LibreOffice Developer Community Increasingly Robust

New submitter someWebGeek writes "LibreOffice, the community-driven fork of OpenOffice, appears to have a very healthy and growing group of code contributors. The Document Foundation has published new stats that portray the climbing rates of developer involvement both in terms of numbers of people and numbers of code commits. One of the most encouraging aspects, as noted by Ryan Paul in an article at Ars, is that non-corporate code contributions by independent volunteers constitute the largest slice of the latest commit-pie."

Comments

Large Deployments

[ninetyninebottles]

I really think Libre Office could take off and become a huge OSS success story on the order of Webkit or Apache. It just needs a few extremely large installations by companies or organizations with the funding and will to constantly improve it. Just a few major corporations that currently license MS office, dumping Word and moving to Libre Office while still investing say half or a third of the same budget into targeted improvements for their needs would tip the scales.

I find it about on par with MS Office now, which is to say buggy, erratic, unable to consistently read MS Office formats, and with some really poor UI choices. When used only with the native format, however, it pulls ahead and such a course of action is fairly doable at least within a company, whereas it never seems to be with MS Office (someone is always stuck using a different version, even if it is just a Mac version, and then the documents get messy and weird). Also, I really like the PDF editing. I'm surprised no one else has jumped on that particular gem of functionality.

Re:Large Deployments

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe that LibreOffice will never make it in the corporate world for one single reason: It doesn't include a program that can use MAPI to connect to Exchange. Outlook is very, very ingrained in the corporate world and that alone will prevent any organization using Exchange from switching.

Re:Large Deployments

[ewanm89]

Considering Libre Office will run fine without java, okay it's slow to start while it looks for it. But that's about it. It only uses it for openoffice base and a few little usually unnoticed features.

Re:Large Deployments

[FaxeTheCat]

The problem is that those corporations who have money (I work in such a company) could not be bothered to use resources on development and doing extensive work on specifying improvements or changes. Those corporations who have money want something that works NOW, not something that (maybe) works in 2 - 3 - 4 years.
And for those companies, the Office license is not a major expense that management will divert attention and resources to save.

Then add that those companies with money also will have the full Microsoft suite like Exchange, Sharepoint and Lync. Not having Office with those would be pretty stupid, as they work best together (yes, you may call it lockin, but I just tell it like it is).

The companies of any size who would want to save money, would do that by using LibreOffice or one of its cousins without paying.

Re:Large Deployments

[Amouth]

^this^

I would and could move my company to OpenOffice or LibreOffice.. but the lack of a mail server/client on par with Exchange/Outlook that is significantly lower in price to justify licensing it and not just going the MS route is the the largest barrier. If we get rid of MS Office we have to replace Outlook, if we keep Outlook only we might as well just license the whole suite so that we have working integration. If we LibreOffice had a mail client that had good exchange support and was on par with Outlook then we could move to dropping MS Office and only running exchange and buying cal's. While i know there are alternatives to exchange/outlook most of the good ones are not much cheaper to license.

Re:Large Deployments

[DurendalMac]

The biggest dealbreaker for me is that LibreOffice will friggin' mulch Office files. I've opened up a .docx with it, modified it, and then saved. What I got was a mess. Formatting wrecked, tables gone, figures gone...ugh. Maybe it's fine if you stick to ODF formats, but MS Office interoperability is borderline useless until then get the formatting figured out.

Re:Large Deployments

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have Office at home (being both tight and honest) so I use LibreOffice. But it's compatibility with Office is poor. It handles most things well, but not pictures. There are so many "LibreOffice opening an Office document without pictures" bugs that there's recently been an effort to consolidate the bug reports.

If I needed it for professional work I'd buy Office. Being unable to read documents with pictures is intolerable.

Re:Large Deployments

[jjoelc]

Wile I don't fit into that large deployment category, I do what I can to promote LibreOffice. We have roughly 100 desktops, and the reality is that well over half of them have no use for MS office in any real capacity. I. deploy LibreOffice to every workstation mainly to make sure everyone has at least that baseline functionality. I store all of my documentation and send out all of my memos etc in an open document format. even if very few people regualrly use LibreOffice to do anything more than read the stuff I send them or open the occasional word document attachment... At least they have been exposed to it, and I have actually had a few people ask me about it when they buy new computers, and see the price of MS Office. It's not much, admittedly, but it works. I'm not pushy about it, I don't evangelize... But they all get some exposure to it, and at least know that there are options when they are personally in the position to make that choice.

Re:Large Deployments

[slimjim8094]

While we're dueling anecdotes, I was once able to fix a corrupted Word file for my mother that nobody could open because it confused their parser, and all their products have the same one. OO.o (at the time) was able to open and re-save the file so that it would work correctly, with no loss of formatting.

Re:Large Deployments

[FaxeTheCat]

The problem is that LibreOffice is stuck as the cheap option.
The question is how can they get out of that position. The answer is: Money, and somebody with a vision. It seems both are currently lacking, and is there any plans to change it?

And just so there is no misunderstanding: There is nothing wrong with what you do. It is what many people do. Spreading it will put pressure on Microsoft, and judging by the profit of the Office division, they need it...

Re:Large Deployments

[ninetyninebottles]

The biggest dealbreaker for me is that LibreOffice will friggin' mulch Office files. I've opened up a .docx with it, modified it, and then saved. What I got was a mess.

I have the same problem with various versions of MS Word. My solution is, sans one client, avoiding the hell out of docx files. They are awful and older versions of Word can't read them either. They are simply a bad idea.

Re:Large Deployments

[Anonymous Coward]

sudo apt-get install thunderbird

Re:Large Deployments

[ninetyninebottles]

The problem is that those corporations who have money (I work in such a company) could not be bothered to use resources on development and doing extensive work on specifying improvements or changes.

But those companies do just that when it comes to Apache or SQL or Linux. I've certainly been paid by corporations to make needed improvements to OSS software and lots of staff at corporations spend time working on OSS the company uses.

