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Libreoffice-- well it's different (not necessarily better- it does some new things OO doesn't- OO does some new things LO doesn't.)

This is wrong as far as I know. Libreoffice is the latest OpenOffice with Go-OO fixes and some plug-ins merged in. Go-OO was made during a time when developers were getting frustrated that OO development was stagnating and they weren't being allowed to include improvements and fixes. So they made them available elsewhere, at go-oo.org

LO will continue to fork, but for now, it's OO with bug fixes and improvements. They even used the same version number, 3.3, because "The Document Foundation and most of the software's developers saw LibreOffice as being a direct continuation of OpenOffice.org"

So I'm curious what you mean when you say OO does something LO doesn't, as I can't think of anything. LO is currently the same product (plus a few fixes/addons).

From their site:

Go-oo joins forces with LibreOffice
Go-oo shares much of its goals and philosophy with The Document Foundation's LibreOffice project, we're therefore supporting LibreOffice since it's inception, and are in the process of merging most of our patches over, as well as migrating to Document Foundation infrastructure. Going forward, the Go-oo project will be discontinued in favor of LibreOffice.

I wonder how GO-oo and LibreOffice compare?

From what I understand, one of the first things LibreOffice did after forking was import the GO-oo patch-set. I believe GO-oo and BrOffice intend to merge into LibreOffice and combine their efforts. I am not affiliated with any of the projects though, so some of my information could be incorrect or out of date.

---Alex

Sorry, bad link:
The Go-OO website is located at http://www.go-oo.org/

Linux users having to chose between installing native OpenOffice or a virtual machine with MS Office.

What gives you that idea? Most Linux distributions have been shipping go-oo for quite a while now and it is the basis for LibreOffice. For us there is no change. We're there already. It's just a name change. The software is the same.

Or if you don't mind running a slightly older version, just run the Go-OO one directly.

All Oracle did was buy Sun. There isn't some sort of magical evil contagion that instantly infected OpenOffice.org; the software is no different than it was before the sale.

Now, Oracle could potentially direct OpenOffice.org development to go down the path of evil. They could change the license under which OO.o is distributed to an unacceptable one. They could do all sorts of things! But they haven't had time to do it yet, and by the time they get their evil ducks in a row, LibreOffice will be up and running.

Little-known fact: many (most?) Linux distros are already shipping a non-pure OO.o. There is a collection of patches that were never part of the official OO.o, called Go-oo, and distros have been shipping Go-oo instead of the pure Oo.o.

I fully expect LibreOffice to merge all the Go-oo patches, leaving us with two office suites: Oracle OO.o, and LibreOffice. And I think it is very possible that the community will line up behind LibreOffice and leave Oracle OO.o completely irrelevant and unloved. (Consider the situation with Xfree86 and X.org. In that case, the switchover happened in a stunningly short period of time.)

The worst-case scenario is that Oracle adopts some license that keeps LibreOffice from merging Oracle patches, and then Oracle funds a development team to make giant improvements to Oracle OO.o; then the community might have to choose between the free LibreOffice and the Oracle offering. But even there, I am not actually worried. The current state of OpenOffice is usable. Even if Oracle poured huge resources into OO.o development, what could they really offer to tempt us away from LibreOffice? A toolbar with giant icons? A dancing paperclip? Meanwhile, if all that LibreOffice does is simply to fix bugs, improve speed, and rewrite to end Java dependencies, I for one would be completely happy.

If you use OO.o on Windows, just don't take any updates until LibreOffice is ready, and you will be fine. Or better yet, simply start getting your installers from the Go-oo web site. If you use Linux, you almost certainly can simply trust your distro to do a good job of keeping your office suite relatively evil-free.

Oracle may be evil, but they aren't magically evil. Don't worry about this.

P.S. After writing this post, my 'o' key on my keyboard is overheating. I'd better not use it for a while or it might stp wrking.

steveha

The first thing they did is add all the patches that where already in used by the folks from http://go-oo.org/ . These are all the patches that the Linux-maintainers has created/collected but where never accepted by the OpenOffice maintainers, which is actually quiet a lot. Because the acceptance process is so slow.

For now. They're in the process of merging in a lot of code from the Go OO.org folks. Should make for better compatibility with MS Office.

http://go-oo.org/ I think that this is the best fork

Which is probably fine if you're using OSX. Otherwise, I think most folks these days are using Go oo which is I guess in the process of merging with Libreoffice.

Speed is nice, but really what has in the past hurt OO.org and such the most is the less than perfect interoperability with MS Office. If you're going to use a minority office suite then you damn well better be able to interoperate.

Well, a large part of LibreOffice came from the http://go-oo.org/ project, which had a lot of patches for OpenOffice which didn't (yet?) get accepted to OpenOffice.org.

