Hacker News Reader

You know it is hard to order people to do something when they aren't paid. Even project like OpenOffice.org that had commercial venture had hardship with funding. Oracle cancelled it, Novell cancelled it, IBM do whatever they want, etc.

All in all, GNOME Office didn't happen. Some bits did, though. AbiWord was always broader than GNOME. And Gnumeric is great IMHO.

And people see the future in the cloud.

View on HN

It became clear to me that there isn't any money to be made in desktop FOSS software, as most users either pay for their tools, or end up pirating or using FOSS software if they don't plan to spend any money.

Desktop software just isn't the same as sellling consulting, trainings or SaaS licenses behind browser paywalls that server based software enjoys.

Except there was a group of people who did want to do it - Abi was a company at one point! But the Gnome guys decided to deemphasise it - that was the problem.

I was in that group. There is so much that can be done just like that.

And Abi as a company was long gone by that time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com