The Picard ManeuverMaybe they just don't know any better
otacon239Heck, they won’t even let you into a difficult-to-cancel subscription! What are they thinking? Think of the revenue!
definitely_AII heard they don’t collect your private information and sell it to third parties, either. It’s as if they hate society itself!
Line goes down :(
LexamApache OpenOffice??
Surely you meant LibreOffice. OpenOffice has basically been dead for years, with no significant work going on.
OpenOffice was dead before it was transferred to Apache, so it’s not old enough to excuse.
JackbyDev
Naho_ZakoLmao I’ve been doing a digital forensics class online, and it’s always got VMs with ancient versions of software on it, so I got to discover what Apache OpenOffice was. Love that they have to use FOSS to teach us shit since Windows needs a subscription.
TypoI almost wrote dogital forensics. Is that using dogs to find data? Sniff out that hard drive and get datadumping boy!
SkullgridJesus those images must be 15-20 years old. I guess that’s probably still good enough for the basics but there’s been a lot of changes since then.
We’re always on some ancient Kali version and Windows XP to 10, and once we used some Linux Distro I’d never heard of in my life. The software is Autopsy, OSForensics, ProDiscover Basic 64, Hex Workshop, and more, a bonus one being IceWeasel (now known as GNU IceCat?). I genuinely want to gouge my eyes out when looking at the old Kali.
To expand further on your point, here are the releases for Apache Open Office (OO). We are at 4.1.6. the page for 4.1 release was last updated in 2014. It’s been mainly small bug fixes since then.
www.openoffice.org/development/releases/
LibreOffice (LO) and Open Office were essentially the same application at OO 4.0 vs LO 4.1. LO had 3 major releases by 2023 before it went from 7 to 24. With the annual releases it is me difficult to gauge progress in the same way. But we are already at 26.2.
All of the ones here are pretty old, so I can believe the meme is over 10 years old with mayve the firefox logo swapped out
LibreOffice has been updated? Interface still looks like it was designed for Windows 95.
It still looks and behaves like StarOffice.
The templates they include look ancient as well. They do have a mediocre copy of Microsoft’s ribbon interface.
I mean, there’s no such thing as a good copy of Microsoft’s ribbon interface.
ProdigalFrogIs there an office suite you had in mind that looks futuristic? Comparing a slightly old version of LibreOffice with a modern version of MS Office… They look pretty similar to me? (The gray document background in libreoffice is from me, it defaults to something closer to MS office).
Also @[email protected]
I haven’t used Apple’s suite much, but it’s likely that LO could learn something from it, for the simple reason that Apple knows about the principles of grouping in design and thus never subscribed to the approach of ‘cram lots of buttons in the toolbars without spacing’.
Ah, I assumed you were comparing it to MS Office as the gold standard, and chose the tabbed mode to make it closest to that, though I don’t personally use it that way myself.
LibreOffice has a simpler mode, though not quite as bare-bones as your Apple example. It’s how I how use it personally:
There’s also a Sidebar mode, which can collapse out of the way when not in use, or be brought back by pressing a small button on the side of the program.
I agree it could stand to offer a mode with much more spacing and just the essential options, but I think for the most part, the simpler toolbar mode which I use is pretty adequate, and doesn’t feel overwhelming to use.
Alternatively, Libreoffice is quite customizable, so a user can remove every option from the toolbar they never use, and make it appear nicer and less cramped.
assumed you were comparing it to MS Office
I’m not the guy to whom you originally replied, so I’m just chiming in with my observations. I would never pose MS’ design as anything to aspire to, because MS only recently learned about the principles of grouping, which is very basic design stuff. Their design philosophy for ages consisted of crammed toolbars, crammed lists, and crammed tables.
Unfortunately, LibreOffice isn’t better in this regard, and won’t be until they work on the UI toolkit to allow a different approach. Apple’s UI is good not because it’s ‘bare-bones’, but because it organises elements visually instead of piling them all into a giant toolbar for the user to wade through. Other Mac apps are the same way. Btw, iirc the toolbars are typically customizable.
Ah, so you are! My mistake :p
until they work on the UI toolkit to allow a different approach (like e.g. Firefox does allow)
Like how Firefox lets you drag and drop icons and spacers around? That would be cool to have in Libreoffice.
Apple’s UI is good not because it’s ‘bare-bones’, but because it organises elements visually instead of piling them all into a giant toolbar for the user to wade through.
Could definitely see that as a big improvement, even as someone quite used to the Windows 95 way of doing things (or at least, I prefer the old way to the ribbon), hopefully someone who has a similar itch to us as well as the capabilities to implement it does so someday :)
Like how Firefox lets you drag and drop icons and spacers around?