Those corporations who have money want something that works NOW, not something that (maybe) works in 2 - 3 - 4 years. And for those companies, the Office license is not a major expense that management will divert attention and resources to save.

MS Office is a significant expense, just not one many major companies or organizations have learned to expunge yet. LibreOffice does work now and many businesses do use it. It simply doesn't have the market yet where the development is shared by enough parties to make it super-cheap and development rapid. That is slowly improving, as noted in the article, but one or two big corporations would really push it over the edge.

Then add that those companies with money also will have the full Microsoft suite like Exchange, Sharepoint and Lync. Not having Office with those would be pretty stupid, as they work best together (yes, you may call it lockin, but I just tell it like it is).

Clearly you are a liar. You used the word "Sharepoint" in conjunction with "works". Seriously though Lots of corporations don't use Exchange. Many do but just as many do not. There are plenty of corporations reliant on OSS servers, Web mail, etc. where Libre Office would not have any compatibility problems with their other, internal systems.

The companies of any size who would want to save money, would do that by using LibreOffice or one of its cousins without paying.

Companies can and do use it without paying, but major corporations sometimes need some improvement and the cost of having a developer helping to guide the project is very small considering the returns are shared across every desktop in the company. It is just like how many companies use Apache without paying, but then some do pay for development because they are a huge user and have needs that others have not already taken care of.

Re:Large Deployments

[marcosdumay]

Outlook is a bad email client, and Exchange is, well, bad lacks enphasis to express it, email server. So, if you are really complaining about the lack of a email client/server go look at an alternative (just one, any one, it will be better than Outlook/Exchange. Tried Pine lately?).

But you may be complaining about the lack of the other functionality that Outlook and Exchange provide, that big companies love with some reason. Well, I don't know anything that provides that and is cross plataform. There are some good stuff for Linux, but Windows software is way behind.

Re:Large Deployments

[Lumpy]

Why?

Libre office works fine and if you have an exchange server you get a bajillion free licenses for outlook.

That is what we do for now. we install Libre office and our free copy of outlook on every PC. 100% legit.

i know a lot of other businesses doing the same thing. Although we will be ditching the Exchange server soon for Google Mail. It's stupid to run your own Email server anymore with a tiny business that has less than 2000 employees.

It is far cheaper for us to let google do it for us and eliminate the Exchange server manager position we had. Saves over $40K a year in operation costs in the IT budget, and the guy was a jerk.

Re:Large Deployments

[marcosdumay]

Those corporations who have money will have quite a poor future if they don't stop using inapropriate software, and deploy something that let their people be productive, and their data be secure.

Maybe they'll even stop being corporations who have money. That is, if the government doesn't interfere.

Re:Large Deployments

[Lumpy]

"If we get rid of MS Office we have to replace Outlook, "

Why? you guys running an illegal copy of Exchange server? because that comes with as many Outlook licenses as you have user licenses.

Re:Large Deployments

[Anonymous Coward]

That's great software, but it's not the same as Outlook, don't pretend otherwise.

Re:Large Deployments

[Lumpy]

Office 2010 does that to office 2003 files.

Only Libre office will open them for us and it even runs the Excel scripting perfectly.

I guess it depends on what special formatting ot scripts you have in the document.

Re:Large Deployments

[Anonymous Coward]

It already does,, my company (telecommunications) that has around 3000 employees, has changed most of the workstations to LibreOffice + Thunderbird + Outlook Web Access, giving up on Office and Outlook, only senior team managers kept using Office, or someone who could justify it (for instance i kept it because i need to run some excel vbs that calls external code). Does it work has good has office? No. Does it integrated has well with Sharepoint? No. Does thunderbird works with everything else other than email has Outlook does? No. But we are using it because it means some cost savings...

Re:Large Deployments

[gbjbaanb]

there's Zimbra, Horde and similar that provide the same groupware functionality as Exchange, but I think most of that is irrelevant. Most corporates I know use email, calendars and shared contacts as the two parts of Outlook/Exchange. There is a certain amount of archiving that's needed too, but that's trivial to support with other email servers.

Thunderbird is a great client and has calendar plugins for it, so the client should be no problem.

If you must migrate from Outlook, but keep exchange, you can use the OWA connector to Thunderbird. This is DavMail and is great - I used to use Thunderbird in a all-MS corporate environment for a while.

Today, I use Thunderbird (and lightning plugin) with Google calendars and it works fine. I don't have any problems and no lost functionality that was present with Outlook - except for a shared contacts list, but TBH most corporates put all those on a sharepoint site anyway. Go figure, even corporates prefer not to use the basic exchange functionality :)

Re:Large Deployments

[ArhcAngel]

Saves over $40K a year in operation costs in the IT budget, and the guy was a jerk.

If you were only paying me $40K a year I'd be a jerk too. I'm not saying his skill set was worth more but I'm sure HE thought it was.

Re:Large Deployments

[gbjbaanb]

They are awful and older versions of Word can't read them either. They are simply a bad idea.

you need to upgrade to the latest version of Office. That'll be $loads please.

Who says it was a bad idea.... for Microsoft. How else do you think they make billions in revenue?

Re:Large Deployments

[FaxeTheCat]

That is slowly improving, as noted in the article, but one or two big corporations would really push it over the edge.

I just explained why big corporations are not pushing it over the edge. You had lots of reason why I was wrong. Still no big corporation has started paying for LibreOffice development. That must mean that I may closer to explaining how big corporations think than you are.
Changing from MS to FOSS on the desktop is a big issue in these corporations. It is a boardroom issue. Before you can get that kind of decision through the boardroom, you need to present something that works. Today. That is the chicken and egg situation here.

Re:Large Deployments

[Amouth]

Exchange does not come with Outlook Licenses, they stopped doing that with Exchange 2007 & Outlook 2007.

