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Programming Businesses Apple IT Technology

No Abiword For Mac? 85

Posted by Hemos from the the-end-of-abiword-for-mac dept.
aliya writes "With Abiword's version 1.90 coming out, their cocoa developer has announced that he will no longer work on a Mac version of the software because he doesn't want to support the company which treated him so poorly. There is a still a somewhat-supported X11 version available, though it is not kept current, and it appears that Abiword will join the abundant ranks of 'almost supported' word processors for Mac OS X."
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No Abiword For Mac? More

No Abiword For Mac?

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  • "Incompetent?" Maybe. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 20, 2003 @10:19PM (#5771181)
    Obviously it's entirely possible that this individual is incompetent. Whether he is or is not isn't something that any of us-- us bystanders-- are qualified to comment on.

    What is absolutely, undeniably true, however, is this: incompetent or not, he's bloody immature.

    I say good riddance. Leave the programming to the grown-ups, please.

    • NOT being immature (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      First off, I do not believe he is being immature in taking this course of action. It would be immature to delete the code base, and make it not available. It would be immature to introduce bugs directly in the OSX version directly.

      I worked for a mortgage insurance company and they pull the same crap on me. Instead of being "incompetent" they said I didn't do anything. Well, when you aren't given anything to do, and you have reviewed the code base over and over again for bugs, what can you do? So, when
      • Except that "textbooks are given to children, not to schools."

        There is a difference--a huge difference--between voting with your wallet and abandoning sales from that company because you are pissed with their practice, and refusing to develop an application that might--at most--get a reference on one of Apple's download pages and will predominantly be used--not by Apple employees--but by a small subset of the community.

  • Talk about shooting yourself in the foot (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sco08y ( 615665 ) on Sunday April 20, 2003 @10:28PM (#5771211)
    Who on Earth would want to advertise their sour grapes to every prospective client or employer?

    If you're pissed, just say, "look, I'm having difficulty negotiating a good deal with these people" or some kind of euphamism.

    But don't let everyone know that things got messy!

  • Killer App? Just How Much Does This Matter? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TheWanderingHermit ( 513872 ) on Sunday April 20, 2003 @10:28PM (#5771212)
    From the cited post: "I had no reason to be a loyal customer (sort of like I was until 1988) and offer them what could *possibly* be a killer app on
    MacOS X    "

    I should point out that AbiWord was a VERY integral part of the software system that got my business going. I can't say that the overall system, and therefore my company, would never have gotten off the ground without AbiWord, but the open document format and load of command line options/commands made it possible for me to save months of work by just dropping in command line uses of AbiWord in Perl scripts. The AbiWord programmers are great to work with and have been very kind and helpful to me.

    However, I recently changed the entire system over to OpenOffice.org. While AbiWord has some wonderful features, OOo has a fully documented programming language and API. It's a full blown office suite -- if, by chance, anyone didn't know.

    While AbiWord was very important to me and I have nothing but the utmost respect for the programmers and people behind the project, I cannot see anyone realistically seeing it as a "killer app."

    To be honest, while I love choice and all the options in OSS, I think Linux in particular and OSS in particular, would be much more widely adopted (and would be much more of a competitor to Micro$oft) if, instead of having so many OSS word processors and spreadsheets, all that effort had been focused on creating one kick-ass office suite. Once done, different groups could take the code from that suite and customize it to their hearts' content, much like what's happened with Mozilla -- one browser, but many groups have taken the source code and created their own versions (like Galeon and Konqueror).

    While no AbiWord on OSX is not good news, I think the actual number of users (in proportion to the total number of Mac users) who will be effected by this is very low. I'm sure most people that spend the extra money on a Mac tend to either buy their own word processor, or use OOo, since it is almost out of beta for OSX.

    While AbiWord is a great program, it is hardly a killer app.

  • So what? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 20, 2003 @10:34PM (#5771229)
    If it's a job worth doing, one of any of the thousands of OSX developers who are competent enough to fill his shoes will step up to the plate and give it a shot.

    Welcome to the wacky world of open source projects. Maintainers may die, but projects will always live - provided they're of use to somebody.

  • Wow, that's some ego he's got there (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 20, 2003 @10:49PM (#5771270)

    Oh no, he couldn't possibly have actually been incompetent, the company must be lying and firing him for no good reason.

    And of course *his* word processor is a "Killer App".

    Oh, I'm sorry, the killer app in word processing happened a couple decades ago. sheesh

    And companies don't usually fire their most competent employees (at least not intentionally without other good reasons to get rid of them). Either this guy did something he's not mentioning to get himself fired, or he was just near the bottom of the competency ladder when the time came to shave off a couple rungs.
    • And of course *his* word processor is a "Killer App".

      The funny thing is, a "killer app" is something so important that people will make a major purchase decision based on wanting it. In this case, a killer app will make people switch to a Mac.

      Microsoft Word is available (for a cost) on both Windows and Macs. Abiword is available (for free) on both Windows and Macs.

      From Apple's perspective, what killer app?

    • And companies don't usually fire their most competent employees (at least not intentionally without other good reasons to get rid of them).