The version at go-oo was actually the one that was used by most Linux-distributions, it is pretty much the code-base for where LibreOffice started.

Sun owned the trademark before, it didn't hinder development then.

Oh yes, it absolutely did. Sun proved to be a major hinderance to the development process -- so much so, in fact, that a fork was created and actually became the go-to choice for some Linux distributions.

It was called go-oo, and if you've installed/used "OpenOffice" in Debian, Ubuntu, or a few other distros, you actually used Go-OO without realizing it.

That will now happen to Go-oo, the project which maintained a set of patches on top of OpenOffice which would never be accepted into Sun's OpenOffice.org tree for political/commercial reasons?

Note that many Linux distros actually use Go-oo for their "OpenOffice.org" packages.

I've been using the Go-OO version for a long time, myself... I think a lot of distros use that as the default base... would be nice to just see the Go-OO group take the lead on this, and bring it back under one roof, so to speak.

From the website:

Q: What does this announcement mean to other derivatives of OpenOffice.org?

A: We want The Document Foundation to be open to code contributions from as many people as possible. We are delighted to announce that the enhancements produced by the Go-OOo team will be merged into LibreOffice, effective immediately. We hope that others will follow suit.

Actually, if you compare the Document Foundation's team with the people behind Go-oo, you will find some overlap. You're right, though, it'd be great if the new office suite had a good name (and a better website, which looks like crap right now), so I wouldn't feel silly recommending Go-oo to people.

While this could spell death for OpenOffice, it could just as well be its revival. Since presumably the copyright assignment requirement and poor management by Sun will now be gone, features from go-oo can (and apparently, will) be merged into OO/LO, and potential developers will have a better incentive to contribute. The project might become truly free software, and get a real community. On the other hand, it seems from some of the posts at Planet go-oo, that not all go-oo developers are happy with the people behind this Document Foundation (I wish they'd picked a better name), for some reason. I will definitely keep an eye on this project.

While this could spell death for OpenOffice, it could just as well be its revival. Since presumably the copyright assignment requirement and poor management by Sun will now be gone, features from go-oo can (and apparently, will) be merged into OO/LO, and potential developers will have a better incentive to contribute. The project might become truly free software, and get a real community. On the other hand, it seems from some of the posts at Planet go-oo, that not all go-oo developers are happy with the people behind this Document Foundation (I wish they'd picked a better name), for some reason. I will definitely keep an eye on this project.

No, but they could have renamed it to gooo. I guess they thought better of it.

http://go-oo.org/

Better support for Open Office XML, whether we like it or not, is critical if we're thinking serious competition against Microsoft Office.

Ximian, now Novell, did fork OO.o. You can get their fork at http://www.go-oo.org/. The only reason that Sun maintained control over OO.o was that they provided most of the code. Last statistics I saw for OO.o contributions were around 80% Sun, 15% Novell, 5% everyone else. If Oracle doesn't keep up the contribution rate, then other forks will overtake theirs and be regarded as the main version. A lot of Linux distributions already include the Novell fork, rather than the main branch, as their OpenOffice.org package.

That's really interesting. Apparently OpenOffice.org + a useful patchset has been the norm for some distributions of Linux for some time, and there are builds for other platforms (Windows included) as well.

http://go-oo.org/discover/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go-oo

"About OpenOffice.org" confirms an ooo-build in Lucid Lynx. I'll switch over in Windows later today I guess. Maybe Go-OO should advertise better?

Isn't this exactly what Stallman warned [gnu.org] when he suggested that Open Office should be forked because it used Java?

Regardless of ooo's tie to Java, it is clear that Oracle cannot be trusted to act in good faith as steward of Openoffice. This should remove all doubt that a fork is necessary. Incidentally, ooo is already forked, however that fork is also a patent trap courtesy of Mono.

> I thought go-oo also required copyright assigned to them when
> submitting patches (I agree they're not as retarded as Sun when
> it comes to accepting patches).

I did not know that. I've never submitted a patch. It sounds ironic, and I see no mention of it on the site:
http://go-oo.org/developers/

Can you tell me where you found that info?

> Why is Oracle making an even bigger mess of it? By attaching it's
> name to the project?

I actually like the Oracle name. But they've reassigned OOo engineers from bug fixing (I am in contact with Oracle for licensing so long as Issue #5556 gets fixed) and they've taken the MS Office ODF compatibility plugin and started charging for it:
https://shop.oracle.com/pls/ostore/f?p=ostore:product:8843910539649667::::P3_PPI,P3_LPI,P3_METRIC,P3_TERM:3710062267511641485310,3760869190131631757316,Application%20User,_Perpetual

> And what exactly did Novell do different than Red Hat that
> makes Suse such a 'dog'?

