Re: [GNU-linux-libre] OpenOffice.org extensions

[John Sullivan]

Rubén Rodríguez <address@hidden> writes:

>> There's just one file that would need to be patched, and that file and
>> the change that needs to be made are in the instructions on the wiki
>> for using the list.
>
> I took a look to it a couple of weeks ago, and discovered that
> the Ubuntu version doesn't point to extensions.OOo, but to go-oo.org
> site. Their server automatically redirects the requests to the OOo site.
>
> As the go-oo project goals involve making OOo better, faster and freer,
> maybe the FSF could convince them to do a little trick, like
> redirecting the users to the new FSF page, or -to be less intrusive- to
> the current one inside a frame showing a warning and a link to FSF's.
> Many other first line distros use go-oo's version, so this change would
> be shown to all of them without patching OOo.
>

That's an interesting idea. I'll explore that.

> By the way, I think the free extensions list is a good idea, but
> linking back to extensions.openofice.org makes it pointless. Maybe
> there is a way to use links to the actual file in its latest version,
> as you can do with Firefox extensions -something that should also be
> checked for IceCat-:
>
> https://addons.mozilla.org/es-ES/firefox/downloads/latest/1843/addon-1843-latest.xpi
>

Yeah, I fretted about this a lot and decided that we should just start
it off this way. We were looking into a different way which would have
involved pulling in the information from the official repo without
linking back to the index containing nonfree.

Note that the official OO listing is different than the Mozilla listing.
There does not appear to be a "home page" field -- all of the links I
checked pointed to hosting at OO's repo. But yes, we might be able to
link to the direct download link. However, this causes other
complications -- for example, there are bug reporting links and other
useful metadata on the official entry.

This is also the way the Icecat listing is done -- many of those links
just point back to the default Mozilla listing.

I think this is still an improvement -- we are building a list of free
extensions. Users can always find nonfree software on the internet, we
are not trying to block that :). What we are trying to do is 1) avoid
recommending or promoting nonfree software 2) build a useful interface
for browsing the free extensions. This list even in this format can
accomplish 1), it is just not so convenient for 2).

> Also, a go-oo folk told me -in a very vague way that needs a deeper
> look- that even the go-oo version isn't fully free, just "freer".
> It seems to include at least a binary only library -which they told me
> is free, but they are lazy to cross compile-, several language tools
> -hypenation filters and such- with bogus licenses and some other minor
> things. I'm sorry about the lack of better info, this needs research.

Hm, that's worrisome...

-- 
John Sullivan
Free Software Foundation
Manager of Operations
GPG Key: AE8600B6