Guy Voets wrote:
2007/10/24, Pavel Janík <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:>
powerpc: IMO, it is/will be dead soon.
Well, my Powerbook and a few million other PPC's aren't dead yet.
The Mac port would become an elite affair if PPC would be excluded
from new versions.
What about backward compatibility? Lock out is as bad as MS lock-in.
It should be announced right now from the get-go to nip any rumors in
the bud whether OOo will abandon PPC within the next two years in order
to give school boards and corporations a heads-up on future purchasing
commitments -- or shift to MS Office.
I can tell you right now as a SB member that here in Queens, New York --
which would be the third largest city in the U.S. if it wasn't part of
New York City -- that those school boards which acquired Macs (mostly 4
years old plus) are NOT going to cough up the bucks to go Intel, on Macs
or Dells, anytime soon -- and many of those hundreds of middle and high
schools were shifting to OOo to get from under MS fees to begin with --
which OOo once very much encouraged. Queens College and St. Johns
University here also run on Macs in classrooms and labs, and they're not
about to shift gears to Intel for a long while. Many school systems and
institutions out on Long Island are also sealed into PPCs for the
foreseeable period, and we're not talking about welfare communities
here. There's in total far far more Mac (PPC) users than Linux, but I
don't hear anything about OOo cutting off Linux OOo at the knees. IMO
OOo will be shooting itself in the foot even announcing a PPC phase-out
before Leopard becomes a dominate system and end up disaffecting current
and potential users.
What's puzzling to me is that OOo doesn't even seem to be actively
recruiting the volunteers to help out with its PPC builds which would
help alleviate this PPC support conundrum. Outside schools and companies
actively using OOo here, if you mention OOo to others you get "OOo
Who??" and blank stares. Overhauling and cleaning out OOo's publicity
and manpower recruitment departments for more gung-ho competent OOo
promoters and headhunters is the first step in my book to swell your
ranks over there so users won't have to face the premature termination
of OOo versions still very much in use by a majority of Mac users.
Remember, compassionate Billie is Watching.
Keep up the great work.
James Greenidge
Queens New York
