OpenOffice = Bloatware?

Interesting comparison of CPU/Memory usage of OpenOffice and MS Office:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/index.php?p=120

A good lesson that software isn't less bloated just because it has the magical OpenSource sticker on it. The only reason open source software has generally enjoyed a bloatware free status is because it generally does a hell of a lot less.

4 Comments

  • While the first part of this post is indisputably true (having a "magic open source sticker" is no guarantee of *anything* except that the source is open), I'd caution against the outright dismissal of any benefits, and saying that doing less is "the *only* reason" is outright false.



    First of all you're drawing a conclusion from a single datapoint; that's ridiculous.



    Secondly, OpenOffice spent a heck of a lot longer as proprietary software (StarOffice) than it has so far as Open Source. Since its release as Open Source there have been groups in the community trying to combat the bloat, but (as anyone in or around Microsoft ought to know) trying to reduce bloat in a massive codebase while also adding features is a huge challenge. Consider that it took Mozilla *two* major rewrites after the source was released (dropping the original Netscape code completely, and then dropping the whole idea of an integrated suite in favor of Firefox; the latter of which only became possible when the corporate sponsor lost interest) before it lost a reputation of bloatedness. OOo hasn't made any attempt to throw away *any* code yet that I know of.



    Basically, attempting to draw any conclusion about Open Source based on software which only became Open late in life is crazy.



    What would be more interesting would be to compare open versus closed implementations of the same protocol. Mono today does a lot more than the 1.0 version of the CLR did - how does the Lines of Code count compare? GNU Classpath now covers rather more than 90% of the APIs in Sun's JDK. Apache and IIS are comparable in terms of features.



    Or how about a default installation of Ubuntu versus WinXP? Any attempt to claim that Ubuntu does less than Windows out of the box would have to be justified, since Ubuntu out of the box includes a full office suite (yes, OOo), an image editing tool closer to Photoshop than Paint, the ability to burn ISO files (my pet missing Windows feature) etc.

  • One of my linux-fanboy buddies was telling me that it took his fairly modern computer *three days* to compile Open Office. I guess he couldn't use binaries because the distro he was using (Gentooooo?) didn't like them.



    But seriously. Three days?!?

  • so much for nightly builds...

  • 428411.. He-he-he :)

Comments have been disabled for this content.