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OpenOffice.org Declares Independence From Oracle, Becomes LibreOffice
Google85 writes "The OpenOffice.org Project has unveiled a major restructuring that separates itself from Oracle and that takes responsibility for OpenOffice away from a single company. From now on, OpenOffice's development and direction will be decided by a steering committee of developers and national language project managers. Driving home the changes, the OpenOffice.org project is now The Document Foundation, while the OpenOffice.org suite has been given the temporary name of LibreOffice."
What's the deal with the cursor here on Slashdot?!?! Edit ing i s becom ing a p a in i nthe ass!
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
This is probably the best thing to happen to openoffice.org since the sale of Sun to Oracle. Almost all of Sun's open source projects have either been neglected (abandoned?) by Oracle or moved to a less-friendly license (OpenSolaris anyone?).
There's got to be a joke in there somewhere.
Now no one will take OpenOffice... err... I mean LibreOffice seriously and continue using Microsoft Office unabated.
When I see names of this kind I know that the project is now dead.
Does Oracle own the OpenOffice name? I've been annoyed that it was officially called OpenOffice.org. That's name of a website, not a piece of software..
Tensions between the open source community and Oracle, a big proprietary software company, can hardly be called infighting in the OSS community.
There is a good chance Oracle owns the OpenOffice.org name. If they break with Oracle (a good idea) they're going to have to leave it behind.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
You're kind of... wrong.
It's taking a vitally important piece of software out of the hands of a commercial company which has not shown a great deal of respect for the principles of free, libre, open source software.
If you RFTA, it states that they have asked Oracle to donate the OpenOffice.org name to the project. Oracle's response to this request will really define Oracle's relationship with the FLOSS community.
I think putting the (former) OpenOffice on independent footing away from a single corporation is a laudable goal and a good idea, but can it work this way?
As far as I remember, one of the problems OpenOffice always had was that most of the developers were paid developers inside Sun who worked on OpenOffice full-time. I thought the code was kind of a mess and hard to decipher for anyone outside, so the project always fought for more volunteers, but could not get many. Has this changed?
Because otherwise, OpenOffice development, while now technically being independent from Oracle, might still by all accounts be entirely dependent on Oracle goodwill if most of the meaningful development can still only be done by those full-time developers inside Oracle.
This might work however, if that new-founded Foundation can somehow acquire enough funding to ease away those internal developers as well and continue paying them to work on OpenOffice full-time. I am not sure if that is feasible, however.
Well that's bollocksed up what little name recognition it had then. Well done OSS community. Shot itself in the foot with infighting again.
Sadly, I have to agree. Add to that the fact that it appears half the population doesn't know how to pronounce "libre" or even what it means and it's hard to see how this change can help rather than hurt.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
LibreOffice? Seriously? What a horrid name. We're not French and the percentage of the population that understands what Libre means is nil.
There's a reason we're all geeks and not in marketing. However, we all have friends who have a bit savviness when it comes to creativity. Quit being a geek and ask for help.
This is no different than the Diaspora project. Even if that project had the technical side working, it'd still fail because the name is so stupid. You can't compete against a product named "Facebook" when your name is "Diaspora".
----- obSig
I wonder how much name recognition Open Office really had, and how much of that was positive. As much as I like the idea of a free open-source alternative to MS Office, and as much as I relied on it for specific tasks, for at least 5 years I've wanted them to fix the bloated mess that it has become. They never have, and many people hate it for that.
If they can get some real movement under their wings now, and separate out the fat, a break with the OO name might just be the Mozilla / Firefoxification the suite needs.
The ______ Agenda
constant name changes are not good. destroys product name recognition.
Read radical news here
Lee Burr Office? Glad it's temporary. Sounds like something said drunkenly to a cop after getting pulled over.
Some of the supporters: FSF, Google, Novell, Red Hat, and Canonical.
When those guys are with you - it'll happen. My only question is if OpenOffice will become LibreOffice next month with the new releases of Ubuntu, OpenSUSE & Fedora or if it'll wait until spring?
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
Q: Why are you building a new web infrastructure?
A: Since Oracle's takeover of Sun Microsystems, the Community has been under "notice to quit" from our previous Collabnet infrastructure. With today's announcement of a Foundation, we now have an entity which can own our emerging new infrastructure.
Basically Oracle told them their lease was up. Yea Oracle! I didn't already have enough reasons to loathe thee.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Well that's bollocksed up what little name recognition it had then. Well done OSS community. Shot itself in the foot with infighting again.
More importantly, by choosing a name that lots of English speakers won't even know how to pronounce, they've isolated themselves even more. They'd have done better if they'd chosen an abstract name like "Firefox" or "Apache."
Lee Bray Office? Sounds like an evangelical preacher's fundraising department.
Lots of people won't be able to pronounce it properly. They will call it "Leeber Office". I think it will hurt the brand.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
Sure we do! It's that Zodiak symbol between Virgo and Scorpio, right?
Any chance to see mysql freed from Oracle as well?
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
If you RFTA, it states that they have asked Oracle to donate the OpenOffice.org name to the project. Oracle's response to this request will really define Oracle's relationship with the FLOSS community.
What's really sad is that if Oracle were to come back with "You can have the name for one million dollars" the LibreOffice people wouldn't be able to come up with the money. Chump change for Ellison, deal breaker for OSS.
Trolling is a art,
That's exactly what TFA says they've done. Actually, they even invited Oracle to join the new community and donate the OpenOffice.org name.
My first reaction is: Thank God. I didn't have a very good feeling where things were going after the Oracle takeover and some of their later business decisions (OpenSolaris). Of course, it all depends on how the new foundation will steer things, and I don't know anyone who is part of this, so it's hard to make a judgment. So my hope is that they will at least not make things worse, and maybe this is a even chance to re-energize the project and take it to the next level.
Dear Document Foundation:
Please live up to it, and make OOo (or LO) kick some ass. We need you!
May the force be with them!
There is a good chance Oracle owns the OpenOffice.org name.
Good. They can have it. Who ever heard of a piece of software being named after its website?
I'm known among friends and coworkers for constantly suggesting that people leave MSOffice and go to OOo.
You can be sure I won't be promoting going to the LOo nearly as aggressively.
I seem to recall that the reason they were called OpenOffice.org instead of just Open Office was because someone else owned the Open Office name. Does anyone know the status of that trademark?
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
What's really sad is that if Oracle were to come back with "You can have the name for one million dollars" the LibreOffice people wouldn't be able to come up with the money. Chump change for Ellison, deal breaker for OSS.
I think the monatary amount would be beside the point. If Oracle said that they could have it for $1000 I would tell them to turn it sideways and shove it up their asses. Oracle has basically given the finger to FOSS so why deal with them at all unless they are truly willing to give up something of value?
Personally, I think LibreOffice should pick a new name, totally redo the icon set and then have the big three push it like crazy. I think the biggest problem with LibreOffice is that it's ugly. Sad, but true.
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
Yeah, really. It was either this, or see the project get scrapped and a new, proprietary "OracleOffice.org" get released a few weeks later. I'm glad to see open source resisting becoming assimilated and crushed because a major backer got acquired.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Oracle doesn't care about their "brand" any more. They only care about profits at any cost. The problem with this economically, is that eventually people see through the hype and start to find alternative products that fill the need. Take a look ...
Oracle buys Sun, and Solaris instantly becomes next to worthless, except for Oracle DBs and big Corporation purchases.
Sun gets Java and immediately starts rebranding it, breaking software. Nice testing there Oracle.
Sun gets OpenOffice and tell the team "go away"
Oracle is eating itself alive. And that makes the books look good for the short term. We IT guys are already looking for ways to get off your anti-customer products and services. It might take a while, but we're already starting the process
Hey Oracle ... Nice going.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Yea Oracle! I didn't already have enough reasons to loathe thee.