      True to a point; yet it does happen when they either want to get rid of a smaller number of people yet get a larger savings on the books, hence they can the most expensive people. Or they want to get rid of those who might lead in a direction they no longer want to go, and the most capable technically are the ones others will listen to most. Lose the leaders, and the s

  • Hello pot? This is the kettle... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 20, 2003 @11:12PM (#5771348)
    "he will no longer work on a Mac version of the software because he doesn't want to support the company which treated him so poorly."


    Boy, if this isn't the pot calling the kettle black. I can't count the articles and responses in forums like this one where so many computer users are labelled "joe sixpack", "jane user" and "phb" simply because they do not care about computers as much as those who frequent these web sites. I truly hope this guy takes an introspective look at his decision and realizes that perhaps he was treated so poorly by the community because the community felt they were treated poorly by him.
    • I truly hope this guy takes an introspective look at his decision and realizes that perhaps he was treated so poorly by the community because the community felt they were treated poorly by him.

      he wasn't treated poorly by the community, he was treated poorly by the company.
  • i have used abiword on x11 as my primary word processor for some time. it is better than openoffice.org in that it takes less than half a week to load and seems to cover everything i need.

    funny i have tried over a thousand of the 7000 os x apps and never heard of it. i guess no one will lose sleep over that one.
    • The idea is to load once, use often. With the price of ram, and the inherent stability of OS X, it simply doesn't make sense to dismiss an app once you have it running. I load 10 or more apps, including OO, at start, and leave them running.
  • Excuse me? I've given AbiWord a try once. It was fast, really fast. And simple. It had the most important features of those you'd expect from a word processing app. And that is all there is to it. There are no special features. There is no interface consistency to anything - not to Aqua, not to KDE, not to GNOME, not to Windows, or even Motif. No innovation.

    It is a simple word processing app, and though a Cocoa interface would have been interesting, it wouldn't have been a miracle. And not a "killer app", either.

  • Is it my imagination... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Llywelyn ( 531070 ) on Sunday April 20, 2003 @11:59PM (#5771530) Homepage
    ...or is this guy talking more about his /dedication/ than the /quality of his work/ as to why they should have kept him?

    I don't know why this guy got fired--perhaps they weren't satisfied with his work, perhaps there were politics involved, perhaps they needed to trim their staff and he wasn't valuable enough to keep--I don't know. What I do know is that he seems to be saying that he deserved to keep the job because he wanted the job and was dedicated to it--not because he was particularly qualified to keep it.

    Also, this has just marginarlly above a 0% chance of become "the killer app" on MacOS X. A good app? Perhaps. Widely used? Maybe. A killer app that everyone downloads right after getting a mac? Not a chance.

    I've used Abiword. It's good, but it isn't *that* good.

  • It's a shame... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by nizcolas ( 597301 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @12:01AM (#5771534) Homepage Journal
    ...abi was canceled. I made the trek over to the net lab simply to use a copy of abiword installed on my network drive. Whenever people ask me what it is, I usually tell them it's MS Word that works.

    Sounds prety corny but think about it, how many times have you wanted to use word and just have it leave you alone? Everytime I've used Word, even on a mac, im constantly annoyed by pop ups and "hints."

    Yes they can be disabled but with Abi they're not even there in the first place. In my opinion, Abi is the most full featured software that lets me get my work done, without bugging me the entire while. I was hoping the Abi team would pick up the mac and make a full os x native version. Hopefully someone else will pick up the code and finish the job, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

  • Oh well (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 21, 2003 @12:31AM (#5771620)
    No AbiWord for AtheOS either, so why is this getting a Slashdot front page story?

  • Understandable (Score:5, Interesting)

    by buckhead_buddy ( 186384 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @12:53AM (#5771695)
    Going on what the developer perceives of the situation, it's completely understandable.

    He was working as a new Apple employee after a year of contract work and was an eager supporter of the platform making many sacrifices to take the job. Additionally, he developed the Cocoa/AbiWord software as a hobby on top of his paid work. He says that Apple terminated him during his probationary period with the reason of "incompetence" and he feels that this is documentably untrue and unfair.

    Personally, I think AbiWord is cool and I think Apple makes some cool stuff. But whether this story is true or fair is irrelevent. This is his perception of the way he has been treated and I feel he's absolutely right for terminating this hobby if this is what he perceives.

    It's disappointing. I sympathize with the guy in his current situation. And I hope that someone takes over AbiWord development (it is pretty cool stuff). It's too bad that this had to happen in this way.

    • Re:Understandable (Score:2, Insightful)

      by OmniVector ( 569062 )
      no offense but, there are so many solutions to edit word documents in OSX that I've yet to even consider abiword. OpenOffice, or Micro$oft Office have word doc editors with integrated graph & spreadsheet programs. Abiword is fine for *nix, but it's got little use in a largely commercial based operating system (at least it has for me thus far, and I used to use abiword in linux).

      Besides, if i really want to run abiword that badly in osx, i'll just run the gtk version through fink/x11.

