A couple of nights ago I downloaded the very excellent latest dev build of OOo. (No problems yet, just goodness, though I do wish the UK-English versions for Mac OS X were more obvious, but I know the answer to that wish: do it.)
After download, I wanted to use an extension I'd used in a long-ago prior version. But the Extensions repository for OOo were out of date, and so I went over to LibreOffice's. Their repository is still being developed, but it did have some of those I wanted and which used to be kept up to date on the OOo repository, before the split. (BTW, I fully expect that the Apache extensions repository will be shortly updated and be very useful indeed….) This led to the obvious conclusion--at least, obvious to me: provided license permits, I'd think that it makes sense to have a single site for extensions that would work with all (or as many as…) ODF implementations. The site could be a list of links, as I had for the old OOo support page. But I'd rather hope that it would be more than that, and be a commons we could all benefit from. I have no illusion that this will come about anytime soon (or that it even ought to). However, my interest lies in making ODF (note, I wrote, "ODF") more usable and more obviously usable now and later for the tens of millions--billions, soon enough--wanting to use the app. And one thing that they will want is extensions. I know I did. How to proceed? Well, a discussion on the matter is always a good place to start. But it would also be good to have a clear understanding of the obstacles, of whatever nature, lie in waiting. Note, this is not at all about consolidating the split communities. That's up to the developers and the teams and the people involved. Nor is this proposal about taking advantage of LibreOffice's extensions because the ones I wanted two nights ago were not current on the old OOo site. No, I expect that repository to be updated quite soon and to be stocked with interesting work as the Apache effort gains the attention it merits and appeals to enterprise users as well as consumers. (And as a strong supporter of the project of which I am a member, I will do what I can to further this podling's progress.) Rather, this is about making it easier for users to access those things they want and for developers to reach communities and markets that want them. And I see a page that concentrates information a useful step. cheers, Louis