Rumors are going round that Oracle wants to aquire a chip-manufacturer, candidates apparently are AMD and NVIDIA, i guess Larry Elison wont rest untill he single handled destroyed the IT world as we know it.. (i can imagine it now, AMD in oracle hands, sharp focus on VERY expensive server CPUs, a quickly dying line of consumer chips leaving both intel and Nvidia without real competition, halting all serious evolution in both GPU and CPU products)
People, what a bunch of bastards
Well it's not really that I like or use it (I'm a latex guy...), but I enjoyed being able to put "experience in Oracle's OpenOffice.org" on my resume. Helps get it past HR goons who only grep for a few words. ;)
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
From the FAQ:
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.
Nothing but good things ahead
Then there's that little thing called Java
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Make the mascot a Zebra, and the English speakers will suddenly pick up on it.
Only the North American manglers of the English language will. (maybe)
I for one don't say Zeeeeeeebra.
As it's just in the beta stage, maybe they'll resolve the UI issues.
Maybe they won't... who knows :)
I don't see confirmation of this on the OpenOffice.org website - how "official" is this? The register article and the project website seem to indicate support from a lot of companies, but this seems to be quite the "bolt from the blue", so to speak - have there been rumblings of this behind the scenes?
From my standpoint, the two projects I was most concerned about when the Sun/Oracle deal was announced were OpenOffice.org and VirtualBox. There was a lot of noise about MySQL, but PostgreSQL is already out there as a very very viable (some would say better) alternative with a functioning community and long history. OpenSolaris never really became a major force in open source operating systems, so it's not likely to leave a bit hole. However, OpenOffice.org and VirtualBox both occupy highly user-visible spots in the open source world. OpenOffice.org has been absolutely key in breaking the "Microsoft Office" lock-in.
If this is for real the importance of this new project dwarfs the fate of MySQL. I really, really hope that enough resources are put behind the project to keep it viable and match compatibility with Microsoft Office, because if Linux no longer has the ability to easily read most Microsoft documents it will be one of the biggest hits to desktop viability that Linux distros could suffer.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
Shoulda kept it simple and just called themselves "MegaOpenOffice.org" or something.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
Can anybody provide a link to the roadmap? I'm wondering when Java is going to be removed from LibreOffice.
Any decisions as to what Java will be replaced with?
Y
Quoting Michael Meeks from (paywalled for 10 days) http://lwn.net/Articles/407339/
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
It's obligatory... an office suite that wears stretchy pants... for fun. :)
As opposed to willful trademark violation? What, exactly, are you proposing the OOO developers should have done here?
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
OpenOffice.org was - for all practical purposes - a wholly owned subsidiary of Sun.
Management. Staffing. Money and Resources.
Rather a lot of money - as I recall - some hundreds of millions of dollars spent in trying to make OpenOffice.org a competitive office suite.
Second-tier to this day - and far from the integrated office solutions being offered by Microsoft.
I'm just saying OO already had a mountain to climb without its supporters attaching heavy weights to its backpack. Or, erm, something.
This is Slashdot! It's "OO already had a mountain to climb without attaching a trailer to their truck".
which is totally what she said
God, I hope so.
Maybe if we're REALLY REALLY lucky they could talk to the guys from Scribus and Inkscape and do something really cool together. LibreOffice has the mass, Scribus & Inkscape have the game. It could be a win-win for all.
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
Libber? Like them liberals? I ain't usin' no commie software
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Is that LibreOffice pronounced the Spanish Lee-bray Office or is it the French Lee-bruh Office? I supposed we should just all consider ourselves fortunate it wasn't called FavreOffice.
This summary (and the first article link in it, which parts of the summary copied verbatim without attribution) is incorrect. This is not OO.o declaring their independence; LibreOffice is a fork. It may or may not catch on. Oracle, in charge of the current OO.o project, may or may not actually pay attention or care.
I was going to try to compare this to Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox, but I couldn't: that was at least started and hosted by (a couple people at) Mozilla and happened to catch their attention and be made their primary focus; Oracle has nothing to do with this, and I find it unlikely that they will care. Additionally, their goals were different: Firefox was mostly to eliminate bloat; this is to make OO.o "free-er," including plugins. I guess they do have one thing in common, which is that they are both attempts to re-take control of a project from a corporate overlord who pushed the product according to their desires for their product; in one case, Netscape, in this case, Sun/Oracle.
Still, the summary is misleading. Visit their web page and find out what they really are; do yourself a favor and don't read the incorrectly summarized article or obviously-not-written-by-someone-who-knows-anything-about-software article.
R.Mo
Good point - I'm trying to think of the possible mispronunciations...
liber ...
libra
library
libber
libby
larabee
le bree
libberee
Like x.org?
Well that's bollocksed up what little name recognition it had then
Sure, but what's the alternative?
Oracle actually is the malevolent cartoon devil that people here will make Microsoft/Apple/Google/whatever out to be depending on what day it is.
Klingon language support, and an Emacs look and feel.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Please do include patches/extensions etc from OxygenOffice aswell. http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooop/
As far as I remember, one of the problems OpenOffice always had was that most of the developers were paid developers inside Sun who worked on OpenOffice full-time. I thought the code was kind of a mess and hard to decipher for anyone outside, so the project always fought for more volunteers, but could not get many. Has this changed?
It has been hard for anyone "outside" to contribute a long time, but for other reasons. Great patches have long been rejected upstream for no reason. If you look at http://www.documentfoundation.org/faq/ you see that "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. ". This is a big and very important change of attitude. We can at minimum expect that all the currently available patches who are available but have been ignored by "OpenOffice.org" will be added to LibreOffice, and I hope and suspect more developers will contribute now that they can.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
Add to that the fact that it appears half the population doesn't know how to pronounce "libre" or even what it means and it's hard to see how this change can help rather than hurt.
Fortunately, everyone knows how to pronounce it thanks to that Jack Black movie nobody saw (Nacho Libre). Unfortunately, the "hurt rather than help" theme continues.
From hell's heart I fstab at /dev/hdc
Heh - like HR goons know the syntax for grep.
Addlepated - punk & metal
May I suggest: Liberty Office Suite as a new name.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Nothing is going to slow down adoption in the US than an unpronounceable Frenchy name.
I have only recently begun using OpenOffice.org again and I can't fathom why I ever left it. I enjoy using it a lot more than it's competitors. I wish the project good luck, wherever it may go.
Mr. America walk on by your schools that do not teach Mr. America walk on by the minds that won't be reached
/libr/ - if this stupid thing didn't use html tags that swallow up my IPA notation
LibreOffice has restored the de facto industry-standard application color coding (blue = wp, green = spreadsheet, orange = presentation), so I consider this a step in the right direction.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Tensions between the open source community and Oracle, a big proprietary software company, can hardly be called infighting in the OSS community.
I disagree. Like it or not, Oracle is part of the OSS community. A huge portion of the development done on OSS is done by employees of big companies, most of which also write proprietary, closed source software. Apple, Google, IBM, Nokia, HP... well you get the point. Basically, Oracle dumps enough money and human resources into improving Linux and the userspace that they've earned the title of OSS community contributor.
That doesn't mean they and other companies don't do lots of things counter to the interests of the OSS community in general, when it helps their bottom line; or that this is anything new. It just means maybe you should revise your view of what the OSS community is to be a little more realistic and a little less black and white. Sure there are long haired, bearded hippies working for free in their spare time to make the world a better place. There are also a crapload of on the clock developers getting a paycheck to work on OSS projects used by their corporation to create salable products and services. They're all part of the community.
Yet it is not at all uncommon for even large and well known businesses to re-brand and change the name of either the business or the product. Norwich Union -> Aviva, Charmin -> Cushelle, to quote two relatively recent examples.
I thought it was Spanish for "book"!
