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OpenOffice 3.0 in 2008

Contrary to rumor, OpenOffice 3.0 will not be a rewrite and is scheduled for September 2008, with 2.3 and 2.4 releases coming out of the kitchen between now and then.

Greening Linux

Kitchen Linker noticed on LWN.net that Linux Foundation says:

Power Management: Throughout the Summit, Linux developers, including the Linux Desktop Architects, met to discuss the increasing need for efficient power management in Linux. As a result of these meetings, Linux Foundation is organizing a “Green Linux” initiative to improve power management functionality in Linux. Making Linux “green” is becoming ever more important in all aspects of Linux adoption: mobile, desktop and server. The Linux Foundation will work with its workgroups, identify key projects and coordinate resources among its members to improve this functionality in the Linux platform. Power management developers will meet next week in Ottawa to continue work in this area.

That smells good in the kitchen.

Java and Javascript, free and efficient

Wow, Javascript and now Java, free.

Both are good for the environment, too. Adobe's JS VM is way faster (i.e., more efficient) than the ones that ship with web browsers. And Sun's Java is way fast too. To the extent scripting languages (Python, Ruby, ...) run on the Java VM instead of their own, lots of cycles (i.e., energy/emissions) are saved.

Kitchen Linker lives in interesting and cool times!

OpenOffice rewrite!?

Slashdot relays that OpenOffice (which I use heavily) is going to get Mozilla Firefox-like extensions and ship with Mozilla's Thunderbird mail reader and one of Mozilla's still-crappy calendar projects. The first part is really cool, it has been too hard to develop for OO.o, this should open up the ecosystem. The second part is probably good to, or OO.o would have eventually and wastefully developed its own mail reader (every program eventually can read mail).

Anyone wondering why not Evolution (an excellent mail reader and calendar client) should consider that OO.o is headed by Sun and Evolution has strong ties to Mono (free implementation of Microsoft's .NET) which competes with Sun's Java.

The post /. referred to says something interesting about OO.o 3.0:

The only objective of the 3.0 will be to make it much more modular and running on tops of frameworks such as Eclipse, Netbeans or Mozilla's XUL.

Uh, do I hear total rewrite? OO.o 3.0 before 2010?

Download OpenOffice 2 now!