I never called Suse a dog.

OpenOffice.Org for instance

Which is why it was forked into http://www.go-oo.org./

Dear friends over Denmark, use http://go-oo.org/ instead, it has more features and it forks from OOffice that now belongs to corporate Oracle ! Think in the long run !!!

I personally prefer IBM Lotus Symphony, it is based off OO.o 1.x but with what I consider a more usable UI.
On the Mac I use NeoOffice, also based off OO.o, but with better Mac integration.

Go-OO is a yet another set of patches on OO.o. This comes default on my Linux distros.

Sometimes I wish there were less fragmentation and duplicated effort, but this is not always a negative given by how I chose OO.o based alternatives.

Disclaimer: I used to work for IBM. Having used MS Office, several OpenOffice.org variants, WordPerfect X* and IBM Lotus Symphony, all in various versions
but, typically only for intermediate use ( no really complex docs or fancy macros ), I have to say that Office 2003 would be my first pick if money isn't an issue.

Second, would be the Go variant of OO.o ( http://www.go-oo.org/ ) and Lotus Symphony would be WAAAY at the back.

It's slow at everything, and, for what i do, lacking in features. If money is an issue, then any variant of OO.o plus Gnumeric for really big spreadsheets,
(yes, Gnumeric really is that good and George Ou should have done his tests on it before clamoring that an open source app couldn't match Excel 2003)

Imagine a fork of Open Office,

Okay.

it isn't very likely

Try again.

Imagine a fork of Open Office, it isn't very likely...

I imagined that fork and, likely or not, here it is: http://www.go-oo.org/

That is why I have had good luck switching folks to Oxygen Office. It and Go-OO are what Open Office SHOULD be. I don't know why in FOSS the most popular is usually the crappiest. Meh, maybe its a taste thing.

Anyway, for those that have had problem with Open office I would suggest Oxygen Office or Go-OO. Oxygen Office if your users miss the extras that MS Office has like layout and clip art, and Go-OO if you need more features like better macro support. Either one of these IMHO will beat OO.o when it comes to giving your users what they want, and both have the nicer 2K3 layout (on screens which are 1024x768, which many offices have here, the ribbon in 2K7 is just painful) enjoy!

I'm sorry. Who said OpenOffice is "good"? Maybe you cut them off while they were saying "good enough". OpenOffice is horrible software, but it works. Personally, I use Gnumeric for a spreadsheet program as it has the main advantage over OOo Calc of not sucking. I don't do word processing (my text is all LaTeX edited via gvim, so I am not a normal user in that area), but most people I know use AbiWord if they want a word processor. Both have support for ODF.

The point of pushing OOo and ODF usage on Windows is not because OpenOffice is some amazing office suite. It is so there can be real competition for Office suites. If everyone uses open formats -- including MS Office -- then I don't care what office suite you are using. Everyone could use whichever office suite they liked best, which very unlikely to end up being OpenOffice.

KOffice's 2.0 release which adds support for Windows and OS X is on RC1. Perhaps it is worth looking into? It has a real chance of displacing OpenOffice as the flagship open source office suite. The Go-OO project may also be worth looking into.

I haven't tried it myself, but I've been meaning to test out Go-oo, which is purportedly faster. From the site:
"A Faster application

From first-time startup, where we sort I/O to reduce seek cost, to a highly optimised second start application and a systray quick-starter on Linux we are faster. We use less memory than up-stream, we link faster, use better system allocators, and don't waste so much time & memory in the registry. Go-oo performance is hard to beat. "

http://go-oo.org/

Correction. Go-OO is not just some improved version, it is the the official version that you get in a number of distributions these days. Check their downloads page ... Debian, Ubuntu and Gentoo carry it as the official "openoffice" package in their own repositories. And as far as I can make out, that is the case with openSUSE too.

You should also consider GoOO http://go-oo.org/ which is an improved version of OpenOffice.

Seriously, as is OpenOffice.org is slick, very usable, I love it.

If those 24 developers can continue to right filters for new file formats (24 of them should be able to handle that), make bug fixes, and make the occasional improvement here and there I say great!

OpenOffice.org does not need a rewrite from the ground up every six months to two years.

Seriously, the guys from Neo Office don't have near the funding or man power of the core OpenOffice.org team, look what they've accomplished on "Macing it" (Macking it?).

Between Neo Office and Go-oo making fixes that the upstream developers don't take, I would say there's some FUD going around and there's more people interested in developing for OpenOffice.org than Sun lets on. I'm thinking this may be the first artificial rublings to justify dumping the project sometime in the near future since it's not profitable and hasn't been a big enough thorn in the MS side.

