Basic Fantasy RPG Forums

The nice thing about LibreOffice, is that they have taken extra/additional steps to ensure the project remains a free and open source project. It is not as likely that a Corporation will again have the option to dictate and/or sell, license, (or give) the project as their property. This is something I like.

I use a great number of Google services, but I am always worried that at some point, the suits will try to pinch me for the use of those services in the future. Thus I remain wary. I am hoping that for each service offered by one of these companies, a similar completely free and open source service will appear.

FYI, one of my favorite recent open source projects is VideoLan which can play nearly all formats of video files including dvd. Nice, as one of my peaves when (re-)installing a Windows-based OS for someone, is that they must have or buy new DVD decoding software for their dvds... now I don't even bother with asking the person for such disks (if they have them)... I just go ahead and give them the videolan player instead.

VLC for the win! No need to look for any obscure codecs.

Re: Google

I used to be a big fan of Google. I still use their services heavily, but am now more wary. Let's see how long "Don't Be Evil" lasts. Some will argue it hasn't.

jcm wrote:VLC for the win! No need to look for any obscure codecs.

Re: Google

I used to be a big fan of Google. I still use their services heavily, but am now more wary. Let's see how long "Don't Be Evil" lasts. Some will argue it hasn't.

I find it amazing that anybody believed that line to begin with

Oh don't be so cynical.

I remember when I first started using Google. There were no ads. There were no other services. And the results were superior to anything else. Quite a contrast to Yahoo, with its portal approach and sub-optimal results.

Thanks for the replies, everyone. Looks like I need to look at LibreOffice.

Still, it's too bad the OpenOffice name wasn't passed along as well; LibreOffice just doesn't have the same ring to it.

Sir Bedivere wrote:Thanks for the replies, everyone. Looks like I need to look at LibreOffice.

Still, it's too bad the OpenOffice name wasn't passed along as well; LibreOffice just doesn't have the same ring to it.

It does if you speak Spanish or French.
Libre = "free" in Spanish & French, so about 1/6 of the world would probably think it is nice (or more given closely related languages).

Sure, LibreOficina has a very pleasant ring to it, but the mismatched Spanish/English just sounds odd. (LibreBureau, the French version, is just right out.)

Still, it's a tiny issue. Maybe I'll just call it LibreOficina on my machine.

You mean "en mi máquina"

I haven't had it for more than a week, but the few things I've noticed make me think it really was designed more by-people-for-people than by plodding-and-misguided-big-corporations-for-who-knows-whom.

Dimirag wrote:You mean "en mi máquina"

Indeed!