Re:Large Deployments

[djl4570]

I wouldn't use "bad" to describe Outlook, yes it could be better and it is overly complicated for the vast majority of the userbase. It is important to remember that Outlook is more than just an email client. Outlook is firmly anchored in the corporate world by the integrated calendar and automatic reminder notifications. Add integration with Office Communicator and you have tools that provide email, meeting scheduling, instant messaging, voice chat and even desktop sharing. I don't see Libre Office or Open Office doing that anytime soon.

Re:Large Deployments

[Osgeld]

oh so thats why LibreOffice that seems to have a slightly less featureset than MS Office 2000 is slow as fuck on my linux machine ... thanks for clearing that up

Re:Large Deployments

[Anonymous Coward]

Exchange doesn't come with Outlook licensing anymore.

Re:Large Deployments

[FaxeTheCat]

Those corporations who have money will have quite a poor future if they don't stop using inappropriate software, and deploy something that let their people be productive, and their data be secure.

Maybe they'll even stop being corporations who have money. That is, if the government doesn't interfere.

I think those that run billion dollar companies with offices in 100+ countries probably know more about running a business than you do. For some reason, the one I work for choose Microsoft. Not because they want, but because it currently is the best. Not because it is perfect or anything, but because it is best by a good margin. And because it improves productivity. We are still well below the average IT cost in the industry. Maybe those who run the company know something you do not?

Re:Large Deployments

[Osgeld]

yea but what are you going to replace outlook with, it does more than simple email

Re:Large Deployments

[Freultwah]

Older versions of Office can read and write docx, xlsx etc just fine. Head to microsoft.com/downloads and fetch the free Office Compatibility Pack. Done and done. Docx for me has time and again proven more robust than doc, which is why I've started to use it more or less exclusively. I'd use odt, but nobody else does, and I must work with others, so tough luck.

Re:Large Deployments

[hairyfeet]

Well there is that and it would need a lot more love to their replacement for Excel and Access. you'd be amazed how many companies have these huge applications built out of Excel and Access. Would it have been smarter to hire actual coders? of course but companies are conservative and "if it ain't broke" is law, at least in these parts.

Just tell me they are recoding the thing to get rid of Java please? Its irritating as hell it wants to install a program with a history of exploits that frankly nobody uses on the desktop anymore. Its just not smart to stick on Java if you don't have to, especially for only a single program. Java may be big in the server space but frankly it and .NET are dead on the desktop, at least around here. Hell you can't even run their version of Access without Java can you?

Re:Large Deployments

[icebike]

Word craps out on long documents, excel has a lot of bugs and powerpoint is SHIT.
What exactly are you paying for ?

The sad thing is Word used to be pretty good about not crapping out. I can't figure if it was when they went to XML storage or when the added that god aweful ribbon, but it has gotten progressively worse over the years.

At work we wrote and edited several very large complex documents in word with no problem, (Office 2000 version). Very big documents. Now it scares me. OOO or LO seem to handle these documents ok, but I've seen a few crashes there as well, but I haven't totally lost anything with either of them yet.

As for Paying, I stopped upgrading Office/Word a long time ago, and we cut over to OOO, and are now using a mix of OOO and LO.
Not paying for that stuff anymore.

Re:Large Deployments

[hairyfeet]

Really? Because I have the ancient MS Office 2K and it reads docX just fine with the converter pack which is free. hell I can even save in DocX if I wanted, but I prefer plain old .doc which seems to work on every version I've encountered. I even had to deal with a 6.5Mb doc that had headers, footers, tables and graphs, and we had MS Office 2K, 2K3, 2K7, and the one for the Mac at the time, 2K6 i think. the ONLY one that couldn't deal with it was the guy running OO.o 2.0 which turned it into word salad and totally trashed the fonts. Luckily one of us had a copy of 2K3 we won at a technet and didn't need so we just handed him that.

Don't get me wrong I give the LO guys credit, considering what a creaky mess they got from Sun they've made leaps and bounds and I still hand it out as the baseline functionality on new boxes, but when it comes to doc they still got some work. ODF is fine if you are ONLY gonna be using it internally but like it or not .doc is the format everyone uses. I've found that the LO docs just don't play nice with MS Office and vice versa and when you get your grade dinged because the teacher opens your LO doc and gets word salad or you send in a resume and it gets tossed because of formatting being wonked suddenly that MS Office Student copy don't look so bad. Oh and before someone uses the "Just send PDF" meme PDF is for PRINTING and most places will file 13 if you send PDF. The software the HR depts use doesn't parse PDF and teachers want to be able to write notes in the doc which cuts PDF right out.

Sorry but while LO still goes on every machine so they can at least view docs and its fine for home users that are just gonna print little Billy's report I've found things get nasty real quick if you have to do any interacting with the outside world. I'm sure with the extra help the LO guys will fix the problem, its just gonna take them some time.

Re:Large Deployments

[Anonymous Coward]

Can Microsoft Office read LibreOffice files? No, it cannot. It is not supposed to.

The same can be said for LibreOffice, although it strives to have that extra capability.

When are people going to stop focusing on this one apparent shortcoming of LibreOffice, i.e. that it can't successfully read all MS Office files. LibreOffice is not supposed to be a substitute for MS Office. LibreOffice is an independent office suite and it should be judged on its own merits, which are quite substantial.

The problem is that most people are so locked into the MS paradigm that they cannot appreciate anything else. For them, anything that claims to be a word processor or spreadsheet has to be an exact Microsoft clone or it is somehow unworkable. This attitude is truly stagnating.

Re:Large Deployments

[Koen Lefever]

Ultimately, it's Microsoft's fault. They invented (and defined) this whole category in the first place, and any imitation of Microsoft Office will end up suffering the same massive feature bloat and quickly become a slug.

You really believe that Microsoft invented "office software" as a bundle of wordprocessor, spreadsheet & database?

MS Office was introduced in 1990. Forefront's (later bought by Ashton-Tate) Framework was in 1984.

(And to my surprize, it still exists.)

Re:Large Deployments

[Anonymous Coward]

With the copy of outlook you already have. duh.

