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Open Office 2.2© Copyright Darrell Anderson. Today I tried installing Open Office 2.2 on my Windows NT4 operating system. I have version 2.1 installed there, as well as on Slackware 11.0. Not that I use Open Office in any serious way, although the idea of eventually learning Open Office has crossed my mind often. Still, the software was there at least for converting files and reading open document format files, which Word 97 cannot do. After installing the 2.2 package, I tried running Writer and immediately received an error message that msimgr32.dll was missing. I thought this unusual because version 2.1 ran just fine. Still, some surfing and searching found me a copy of the file, but after installing I ran into a second error message that the procedure entry point EnumDisplayMonitors could not be located in USER32.dll. Additional web surfing revealed that OpenOffice 2.2 now expects only the newer Windows versions. At the OpenOffice web site, version 2.0 does not officially support NT4, yet 2.1 ran just fine. With the few bug reports I found sharing the same problems with 2.2, the official response is that these “bugs” will not be fixed because NT4 is no longer a supported operating system. In other words, NT4 users can take a long walk on a short pier. So here are enthusiastic developers trying to convert the computing population to free software because free software avoids the problem of vendor lock-in. Yet by abandoning the millions of people who use older Windows operating systems, which includes Windows 95 and 98, these same developers essentially create vendor lock-in because the only way to run the Windows version of OpenOffice 2.2, and subsequent versions, is to buy a newer Windows operating system. I expect this kind of treatment and attitude with proprietary software vendors, but not free software advocates. This type of attitude demonstrates that free software that runs in Windows is not truly free. Much like within the statist political system where the corrupt legal system is commonly known as the “just us” legal system, so too is free software for Windows now basically only good for the “just us” crowd. Yes, I could fully migrate to GNU/Linux, but as I have documented liberally at this web site, GNU/Linux lacks many usability features. And with respect to OpenOffice, I now am sufficiently irritated that I do not want to use the bloated software on any platform. I gave up trying to find any workarounds to the problem because user32.dll is one of the fundamental Windows libraries and not one to be tinkered with haphazardly. I will not update to any newer version of Windows. And with that action, I removed OpenOffice 2.2 from my box. I have not decided whether I will restore version 2.1 from my backups, which functions just fine on NT4. Currently I am tempted to respond to the OpenOffice developers much the same way they treated me: the developers can all take a long walk on a short pier. They do not want to support me and at this moment I do not want to support them. Note: Yes, I am aware that the Mozilla developers have made a similar decision with their Gecko 1.9 rendering engine. At this rate developers in the proprietary world have nothing to fear. The concept of free software just took a significant step backwards. Finis. |
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