IBM Donates Symphony Code To Apache Software Foundation

CWmike writes "Hoping to further sharpen OpenOffice's competitive viability against Microsoft Office, IBM is donating the code of its Symphony open source office suite to the nonprofit Apache Software Foundation. Apache could fold this code into its own open source office suite OpenOffice, on which Symphony was based. In June, Oracle donated the OpenOffice suite to Apache. 'Prior to Apache's entry, there really hasn't been enough innovation in this area over the past 10 years,' said Kevin Cavanaugh, an IBM vice president. 'It's been constrained because we haven't had a true open source community with a mature governance model.'"

Comments

Maybe...

[kakyoin01]

...if just about every major company out there wasn't trying to sue the pants off of some other major company over some generic patents, there might be more properly-driven innovation.

What Uses Does Microsoft Office Have?

[Tenebrousedge]

All right, I'll bite. I'm curious. What exactly is it that Microsoft Office gets done? Besides lock your data into a proprietary format. I don't use it myself, so I'm sure there's *some* use for it that I'm not aware of, but here's some of the technologies I use instead.

I only use a word processor to generate blog posts, fiction, and documents where I don't care about layout too strongly, since it's sort of inherent in a word processor that they will adjust the layout somewhat before e.g. printing it. There's very little reason to save in either .docx or .doc as far as I am aware, since the former does not currently conform to the OOXML format and the latter is more akin to a memory dump of Word.

For text that I really don't care about, I use a text editor. I also use this for small notes to myself, or simple lists. I don't need my notes indexed, thank you, grep will do just fine.

For layout documents, I generally use Scribus, InDesign, Inkscape, or Illustrator, and save in svg or pdf, dependent on whether or not I want a working format or a presentation format. If I can count on being the only one to edit it, or that any collaborators will be using the same software, it makes sense to use each program's native format. For bitmaps I use GIMP and Photoshop, and generally prefer GIMP, except for the name and the text-related tools. It runs on more systems that I use, and takes far less time to download and install, and similarly uses a fraction of the disk space. I usually have the most recent version of Adobe's software on a disk.

For my own personal artwork I have found a nice balance of features in the painting program MyPaint, which runs on Linux and Windows.

I do not generate 3D images or models, or animation, or music. Neither, as far as I'm aware, does Office.

I create web pages with Netbeans or Bluefish, or a text editor. If I did not know how to write markup I suppose I might have more use for Word. Similarly, for storing and retrieving and processing data I use a database and a scripting language, or XML if I don't need a full-on database. For keeping track of financial data, an accounting program or package is useful for even small projects, and vital for any business-related endeavor.

I've used web-based email since hotmail became available. I have no idea what, given all of the above, Outlook would be useful to me for. It seems like an adequate if bloated email application, though I've never enjoyed trying to move data out of it.

That's my current toolset. I'm not particularly attached to any of them, and obviously quite used to using both the tools at hand and, when I have the luxury, the best tool for the job. Office has not to date been in the latter category in my experience. Why is Office a good tool? At what task does it uniquely excel at? What combination of features am I missing out on?

Re:Donating open source?

[Kjella]

Can't they do that anyway? I thought that was the whole point of "open source".

Lotus Symphony is not open source, it's a proprietary fork from an early version of OpenOffice with a license that permitted this. IBM has been offering it as freeware, so by offering this code to the Apache foundation they're looking to mend the old fork between OpenOffice and Symphony. It still would not mend the fork between OpenOffice and LibreOffice, but as far as IBM is concerned their Symphony code can now be used in both versions under the Apache license. This is a direct consequence of Oracle giving OpenOffice to Apache, IBM wasn't willing to give Symphony to Sun or Oracle, but they are willing to share it as an Apache project. So good move by IBM, another open source contribution from them.

Re:10 years without innovation

[PCM2]

Bullocks. Push people on what features they actually use. Most people really do use the roughly the same 20%. The vast majority of people I've talked with and seen what they do, Office 97 is just fine.

Says the guy with a vested interest in agreeing with his own opinion.

I don't want to use Office 97. If I wanted that, I might as well use OpenOffice (because that's the version it resembles). I want to use Office 2010. I like the ribbon UI and I like many of the other improvements they've made since then.

I also have various workflows that I have built into Office that I find indispensable. I have an Excel template that I use for invoicing that has not been compatible with any other office suite I've tried, including OpenOffice, LibreOffice, Google Docs, Zoho, and Microsoft's own Office Web Apps. I have a couple VBA macros assigned to hotkeys that make the things I have to do in Word much easier, and I haven't had much luck porting those either. There are other ways that I used Office features that you may consider idiosyncratic, but now that I'm accustomed to working that way, I am reluctant to give them up. I definitely have my own 20%.

Sorry to disagree with you, though. You clearly had yourself convinced; it must just be me.