Re:Large Deployments

[Lumpy]

Well google corperate mail is not free so add that cost +40K and you have your answer. Still overpaid for a MCSE.

Re:Large Deployments

[styrotech]

MAPI? MAPI was 'deemphasised' in Exchange 2007 and I think actually deprecated in Exchange 2010.

Writing MAPI clients these days is wasted effort considering even MS wants to move away from it. The Gnome Evolution connectors have shifted away from the original OWA based version (for Exchange 2000/2003) as well as the MAPI version (for Exchange 2007) to concentrate on a new web services one for Exchange 2010 onwards.

Also I seem to recall that if your Exchange server predates Exchange Web Services (eg 2003 and earlier), those older versions bundled Outlook licenses with the Exchange CALs anyway.

Re:Large Deployments

[Anonymous Coward]

No it's not. It's easily configurable.

Re:Large Deployments

[nadaou]

> I believe that LibreOffice will never

ponder the chronistic implication of the word "never" for a moment, and which direction on the time-axis it applies to.

> make it in the corporate world for one single reason: It doesn't
> include a program that can use MAPI to connect to Exchange.

now for a moment, ponder the tense of the word "doesn't", and which direction on the time-axis it applies to.

the magic word you are missing is "yet". (where in the sentence you place it depends on your view of split infinitives)

Re:Large Deployments

[Dr_Barnowl]

AFAIK they are doing so ; the main use of Java is for Base, which few people use AFAIK. The secondary use of Java is for some of the file export filters - like the "flat" XML outputs which are good for some XSLT sheets. I think these are getting rewritten in C++.

Re:Large Deployments

[alexgieg]

the lack of a mail server/client on par with Exchange/Outlook

Other than opening Outlook once or twice in computers with Office, I haven't ever used it, much less with Exchange, so I don't know what it provides that's different from other e-mail and calendaring programs. I'm familiar with Gmail, Thunderbird, Eudora and a few others, plus the standard feature set of IMAP/POP3/SMTP, but that's about it. Could you provide a short list of the specific features corporations particularly like, specially when it comes to integration with other Microsoft solutions, that isn't available (or as easily available) in alternative solutions?

Not trolling, just curious.

(By the way, I use, and like, MS Office 2010, but it's a home installation, not a corporate-integrated one.)

Re:Large Deployments

[micheas]

It's on the roadmap, the last I looked at the issue they were looking at a replacement for the java odbc connector. which is the main java dependency as I recall.

Re:Large Deployments

[hairyfeet]

Cool as I don't mind it asking to install MSFT Visual C++ like it did last time I installed it, as everyone and their dog has MSFT Visual C++ installed anyway. All the games use it, and many of the freeware programs use Visual C++ the way they use to use VB back in the day. it also gets updates through WU so no need for a constantly running third party updater like with Java.

I did find it strange with so much hatred in the FOSS community they would use Visual C++ but i think its a good sign, they are using the best tool for the job on each platform and on Windows Visual C++ works great and is widely deployed.

Re:Large Deployments

[Anonymous Coward]

Not in one tool, no - but then, jamming all that stuff into one tool is one reason why Outlook is such a nightmare to configure, support, and use.

Re:Large Deployments

[Anonymous Coward]

oh so thats why LibreOffice that seems to have a slightly less featureset than MS Office 2000 is slow as fuck on my linux machine ... thanks for clearing that up

Microsoft Office 97 was the last real innovative with a useful feature set office software. Seriously what do you expect to have in a word program to let you write medium long reports ? No one, and I mean no one would have upgraded from office 97 if Microsoft werent' introducing voluntary incompatibilites in its files formats. This is the truth.
Office productivity software is an evolutionary dead end, commercial or open source.

Re:Large Deployments

[dumeinst]

Also, I really like the PDF diting. I'm surprised no one else has jumped on that particular gem of functionality.

Holy crap - I didn't know it could edit PDF's. I'm sure it's not perfect but sometimes I just need to make a simple change. See - this is why I still read slashdot :)

Re:Large Deployments

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft Office 97 was the last real innovative with a useful feature set office software.

Still using '97, works great for me. For a couple of years I was occasionally annoyed by .docx files, but now with Google Docs, it's easy to convert back to .doc and download for local viewing and editing. Same for .xlsx, Google lets me save in the old formats.

I believe that '97 is also the last version that doesn't try to call home?

Re:Large Deployments

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless my memory is faulty, Microsoft doesn't have a history of abusive licensing practices with their dev tools. I remember the eighties when most vendors weren't content with selling you tools, they cravenly wanted a piece of your business as well. Microsoft and Borland were the exception. Fundamentally though it will be nice when Libreoffice finishes removing Java, then it can be gone from my desktop.

Re:Large Deployments

[rahvin112]

Fully integrated email/calendar. The ability to send an appointment while checking others schedules AND scheduling a conference room at the same time. It doesn't help that pretty much every enterprise in the world uses outlook so you can email an outlook appointment outside your organization and have it fully work in not only adding to their calendar at the correct time and provide full details.

A small list of features:
- Email with full calendar support.
- Web-mail with most of the features of the Outlook client.
- Folders and structures including common folders that can be shared between multiple people.
- Integrated Contacts with separate personal contacts and company directories.
- Company directories can store all contact information and in the case of VOIP systems can be linked such that clicking a phone number dials the phone.
- Integrated Instant messaging and RSS feeds that can be secured and restricted to certain people.
- Task handling that will track a task list, even between multiple people and offices.
- Fully shareable calendars and other items allowing people to delegate calendar, email and other tasks to a subordinate.
- Integration of other items such as the ability to schedule conference rooms and such with a calendar appointment.
- Distribution lists, Journals, notes and Internet faxing.
- Push email and calendaring that transfers everything to a PDA/phone automatically with secure handling. Works so well emails often show up on the phone before registering on outlook/exchange.