Yeah, the spacers are the key thing here, because humans perceive spaced-out things to be topically distinct. Meanwhile Windows always offered separator bars to divide groups of buttons in the toolbars, which of course added visual noise. Idk what toolkit LO uses, but from what I’ve seen Java UIs typically follow Windows’ conventions.
LibreOffice’s look stems in large part from the UI toolkit that they use. Which was guaranteed to look like Windows, since LO is made in Java, and is not gonna be changed easily.
You can change the interface, it comes with 5 types of interface you can choose.
With enshitification nowadays, the fact that they’re nonprofit is the reason why the software is good quality.
If you ever feel like you can’t make anything good, keep in mind that companies will intentionally make worse stuff
That’s my main issue with windows in particular. Their bad decisions are known to be bad for the user, but in theory good for the shareholders.
I can accept I’m not the right user for a program or feature, but not that the features are against the users.
Will they get away with it? Vee’ll see.
I’ll go home now, HEY DON’T PUSH ME
In May 2021, after the project was acquired by Muse Group,[58] there was a draft proposal to add opt-in telemetry to the code to record application usage. Some users responded negatively, with accusations of turning Audacity into spyware.[59] The company reversed course, falling back to error/crash reporting and optional update checking instead.[60] Another controversy in July 2021[61] resulted from a change to the privacy policy which said that although personal data was stored on servers in the European Economic Area, the program would “occasionally [be] required to share your personal data with our main office in Russia and our external counsel in the USA”.[62] That July, the Audacity team apologized for the changes to the privacy policy and removed mention of the data storage provision which was added “out of an abundance of caution”.[61]
Awwww… :(
Hey at least they removed mentioning it in the TOS!
Yeyyy!… :)
…..:(
required to share your personal data with our main office in Russia and our external counsel in the USA
Which most probably means that if you report a bug, you send them data about your installation and whatever additional data you include, like the email to contact you.
Lawyers keep stepping on this rake time and again when writing terms and policies.
UnderpantsWeevilWhat if I told you all of these ventures were profitable?
Being profitable so you can continue to exist does not mean you are motivated by profit.
This is the same argument as “you hate capitalism but you participate in it.”
Being profitable so you can continue to exist does not mean you are motivated by profit.
I mean… it definitely plays a large factor. The idea that these organizations aren’t profit-maximizing is very different than claiming they’re net negative or hobbyist endeavors.
This is the same argument as “you hate capitalism but you participate in it.”
“We live in a capitalist society and must play by its rules” is merely an observation of the status quo.
I would more compare it to the complaint about a number of socialist states - China, Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela - that wildly outperform their expectations despite flying in the face of Chicago School orthodoxy. “Well, but they’re cheating!” is an allegation made regularly.
Western AI data scrapping companies love to get mad at Chinese AI data scrapping companies for scrapping their data, for instance. American MIC love to bemoan foreign investment in cheap, efficient deterrents. American biotech companies are firmly committed to keeping anything developed in Cuba out of the hands of the American public.
The biggest driving point of capitalism is the innovation.
That’s why nothing was ever invented before capitalism.
Which makes some wonder how capitalism was invented.
But they are communists and should be shot for questioning the wisdom of the system.
MeldrikI don’t understand economics but why does there have to always be profit? If someone made devices that last 50 years they would go bankrupt? Make it make sense.
Funny you should mention that! The Phoebus cartel formed in 1924 by major light bulb manufacturers, because they were at a point where they were producing light bulbs that could last for decades, and they realized that this would kill their profits because nobody would buy bulbs because they lasted so long, so they made rules to deliberately make the bulbs fail after about 1,000 hours and fined members for making bulbs that lasted too long, effectively creating the concept of planned obsolescence as a business model.
See? Capitalism promotes innovation! In how to profit!
They don’t want some profit, or even sustainable profit. They want all the profit, and always more this quarter than the previous.
I do understand that if somebody created something that is cheap, lasts forever and there’s a limited (non infinite) need for it, they would eventually stop selling. That’s why they need to make things last less, or invent excuses to make you buy a new one.
The capitalist imperative is: make as much profit as you can as fast as you can.
The fastest way to make as much profit as you can is not to create the best possible product. Sure, that’ll get you far enough- but in capitalism there is never “enough”. For instance, you could use the capital you amassed to buy up all the competition and create a monopoly and hike prices to whatever you like because people will have no choice but to buy it from you, especially if it’s something essential like food, energy, housing, or what have you.
Of course, monopolies are illegal. Not because capitalism says so, but because society says so, in order to contain capitalism, which would otherwise consume society even faster than it already does!
