RE: Jakarta POI - HWPF for word files

Hi Bob,

Sorry to misinterpret you.  Although you said "most", the wording of the 
rest of the email gave the impression (to me at least) that you were 
dismissing free/open source software as unreliable in general.  This is, 
of course, always the problem with email - with a lack of tonal and body 
language queues it can be difficult to decipher meaning in some cases.

With apologies,
Adam


rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote on 10/08/2006 04:08:34 PM:

Grouping "all" into one basket is not what I was doing.
Assuming someone means "all" when they say "some" or "most" is a 

bitunfair as

well. 
But your point is well taken. 

-Bob Cozzi
www.iSeriesTV.com
Ask your Manager to watch iSeriesTV.com


-----Original Message-----
From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx 

[mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On

Behalf Of AGlauser@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2006 10:08 AM
To: RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries
Subject: RE: Jakarta POI - HWPF for word files

Hi Bob,

you wrote on 10/08/2006 10:29:47 AM:

This is often the case with this "free" software. Most of the time, 

people are

doing it in the spare time, however frequently the unemployed (i.e.,
recent grad
students) are doing it to play in the sandbox and to get their resumes 

out

there. Odds are the "Maintainer and Main contributor" probably took 

jobs 

at

Google. 
This is the risk you take in using this opensource/free software.

I agree that this is a risk.  In the case of the POI HSSF subproject, it 

is widely used enough that the chances of it being abandoned seem low. 

The 

HWPF subproject seems to have been low on interest for its entire 
lifespan, so its abandonment probably shouldn't come as a surprise.

While it is true that some free/libre open source software (FLOSS) 
projects are the pet projects of one person, I don't think it's fair to 
paint all FLOSS with the same brush.  Some examples of open source 
software that is not likely to be abandoned are the Apache webserver, 
Apache's XALAN project, the Expat parser project, Eclipse, OpenOffice, 
Firefox, PHP, Python, MySQL, and the Postgres DBMS, just to name a few.

It is also worth noting that abandonment is a concern some many 
proprietary systems, thought the risk is usually farther in the future 

but 

perhaps less predictable.  I remember reading many articles by people 

who 

were very concerned when Oracle bought companies who had products for 

the 

iSeries.  In this case Oracle decided to continue to support the 
customers, because there were enough of them.  When deciding on any 
software, the size of the customer base (or "user community" in FLOSS 
terms) is an important consideration.  One of the benefits of FLOSS is 
that if the creators abandon the project, your migration is easier.  In 
some situations you can simply begin to maintain/update the software 
yourself.

I'm not trying to say that FLOSS is always better than proprietary, but 
don't dismiss all FLOSS as risky simply because it is FLOSS.

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