Slashdot Mirror
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?"
Ask them to stop using Word documents for instructions.
Ask them to use PDF or HTML.
Wait for LibreOffice to be released a stable build and then leave OpenOffice behind. Until then you'll just have to use it and keep in mind that the only thing Oracle did for OO was buy Sun, they didn't write any of the code.
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.
For now would have thought Libreoffice's support for Powerpoint etc would be on a par with OO as the fork is based on the 0O 3.3 code base...
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
If you don't want to deal with Oracle. Then buy Microsoft Office. You never said you didn't want to deal with Microsoft too.
Try Google Docs or Zoho. Google 'em.
LibreOffice has the spanish word "libre" in it. I can't use that either because I strongly condemn the actions during the Spanish Inquisition.
Java, OpenOffice, MySQL are all GPL or better and no one can change that.
...that you can use whatever software you like. If you were happy with the last Sun release of OpenOffice, then download and use that instead. It should be fine for a couple of years* and by then it should be clear which OSS office software is appropriate for you.
*It's not uncommon for Microsoft to go several years between releases of MS Office, so two years with Sun's last OpenOffice release isn't unreasonable.
and as such it remains vulnerable to potential legal attacks from Oracle which now owns the Java technology...
Disaster awaits if something isn't done about this...
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Latest version of Lotus Symphony is yet another fork and it has the best Excel compatibility of all the ooo variants. It is free but not open source however (look at SISSL license conditions).
Do anything, anywhere, anytime.
and throw it in a barrel of quicklime
There was a bit of dust on my screen next to the l, so that looked like you said he threw it in a barrel of quicktime. Somehow, the sentence still seemed plausible, it just looked like you'd confused CEOs...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Your problem is the Oracle Logo... go to gnome-look.org and find a new splash screen that suit you.
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
If you weren't a Slashdot celebrity, that ridiculous submission would have been rejected as whining over a complete non-issue. Grab the OOo source, and build your own copy that doesn't display the Oracle logo. Problem solved. (Or just look away when the splash screen appears).
The first thing they did is add all the patches that where already in used by the folks from http://go-oo.org/ . These are all the patches that the Linux-maintainers has created/collected but where never accepted by the OpenOffice maintainers, which is actually quiet a lot. Because the acceptance process is so slow.
New things are always on the horizon
All Oracle did was buy Sun. There isn't some sort of magical evil contagion that instantly infected OpenOffice.org; the software is no different than it was before the sale.
Now, Oracle could potentially direct OpenOffice.org development to go down the path of evil. They could change the license under which OO.o is distributed to an unacceptable one. They could do all sorts of things! But they haven't had time to do it yet, and by the time they get their evil ducks in a row, LibreOffice will be up and running.
Little-known fact: many (most?) Linux distros are already shipping a non-pure OO.o. There is a collection of patches that were never part of the official OO.o, called Go-oo, and distros have been shipping Go-oo instead of the pure Oo.o.
I fully expect LibreOffice to merge all the Go-oo patches, leaving us with two office suites: Oracle OO.o, and LibreOffice. And I think it is very possible that the community will line up behind LibreOffice and leave Oracle OO.o completely irrelevant and unloved. (Consider the situation with Xfree86 and X.org. In that case, the switchover happened in a stunningly short period of time.)
The worst-case scenario is that Oracle adopts some license that keeps LibreOffice from merging Oracle patches, and then Oracle funds a development team to make giant improvements to Oracle OO.o; then the community might have to choose between the free LibreOffice and the Oracle offering. But even there, I am not actually worried. The current state of OpenOffice is usable. Even if Oracle poured huge resources into OO.o development, what could they really offer to tempt us away from LibreOffice? A toolbar with giant icons? A dancing paperclip? Meanwhile, if all that LibreOffice does is simply to fix bugs, improve speed, and rewrite to end Java dependencies, I for one would be completely happy.
If you use OO.o on Windows, just don't take any updates until LibreOffice is ready, and you will be fine. Or better yet, simply start getting your installers from the Go-oo web site. If you use Linux, you almost certainly can simply trust your distro to do a good job of keeping your office suite relatively evil-free.
Oracle may be evil, but they aren't magically evil. Don't worry about this.
P.S. After writing this post, my 'o' key on my keyboard is overheating. I'd better not use it for a while or it might stp wrking.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
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).
I guess that means no java for you either :)
---- Booth was a patriot ----
OOXML is a documented standard, ISO/IEC 29500.
lol
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
http://lists.kde.org/?l=koffice-devel&m=128782551919625&w=2
"Dear fellow members of the community,
As you might be aware, after months of discussions, it has been concluded that
the best solution is to split the community.
However, the split is going to happen at application level. The maintainer of
each application will be asked to consult his fellow developers to decide in
which group, A or B, the application will lived. The other group is free to
fork the application under a different name. It is also possible for the
developers to change the application name and ask that the current name is not
used by any of the group. This can be used as an opportunity for a fresh
start.
Currently, to the best of my knowledge the groups are composed of the
following applications:
Group A: KWord
Group B: KPresenter, Krita, Karbon, Kexi
Since the license give the right for a fork, I can already mention that Group
B will come with a fork of KWord, under a name that has yet to be decided.
Group A is free to fork any application of Group B under a different name.
Maintainers have until Sunday October 31th to decide with which group to go.
Applications that have not choosen a group will have to be renamed by each
group.
The KDE e.V. board will be asked to decide what happen to the KOffice name,
the KOffice website, the KOffice mailing list, KOffice.org, KOffice wiki and
the KOffice bugzilla product. The recommendation from members of the CWG is to
retire the name KOffice altogether, which will allow both side to start on a
fresh start and leave the past behind. Then the application maintainers and
developers of each group will have one week to find a new name for their
suite, and move to another place in the KDE subversion tree and to rename or
remove the applications that are in the other group.
In the meantime, I am suspending the KOffice release process, meaning that I
will release Beta 3, but that the date for the following release is undefined.
The reason is that I do not feel confident that the splitting will happen in
time before the RC1, and I do not think it is a good idea to ship a RC release
that will get different applications than the final release. If the splitting
takes more time, I will proceed with one more beta. I also advise each group
to ensure that they have a release coordinator.
I will urge readers of this letter to:
1) refrain discussion around the splitting outside the mailing list, or to do
so in private conversation
2) acknowledge, that at this point there is no sense in trying to place the
blame anywhere, we just have to accept the fact
3) remain civilised and polite in this difficult moment
--
Cyrille Berger Skott"
Unfortunately, OOXML doesn't follow the ISO standard, even though the standard was based on OOXML and was arguably the result of Microsoft corrupting the ISO process. There are, to my knowledge, no reference implementations of ISO/IEC 29500 -- not even from Microsoft.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.