That said, my energy to support OpenOffice/OfficeLibre it is running out. What I'm seeing is that there is really very little financial support for it (as compared to MS Office, for example) and even less for marketing it. The result is that it does some things extremely well (ODF, importing) and others very badly (BASE). This is not because the people behind it do not care - much the opposite - I've submitted bugs and there have been very positive experiences. The bottom line is that there are just simply not enough brains working on the code because no one is paying them to do it.
If OfficeLibre is to succeed it needs the following:
a) A weathly foundation and/or solid source of revenue to keep it going
b) A professional marketing plan to make it the default choice in Western Schools where it can get mind-share. (Why are disadvantaged kids being taxed to use Microsoft?)
c) A results-driven steering committee so that goals and objectives are established and prioritized based on USER-driven wishes.
d) A program to get it rolled out on the Web too - LibreDocs??
e) Make working on it part of every computer science corriculum.
The landscape is changing so rapidly out there that, if this is not done soon, I don't see it surviving two years.
*** Don't be dull.***
Google Chrome, Google Earth, Mozilla Web Browser. The individual OOo applications are (were?) called OpenOffice.org Writer, OpenOffice.org Calc, etc. The suite is (was?) called OpenOffice.org, which, I agree (and apparently so does The Document Foundation) that this is a bit confusing.
My blog
The main problem, however, is that the software still sucks ass.
Whale
Really? After Office Open XML courtesy Microsoft, ditching Open Office (and Office Open) monickers seems to be a good idea.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
It had to be done. Open Office (and MySQL) are too important to be entrusted to Larry Ellison. Already, a few parts of MySQL, such as the Windows GUI client, are no longer reliable.
("LibreOffice", as a name, though, has to go. The open source community sucks at naming.)
I think it's worse than that. "LibreOffice" sounds alot like "Liberal" to me. What executives are going to want anti-capitalism/hippie smoking/communist software in their enterprise?
They should have gone with something more patriotic/capitalist like "FreedomOffice" to cater to the business crowd.
Bell Atlantic to Verizon to quote a more well known example.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
Indeed. Realistically though, the .org was there to avoid legal troubles with the original OpenOffice. Virtually everyone I'd ever heard say the name just called it OpenOffice with no ".org" attached.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
I think it would be great if they altered the name to Liberache Office and *then* did a UI to match.
Professor Karmadillo Songs of Science
OpenOffice.org is trademarked, which is now owned by Oracle. Making the name OpenOffice could easily be crushed by Oracle if they chose to. Giving it a new name, however, would make it a lot harder for Oracle to get in the way of this move.
Remember to maintain your supply of
Probably the weird "re" ending. In the US, we pronounce that differently than in Europe typically.
Please please please please please, do not go with 'libre' or 'gnu' or 'gimp' or 'smokingfeces' or 'roadkill' or 'firebox' or 'ckunglom' :((((
Ohhh, I am so sad to see a good piece of software come out with a terrible unmarketable name.
Pleaaaaase, let's have a good name for once.
How about "Top Office" or "Power Office" or.... (I was just thinking Barely Legal Office, then I realized I was thinking of porn.)
OK, something sexy, something with zing, zzzazzzz, xxuzzzz, whatever.
"XUPER OFFICE!"
"Best Office"
Just don't come out with something like "Unfortunate office", it's just not good.
You can't handle the truth.
Relatively recent and relatively European. I wouldn't wipe my ass with "cushelle"
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
If this does result in a complete change in the way OpenOffice (or whatever it ends up being called) does project development, it's both scary and a big opportunity.
Risks:
1. Keeping up with document formats in Microsoft Office products is a difficult, time consuming process. Other open source office projects have never matched OpenOffice.org's support for MSOffice files, and arguably that strength alone is responsible for OpenOffice.org's success in the open source world. Implicit in that support is being feature-rich enough to be able to work with said documents, of course, which is also a lot of work. This kind of support, especially on something unsexy like office document formats, REALLY REALLY BENEFITS from paid people working on it. This is my single biggest concern going forward.
2. Code expertise. It has been years since I took a look a the OpenOffice code, but unless things have changed dramatically I have always heard that it was huge and required a LOT of time to become a productive contributor - definitely not organized into small, distinct parts. If the formerly paid developers can't devote their time to it as much/at all (which I wouldn't blame them for, we all need to eat) we could be looking at a substantial learning curve for the community.
Opportunities:
1. The relatively closed nature of the OpenOffice.org project seems, at least from my admittedly remote vantage point, to have resulted in a rather spectacular "not invented here" effect. OpenOffice has a great deal of functionality, but to the best of my knowledge there has never been any serious attempt to make independent libraries packaging that functionality for use in other applications - this is a shame. Perhaps even in principle you can't split office functionality up that way, but the KOffice team seems to have had some success doing so - perhaps this would be a good time to have an "XFree86->Xorg" style "break it into pieces" re-think of the OO.org architecture? Investigate whether and where it makes sense to break out OpenOffice functionality into libraries, contribute abilities to other projects' libraries and use those, or just flat out replace internal OO.org code with use of external libraries. Maybe OpenOffice really does need to be as huge as it is, but I'm rather suspicious of that.
2. REALLY hoping someone can make an OpenOffice fork/port/whatever that makes full use of the Qt toolkit. Instead of just getting the look of native widgets (which is what I understood efforts to date had been doing?) actually use the real Qt widgets and let the Qt toolkit handle that part of things. Probably requires major reworking of OpenOffice, but moments like this tend to be good times to take new directions like that. Let Qt do what it does so well and handle the cross-platform GUI widgets, and focus on the Office stuff.
Obviously not expert opinions as far as the OO.org codebase is concerned, and there may be reasons some of these things are bad ideas or won't work, but with luck and effort perhaps we can see actual major improvements (the integration of the Go-OO work is certainly a great start!) and some good will come out of all of this.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
Lolololol...
Lolololol...
Laughing out loud out loud out loud out loud?
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Open Office is in big trouble.
Sun provided most of the money for this project and now that is gone.
How will OO.org get funding? Firefox/mozilla gets it from Google search.
Without some revenue Open Office is going to be in a world of hurt.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Now suddenly it's changed it's name. It makes it appear that I chose an unreliable fly-by-night supplier. Businesses want stability not risk.
Yeah, that's like the time I recommended we upload our company's videos to this startup YouTube, which was then acquired by some fly-by-night called Google. Boy, was there egg on my face! I'm just lucky that I didn't recommend OpenOffice.org at the same time, seeing that it's now backed by that fly-by-night Oracle.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
No, but they could have renamed it to gooo. I guess they thought better of it.
To do anything implies porting. I've recently looked at Inkscape's codebase -- it's pretty much married to glib. Porting it to oo.org's framework is probably a man-year to complete. And you'd better start with good understanding of oo.org's framework first.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Right, because the one thing keeping Intel moving is AMD.
The specter of competition from AMD probably provides some motivation to Intel, but it doesn't seem to be a particularly primary source.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
It has been steadily getting better since 2.4 and most importantly getting faster, not slower (as is the case with MS Office). I would not even try to run 2007 on a netbook while OO runs perfectly fine on anything down to around 400MHz.
The problem with it is that import/export filters still suck bricks through a straw sidewise.
If you want to keep your docs in its original format and produce PDFs and distribute finished docs as PDFs it has long been on par with MSFT office. If you are using low spec machines it has long exceeded it.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
No. Originally OpenOffice.org was called OpenOffice, but there was an existing product with that name and IIRC they complained (or maybe it was just preemptively changed to prevent a potential complaint). In any case all the reasons not to use that name are still valid.
I want my Cowboyneal
The project and software are commonly known as OpenOffice, but this term is a trademark held by a company in the Netherlands co-founded by Wouter Hanegraaff and is also in use by Orange UK, requiring the project to adopt OpenOffice.org as its formal name.