Many other features, of course MS is one of the best companies at inter-product ties, such that there is integrated handling of all MS products including the ability to directly cut and paste document items directly into emails and have it fully handled and look and behave perfectly. This extends as well to Share-point which is a network enabled file management system that allows collaboration including multiple people in the same document over the Internet along with check-in and checkout library type handling.

It's reached the point that if outlook and exchange are down large companies can't even function. I'm not exaggerating either. I've seen personally an exchange crash idle almost the entire company while it's restored. This list was neither comprehensive nor even all the popular features. Just the ones I'm familiar with in my little tiny slice of life. As it's been stated before, most people only use 10% of the programs, but the features that make up that 10% is different for everyone, meaning everything gets used by someone but on average only a small subset is used per individual/company/business.

To replace MS Office at the enterprise level we have to replace the whole kit and kaboodle. Office, Exhange, Outlook, Sharepoint, etc, precisely because MS has tied them all together so well that they are essentially indispensable to most companies.

Re:Large Deployments

[davidrfoote]

I think this depends on organizational perspective. Mine was that 1M USD to license Windows and Office every three years is not chump change. So we are moving approximately 600 desktops to Linux and LibreOffice. As we move our workforce increasingly towards web based systems and workflows, desktop tools in the MS Office suite rapidly decrease in value. Similarly the value of windows as the default corporate OS is also rapidly decreasing as we look to cross platform solutions where we can work from next-gen mobile devices and tablets. Saving ~330K USD per year and reinvesting a small portion of that savings into tool improvements and customizations that can be shared with the community sounds like a win-win, and a morale boost for our internal dev teams. Sure we would never make a business decision to replace something that works now, with something that doesn't. But Libre office works well enough now (we tested), and MS office has plenty of its own challenges and limitations. These tools working best together is also subjective. There are better document management systems than share point in the marketplace, and evolving standards such as CMIS for content interoperability between systems that Sharepoint now supports. Microsoft's lock-in strategy has been a double edged sword, as focus on making sure that their systems work better with each other has been counter to ensuring interoperability with other systems in the enterprise. For large enterprises Microsoft systems to not represent the majority.

Re:Large Deployments

[davidrfoote]

We struggled with the same issue, and decided to replace Outlook desktop with Outlook web for the 600 desktops that we are migrating to Linux and LibreOffice. OWA in exchange 2010 is robust enough to address the majority of our enterprise needs. We also found that cross-platofrm compatibility with OWA is much better than desktop clients and prefer OWA on Mac, Windows, and Linux, to a mixed back of clients on each OS. You're right that MS prevents licensing portions of the office suite separately, as we had considered keeping outlook desktop clients, this is annoying to say the least, and played a big factor in our deciding to boot MS Office and windows from many of our desktops altogether.

Re:Large Deployments

[Anonymous Coward]

Outlook is not (just) an e-mail client, and configuration options are not its biggest problems. I know it's easy to bash if you've never used it (recently), but let's try to keep it real here...

Re:Large Deployments

[Amouth]

OWA 2010 is light years head in the right direction compared to previous OWA's.. but i think it still has a bit to go for general ease of use (not MS's fault but the tech just isn't quite there to completely blur the line between desktop and web apps). If MS continues in the same direction and at the same pace they have from 00-03-07-10, then what you have done will be an option on our side as i would expect the newest version of OWA to support some of the up coming offline web app and local data storage support. one of the main reasons we can'd do what you have done is 90% of our users travel and are constantly in and out of their mail and items while in air ports and on planes or at a client site where they have zero access to a network/net connection 90% of the time..

Re:Large Deployments

[hairyfeet]

Well that was one area where MSFT was smart, the whole "developers developers developers" bit. They've always been quite good with giving you plenty of docs and a large KB to work with so using their tools is pretty painless. Now you can even download Visual Studio Express for free, so it doesn't cost anything to use VS for some small project. I agree with you though that the sooner Java is history the better, I don't install anything but writer with my new builds now simply because i don't want LO asking for Java, once its completely out of there I'll start installing the full suite again.

Re:Large Deployments

[CAIMLAS]

Most certainly. If Microsoft has it's way (which I'm sure they will) with Office 2012, there will be a wide open field for LibreOffice advancement.

Let's see: Office 2012 is supposed to be something like "the biggest innovative complete re-implementation" of the Office framework to allow it to use the new Windows Phone/8 style UI elements. They may be doing away with the Ribbon UI (which, once I understood it as being modal, made decent sense and was implemented fairly well in 2010.) Over the minimalist cubism of WP7/W8, pretty much everything is desirable. (I'll go back to wordgrinder, thanks...)

From what I've seen of late, people hate Outlook and will switch to Thunderbird if they can. Likewise, people who are familiar with the Ribbon UI tend to like it, but still in some ways prefer the older UI still present in LibreOffice. From what I can tell, LibreOffice is all but a replacement for Office, except for some shortcomings in the spreadsheet application regarding support of complex Excel workbooks (that's what I hear).

LibreOffice, with the option for different UIs as well as with the upcoming 'porting' effort to make a web-enabled UI for LibreOffice, is starting to get quite a bit more appealing.

Re:Large Deployments

[CAIMLAS]

Yes - except most things don't need MAPI, only email.

For that, you've got Thunderbird. Thunderbird is fairly mature of late, but it's still got a lot of work which needs to be done. It outperforms Outlook by quite a bit. The only thing missing is (like you said) MAPI.

Since Android has probably a bazillion implementions that do MAPI, I'm kind of surprised there's no Outlook alternative which does MAPI well. The only thing I'm aware of is Evolution, and that won't work with the online version(s) of Exchange (BPOS or whatever MS is calling it now).

