LibreOffice 3.3 Released Today

mikejuk writes "Only four months after the formation of the Document Foundation by leading members of the OpenOffice.org community, it has launched LibreOffice 3.3, the first stable release of its alternative Open Source personal productivity suite for Windows, Macintosh and Linux. Since the fork was announced at the end of September the number of developers 'hacking' LibreOffice has gone from fewer than twenty to well over one hundred, allowing the Document Foundation to make its first release ahead of schedule The split of a large open source office suite comes at a time when it isn't even clear if there is a long term future for office suites at all. What is more puzzling is what the existence of two camps creating such huge codebases for a fundamental application type says about the whole state of open source development at this time. It clearly isn't the idealistic world it tries to present itself as."

Comments

What idealistic state?

[alexandre]

I'm pretty sure that we'll be stuck with Office suite for a long long time still...

But saying that this unmasks Linux as not being perfect is like saying your family is not perfect because you brought your kid to the hospital after he was hit by a car instead of hiding the fact...
A fork in this case is a wonderful solution to a death by stagnation caused by proprietary idiocy from Oracle.

Re:What idealistic state?

[somersault]

A fork in this case is a wonderful solution to a death by stagnation caused by proprietary idiocy from Oracle.

Exactly. If the source was closed, we'd maybe have to find a whole new Office suite, but this way we can just fork Oracle and move on.

Re:What idealistic state?

[jo_ham]

It doesn't say "Linux" it says "open source" and they are not the same thing, although it is something of a non sequitur to call this a "puzzling or bad" move (which seems to be the inference) - the project was forked because the community didn't like where it was going, which is one of the major benefits open source code has over closed.

You seem to have fallen into the trap that any perceived criticism of open source is an attack on Linux, though. I have plenty of open source software on my Mac, including Open Office. If this (and future) releases of LibreOffice [seriously, they need to change the name] can offer a strong alternative to MS Office, then I'm all for it.

My first question, can it do graphs on new sheets yet? That was my one annoyance with the spreadsheet app in OO.

I should probably mention that I use MS Office for Mac all the time for writing reports. Word itself I can take or leave - it's a pretty poor and idiosyncratic word processor that drives you mental with its attempts to be helpful. Excel, on the other hand, really excels (ha) at what it does and makes the cost of Office worth it for me (and not just for the graphs on new pages).

Re:What idealistic state?

[swillden]

Yeah, you're probably right.

I guess that's why the documentation for the 2007/2010 (transitional) and future (strict) versions of the .docx/.xlsx/etc Office formats takes 6,000 pages - it's all so obfuscated, vague, and proprietary.

(Overcomplicated, I'll grant you...)

And why that massive 6,000-page document is, in fact, incomplete and underspecified, including numerous directives to do things in whatever way various MS proprietary versions did them, without spelling out what those ways were, ensuring that no one but Microsoft can completely and correctly implement the specification, in spite of its apparent "openness".

But, just in case, Microsoft has also carefully avoided correctly implementing even what the spec does say, thereby assuring that no competing implementation will ever work quite the way theirs does. And of course theirs is the de facto standard implementation, no matter what the documentation says.

Biased Summary

[Ltap]

Somehow, the news that LibreOffice is right on track is spun into a negative diatribe against FOSS. We should be happy that we dodged a bullet and ditched an Oracle-controlled project. As well, this is another piece of proof that a major project can be forked without too much trouble. To me, this is nothing but positive, yet it's been spun into something else.

They urgently need a new name

[juancn]

I can't believe that the name LibreOffice stuck.
I'm a native spanish speaker, and it sounds so goddam awful. Specially when mispronounced by pretty much everyone.
I know this is a personal opinion, but still.

completely missing the point

[tverbeek]

"What is more puzzling is what the existence of two camps creating such huge codebases for a fundamental application type says about the whole state of open source development at this time. It clearly isn't the idealistic world it tries to present itself as."

How bloody clueless. This is like questioning the fact that we have more than one set of automobile designs and assembly plants, or more than one political party, or multiple soft drink bottling and distribution networks.