Google Chrome, Google Earth, Mozilla Web Browser. The individual OOo applications are (were?) called OpenOffice.org Writer, OpenOffice.org Calc, etc. The suite is (was?) called OpenOffice.org, which, I agree (and apparently so does The Document Foundation) that this is a bit confusing.
But they're not called Google.com Chrome, or Mozilla.org Web Browser. The .org on the end of OpenOffice's official name is, you have to admit, somewhat an ugly wart.
Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
I think it would be great if they altered the name to Liberache Office and *then* did a UI to match.
"Colonel go for laugh. No get" (tm MASH)
That might have been funny/ier if you'd spelled "Liberace" correctly. As it stands, it looks like a variation on headache.
Which might be funny but takes too much work.
Especially given your sig.
Will they finally change the name of their binary away from "soffice"?
From Groklaw:
"LibreOffice is being welcomed by Red Hat, Canonical, Google, and Novell, among others, and by both FSF and OSI."
They will not lack for resources with that backing.
Well it's not really that I like or use it (I'm a latex guy...), but I enjoyed being able to put "experience in Oracle's OpenOffice.org" on my resume. Helps get it past HR goons who only grep for a few words. ;)
Well you can still probably garner a lot of attention by just putting "I'm a latex guy" on your resume. :)
"The bigger the lie, the more they believe." - Det. Bunk
How would this be different than the OpenOffice.org v. StarOffice.org?
You talk as if this is a new thing. The fact that there can be a libreOffice should be evidence enough that open office has no real threat. I for one would wait until Oracle actually pulled the trigger. Why bite the hand that feeds you?
Oracle (ex. Sun) gave OpenOffice.org full-time support and credibility. What will libreOffice provide?
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
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.
The difference is that they do it at the same time they spend a ton of money promoting the new name. (How much money does the Document Foundation have to spend doing that?) And even then the new name often fails to take hold. (e.g. Amway -> Alticor)
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
The name is ugly. Doesn't flow naturally unless you saw words like Libre often. Give it a good name and people will go to it.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Oh look. there's already infighting in this thread... ...DANCE PUPPETS....DANCE!!!!
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
or just OOPS - Open Office Productivity Suite
Seriously, though it just needs a short catchy name. We can backronnym it later.
You win the "Poor Analogy of the Day Award". Twice. (Do you even understand what's being discussed?)
YouTube is still called "YouTube"; there was no change of name that would suggest instability to a casual observer.
OpenOffice.org was not renamed when it was taken over by Oracle; it is (apparently) being renamed in an attempt to wrest it from Oracle, which is a sign of instablity.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Well... The only reason OpenOffice exists is because the company that Oracle purchased spent money to purchase StarDivision and its StarOffice, open sourced the source code, and form OpenOffice.org.
You act like FOSS did all the work and spent all the money.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Libre as in Free
Libro as in Book
"Who ever heard of a piece of software being named after its website?"
Hundreds of java class name spaces would beg to differ with you.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
but if you read James Gosling's recent comments of how Oracle is run, then you'd have a good idea that it is unlikely to release OpenOffice.org. They are seriously focused on making profits and run by a pyramid shaped management hierarchy which is _very_ narrow at the top. I'm pretty sure Larry knows the value of the Star Office and OpenOffice. They have already changed the name of Star Office to Oracle Open Office so that should be another clue about how they value the Open Office brand.
LibreOffice is _not_ a name they should keep but it does have to both sound right and feel right. If anything, they should have started with Free Office and talked with the guy who parked the web site. It is a shame it's come to this and it will initially hurt the progress of the Open Office brand. IMO
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
And the reason it was named OpenOffice.org in the first place was because OpenOffice is/was already trademarked : http://www.openoffice.org/FAQs/faq-other.html#7
- Peder
Maybe... they at first wanted to call it "FreeOffice" (!) but, because they're insufferable geeks, one of them had to say "oh, hey let's use the ancient Germanic for 'free' which is 'frank'" and another geek said "hey, better, since 'frank' is the originator of 'France' let's use the French word: libre" and the rest thought that that was a great idea, out of recursion.
Or... maybe these are some radical-minded liberals, who still to this day feel affronted by Bush's ideological attack on use of the word "French" as an insane attempt to slight France for failing to kow-tow. So, the first chance they have, first word-or-name-to-be-invented that comes along, they stick something French into it, for revenge.
Or... they are a bunch of rich, poppyheaded fucks, with their heads stuck up their asses, taking their product in a horrible and disastrous direction, out of the frying pan and into the fire, and because Ellison is a beefhearted, barbarous neckbeard who sails boats and flies airplanes and makes them jealous, they decided to try and show him up, show him who's the real $$$ goods, and pick a real expensive-sounding FRENCH name, for their pile of barely-keeping-up poo-pooh; also to overcompensate for the fact that they'll be going broke and will never be able to afford that trip to Paris ever again.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
The question isn't "why?". It had to happen. And that it happened that soon is a rather good thing. But now there's a flock of developers that used to be paid by Sun that have to be transitioned to the new foundation or hired by someone like google, who has an interest in the office suite and its future direction.
And this has to happen rather quickly or there will be forks and fights and funny things that lead to uncertainty.
Hehe. I think the name shoud've been OfficeLibre. You know... like CubaLibre!
I think "Lightchainsaw Office" sounds catchy.
"From now on, though, OpenOffice's development and direction will be decided by a steering committee of developers and national language project managers."
I used The Google to try to find out what that term is, as I have never heard it. Anyone know what they mean by this? How should I be credentialed to become a candidate for the steering committee?
There are thieves in your area. Are they part of your community? Only in a very broad sense of community. Generally, community refers to a group of people with shared ideals, cooperating. Submitting patches to FOSS is one thing. Submitting patches to FOSS for the good of the community, without an ulterior motive, or at least with your vision of how it might be useful sharing a large subset with others, is another thing.
Not exactly grep, but Monica Goodling allegedly used this commend to screen resumes using Lexis/Nexis
[first name of a candidate] and pre/2 [last name of a candidate] w/7 bush or gore or republican! or democrat! or charg! or accus! or criticiz! or blam! or defend! or iran contra or clinton or spotted owl or florida recount or sex! or controvers! or racis! or fraud! or investigat! or bankrupt! or layoff! or downsiz! or PNTR or NAFTA or outsourc! or indict! or enron or kerry or iraq or wmd! or arrest! or intox! or fired or sex! or racis! or intox! or slur! or arrest! or fired or controvers! or abortion! or gay! or homosexual! or gun! or firearm!
(Do you even understand what's being discussed?)
Aw, shucks Mister... golly gee, that's not very swell of you to say that.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Yeah, capitalization can be very important.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
I was one of the people who would have preferred Java stay in the hands of Sun, I didn't think they had any reason to go open source. I thought (and honestly still think) that most of the people who were upset that Java wasn't open source were simply trying to find anything they could to bitch about and wouldn't switch to Java even once it was open source. Honestly I don't think many did switch after it was opened up.
Now, though, I'm really glad it was done. I haven't really been impressed with anything Oracle has done since buying Sun. At least Java can do the same thing Open Office did if it has to. It might be harder because the Java name is more critical (being "Java" has actual meaning) and I think Oracle still controls that, but at least there IS a way out if need be.
I mean, nobody like the French
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
It is when that business only represents a small portion of the product's ownership.
Funny, I still know Norwich Union by it's old name, and thought Aviva was a new, tiny company. Cushelle, I've never even heard of. Then again, I don't watch ads.
I used it the other day and could not find any way to turn Clippy on. I can't figure out how to use it without his help!
The about still sais (c) Oracle :)
Be or ben't
Didn't they just buy a chip manufacturer? SPARC?
