On 12/07/2011 Simon Phipps wrote: > TDF are just about to launch a full version of their extensions & > templates system and they would be perfectly happy for AOOo to redirect the > URL that OpenOffice.org is using to access the repository so that it uses > the system TDF are hosting for LibreOffice.
While I believe cooperation would be nice and I've written for months that I don't support the idea to host OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice extensions on separate sites, we should get facts straight on this. The LibreOffice extensions site is being developed for two reasons: 1) the Document Foundation doesn't want to depend on *.openoffice.org sites (and in this case it cannot, since on the launch day it promised to only offer free software extensions). 2) http://extensions.services.openoffice.org was unreachable at times. Now, reason 1 does not exactly go in the direction of a shared resource, while reason 2 is now obsolete: the site is now fixed and the problems were in the caching server, NOT in the OOo extensions site. If we are to use a common resource, then let's go for the best one, which is (don't consider the URL!) the one currently living at http://extensions.services.openoffice.org . Reasons: mature, tested, nicer, flexible, populated with hundreds of extensions. With a bit (quite a bit) of customization it could even be tweaked so that is is accessible, say, both as http://extensions.openoffice.org and http://extensions.libreoffice.org and that it shows different branding depending on the URL; it could even be set up so that non-free extensions are hidden when browsing it in "LibreOffice mode". This would be a really shared resource, where anybody can submit extensions that anybody can download and use regardless of the software he is using, and where all identities are respected. It could of course be extended to other derivatives and it would be a remarkable example of something useful to the whole community. Regards, Andrea.
