Re: Stress calculation

This one is not going away just yet.

In my quest to unshackle myself from the microsoft juggernaut, I mentioned I intend to change to Linux OS. While looking around for suitable applications, I stumbled across OpenOffice.org - all its products appear to be open source. WP (can write to pdf), spreadsheet, etc etc but no database; you get this from mysql.com

A batch converter is included to reformat MS files.

A local(NZ) rag claims 16 million copies of OpenOffice have been downloaded, and perhaps 10 times that distributed with magazines.

Has anyone used OpenOffice? What did you think of it? Are you still using it? If not, why not?

Apparently MS had some documents leaked at some stage. They were called the Halloween Documents and the first indicated MS' belief that open source software could achieve or exceed the quality of commercial software.

So dont give up just yet, open source has been done with operating systems, word processing, spreadsheets, simple drawing packages presentation packages, databases and probably a whole lot more. Why will CAD,CAM,FEA and specialised engineering packages not follow suit?

I tend to agree with Pauls rather grand prediction, as the signs are already there. No, I dont know how it pays, but would like to know.

Perhaps there are still a few people around who put progress ahead of profit, like engineers used to do. But I still dont understand what puts the bread on the table during development. Spare time projects? Seems unlikely.

Cheers

Steve McKenzie

• In PipingDesign@yahoogroups.com, Christopher Wright <chrisw@s...> wrote:
  > >I would suggest that commercial programs (as they exist now,
  the "high-end"
  > >stuff) are going to be on the way out within the next 10 years.
  This will
  > >happen because of the increased usage of open source software
  running on
  > >Linux.
  > Not likely. It might happen that way if the users were the people
  > responsible for buying software, but that's not the case in the
  > enterprise market where the money is being made. Dedicated users
  may
  > still do their own development, but the effort to develop large
  scale
  > general purpose CAD and FEA software is too much for individual
  users. I
  > can't imagine that any individually developed software could
  possibly
  > replace Photoshop or Acrobat--the development is just too complex.
  > Software used to be developed by users, just as pilots once built
  or
  > oversaw the building of their own aircraft. But thos days are gone.
  >
  > >After all, the only proprietary bits about most software is the
  user
  > >interface; it's not like the underlying, basic calculations are
  protected by
  > >copyright.
  > This is flat wrong. FEA solvers and CAD graphic engines and
  operating
  > systems, to name only three, are very much proprietary. Again, this
  might
  > have been the case when the Apple II and MS-DOS were cutting edge,
  but
  > not now.
  >
  > Christopher Wright P.E. |"They couldn't hit an elephant at
  > chrisw@s... | this distance" (last words of Gen.
  > ___________________________| John Sedgwick, Spotsylvania 1864)
  > <a href="http://www.skypoint.com/~chrisw">http://www.skypoint.com/~chrisw</a>