    • Re:Understandable (Score:4, Interesting)

      by 1155 ( 538047 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @08:57AM (#5772630) Homepage
      or maybe ical sucks? There are any number of complaints against the application, maybe they wanted someone else working on the project. eh. Still doesn't mean he should just give up on the entire platform, unless he is just really bitter.

  • And in other news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by PrimeWaveZ ( 513534 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @01:10AM (#5771737)
    The developer of selfQuit [versiontracker.com] has decided to stop development of their "possible" killer app for OS X because someone said their friend who knows a guy who works at an Apple store made fun of the program.

  • So, he worked on iCal? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 21, 2003 @05:53AM (#5772155)
    Maybe he is incompetent.

  • I'd like to hear the other side (Score:3, Insightful)

    by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @07:40AM (#5772385) Homepage Journal
    Some folks here have positted that the man may have been fired as part of a reduction in force, and the "incompetence" arguement was a smokescreen.

    That seems unlikely to me - usually it is the reverse, and incompetent moron being fired with some made-up RIF so as to avoid problems.

    Here in the US, If you lay somebody off as part of an RIF there's very little they can do about it - unless they can somehow show that you were not reducing force in his area at the time of the RIF there's little legal ground to file a wrongful termination suit.

    However, if you terminate somebody for incompetence, they can bring suit for wrongful termination, and insist that you prove they are incompetent. Since they will challenge everything you say, and your case will be heard by twelve people too incompetent to get out of jury duty, you are very likely to win.

    I know - for years I had to deal with an engineer who didn't know an FFT from a HITG(*) and management was unwilling to do anything about it because of their fears of a suit.

    (*)hole in the ground
    • Yeah, firing someone for performance reasons (i.e., failing to adequately peform the duties of their position) gives the former employee lots of appeal rights, but if this guy was fired during his probationary period that's a whole 'nother matter. Probationary periods exist to give the employer an opportunity to see if newly hired employees really are as good as the resume/interview/background checks indicate they should've been. If it turns out the employee doesn't cut the mustard the employer can release
  • I'd be interested in making a cocoa version of Abiword. I have lots of time, know a little bit a bout programming, and I have a new eMac (1 GB RAM). I think OS X could use another word processor that is native to OS X. We are still waiting for Mellel to be finished. Mariner Write and Zwrite are expensive and are not fully featured. Appleworks is nice, but I don't want to have to rely on one word processor.
    • If you know about the concepts of OOP (object-oriented programming), Cocoa / Objective-C aren't all that hard. Buy a book in the $30-50 range and you'll learn it in a few weeks.

      If you don't know about them, it'll take you longer and won't be as simple as it looks like.
    • In a followup to what the other responder said, I'd suggest "Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X" by Aaron Hillegass.

      Excellent, excellent book.

  • Just because you do a job... (Score:3, Informative)

    by MoneyT ( 548795 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @10:29AM (#5773054) Journal
    doesn't mean you do it well.

    Probation period = we test you out and see if we like what you bring to our company.

    Guess they didn't like him.

    And of course, instead of saying "Screw apple, I don't need them" turning arround, writing abiword PPC and turning it into an international best program, he's just going to cancel it.

    Another question. I'm going to assume for the moment that AbiWord is an opensource program. So how could his PORT of the program be his killer app?

    • Re:Just because you do a job... (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Notice they hired him AFTER they had him as a contractor for some time. Incompetance usually results in lots of boss-employee meetings and generating of "improvement goals" and shit, and you know you are the "problem employee" long before they take you into the conference room for "the talk."

      Firing people is one of the things most likely to generate legal fees for an employer, even in an "at will" state. Because of this, mediocre managers usually avoid offering a reason if they live in an at will state,
      • But working as a contractor and working as an employee are two different things. Our local school hires contractors to do wiring over the summers, but there's no way they would last more than a few days as regular employees.

        And it is entirely possible, when he was a contractor, he was doing different work, and his incompetence showed up later.

  • Who Cares? (Score:1, Redundant)

    by Enrique1218 ( 603187 )
    (feel free to assign -1 troll) Millions of mac users today are dismayed by the announcment of whoever that he won't be developing his ever popular word processing app for the Mac. Oh!! how will they ever type another document? Analysts suggests, this may be the end of the mac platform. Just from this guy's little blurp, he is very ego-centric. This guy is putting a personal gripe over any possibility of moving his app one level above obscurity. That's ok I'll continued using Word.

  • I would have installed AbiWord... (Score:4, Informative)

    by thatguywhoiam ( 524290 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @12:12PM (#5773756)
    ... but TextEdit, which has been reincarnated from its previous feeble form (known as SimpleText), brandishing its new spell checking and PDF-handling and non-80k-limit... threatened to beat the crap out of any incumbent word processors I dared install.

    And you know what? I believed it.

  • This will only hurt Abi's success on the Mac and hurt this guys chances of getting a job on par with Apple.

    Apple already has Microsoft and Openoffice and even TextEdit. There are dozens of good word processors out there, and Abi will never be the killer app for OS X. If anything's a killer app, it's Konfabulator. A word processor hasn't been a killer app since 1985.

    It's a shame, I like and have advocated Abi at various times, but with putzs like this, I'm almost ashamed at even suggesting it.

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