Re:Large Deployments

[CAIMLAS]

Here's the problem: Exchange isn't just a mail server, it's also:

* An address/contact book server for:
- personal addresses/contacts
- shared/group addresses/contacts
- organization/server-wide contacts

* A calendar server
- personal
- shared from internal exchange users
- shared from server/organization-external exchange users
- local/server wide shared

* connected to the same authentication backend your workstations use (Active Directory) and configurable through such

* single authentication/configuration point for all of those things

So, what we need then is:
* an open MAPI server implementation/gateway
* something to control said configuration/backend through AD (or some other directory which we can also auth our workstations through) - Samba would be the natural choice for this; unfortunately, Samba 4 has been in process since at least 2005, and is still yet not even usable at a 2000-level AD controller without significant problems. :(

Re:Large Deployments

[tibit]

I'd love to be able to offer discouraging first-hand accounts, but the truth is that even on 6 year old hardware with upgraded RAM, MS Office offers excellent performance. That's my anecdote, and I'm talking about systems that have both latest LibreOffice and MS Office 2010 installed -- old Windows XP based Dell clunkers, off-corporate-lease. LibreOffice is glacial at startup (roughly order of magnitude slower), and it's glacial at reading MS Office formatted files. Never mind the incompatibilities: try explaining to our office administrator that it's MS's fault. We had to pony up the cash for Office, people have to work with externally provided documents and no one wants to waste time reformatting them to work. MS knew full well what they were doing by not doing any formal specification of office document formats (formal in what a computer scientist would call formal -- I'd expect to see plenty of logic expressions, automatons, etc).

Re:Large Deployments

[SpzToid]

Microsoft Outlook is a massive organisational security risk that is also used as an email client.

Re:Large Deployments

[MightyMartian]

My organization's was money as well. We do government contract-based employment services work. The cost of MS-Office licenses were absurdly high, and after some attempts to negotiate some lower per-seat rates I finally just threw up my hands and told our sales reps to forget it, I'd throw OpenOffice on the thirty computers in question and be done with it. It's not a completely perfect solution, and some documents, particularly resumes, with lots of formatting, can be problematic, but it's workable enough.

All our staff are running either Office 2003 or Office 2007, and I doubt we'll be upgrading. They work well enough for what we want. It's not as if Office 2010 offers anything all that spectacular, other than, of course, it will be supported longer than the older software. I suppose at some point Office 2003 at least won't install on some later version of Windows, and then we'll be forced into the difficult decision, but I doubt we'll be doing any major OS updates in the near future.

Re:Large Deployments

[MightyMartian]

I find LibreOffice docx support pretty weak. I wouldn't dream of saving anything beyond a trivial file in OOXML format in LibreOffice. I usually save either as a .doc or .odt.

Re:Large Deployments

[Anonymous Coward]

Rubbish. LibreOffice starts faster than MS Office on the same machine.

Re:Large Deployments

[Anonymous Coward]

NeoOffice is the future.

Re:Large Deployments

[shutdown -p now]

More recently, it also integrates with Lync, which is a pretty decent intranet IM/VoIP solution (at least on the client side, I've no idea how hard it is to manage on the server).

Re:Large Deployments

[shutdown -p now]

Let's see: Office 2012 is supposed to be something like "the biggest innovative complete re-implementation" of the Office framework to allow it to use the new Windows Phone/8 style UI elements. They may be doing away with the Ribbon UI (which, once I understood it as being modal, made decent sense and was implemented fairly well in 2010.) Over the minimalist cubism of WP7/W8, pretty much everything is desirable.

That Ribbon is not going away any time soon, is evidenced by the fact that Win8 has more Ribbon, not less - e.g. Explorer is now ribbonized.

And of course no-one is going to redo Office entirely in Metro stile. What you'll likely get is a separate version of Office for Metro, just as IE10 comes in both desktop (same UI as today) and Metro ("cubism") versions in Win8.

Re:Large Deployments

[Anonymous Coward]

The OOO/LO folks could have had money from Oracle if they hadn't insisted on acting like a bunch of whiney 14-year-olds.

Re:Large Deployments

[DogDude]

You know, just because a software update comes out doesn't mean you have to buy it. Older versions of MS Office still work just fine.

Re:Large Deployments

[Anonymous Coward]

Blindly expecting that everyone runs exchange server is the reason we sometimes get a pile of XML data, with very confusing appointment time-zone details. Some companies even manage to use attachments in the undocumented winmail.dat format for there external e-mail, or send automated requests to delete the embarrassing e-mail they just send, twice, just to draw extra attention to it. I also disabled read confirmations. The fact that someone in our company opened the e-mail does not mean that the appropriate person has read it, nor that he has fit it into his schedule.
In short, it's very easy to make you company look like a bunch of idiots using proprietary Outlook functionality in external mail.

Re:Large Deployments

[Bert64]

Try Zimbra, it has a local desktop client you can use, a very good web interface and it supports imap/caldav so you can use other clients and aren't locked in to the ones they provide.

Exchange becomes a huge pain in the ass as soon as you want to use anything other than their official client with it.

Re:Large Deployments

[Bert64]

Forget MAPI, use IMAP for mail and CalDAV for calendaring...

There are plenty of packages which suit your requirements, Zimbra and Zarafa for starters but there are more.

Re:Large Deployments

[Bert64]

Outlook doesn't even quote previous text properly when replying to a message, nor does it set the in-reply-to header... Both of these actions are specified in various RFCs and virtually every other mail client seems to get it right. Makes it extremely hard to follow a conversation once you have outlook users replying to messages.

Re:Large Deployments

[Daniel Phillips]

For a couple of years I was occasionally annoyed by .docx files, but now with Google Docs, it's easy to convert back to .doc and download for local viewing and editing.

Actually, Libreoffice/Openoffice does a great job of that. Probably what GOOG uses under the hood anyway.

Re:Large Deployments

[Daniel Phillips]

The sad thing is Word used to be pretty good about not crapping out. I can't figure if it was when they went to XML storage or when the added that god aweful ribbon, but it has gotten progressively worse over the years.

The Microsoft engineering culture has been circling the drain for years. It's run by a salesman.