Actually, I was not suggesting joining the groups - I don't think that would work well at all and the smaller the groups the better they can service their area of expertise. What I'm suggesting is that Scribus & Inkscape's interfaces are very nice looking and if the Scribus & Inkscape camps can lend a hand in UI design and new logos then LibreOffice can lend their weight in the realms of advertisement and so on. The install base of LibreOffice is HUGE compared to Scribus & Inkscape - letting people know there is a FOSS solution (along with GIMP) to the Microsoft & Adobe Design suites could be huge. I know I'm looking at moving away from Publisher this winter to Scribus.
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
Oh my goodness; nice troll (I hope!). This is pretty much a "worst case scenario" for the PC enthusiast community. It's on a par with Apple buying ARM in end-user doom.
Hopefully if it is true, Intel (of all companies) will arrange to block it, for the same reason that they don't lower prices enough to push AMD out of the CPU market (which they could do if they really wanted to): being pursued for being a monopoly would be seriously bad for them as well as the rest of the ecosystem and they know it...
Do you ignore the intended meaning and expand other common expressions, like RADAR, too?
Sun should have donated this name to the community years ago. If not, the community shouldn't have accepted that name. They'd have been better off raising the money to trademark their own name. Hope this isn't going to happen again with LibreOffice
Some of us find Oracle being in the name to strip all credibility, much like Microsoft.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
I thought:
Laughing out... laughing out... laughing out... laughing out loud.
Kind of like,
driving me... driving me... driving me... driving me crazy.
So CRAY-ZAY, yeah yeah baby.
(Neer neer neer, woka neer neer, woka woka...)
No?
sig: sauer
So it's now LOWriter?
Can all my friends have it, too?
Watch for Penguins, they eat Apples and throw rocks at Windows.
It's French for "Free Beer".
Free Martian Whores!
"they could have renamed it to gooo."
Giggity giggity!
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
Not to even mention that Open Office is a great piece of software and that we are grateful to those who created it!
But switching names isn't cheap. Verizon spent a lot promoting their new name. BTW, it was Bell Atlantic -> NYNEX -> Verizon.
Name changes do create some risk. It certainly doesn't make it easier to promote "the product that was formerly known as OpenOffice"
AT&T Wireless -> Cingular -> AT&T Wireless
that's libro
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
...website about this, I'd say it's a safe bet that Oracle could not care less.
There are companies that only care about making money and nothing else.
And then there are companies that actually go out of their way to be assholes. Oracle is the later, and I wish the dev team well even as I cry at their choice of a new name.
Which is why it is now Rogue office...
Yes... Open office went Rogue!
Ahem...
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
The wikipedia article, in the context you put it in, is meaningless. How about posting the words?
Free Martian Whores!
I believe the usage is way higher in developing countries. Some universities in Brazil for example has been using openoffice in
all administrative offices for 8 years or so.
There are more computer users outside developed nations now than in it.
We use Solaris for its ZFS, as no one else has continuous integrity checking in a production-grade filesystem; for hundreds of terabytes, we don't feel comfortable with any other filesystem. FreeBSD is coming close, but ACL support is still very lacking.
Oracle still owns the copyright.
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
Why do so many great open source projects have such awful names? There's so much value in having a memorable, likable name, it boggles my mind that more open-source projects don't bother.
Ah screw it - Office Unleashed: The Saga Continues!
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Declare independence!
Don't let them do that to you!
Declare independence!
Don't let them do that to you!
Declare independence!
Don't let them do that to you!
Declare independence!
Don't let them do that to you!
Start your own currency!
Make your own stamp
Protect your language
Declare independence
Don't let them do that to you
Declare independence
Don't let them do that to you
(x4) Make your own flag!
(x6) Raise your flag!
Declare independence!
Don't let them do that to you!
Declare independence!
Don't let them do that to you!
Damn colonists
Ignore their patronizing
Tear off their blindfolds
Open their eyes
Declare independence!
Don't let them do that to you!
Declare independence!
Don't let them do that to you!
With a flag and a trumpet
Go to the top of your highest mountain!
(x6) Raise your flag!
Declare independence!
Don't let them do that to you!
Declare independence!
Don't let them do that to you!
Raise the flag!
Living With a Nerd
Exactly. I wonder if it would be possible for the VirtualBox project to do the same? Oracle kills every FOSS project it touches, every previously-Sun-backed project should separate itself from Oracle ASAP.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
First came OpenOffice. Then came OpenOffice.org. Ladies and Gentleman, we are proud to present OpenOffice.org.org.
Hey the http://org.org/ domain doesn't seem to be being used for much.
There are 2 types of people in this world. Those who understand ternary and those who don't.
You should at least attribute that quote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org
Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"
To throw a few more on the fire:
Comcast -> Xfinity
Any Citrix product has probably undergone at least 2 or 3 name changes, for example:
Winframe -> Metaframe -> MetaFrame XP -> Presentation Server -> XenApp
Tigerdirect stores -> CompUSA (horrible choice IMO)
New World Music Theater -> Tweeter Center -> First Midwest Bank Amphitheater (large concert venue in Chicagoland area)
Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"
You could try:
C:\>del C:\windows
Linux/Open Source/Anti Microsoft News
How about "Sexy Office"? It's very French and has a nice mass appeal to it.
I agree. But let's have a name which reeks of quality and good design, not of Che Guevara.
If you live in a community where the thieves contribute more than the non-theives, then yes, definitely.
"I think the biggest problem with LibreOffice is that it's ugly."
You forgot slow. And badly designed. When you make Office (okay, Office on the Mac) look svelte and user friendly you've got problems.
Welcoming is one thing. Writing checks is another.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Why don't you just time travel forward about five minutes to the time when you have already time traveled forward and downloaded it to a USB stick and then come back and installed it? Then you can enjoy it RIGHT NOW! Don't forget to update Java while yer at it.
You are right, I had every intention of doing so and got in a hurry. I'll go stand in the corner if the internet with a pointy hat on.
I tend to think you haven't followed much of the whole story of Open Source software or it's timeline.
Then you'd be wrong. I've professionally developed open source software for a decade or more.
Oracle has never been much of an advocate of Open Source and the recent buyout of Sun has not been a good thing for Open Source advocates.
You don't have to be vocal to be part of a community. Oracle is a huge user of Linux and for many years they've had full time, paid employees coding on Linux where they found it lacking for their needs. That right there makes them part of the OSS community, as in they are both users and developers of OSS software. As for Oracle buying out Sun being a good thing for the community, when did I say it was? I think it has been almost entirely negative, but then I think a lot of members of the OSS community do more harm than good. Some would argue that about Stallman. That doesn't mean they aren't part of the community.
I'd almost have to say you're just trolling...
Why would I care if an AC claims I'm trolling? It doesn't make it true and you don't really support that opinion with anything useful.
...statements referring to 'revising' our views is totally irrelevant in this particular matter.
When people claim users and developers aren't part of the OSS community, I find that very relevant. It's trying to cherry pick based upon purely subjective criteria.
Yes companies, big and small, contribute a lot to the Open Source community. Oracle's history is steeped in corporate IT and very little of it was focused towards Open Source.
Their contribution to the Linux kernel alone are significant, more than you've done I'd wager. Yast, IPv6 support for NFS, etc. But hey don't take my word for it:
"Oracle's development work for the Linux kernel represents vital contributions to the open source community, which benefit anyone using Linux." – Andrew Morton, Linux Kernel Maintainer, Google
If Oracle is not a a member of the OSS community by virtue of all the OSS code they write and use, then you have rendered the term meaningless.
You are right, I had every intention of doing so and got in a hurry. I'll go stand in the corner if the internet with a pointy hat on.
