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OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X Alpha Released!

Posted by Zonk on from the copy-and-paste-how-do-you-break-that dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Nearly 6 years after announcing a Mac port, OpenOffice.org has released the first release of OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X that can finally run without X11!! An alpha is available for download today, but a lot of help is still needed to make OpenOffice.org available for Mac OS X. The site is very blunt: 'WARNING: THIS SOFTWARE MAY CRASH AND MAY DESTROY YOUR DATA DO NOT USE THIS SOFTWARE FOR REAL WORK IN A PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENT. This is an alpha test version so that developers and users can find out what works and not, and make comments on how to improve it.' Currently missing functionality includes printing, pdf export, copy/pasting, and multiple monitors. That said, if you're interested in participating you can visit the Mac team to figure out how you can help today."

6 of 251 comments (clear)

  1. REALLY READ THAT WARNING MESSAGE by Chris_Jefferson · · Score: 5, Informative

    While this is cool, make sure you really read that warning message. This is real alpha. You won't be able to print. You won't be able to cut+paste reliably. As this alpha has been approaching, I had a crash while saving, leaving me with a half-corrupted useless copy of my document.

    So have a look, and help submit bug reports, but please don't try using this is your normal editor, or get annoyed it isn't in a full usable state yet, that's why it is called alpha :)

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  2. Neo Office by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    http://www.neooffice.org/

    A port of OpenOffice to Mac OS X that uses Java as a compatibility layer.

    It _is_ production ready (I use it every day).
    Why the OpenOffice people are hostile to this project is something I've stopped
    wondering about... today's announcement of the "first" port of OOO to Mac not
    using X11 just shows how badly a project hurts itself when it refuses to work
    with others

    1. Re:Neo Office by swillden · · Score: 5, Informative

      Licensing. NeoOffice code can not be reused in OpenOffice.org due to their relicensing to GPL from the original LGPL.

      This is incorrect. The problem isn't GPL vs LGPL, the problem is that Sun requires the copyright for all significant contributions to OpenOffice.org to be assigned to Sun, so they can sell StarOffice as proprietary code. The NeoOffice developers don't want their code sold as proprietary, and don't want to assign their copyrights to Sun.

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  3. Re:Used it on MacOSX - switching to google docs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny
    not to mention having every single thing you write indexed for public consumption and advertising goodness...

    google...you seem to apologizing to you girlfriend.
    would you like to

    1. order flowers
    2. seek counseling
    3. look up a local escort service
  4. Re:Warning! by CockroachMan · · Score: 5, Funny

    'WARNING: This software may crash and may destroy your data Do not use this software for real work in a production environment. Windows should have one of those in the box..
  5. Thanks to neooffice... by MMC+Monster · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Just wanted to give a thanks to the folks behind neooffice (http://www.neooffice.org/) before all the bashing starts...

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