Re:Large Deployments

[Anonymous Coward]

All libraries and employment-centers in Copenhagen have LibreOffice on their public pc's. *pats himself on the back*

Re:Large Deployments

[jimicus]

I don't think it is - Google Docs generally does a better job of interpreting .doc files than the latest versions of Libre|OpenOffice

Re:Large Deployments

[jimicus]

You still need some central, backed-up way to store your contacts list. Your head of sales won't thank you when his entire contact list disappears because his laptop's been stolen.

Re:Large Deployments

[impaledsunset]

Unfortunately, the Windows version of LibreOffice also tends to warn you several times about the lack of Java while its loading, and halts loading when it's waiting for you to click OK. Which means that "runs fine without Java" is misleading. It runs, if you have the nerve to give it your attention for a minute each time it loads. It's also not clear which Java versions are supported, so you'd end up installing at least a couple until it accepts one. I've had to install four until it stopped complaining.

Re:Large Deployments

[ewanm89]

you can turn that of on the options.

Re:Large Deployments

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

apt-get install evolution

He is right, thunderbird is not Outlook. Evolution is.

Re:Large Deployments

[eulernet]

Also, Google's antispam is very efficient and included in the price.

In comparison, if you want a good antispam with your Exchange server, you need to take Forefront licences.

Re:Large Deployments

[eulernet]

Most of the products start by copying the competition at a lower price, but at a lower quality.
Over the time, the quality increases, and the leader has to innovate more and more to avoid being taken over.
At some point, for the customer, the cheaper option is the best choice.
There is still psychological inertia that keeps the old clients tied to their original supplier, but such beliefs disappear over the years.

Read also how cheaper competitors win:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_technology

Re:Large Deployments

[marcosdumay]

For some reason lots of those people are needing the help of governments to keep their business...

But anyway, I wasn't implying they don't know how to run their companies. I was saying that they'll adopt the best tool out there. FreeOffice just have to be the best tool (for a time, and consistently), and the important companies will use it (or stop being important).

Re:Large Deployments

[marcosdumay]

Sorry s/FreeOffice/LibreOffice/

Re:Large Deployments

[Super_Z]

Zimbra uses an LDAP server for contact list storage. You can configure software like Thunderbird, Apple Address Book, Apple Mail etc. to use this LDAP server with a few clicks. It just works.

Re:Large Deployments

[Oligonicella]

Let's see:

Someone with a personal anecdote with some detail, describing his experience.

An AC who simply says "Unh unh!"

Who to believe, who to believe....

Re:Large Deployments

[Ihmhi]

You know, I've recently been reading up on Word 2007/2010. The last time I actively trained with an Office program was '97.

There's a lot of fluff and I still dislike the ribbon (although that's probably because I dislike having to adjust to it), but I honestly see a lot of useful features added. The UI seems a bit more intuitive and intelligent. The Format Painter alone is a super-useful feature. And there's all sorts of other little things like viewing documents side-by-side (with simultaneous scrolling!) that I find really cool and useful.

It still has its problems, of course, but while there has been a lot of junk added I think there was a lot of pretty cool stuff too.

(Of course, saying anything positive about Microsoft or its products is heresy, so I expect to get rapidly modded into oblivion...

Re:Large Deployments

[Anonymous Coward]

in my job, we were moved to LO + thunderbird as of 2012. (800+ employees)

the outlook exchange issue IS a problem.

Re:Large Deployments

[ninetyninebottles]

Really? Because I have the ancient MS Office 2K and it reads docX just fine with the converter pack which is free. hell I can even save in DocX if I wanted, but I prefer plain old .doc which seems to work on every version I've encountered. I even had to deal with a 6.5Mb doc that had headers, footers, tables and graphs, and we had MS Office 2K, 2K3, 2K7, and the one for the Mac at the time, 2K6 i think.

I'm currently on a project with a lot of paperwork, all in MS Office formats. The main client is using Word 2003 and 2000 and has no choice about it because they are a huge corporation with strict rules. The high priced consulting firm uses Word 2007. The independent contractors have a mishmash of OO/LO versions of word, etc. The regulatory expert is using Word 2000 on a Mac. I have access to all of these versions, albeit across several workstations.

I regularly get .docx files saved out of some version of Word and get to hunt through all the versions for the one that will display it properly because only one will get it close to correct for the numbering, TOC, headers, and page numbers and that is NOT trivial when you're talking about this kind of work. Sometimes, I get versions out of Word 2007 that have been edited in Word 2003 and the only solution we've found is to go back to plain text and start all the formatting again from scratch. The documents are simply so FUBAR we can't fix them. Don't even get me started on the incompatibilities with the Mac versions of Word.

On this project we've mostly pushed for Word 2000 .doc format as the most readable across versions, and it is still a pain in the ass, but doable. On a previous project we just said "screw it" and mandated LibreOffice for everyone and gave everyone a copy. One company referred to it as "The compliance documents software" but whatever they didn't have any problems using it. Everything saved in default LO formats and everyone had the same version even across OS's and we had no problems. This saved us a metric crapton of money and time on the project and became my model for good software project planning thereafter.

In previous jobs I had the fun task of maintaining very large documents and let me tell you, Word is by no means sufficient. OO used to be a work around as it would open many that Word failed on (even though they had been created in Word). Very large documents did, and the last time I checked, still do regularly corrupt themselves on save. LibreOffice certainly has problems, but it is our best hope right now to bring real, strong competition into this market. A few corporations contributing could iron out the bugs and suddenly I would have a path to no longer dealing with all of MS's broken, lousy formats, and MS might start making something of quality in order to compete instead of constantly redoing the UI in bizarre, poorly tested ways.

I've found that the LO docs just don't play nice with MS Office and vice versa and when you get your grade dinged because the teacher opens your LO doc and gets word salad or you send in a resume and it gets tossed because of formatting being wonked suddenly that MS Office Student copy don't look so bad.

This is going to happen anyway. You don't know what version of software will be opening your document. It might be LibreOffice or Word 2000 for the Mac or Pages or Google Docs. If you're not using a standard, there is a good chance it will be messed up. Having sorted through at least a hundred resumes over the years, I don't expect them to work properly unless they are PDF.