Monopolies are just one ugly example, there are other ways of making super much profit super fast. Like, stealing! That, too, is illegal, because it goes against the very concept of living in a society, which itself is predicated on the idea that we are stronger and better and happier when we come together and pool our resources.
Alas, I wax verbose.
So basically what it all comes down to is competition and not just greed like most people believe. If you don’t make more money than the competition, you will fail. That’s why companies keep getting bought out all the time, they lost this game. Most people have no idea just how many companies they know are owned by bigger ones they may not know. The whole thing is conglomerating like the T-1000 after it had been shattered and melted. So rabid profit chasing is a matter of survival.
That is precisely correct, capitalism is in some sense like a story, I don’t remember who wrote it, in which human scientists ask a semi-omnipotent AI to answer some question, and the AI decides that in order to solve it, it needs to transform all the matter in the solar system into an even greater AI, and calmly treats human extinction as an irrelevant side effect.
“Maximize profit forever” is a bad algorithm if the goal is to sustain a thriving human society. It has no goal state. Just more, forever. Capitalism is fundamentally flawed in its core design and central idea, that somehow, by creating ever more “wealth”, everyone gets richer as a whole, while not taking into account the societal effects of some getting vastly richer than others, compounding over time unto infinity.
I could go on. But capitalism is a fundamentally broken idea that will implode on itself as a matter of causation as it plays out over time, it is logically and physically incapable of sustaining itself.
IninewCrowrunaway infinite consumption at all costs … aka … cancer
So why is Mozilla shoving AI garbage nobody asked for into Firefox? I seriously doubt that their severely overpaid execs don’t have some kind of profit incentive.
Because they also want to entice new users or appeal to users that for some reason do want that feature. More users means more money and despite being non-profit, people do enjoy having more money. They’re not immune. Which is why we need to pull the reigns back every now and then.
Mozilla exec compensation aside (relative to other tech CEOs it is pretty low) the reason they do this is because they are trying to make money in some way that isn’t the Google search box.
The other thing to consider is that even though a lot of people around here and AI skeptics loads is the general public are not and use it everyday and don’t think twice.
I swear the Firefox users have no perspective whenever this stuff comes up.
It’s always “why don’t they just work on the browser” or " I would pay for just the browser" ( they won’t, and even if they did most won’t and it won’t be enough)
Web browsers don’t make money. It’s why only chrome basically exists and that’s a cost center to support Google’s Internet ad hegemony and they spend billions a year on it.
I am watching ladybird and hoping they manage to coalesce the required amount of support to get something off the ground and keep it there.
Firefox isn’t used by the “general public”. The general public doesn’t give a shit about open-source or which corporate logo is stamped on their copy of Chromium. Many won’t even look past Edge, and the rest will likely use Chrome because everyone does already.
No, Firefox is used by the enthusiasts who care about not using Chromium; about actively choosing control over convenience. Now Mozilla Corp is pissing off that same audience by doing what Google does – shoving AI up everything. To date, every decision regarding AI has met with pushback from their own userbase. Being the lesser evil does not grant them a free pass for every boneheaded decision.
If they need cash, they can fire that fuckwit of a CEO, roll the savings back into their engineers and products, and go on a funding campaign promising to actually improve their products like Mozilla Org Foundation did with Thunderbird.
I guarantee you that most Firefox users do not feel the level of emotions that you do on these issues, either about the AI prompt sidebar or the CEO’s salary. They also don’t use Firefox to spite Google. They use it because they think it’s better than Chromium.
You’re unhappy with Firefox? Easy fork. Off you go. Want to convince me to be mad too? Okay, make your case, but don’t just assume that I’d just have to be mad if I just knew that there’s gasp an AI sidebar that I can use if I want to.
Web browsers don’t make money. It’s why only chrome basically exists and that’s a cost center to support Google’s Internet ad hegemony and they spend billions a year on it.
Yep. Well, I don’t necessarily agree it started exclusively for the ads, but they definitely wanted to create something that they control. Microsoft Edge and Opera switching to Chromium just means Google has more soft control on how the web operates. (Even saying “soft” there is pretty generous.) A majority of browsers are Chromium forks. Google can control how the web operates because of it.
But to your point though, thwarting ad blocking is a huge part of it now. The manifest V3 changes (which severely limited what sorts of ad blocking extensions could do) came the same year they listed ad blocking as a significant risk to their revenue in their shareholder statement. Which, I just wanna mention for folks who might not be keeping up with this as much, isn’t some sort of conspiratorial statement. It’s a public document because they’re a publicly traded company.
bazzett