[Fwd: Re: [luau] WordPerfect for Linux]

[R. Scott Belford]

I understand.  Miscommunication is so easy.  :-)  I really enjoyed your 
response to Warren and your very thorough efforts to see Linux and in 
particular WP for linux penetrate the legal community.  I appreciate 
your perspective.  Please keep up the good work, and thanks for taking 
the time to clarify.  I see now why you were so impassioned in your 
defense of WP.

aloha

scott


On Thursday, May 9, 2002, at 07:05 AM, W. Wayne Liauh wrote:

> Scott-
>
> Below is my follow-up message to Warren.  I did not know that what I 
> thought was a personal note to Warren was going to be posted at LUAU. 
>  I wouldn't have written my comment to Warren had I not had great 
> respects and deep appreciation for him.
>
> "[T]ireless", "(and thankless)".  Two words that most succintly 
> describe Warren's leadership in our little Linux community here (just 
> wish it could be much bigger, also I don't believe most of our local 
> people are aware that Warren is a very prominent national figure on the 
> AMD forum).  Actually I have invited Warren to the Bankers Club for 
> lunch a couple of times, he was always too busy to accept it.
>
> Well, from your message, it appears that Warren is not that 
> unappreciated.  :-)
>
>
> Best,
>
>
> W. Wayne Liauh, Ph.D., J.D.
> Attorney and Counselor at Law
>
>
>
>
> Warren-
>
> Thanks for the reply.  Truth is the best defense to any defamation 
> suit.  What you are saying about Corel and WordPerfect are absolutely 
> true.  However, that does not prevent someone from suing you.  
> Defending a law suit can be very expensive, even though you have a 
> perfectly legitimate defense.  Of course, you don't have to worry about 
> anyone ever thinking about suing you.  But, for me, it is a different 
> ball game, and I have to be stupidly careful and stupidly 
> ultra-sensitive.
>
> I have been making extremely critical comments against Corel s CEO in 
> several public forums, however, I am prepared to take on a fight with 
> Corel management.
>
> Now getting back to the WordPerfect issue.  Dealing with Corel has been 
> one of the most frustrating experiences of my professional life.  
> However, they own the product that I have to rely on to make a living.
>
> Gav and I had a long talk when he was leaving Corel.  Personally, I don 
> t think WINE is the solution for WordPerfect or most Windows based 
> programs.  Gav will tell you that it is easier to port Windows games to 
> Linux using WINE, because games require less APIs, and most of them are 
> better documented and more straightforward.  Porting WYSIWYG 
> wordprocessors with WINE, however, is a very different story.  I don t 
> think it will ever be possible, if not prohibitively expensive, to port 
> most of the APIs necessary to run WordPerfect into Linux.
>
> Then we will run into the testing problems.  For commercial software, 
> code development counts for only 10% of the total cost.  Microsoft 
> writes good software because it has an army of competent and willing 
> outside testers.  If we want to encourage and induce business owners to 
> adopt Linux, we must make sure that we can provide a turn-key solution 
> which has been thoroughly tested under similar conditions.  At the 
> present time, this piece of the Linux puzzle is seriously missing.
>
> I am trying to find a few volunteer lawyers from the Hawaii Bar 
> Association to test the Linux solution.  Preliminarily, I am very 
> pleased to find out that WordPerfect 8 seems to provide all the 
> features necessary to produce complicated documents.  Of course, it is 
> much more fun to use OpenOffice/StarOffice than this old dog.  However, 
> there are quite a few critical features that are not yet available in 
> OO/SO, also, neither program has been reliably tested.  With time, 
> perhaps OpenOffice will have enough features be the solution for law 
> offices.  But at the present time, the best solution seems to be using 
> WordPerfect 8 for official/office use, and OpenOffice for other chores.
>
> That said, I believe WINE will be very useful in porting other key 
> windows programs, such as time-tracking, billing, accounting, etc. to 
> Linux.  However, the first step, as far as converting law offices to 
> Linux is concerned, is to satisfy our wordprocessing needs.  As I 
> indicated above, WordPerfect 8, which is a natively compiled Linux 
> program, seems to be extremely promising.
>
> Just a few random comments.
>
> Best,
>
>
> W. Wayne Liauh, Ph.D., J.D.
> Attorney and Counselor at Law
>
>
>
> Joe Linux wrote:
>
>
>

>
>

>
>
> Wayne,
>
> Please allow me to reply and ask that you show greater respect for 
> Warren.  Your newness to this group denies you the knowledge that 
> Warren Togami has been more instrumental to the mass adoption of open 
> source software than any other human I know.  His tireless (and 
> thankless) efforts to answer nearly any tedious question posted to this 
> group has earned him great reverence.  Your request that he not express 
> his ideas to this newsgroup is VERY unwelcome.  As you can read from 
> Warren's response to your flame, he is more than willing to help be a 
> part of this solution that you seek.  This is how a man thinks and 
> responds to such taunts.  Having Warren assist you and other WP8 users 
> will be to your advantage.  Your condescending and uninformed comments 
> admonishing Warren to refrain from his insights are inappropriate at 
> best.  You will find a wealth of assistance here if you take the time 
> to learn who your allies are.  Please keep the tone more civil in 
> future posts.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> R. Scott Belford
>
>
>
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