Oh, god, not the robe and wizard cap again. :-P
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I'd say there's another problem: that oo.org, inkscape and scribus ALL use different application development frameworks. This means that developers are not portable. Once someone is fluent in oo.org, it'd take another year to become fluent in gtk, and perhaps less in Qt. This methinks bleeds manpower: you can't be as flexible as you could potentially be, and you can only contribute to one class of projects:
- oo.org uses GSL: their own framework
- inkscape uses glib/GTK
- scribus uses Qt
Now, my personal preference would be to port everything to Qt. But this has a couple problems. First of all, it'd need to have Nokia on board, as Qt would really be shaken down by porting something as big as oo.org to it. Nokia would need to supply badly needed bugfixes and new development resources for Qt to make oo.org porting possible.
Porting to GTK is harder, since generally you write way more code to accomplish anything in GTK, compared to Qt. At least there's way more unfunny boilerplate to write.
As for the oo.org's framework -- I have no clue. There is no real documentation for it, and there are probably very few people outside of core developer group who know anything substantial about it. Neooffice.org's pluby knows it well, but that's rare.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Forgot to add the Novell's go-oo people the the list of folks who know oo.org, of course.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Good God! That exhausted my emphasis neurotransmitters! And now I have to stare at a mauve wall for a while until I'm recharged!
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
from someone who has tracked and used this office suite since its 3.0 Staroffice days, i have to say, that i am very happy about libreoffice!
Just be sure not to use an oil-based lubricant on your latex.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Sorry, this time you have to write an application in Visual Basic that prints the following text 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 times:
I will not quote the internets without attribution.
Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"
It's a copyright notice. Oracle holds the copyright on a huge chunk of the code. It's just licensed open/free/librely, which allows TDF to use it.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Why is my document white and furry and sounds like a piano??!
[Actually, that's not a terrible idea. Liberace was largely about bringing classical music to the masses in a way they could relate to. Isn't OOo about bringing document processing to the masses in a way that's less financially painful to relate to??]
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I can't stop thinking of Nacho Libre. Probably not a good association for an office software suite.
Since we have Opera, and Symphony (Lotus/IBM's office suite), why not something musical like Concerto Office, Orchestra Office or Quintet Office?
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
Add to that the fact that it appears half the population doesn't know how to pronounce "libre" or even what it means
I'm part of that half (or maybe quarter -- I do know what it means, but I have no idea what the correct pronunciation is).
How DO you pronounce that, anyway? Libra? Liber? Something else entirely?
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
You mean like Wireshark vs Ethereal? Oh wait, everybody uses Wireshark now and Ethereal is sinking slowly into obscurity, as is right and proper.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Just call it OpenDocs.
OpenOffice.org never had good names. They should have dropped the .org part which I always thought was dumb to have on the software product. It should have always been called "OpenOffice" written/supported/produced by OpenOffice.Org.
The Document Foundation is also a dumb name.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
They have been invited to join the efforts as an equal contributor. Hopefully they will. They just aren't going to be permitted to actually run the project. Yes, many large companies have contributed to Free software while also producing commercial software, and that's fine. That's not the same as actually RUNNING the project effectively. That requires a particular management culture that Oracle just doesn't seem to have.
Like it or not, Oracle is part of the OSS community.
True, and liberating Openoffice from their rapacious tentacles will not change that.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Thanks for pointing this out.
My filthy mind never connected the dots, I was contemplating on reading the hidden comments to figure out how the poster reached the conclusion to confess this particular fetish.
Load New Commander (Y/N)?
I use EtherPad quite a bit, and it's not the feature list. It's good design. More isn't better. Sadly, OO had neither last time I tried to love it.
Actually this represents a rare stability in the face of acquisition. I have seen many product lines change overnight as a new management marks it's territory without regard for functionality. The new product is rarely even half as good as the old one. In this case the old reliable product has broken free and refuses to be pissed on.
Thank Christ it's a temporary name. "LibreOffice" is a terrible name.
True, but choosing LibreOffice just feels like the kiss of death. Some FSF diehards are probably rejoicing, but it's difficult to say, difficult to understand the meaning of it, and the average public just won't pick up on it the way they would have with OpenOffice.'
Now... LuchaLibreOffice, I'd use that...
I stopped using OOo. It's slow, I constantly encounter compatiblity issues with simple documents moving back to Office and so on. I used to mention OpenOffice to people and they'd say wow, free Office? Now I mention OpenOffice to people and they say yeah, my dad uses it and I'd rather have MSOffice. Even the OpenOffice website is very unappealing. If you click "I want to learn more", your only options for user types are Business and Government and so on. What about "90% of our userbase that just wants a word processor that doesn't cost $100"? And the whole page is BOLDED walls OF TEXT. That's REALLY pretty horrible DESIGN. Ugh. Get it together, people.
Microsoft also produces some Free Software. That does not necessarily make them part of the Free Software community. In this particular case Sun gets credit for releasing the source code for OpenOffice.org and Java (and Solaris, I suppose). However, the OpenOffice.org development community has a long history of problems with Sun's stewardship of the project. It is difficult enough to get code accepted into OpenOffice.org that most Linux distributions actually ship code from go-oo.org's fork of OpenOffice.org. This particular announcement only shows that the Free Software community has basically given up on working with Oracle to push changes upstream.
Combine this new schism with the fact that Oracle is suing Google over a Free Software Java-alike (Dalvik, and Harmony), and the recent closure of OpenSolaris, and Oracle is not looking particularly friendly right at this moment.
This might seem like the sort of thing that only "long-haired, bearded hippies" care about, but that's just not the case. Red Hat has basically shown that even Oracle's own customers would rather pay for Linux support from them. Part of the reason that Red Hat wins these contracts is that Oracle's customers know that if they become too reliant on Oracle that they won't be able to shop around for competitive pricing in the future. Red Hat is unabashedly "Free Software" friendly, and Red Hat's customers definitely see that as an advantage worth paying for.
Likewise, if you were considering a move to an alternative office suite right now you almost certainly would be interested in go-oo.org's version (what the new LibreOffice is based on) over OpenOffice.org. Oracle certainly pays developers to work on OpenOffice.org, but so do Novell and Red Hat, and their version, quite frankly, is considerably better than the OpenOffice.org version you can get from Oracle.
oh god, that made my heart jump. Don't touch AMD!
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
Are you kidding? AMD is Intel's only real competition. They are mostly assuredly what's driving Intel.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
LibreOffice (if it's good) will gets its marketing the same way OpenOffice did. The geeks will preach the gospel, and the quality (pretty good) and price (free!) will seal the deal.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
I always hated the name OpenOffice.org. OpenOffice, fine. But OpenOffice.org? That's an internet address, not a name for a program.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
Would it mean that it could go the same way as Firefox? Where they took a pile of crap that was proprietarily developed and turned it into one of the majors players in its field?
I sure hope so.
-- The Internet is a too slow way of doing things, you'd never do without it.
Maybe we can draw in the Mexican wrestling aficionados by changing the icon to a lucha libre mask...
I volunteer Strong Bad's face.
"We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
Part of the problem with "LibreOffice" is that it's a mongrel name. It's half French, half English. "BureauLibre" would be better, even if it put off a few anti-French bigots, because at least everyone else would recognize it was French and sort-of pronounce it like they think French is pronounced instead of stumbling their way through Franglais.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
OpenOffice.org was not renamed when it was taken over by Oracle; it is (apparently) being renamed in an attempt to wrest it from Oracle, which is a sign of instablity.
The renaming is a byproduct of the change in organization, not a goal. Otherwise, why would they ask Oracle to donate the OpenOffice.org trademark?
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
Yeah, capitalization can be very important.
Doesn't help. Any online group for LaTeX is routinely spammed with fetish ads.
What was that we were saying about terrible names for open source software?
Thanks, now it makes sense!
Free Martian Whores!
You're a Notearr Dayyum graduate too?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Do you ignore the intended meaning and expand other common expressions, like RADAR, too?
