Spotlight: On Developers and Technology

Spotlight Two

Spotlight focuses this week on the mailing lists, in particular on the "Groupware" thread in the "discuss" list that has engaged many of contributors, who debated not just the technology, but what even constitutes "groupware," and its relationship to OpenOffice.org, a question that implicitly invokes discussion about the project's goals and strategies. (The editorial column, "Quo Vadis OpenOffice.org of 16 January 2001, touched on the early phases of this discussion.) The thread is quite extensive, and curious readers are encouraged to review the thread index. For a rough summary of what Groupware more or less includes (note the caution of the phrasing), readers might want to look at this message.

The thread is itself a combination of several others: an initial discussion related to mail and messaging functionality (the "Say it isn't so" thread), an appeal to the community for those features and functions they would like to see in the next major release of OpenOffice.org, a discussion related to future integration of OpenOffice.org software with handheld computers, the bold cross-fertilization of a Ximian.com mailing-list post to OpenOffice.org's own lists (a move that was cheered by the community), to the thread that synthesized many of the issues into one: the Groupware thread, initiated at the end of January and which served as a sort of manifesto for the project.

On 13 February, Slashdot noticed the discussion: what a sign of arrival!

Previous Spotlights

Spotlight One, 5 February 2001: Jörg Brunsmann, the first external committer to the OpenOffice.org project.