Comment 3 for bug 209714

I can confirm this bug on Hardy. gnome-open does not have the same associations as nautilus - .doc and .xls files in my case ( See http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=4642441 for details and a discussion )

Yes, gvfs-open seems to do the right thing (TM).

I found this here http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=343896 "but we
have to face the fact that libgnome and libgnomeui are on their way to being
deprecated. Maybe gnome-open should be moved to gnome-vfs along with this
enhancement request for it?"

gnome-open is undocumented ( https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libgnome/+bug/185171/+viewstatus ), but its name is so easy to remember. "gvfs-open" isn't. Also gnome-open gets 39,100 hits on google. gvfs-open gets 274. Not that this in itself is any authority, but it does indicate that gnome-open is in more widespread use than gvfs-open. I checked the source of xdg-open, and I concur - it just calls gnome-open (lending credence to gnome-open being in more prevalent use than gvfs-open)

What is the purpose of gnome-open? Isn't it supposed to do the same thing as gvfs-open? Do they do different things on purpose? What purpose? Isn't gnome-open just broken in Hardy? Or is it simply that gnome-open (from libgnome) is about to be deprecated and thus not properly maintained?

I can see that the bug is listed as "Incomplete". I hope this is enough information to move it to "Confirmed" status.