can't understand why Ed and Patrick seem to be the only ones toiling over code on a project that benefits the Mac universe far more than AppleWorks or iWorks or whatever lame suite effort Apple cranks out! When I glance reviews of people actually carping over NeoO's features and (beta!) maturity, I just have to shake my head in scorn and wonder if these malcontents ever heard the phrase of looking a gift horse in the mouth!
Okay, yanked off the soapbox...
James Greenidge
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OPENSTEP
The One (Edward H. Peterlin, NeoOffice co-developer, NeoOffice.org)
Posted: Sun Feb 06, 2005 2:26
Post subject: Enlisting Able (but unwilling?) Help For NeoOffice Programming
If you can think of any good way to get programmers interested in helping the project out, by all means please do I tried for many years at conferences like WWDC even, but thus far not too many have jumped onboard to help.
For what it's worth, one of the major turnoffs for most Mac developers it seems is that we're not using standard Apple tools or technologies for the development. A lot of developers have come on through and stated they'd love to help if they could design things in Interface Builder, but then they find out we don't do that and leave. So I guess from a developer point of view it takes a lot of patience or it takes trying to find one of those Linux-convert style developers that are already familiar with the command line tools and don't mind working without the Apple GUI tools.
I'm not sure if that information can help you start to develop any ideas...but one of the fundamental problems in recruiting for Neo are the same as recruiting for OOo X11: so many people want to do "Aqua" design and redo the interface but very few want to do the much more difficult task of maintenance and infrastructure development that's required to get us there.
I'm sure some developers are also put off by the way we handle "introducing" them to the project and the code. In general, we don't have the human bandwidth to handhold a lot of people through the initial building and debugging process. This is pretty thick stuff, and historically the "throw them in and let them swim" approach has kind of helped do a self-screening to let only dedicated developers with good skills through...and who also don't mind a little frustration along the way.
Anyway, if you can get any additional ideas please let me know. WWDC has proven to be the most successful developer "mindshare" place I've gone to. While we may not always find more core developers, we definitely build mindshare and get other developers aware of an alternative office solution. We get a decent bit of database developers, solutions integrators, systems administrators, and the like interested in the product. That's always good.
ed