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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?"
Seeing as libreoffice is just a fork of openoffice (they're probably almost identical in code right now), you can probably rely on it just as much as openoffice now, and possibly even more in the future.
And after, that stop acting irrationally. Sure, ignore Oracle products if you wish, if you ask me that's a good thing. However, refusing to use a FLOSS computer program just because it's written by Oracle (btrfs), or just because it has the Oracle name on the splash screen (OpenOffice.org) is simply stupid. Yes, Oracle are going to fuck up OpenOffice.org, and yes, we're moving to better alternatives (LibreOffice), but there is no need to rush, unless you want to help with writing bug reports. Unless you plan to do just that, jumping to install LibreOffice before distros switch is irrational and stupid. It's too early to worry about that.
OpenOffice.org is not a product, it's a computer program, that happens to have a Oracle splash screen on it. You aren't buying it, and the code is still virtually unchanged since the acquisition by Sun, so you can't claim that by using it you're supporting Oracle in any way. RELAX.
Yeah, I'm a little worried about the future of VirtualBox. AFAIK there isn't a viable fork yet (the VirtualBox equivalent of Go-oo).
Because Adobe keeps threatening to sue Microsoft if that feature is added.
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You can also give http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Lotus_Symphony a shot as the current version is based upon open office. Interestingly enough software development is done IBM China Development Laboratory, located in Beijing, so there is very likely to be a huge surge in the number of users in the not to distant future.
I wouldn't be so sure about that one. I'm thinking that IBM based development of Symphony in China as a measure of cost reduction, not because they are targeting a Chinese audience. Further, even if their target is a Chinese user-base I don't think Symphony will take off there; things like linux-based Ylmf OS (which is developed by a Chinese company for a Chinese user-base) have trouble gaining traction. China already has Kingsoft WPS Office which is free for personal use. (The English version is a 30-day free trial.) The only Chinese I know that don't use Kingsoft WPS Office are the ones doing graduate study in the US. They're using bootlegged copies of Microsoft Office instead.
"I visited some technical factories in China earlier this year and they have gotten to the point where they know they have a high, high turnover rate. The average worker jumps ship in 18 months to get a much, much higher salary."
This means nothing but that those companies will need to be much less labour intensive. To-date, due to very low wages they chose man labour against automations every day; luckily for them (and for companies selling these kinds of automations) they have a big and obvious path for optimization by automation (in some cases you can find the same kind of factory that currently uses 1000 workers in China totally automated in Japan with just 2 or three workers).
This post is full of FUD. As the KOffice marketing dude, let me clear it up.
It's true that the KOffice community is splitting up. Right now it looks as if group A is going to be more or less one person, and group B the rest of the community. I won't write any more about that and I'll let you speculate freely on it.
Nokia has *not* forked anything. At the point when the feature freeze came along before the release of KOffice version 2.3, Nokia wanted to continue developing some features. As good citizens in the community this is being done in a work branch in SVN. In the mean time the team working within and together with Nokia does both lots of bugfixes and some new features. All the bugfixes go directly into SVN trunk, and the new features go into the work branch. This is how it should be.
Once KOffice 2.3 is released, the new features in the work branch will be individually presented to the community for review. If the community accepts the feature, it will go into trunk, and if not it will be reworked until it's accepted.
This said, It's not impossible that team B (being almost all of the previous KOffice community) will continue to work from the work branch as the new trunk, but then it can be regarded as the community accepting the new features.
Inge Wallin
KOffice developer