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Where Do I Go Now That Oracle Owns OpenOffice.org?
eldavojohn writes "So I noted that there was better support for my processor in the latest BIOS for my mainboard. After downloading the update, there was a .doc file containing flashing instructions. No matter, I have OpenOffice.org installed on this machine and just opened it up. And, as should be no surprise, there was an Oracle logo splash screen while OpenOffice.org 3.2 started up. At my job, I've had a less than favorable history with Oracle that I'm not going to get into — rather let's just say I never want anything to do with them again. Including installing any of their software on my machine. So I'm facing a dilemma. I've looked into the forked LIbreOffice but that's still in beta and I'm a little wary of depending on that. Has anyone used LibreOffice (it's installing as I type this) extensively? Does it handle complex Powerpoint files okay? Is there some alternative out there that I'm completely overlooking for open source? Can anyone convince me that there's no reason to fear the Oracle OpenOffice.org? Will it remain the de facto standard? Will it eventually lock me into a commitment with Oracle? If you get by without one of these heavyweight monster editors, what do you use and how do you handle doc, ppt, (etc.) extensions?"
Try Google Docs or Zoho. Google 'em.
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.
LibreOffice still depends on Java, which is also Oracle branded. OpenJDK doesn't release binaries, and Oracle still controls OpenJDK anyway. So Oracle seems pretty unavoidable right now.
You mean except for all of the actual executable code being Oracle's?
Except for it being opensource so its not, and it was managed by Sun which is not Oracle. Oracle bought Sun, rebranded OpenOffice from Sun to Oracle (as should be expected) and that's about it.
Switching to LibreOffice should be the same as the original Sun OpenOffice except rebranded by the Document Foundation, and they are patching in enhancement by RedHat and Go-OOo that were never accepted by Sun.
I think some of the LibreOffice developers do have dreams about removing Java dependencies, after all it's only a very small part of LibreOffice that requires Java... My point is that with LibreOffice you're on the right path... Rome wasn't built in one day, and the alternative to Sun OpenOffice.org isn't going to be built in one day either...
No, not really. Some advanced stuff might still need Java, but I've installed LibreOffice recently on a system with no JRE at all, and aside from some complaint on the first launch, it's now working fine.
LibreOffice is unstable on OS X... crashes regularly under 10.5.8