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ASF Lays Out Its Plan For OpenOffice.org

Posted by Unknown on from the not-quite-dead-yet dept.

Thinkcloud writes "In an open letter, the Apache Software Foundation has made its plans for OpenOffice clear, including an Apache-branded OpenOffice suite targeted at developers coming next year." From The H: "The ASF says it does not want to force any vision on the ODF community noting that 'it is impossible to agree upon a single vision for all participants, Apache OpenOffice does not seek to define a single vision, nor does it seek to be the only player' in the large ODF ecosystem. Instead, it wishes to offer a neutral 'collaboration opportunity' and notes that its permissive licensing and development model are 'widely recognised as one of the best ways to ensure open standards, such as ODF, gain traction and adoption.'"

9 of 129 comments (clear)

  1. Why don't they just kill it? by hedwards · · Score: 3, Interesting

    At this point is there really any reason why we need OpenOffice? Libreoffice, stupid name aside, seems to do everything that people want and more or less all the developers jumped ship for it a long time ago.

    1. Re:Why don't they just kill it? by Grishnakh · · Score: 1, Interesting

      There's nothing wrong with the name "LibreOffice". Anyone who has an education knows that "Libre" comes from the Latin root for "free" (as in liberty), is a word meaning exactly that in several Romance languages, and so its meaning is pretty obvious: a free (as in liberty) office suite.

      It only sounds "stupid" to uneducated hicks.

    2. Re:Why don't they just kill it? by Anrego · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I actually didn't read the article, but when I saw the title, my gut said "yup".

      Maybe it's just the circle I hang with, but I've personally felt a shift away from the GPL over the last several years, with v3 being for many the stray that broke the back.

      I've largely attributed it to people my age who are now out in the work force and are running up against the restrictive elements of GPL when trying to bring open source into the work place. The realistic choice isn't creating a cool derived work and not releasing the code vs creating a cool derived work and releasing the code.. it's creating a cool derived work and releasing it under your own terms (which most non-fanatics would probbaly be happy with) vs not bothering at all. In my view GPL doesn't foster open source, it prevents it. And that's the vibe I get from those around me as well.

    3. Re:Why don't they just kill it? by tibit · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I don't know how you did it, but I've been opening csv text files in Calc for many years. It works fine. You can select how to format the columns (numeric/text) and how are they separated (what character or where are the breaks in case of fixed format). It does exactly what you'd want it to do. How did you try to open that text file? Start up calc with a new spreadsheet, do Open, limit file types to Spreadsheet, click on your text file, and it'll pop up a text import dialog.

      --
      A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
  2. Re:So how does this effect LibreOffice? by Pi1grim · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The politics is to provide OpenOffice under more permissive license, as for some businesses this might be a deal-breaker, thus getting more traction for the ODF format. So people will have choice between Apache licensed OpenOffice, or GPLv3 licensed LibreOffice, whichever they go with — it's still compatible.

  3. It's now for derivating software by marcosdumay · · Score: 3, Interesting

    They could quite well turn it into a library, and let people write their software with it. They are publishing it with the APL, if you redistribute it you must fork (because of trademark issues), and most people did already migrate to forks.

    It is a nice way to make everybody colaborate on making ODF better, put everybody in sync, and make more ODF editors available. You can't do that with GPLed software. For once Oracle created something good. Too bad they had to try to screw everybody before they give up and do the right thing.

    --
    Rethinking email
  4. Re:dumb question... by OakDragon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    And what would Open Office that is "target at developers" look like, in contrast to plain ol' vanilla Open Office?

    --
    Dark Reflection
  5. Re:So how does this effect LibreOffice? by Kjella · · Score: 5, Interesting

    My guess it that Apache just got this from Oracle and they wouldn't want to piss them off by just handing it on to LibreOffice, since clearly Oracle didn't get along with those guys. So they'll make their Apache version, keep the lights on and the project running and then one of them is going to fade away and eventually all that's useful will be merged into the other. I expect more of a xfree86 vs xorg situation here, once the split has already happened there's really not going to be much of a conflict, the developers will pretty soon gravitate towards the one that is best.

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  6. Use Calligra instead by ingwa · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If you want to embed or reuse a library then I would suggest that you would be better off by using the Office Engine from the Calligra Suite (http//www.calligra.org/). It is already used in many mobile and embedded places, e.g. the office viewer in the Nokia N9 smartphone. The engine -- and the apps themselves -- are all under LGPL which makes it usable even with non-free apps.