No, just the stupid ones that people use incorrectly.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Windscale -> Sellafield.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It's a pretty insane track. Imagining a tiny Icelandic woman (i.e. Bjork) performing it in China with Tibetan flags flying on the stage...it brings goosebumps.
The video is pretty crazy, but the song itself is just nuts.
Living With a Nerd
Its great they are going to be independent, but who is going to fund things now?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I thought:
Laughing out... laughing out... laughing out... laughing out loud.
Kind of like,
driving me... driving me... driving me... driving me crazy.
So CRAY-ZAY, yeah yeah baby.
(Neer neer neer, woka neer neer, woka woka...)
No?
ROFLOFLOFLOFL! Well, there's also the explanation that people have used "hahahaha" which works as onomatopoeia of what laughter sounds like and can be expanded by adding on more "ha"s at the end to approximate the length for which one laughs. Then they learn the phrase "lol" and mistakenly apply the same principle to an acronym which is not intended as onomatopoeia. Or something. TL;DR;DR;DR;DR?
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
At this stage it is clear and everybody agrees:
'LibreOffice' is going to be disaster.
Let's start a Slashdot brainstorming, folks.
My entry: Officine.
Yes, it is French but only you and I know
and I'm not sure about you.
pfft, I think we need tamarian support before that. Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
I don't think it's a stupid name. I think it's no more "stupid" than calling a spreadsheet "Excel" or making up a new name like "PowerPoint". Names gain acceptance over time as people become more comfortable with them. This means that they begin with names you might not have heard before, or names you've not heard used in that context. People had to get used to "Ubuntu" too but they did /.ers notwithstanding. You implore them to "ask for help" but you offer none yourself. What names do you think they should consider? Perhaps you have "friends who have a bit savviness when it comes to creativity" and offer some names they came up with. Constructive criticism goes so much further than name calling.
Digital Citizen
I'm a latex guy \footnote{By ``I am a latex guy'' I mean ``I am a \LaTeX guy'', not ``I am a S\&M B\&D guy''}.
i wasnt trolling, that rumor showed up on some tech-news sites, just traced it back to bloomberg:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-23/oracle-plans-to-buy-chip-companies-industry-specific-software.html
at this point AMD is just fingered as a target by a third party analyst, but it was enough to sink in deeply with me, since AMD is my prefered chip maker (and they provide much-needed competition to intel), so this would be horror for me too
If that were to happen, oracle will have taken over my two most favorite tech companies, and probably gut out the good parts and leave the burning carcas to rot... (or whatever, shitty metaphor, i know, it's late)
People, what a bunch of bastards
Yeah, they bought Sun, but apparently SPARC isnt what they were really looking for...
anyway, bloomberg link to back this shit up:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-23/oracle-plans-to-buy-chip-companies-industry-specific-software.html
People, what a bunch of bastards
Intel sells more stuff by the end of February than AMD sells in a year.
They are companies operating in the same industry, not competitors.
(And that is after the ATI aquisition!)
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Sorry, I meant, WonderfullyHelpfulOpenOfficeorgSoftware.html!
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
yeah, because obviously the reason intel doesnt just double their prices overnight (or introduces new techs and stops dropping prices when new stuff arrives) is VIA, with their C7 cpus!
get real, intel might not have to work very hard to keep ahead of AMD enough to keep their #1 position, but the stock-holders would revolt if AMD died out and intel didnt raise their prices
People, what a bunch of bastards
I believe the reason is that OpenOffice was already trademarked by someone else, but Indeed OpenOffice.org or OOo as some call it is really stupid namee !
more like kekekekekekeke,
or wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!
It isn't always a monopoly's best move to increase prices (basically because some of their market might be willing to simply do without rather than make a purchase).
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I think that falls under "except for Oracle DBs and big Corporation purchases."
If you have exabyte size data, that sensitive and important, you're by definition a "big Corporation".
Q.E.D.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
The MIT implementation moved to a non (or at least less) free license, and the community walked away from them.
I'm not sure that other companies don't have "ulterior motives" depending on what you call ulterior. Companies like Google, IBM and Red Hat have a pretty clear strategy for making money from open source software. I doubt that their motives for cooperating come strictly from being altruistic. In some cases I'm pretty sure there is no altruistic motive at all.
If I were to characterize it, successful open source companies have found business models that work well with the open source development model. They contribute to projects because it is in their best interest to do so. Other companies haven't figured out how to do that. They are contributing because they have a legal responsibility to do so.
From a community standpoint the distinction is important because on the one hand, success of the company will bring success to the community and vice versa. On the other hand, success of the two entities is not related. We can't quite trust companies who haven't found out how to be successful using open source methods because they will always prefer to use methods that are successful.
It's interesting, though. Personally, I would have put both Sun and Novel into the category of open source companies that I don't quite trust, mainly because I could never see a coherent business model that derived money from their open source business. They both seemed to use open source as a kind of loss leader to sell their proprietary stuff (although less so Sun, as they didn't seem to have any coherent business model that would make money). Now Oracle has bought Sun and very rightly wants to shed the unproductive parts of the business. As their success is not aligned with the success of the open source community, I agree that they can't really be called as a central member of the community. They are just a group that has inherited ties to the open source community.
Having said all that, I think they are stupid. If you can't find a way to make money from Open Office, you have to have rocks in your head. Delivering customized office solutions to large enterprise businesses should be very lucrative. If you can offer a stripped down version of Office that offers exactly what a company wants (to reduce training costs, etc) at a fraction of the cost of the competitor, I can't imagine that you won't be successful. But having worked in large proprietary companies before, I can completely understand that they probably lack the vision to do anything other than what they have always done. It's too bad, though...
I'm not convinced that Oracle *has* become a part of the FOSS community. Their actions have been, at best, ambiguous. And often a bit predatory.
Buying a company in order to kill of it's FOSS projects doesn't make a corporation a FOSS community member. Oracle has only killed off OpenSolaris, and perhaps that deserved to die. I don't know. But it looks suspicious. Then it sued Google over Davik. Again this is something that's justifiable, but quite suspicious.
Let's just say that I'm not convinced that Oracle is a legitimate FOSS community member. I'm not convinced that they aren't. How they react to this will be quite telling, and how they develop Java will be even more telling. Also what they do with MySQL and SleepyCatDB. (They've had SleepyCatDB for awhile now, and it doesn't seem to have suffered, but it's a rather small product. I note that it's been dropped from Python, but the reasons given were more version incompatibility than anything else.)
Let's just say the jury's still out on this one. And it may be awhile reaching a consensus.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Trolololololol
Hohohohoho!
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
Though I am a supporter of OpenOffice, many times I get annoyed with cluttered user interface (derived from MS Office). Why can't some one think of simple user interface like one Chrome did to browsers?
bits and bytes of life should serve the needy - My bits and bytes
You're out of date. Not my problem.
>Klingon language support
A Klingon UI for OOo was available roughly five years ago.
Wind Beneath Thy Wings
A program to get it rolled out on the Web too - LibreDocs??
Google Docs can File > Download As... "Open Office" (and PDF for archiving), as can ZOHO Docs. I hope LibreOffice continues to be a good local editor for web documents with ODF as the file format of the exchange. With Google supporting it that seems plausible.
Or do you want a web app that can saves locally as seamlessly as it works remotely? HTML5 web storage makes it possible, the remote infrastructure is trickier. But that codebase would be radically different from Libre/OpenOffice's current C code.
Or do you want a local desktop application that can save to the cloud? Some GVFS/KIO/Git integration could get you part-way there "for free".
Or do you just want anyone to be able to directly view your native LibreOffice documents on a web site? (OO.o already does a good job of exporting as HTML.) Nobody has yet made the code to view a .od? file in a browser. But with Firefox's jar/zip support, most browsers supporting XML and XSLT, and lightning-fast JavaScript interpreters, it's conceivable.
