Where is the AJAXy word processor that reads OpenDocument released under the GPL?

November 11, 2005 | categories: Uncategorized | View Comments

The organization that I work for has been struggling to find a way to exchange editable text documents across platforms (Windows, OS X and Linux) without also exchanging viruses or relying on a server at the far end of our T1 line.

What I really want is an AJAX word processor like Writely, but released under the GPL. Writely looks decent, and I found a mention that they plan on supporting OpenDocument by Thanksgiving 2005. Unfortunately, I can't run Writely on our local network, because the Writely folks, like most proprietary software companies, will not share their code. This means that if our rather shaky Internet connection were to go down, we'd lose access to all our documents, which is not acceptable. I also have some concerns about the security of our data on their servers, but given the lax security of our network, it's not as much of a concern as network unreliability. Maybe it will turn out that Writely will let us run a precompiled local version on a server on our network-- if we can afford it, that could be great.

FCKEditor, on the other hand, is released under the GPL and sports the AJAXy goodness, but doesn't support OpenDocument yet. I haven't seen any mention of FCK adding support for ODF, but I wouldn't be surprised if it happened.

We'd also consider Microsoft's new Office Live, when it's released, but we've previously had trouble with Word files as a virus vector. Given that history and the price (I'm guessing around $50 per user, similar to the price we pay now for Office), I'm hesitant to stay with them. Anyone else know about any competitors I'm missing?

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