[Libreoffice] Easter eggs, was: Re: Comments on RC1

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 12:25 PM, Marc Paré <marc at marcpare.com> wrote:
> ============
>
> Le 2010-12-08 12:00, Olivier Hallot a écrit :
>
> The no
>  ise I had to fight in a 120.000 desktop deployment I am managing, by the
> IT security dept who almost made me write under oath that these stupidities
> are
> not a security threat.
>
> Sorry, but I had pretty tought times dealing with that to have fun with. It
> is
> not. OOo and LO are the underdogs in a (any) migration situation and easter
> eggs
> is another ammo for those who want to go back to Microsoft Office. I rather
> prefer not to give'em that sweet taste.
>
> No matter how good or fun is your easter-egg, it puts you a label of lack of
> seriousness when it comes to address the enterprise needs or code quality
> reputation.
>
> ============
>
> I have to echo Olivier's words too. I am/was in the process of recommending
> the OOo (and now) LibreOffice to a school board in Canada. "Easter Eggs" at
> this point would not go well with the committees and higher ups. As with
> Olivier's situation, other members of committees at this school board as
> well as many other stakeholders will grab to any kind of excuse to de-value
> the LibreOffice distro in order to keep MSO on the computers.

Must I remind you that MSO and Windows have known easter eggs. and
there is no way to affirm
that MSO 2007 doesn't have any, just not any known at this time,
(unless you have access to the source  to confirm ?)

My grand-ma used to say: there is none more deaf that the one who
doesn't want to hear.
Once you removed _that_ excuse, they'll find another one.

> IMO, it does
> not make the suite look professional if Easter eggs are hidden in the code.
> My particular board has been blacklisted twice this year for having been the
> source of virus mailouts (due to only 2 teachers irresponsible behaviour on
> their email system). They are now very wary of any piece of software that
> has any kind of hidden code.

with MSO 100% of the code is hidden. with Libre-office 0% of the code
is hidden. even the 'eggs' are in plain sight for everybody to audit.


Norbert

>
> Add this to the reason why we are now recommending the use of LibreOffice
> rather than OpenOffice. It just makes it harder to market the distro.
>
> Marc
>