=S
I always thought they could be odd but I had no idea liberals smoke hippies.
Mod points: Guaranteed to remove your sense of humor.
Side effects may include gullibility and temporary retardation
Microsoft also produces some Free Software. That does not necessarily make them part of the Free Software community.
Well, it sort of does, just not a very important part. Oracle, on the other hand, has contributed a lot of code to Linux over the years, important bits too.
This particular announcement only shows that the Free Software community has basically given up on working with Oracle to push changes upstream.
I thought the free software community had given up long ago, which is why things like go-oo.org exist in the first place. The only difference is before Sun was sinking significant resources into it and no one was willing to fork in a way that would make getting the resulting improvements cumbersome. This announcement is more like a vote that things have gone one step further and most don't expect much useful from Oracle to be added.
Combine this new schism with the fact that Oracle is suing Google over a Free Software Java-alike (Dalvik, and Harmony), and the recent closure of OpenSolaris, and Oracle is not looking particularly friendly right at this moment.
You seem to be misinterpreting my comments. I never said Oracle was a model OSS contributor. I simply said they are a major one and that claiming Oracle being problematic is not a conflict within the ranks of OSS developers is not really accurate. Oracle is an OOS contributor on a significant scale.
This might seem like the sort of thing that only "long-haired, bearded hippies" care about...
It has nothing to do with who cares about it, you just have to realize different part of the community have different priorities, some of which are simply to minimize their costs and maximize their profits... and that's okay so long as they contribute.
Submitting patches to FOSS for the good of the community, without an ulterior motive, or at least with your vision of how it might be useful sharing a large subset with others, is another thing.
corporations who submit patches purely in their own interest are just as valuable to the OSS community as contributors who do it altruistically. look at the amount of contributions from corporations - to say linux - who do it purely because they need the improvements.
I'm not convinced that Oracle *has* become a part of the FOSS community. Their actions have been, at best, ambiguous. And often a bit predatory.
How is that relevant?
Buying a company in order to kill of it's FOSS projects doesn't make a corporation a FOSS community member.
No, writing chunks of the Linux kernel, however, does.
How they react to this will be quite telling, and how they develop Java will be even more telling.
Telling about how helpful they will be to the community, maybe, not about whether or not they are part of it.
You're out of date. Not my problem.
I see, you're fashionably incorrect. Carry on then.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
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.
Well, as long as they don't mess up the executable names and name them "looimpress", "loowriter", etc... I can probably stand it.
Your HR goons know how to use grep? Eek. That makes me think of velociraptors that know how to open doors.
How about we just go ahead and call it "the unpronounceable symbol which stands for the project formerly known as OpenOffice.org". We could totally pick some obscure symbol in unicode and just let that be the new name (I'm thinking of you opensarcasm).
Right, because the one thing keeping Intel moving is AMD.
The specter of competition from AMD probably provides some motivation to Intel, but it doesn't seem to be a particularly primary source.
I'd say they're being pushed harder by anyone doing an ARM chip than by AMD at the moment.
Assuming a printing speed of 1000 lines per second, it would take over 500 million years for the program to run. Windows can't have that much uptime, even if you run it in a virtual machine to get around the hardware deterioration problem.
However, I suppose some kind of distributed printing approach might work.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
How many people from the companies and organizations that you've listed have made any code contributions to the project so far? How does that number compare to the number of ex-Sun Oracle employees?
From what I've heard, OO.org source code is quite a mess, so it might not be as easy to fork as it sounds.
Sun gets Java and immediately starts rebranding it, breaking software.
In all fairness - if you refer to Eclipse breakage - it was more of a fault on Eclipse part for relying on the precise text of the copyright notice in java.exe in its startup scripts. That Oracle didn't bother to test Eclipse is rather WTF on its own, though.
Well, there *is* a rather sizeable featureset missing compared to you-know-who, but those features are not used by a majority of the casual users. Note the cunning use of the word 'casual' there, though - I'm not meaning that to include secretaries, geeks and other people who either routinely produce sizeable documents or suffer from must-use-featureitis.
While that missing featureset is something that has traditionally received rather too little attention, I do believe that you are right: more bling is almost certain to up joe user's opinion of the software if he's never actually used it. This is exactly the way marketing works, incidentally: beauty sells, so you dump a hot chick on an otherwise worthless piece of junk, and suddenly people buy it.
What a depressingly stupid machine.
Star Suite
How many more years will slashdot have an off-by-one error on your Score in your profile?
No, they bought a chip designer. Sun was fabless; the SPARC chips were manufactured elsewhere.
I totally agree with you on frameworks - not really a good idea. However, artwork is very portable as is UI concepts. I think LibreOffice looks horrible and that it needs a serious overall on it's look. I think functionally it's damn good but it's not clean and it's falling seriously behind when even distros like Puppy and Lubuntu are kicking it's ass in looks.
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
Sorry, I meant print to screen, doesn't need to readable, just let it scroll quickly. Not sure how fast that would go, but I imagine modern processors could go faster than 1000 lines per second. Also, I was hoping someone would figure out what the number is, it is the maximum number of an unsigned longint plus 1.
Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"
No, linguistic correctness is a function of accepted common practice. If it wasn't you'd still be grunting and claiming that all properly formed words were wrong. Grow up.
And if you doubt accepted common practice, google is your friend.
p.s.: I could have responded to your first comment on this with a simple "whoosh" if you prefer, since the whole point is that it's deliberately over the top.
No, linguistic correctness is a function of accepted common practice. If it wasn't you'd still be grunting and claiming that all properly formed words were wrong. Grow up.
If you were as grown up as you would like to believe, you would have ignored my whimsical "Laughing out loud out loud out loud out loud?" reply or you could have replied with something like "Yeah, isn't it funny how we use words sometimes?"
Instead, you've called me out of date, admonished me to grow up, and who knows what immature insult you will hurl in your reply to this message.
Yes, grammar does change over time. So call me old fashioned, but despite popular usage I will never use should of instead of "should've" or their going instead of "they're going" or your welcome instead of "you're welcome". I will continue to use "its" and "it's" correctly, despite widespread ignorance of their correct usage. I'm sure a grownup such as yourself can understand.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
That says it all really.
Other people have touched on this, but I want to highlight just this point... Why is there no mention of this on OpenOffice.org?
Ah, apologies. I was skimming your post and misread that as you forswearing contractions :)
Dude. Do you really think some young woman is going to pick up your resume, read "LaTeX", and think "Oh, OK, he wrote 'latex' with lots of changes in case, like those weird internet kids do, so it must be perfectly normal, and not what it sounds like at all..."?
(Un)fortunately, the specific 'non-free' enhancements seem to be excluded. Groklaw has the inside:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20100928224103271
Make what you will out of it, but OOXML may stay an outcast in Open^WLibreOffice for the foreseeable future.
Karma? What's that again?
Sometimes noticed the slow, but not often. I had OO on Linux and Office on Windows, and I would much rather do large documents in OO on Linux. Office feels slower, and your large document in Office is either corrupt or about to be.
Hm... not such a good comparison, between two different operating systems. I've also heard that, much like Firefox, OO is better on Windows.
Having using both on OS X, Windows is slow and buggy. OO is more so. Both are crap in speed, stability and ease of use compared to some of the alternative word processors that are available. Unfortunately Office wins on features, with OO close behind.
No, I like it much more with Linux. But I guess its all about what you use it for. For 3,000 or pages, OO was much better then Word. Word was very unreliable, OpenOffice had better intergration (for my workflow at least) with Calc. OO has finer control over layout too. For me, Word had the better features. Also, I can call OO Calc and Writer with command line scripts to update them without ever opening the software, which is handy. Does Word's XML let you do that now too?
leebreh
The 'eh' is brief, and the 'r' is pronounced far back in your throat.
Sorry, that was a really bad attempt... ftfm
Libre