Go-OO has VBA support. It's Novell's fork of OO.o. (You know, just like IBM has, too.)

Zoho Office is an on-line office suite with VBA support.

Nice to see this out. However I am disappointed that PDF import even when it is ready will only be added as an extension. It should be part of the core. I was also hoping for a few more big features. Even the improved Crop feature in Draw/Impress was a feature that a developer did as a side job in is free time http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/improved_picture_cropping_for_draw Will 3.0 include some of the features that were forked off with Go-OO http://go-oo.org/ ? ie: -SVG support - So we can import Inkscape documents ... remember SVG is a standard also. -MS-Works import - This would be nice as many home users use this as it cost less then MS Office -Improved EMF rendering - I have not done this in a while but EMF quality was poor -WordPerfect Graphics import -GStreamer integration -Rich fields support - some of the features OOo people said they would not support. -Other Go-oo features I am not trying to start a turf war, but there are some nice features. I would think that there might be time to integrate some of existing code i.e. Works support etc into OOo before 3.0 is final. AS the other features have been sitting in Go-oo they might be considered stable enough to port back to OOo at this beta stage.

I haven't tried it, but apparently this modification of OO.org handles Works:

http://go-oo.org/discover/#ms-works-import

So how exactly does the 3.0 beta release compare with Go-Openoffice.org 2.4?

Now would be a terrible time to stop developing parallel languages, because the problem is just now coming to the forefront with the limits of single-core performance pushing back and multi-cores taking over.

This is one of the reasons dual-licensing is bad. Big projects with this problem are OpenOffice, Java, and Qt.

ooo-build (previously just for build fixes) is now a formal fork of OpenOffice [CC] to be located at http://go-oo.org/ [CC]

And this is the proper response: to fork the code and make an open-source only version, leaving the company and all its legal shenanigans in the dust.

Did anyone else notice that "The people behind go-oo.org" are DEVOID of chicks?
http://go-oo.org/about/

1: The "non-starter" speed. Even with the quickstarter, OpenOffice.org does not start that fast enough for me.

3: Beauty. Heck, the [ugly and huge] icons on Linux can be made better looking.

So - fork is rather a pejorative term; it has always been the case (for one reason and another), that there are lots of different versions and derivatives of OO.o out there. Most obviously Sun ships a version of OO.o under a proprietary license, and many other vendors and small companies likewise - with different internationalizations, and (most often) some proprietary value add. http://go-oo.org/ has existed for many years as has ooo-build, and has been used rather widely as a place to share improvements and fixes layered on top of OO.o. Also, fork sounds like some drastic severing of ties - it's clear that we will continue contributing tons of effort to up-stream OpenOffice.org, much as before. So, at some level this is business as normal: just a set of LGPL pieces (and existing patches/improvements), bundled up and made more widely available than before; the only slight difference is that go-oo is all free software. HTH.

It's been sustaining itself for decades now. The popular software tends to create communities with services. The unpopular software can usually be maintained in the developers spare time.

Then there's OpenOffice.org, which isn't fun to hack on (the build environment is horrible), is slow, lacks plugins and extensions, and with uninspired planet blogs quite unlike anyone else.

The problem though is that Office software is necessary (other OSS Office packages are years away from competing features) for the desktop and OOo is good enough to quell developers but not good enough for anyone to be particularly happy about. No wonder Sun have problems getting contributions.

There is a schtick within OSS that you shouldn't ask for money... are there any other ways of earning money from happy users other than a paypal button?

Drepper's paper explains why it takes so damn long to work through C++ symbols. This is a limitation of the ABI, not of the compiler's ability to optimize or the programmer's ability to code.

C++ also makes a lot of indirect addressing crap, due to having to bounce through classes and virtual tables; this is about 5 times slower than immediate addressing.

Meeks' paper shows exactly where most of the load time for OOo is spent; this happens to be a lot of symbol look-up through C++ symbols. Practical example of the stuff in Drepper's paper.

C++ brings things like namespaces (useful, but they do cause the longer symbol look-up time) and operator overloading (evil, causes code to be obfuscated massively; most so-so programmers like not having to type myMatrix.Add(otherMatrix), while many experienced programmers seem to hate having to check the types on 'x' and 'y' when they see x=x+y somewhere). Still, you don't exactly need these; namespaces change your functions from gtk_window_do_crap() to gtk::window.do_crap(), and allow you to tell the compiler that if you don't specify anything, gtk:: is assumed.

As far as I have understood the Ximian version of Openoffice (http://go-oo.org/) was born out of the fact that some developers did not want to license their code under Sun's terms. Is there any comment on whether the Ximianized OO will be merging with the main one now?

I personally use XOO because it has far better KDE integration than the regular one.