Fork Makes Sense

[salesgeek]

I'm not sure what Oracle's intent was with OpenOffice, but their actions sure caused a lot of very good people to leave in a hurry. Between this and the Android situation, it seems like Oracle really doesn't get free software, or worse, sees free software as the enemy. I'm not sure which. Regardless, I'm thankful that I get to use OpenOffice and now LibreOffice.

Re:Tried it today

[PeterBrett]

Did they finally ... give us a ribbon?

Why would anyone want one of those? Surely having an interface consistent with 99.9% of the other applications running on your system is more useful than keeping up with the Jones's latest patent-encumbered different-for-the-sake-of-being-different UI fad?

This is precisely why we haven't left MS

[HikingStick]

Just as I was getting senior staff comfortable with the idea of giving OpenOffice a try on some of our machines, this fork happened and someone brought in news of it. Now it doesn't matter that both can write to the same formats, and that you can have the programs save by default to MS formats. It introduced uncertainty, and many business leaders associate uncertainty with increased costs. Do you blame them? There's no confidence that a selected open source solution will provide a stable, long-term platform.

Now, I'm just happy I've been able to get some of our workstations moved over to FF. The entire open source movement has plenty of benefits, but those benefits are viewed as drawbacks by much of the traditional business community.

Now with Double Standards!

[eldavojohn]

I was trying to keep my mouth shut as the end of this summary nearly caused me to fly off the handle. I agree with your post (after all, I recently moved to LibreOffice after inquiring that same question about Oracle). But I would like to add that the author of the summary seems to apply a different standard to FOSS than they apply to closed source or COTS applications. Nowhere does the author comment on the hundreds of proprietary 'camps creating such huge codebases for a fundamental application type' in word editing software or any other multitudes of software whether they be Microsoft, Apple or Google.

The logic applied here amuses me greatly but more so the Glenn Beck-ish puzzlement about what this says about open source:

It clearly isn't the idealistic world it tries to present itself as.

Define 'clearly' because having tons of options sounds really really awesome to me. You make it sound like everyone has to throw their lot in together or this effort is for naught. Everyone knows that isn't true. Secondly, who presents open source to be 'idealistic?' And how do you figure that people working on what they want equates to anything sub-optimal?

Re:Tried it today

[Anonymous Coward]

Bull. Simple hierarchical menus that present all functions are much easier to understand than multiple toolbars that scroll off-screen etc., and even toolbars are much better understood than ribbons, precisely because they are familiar. Don't get me started on the stupid app button thing that hides the most necessary functions like a print dialog.

The ribbon serves ONE purpose: to differentiate Office from OpenOffice/LibreOffice by patents alone, because it it was largely equivalent in features.

Re:Tried it today

[Digicrat]

+1

The worst thing about the Ribbon is that half the time it seems like there's no logic what-so-ever in where items are placed in it, and even worse you can't customize it in any meaningful way.

A good UI should be intuititive to use and allow you to find a feature quickly if you know what it is. In comparison, Google/Help-docs is often the only way to find a newly hidden item in the MS Ribbon that was once easily found in the menus . . . /rant

Re:Tried it today

[tverbeek]

When I first encountered the MS Ribbon, with no one to explain it to me, it took me a full minute to figure out how to print. That's a pretty basic function, but it was unclear how to do it. I resorted to poking at things at random because there was no intuitive place to look for that function. (As I recall, I eventually found it by clicking on the unlabeled logo in the corner.) In principle, the ribbon might be a good UI design (especially for people who have no prior knowledge of how to use an office app). In practice, Microsoft's ability to hide the print function from me was a pretty big turn-off.

In fact, Microsoft's fondness for hiding things is chronic problem with their approach to UI design. In recent versions of Windows, they hide filename extensions by default, making it difficult to change/correct them when needed, and obscuring them as clues to the user (like ".EXE" on a piece of malware disguised with an MS Word icon). They have "personalized menus" that actively hide menu functions that you haven't used recently, which defeats much of the purpose of an explorable pull-down menu, by not letting the user remember "oh, I remember seeing that under View...", and even hiding from them the fact that these features exist. Instead of actually simplifying the software, they keep it complex but try to sweep that complexity under the rug.