Oh and before someone uses the "Just send PDF" meme PDF is for PRINTING and most places will file 13 if you send PDF. The software the HR depts use doesn't parse PDF and teachers want to be able to write notes in the doc which cuts PDF right out.

In the real world if and HR department can't open PDFs, I really don't want to work there. If your teacher c

Re:Large Deployments

[ninetyninebottles]

Older versions of Office can read and write docx, xlsx etc just fine. Head to microsoft.com/downloads and fetch the free Office Compatibility Pack. Done and done. Docx for me has time and again proven more robust than doc, which is why I've started to use it more or less exclusively.

Heh, a manager came to me the other day and said she got another .docx file and asked what she should do. I said, "Open it and see if the formatting is okay". She just laughed and said that course of action NEVER works. She was right too, it was all messed up in Word 2003. I'm not sure why your experience is so diametrically opposed to mine, but it sure seems to be.

Re:Large Deployments

[VortexCortex]

You know, just because a software update comes out doesn't mean you have to buy it. Older versions of MS Office still work just fine.

You know, just because they stopped supporting the software doesn't mean you can't roll out your own security updates.
--Oh Wait, yes it does... unless you're using a FOSS product, it which case you can support the software yourself for as long as you need.

In other words if you don't upgrade you'll probably be found negligent when malware compromises your security and a customer sues you... Perhaps you've never heard of HIPPA compliance?

Re:Large Deployments

[Jalfro]

Microsoft Office runs on Microsoft Windows. Imagine that!

I can't get it to work at all on my Linux system lol

Re:Large Deployments

[Amouth]

the only problem with Zimbra (for us) is the feature set we need requires the pro licenses where are far from free. Zimbra's licensing price is the same Per mailbox as MS is per Enterprise CAL.. except that you buy a CAL once.. Zimbra you have to pay the fee annually.. if you have a small deployment then it can be justified - but once you get to 50-100 users.. and take into account a max shell out to MS once every 3 years.. Exchange is Cheaper than Zimbra.. And if you buy a perpetual license from them (more equivalent to a CAL) then you end up paying twice the cost per user.. it very very quickly washes any savings from not having to purchase the server side.

Re:Large Deployments

[SirSpammenot]

"including the ability to directly cut and paste document items directly into emails and have it fully handled and look and behave perfectly".

Sorry, but I can't stop laughing at this to post long enough to post a real reply. Let's just say that hasn't been my experience. Especially when you remeber microsoft's definition of cross platform is it works on both Vista AND win7. Maybe if 100% of all servers, clients and OS were all the same versions? I guess that rules out macs, iphones, androids, etc. PLEASE. The larger the enterprise the worse the fragmentation gets.

Re:Large Deployments

[FaxeTheCat]

That is a valid point. If LibreOffice (or any other piece of software, free or not) consistently is better than the competition, then large corporations will indeed use it. The problem is how to get there. I have not seen a plan that will get them there before office suites are obsolete...

Re:Large Deployments

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with this sentiment but for one thing , I do tech support, and I'm constantly having to explain to customers when outlook fails along with word and excel that they need a reinstall of msoffice to repair the issue, most are dumbfounded when you tell them outlook is part of office, they just didn't know.
The real problem is MS uses huge incentives to keep MSOFFICE in the mix by almost giving away the license up front then sticking it to the customers on the back end, what needs to be done is to have libreoffice compete head to head on a cost per seat basis and have the settings tweaked to save to office friendly formats or to PDF at first. Only when an organisation can see the results will it accept libreoffice as an alternative.
As for an outlook replacement, I agree it needs to be addressed by libreoffice, but in reality it is a perk that can be overcome by simply replacing outlook with the evolution email software, as I noted earlier they don't know its not part of libreoffice and oh ya, really don't care either.

Re:Large Deployments

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't use "bad" to describe Outlook

I agree. I would call it "terrible." We use it at work, and it's the worst, but that's corporate laziness for you.

Re:Large Deployments

[Hordeking]

I can only hope they can get Calc up to the responsiveness of 2007 Excel, especially in the area of charts and graphs. I'm a big fan of Libre, but when it comes down to interoperability between Word Processor and Spreadsheet, Word and Excel win hands down. Add to that the fact that Excel seems to do a better job with charts and visual representation of data, and that's why I prefer (for now) to do my scientific data processing with Excel.

Re:Large Deployments

[brit74]

"While we're dueling anecdotes, I was once able to fix a corrupted Word file for my mother that nobody could open because it confused their parser, and all their products have the same one. OO.o (at the time) was able to open and re-save the file so that it would work correctly, with no loss of formatting."

We had the same thing happen to us about ten years ago. Unfortunately, I've seen LibreOffice mangle document formatting too much to see it as an equivalent product - it's more like "sometimes it manages to beat out MS Office for this or that obscure situation, but generally it's worse". In fact, after installing the latest version of LibreOffice a few months ago, I had to wonder whether it's progressed at all in the past five years (I even considered the possibility that it has regressed). I was really disappointed that MSOffice seems to be pulling ahead rather than losing ground to LibreOffice. I almost never use MS Office, but I actually find myself much more comfortable using it despite the number of hours I've spent using LibreOffice. Sometimes I really wonder if the praise heaped on OpenOffice/LibreOffice is really gratuitous praise from Open Source advocates who want to believe it and want other people to switch to it.

Re:Large Deployments

[slimjim8094]

Alright, fair enough. MSWord is really good. The ribbon is actually not a terrible invention, once you make the mental shift from memorizing menu structure to working on context.

But I don't want to spend $100 on it. And it doesn't work on Linux. So LibreOffice is my office suite, and I don't really have any complaints about it. It's less polished, but I don't think any less functional. I don't do much word processing (write any papers in LaTeX), so I don't really care.

My objection was more to the formatting complaints. I must say, I've never had that happen for Word or Excel documents. Powerpoints don't work very well, which could absolutely be a dealbreaker for some people, but I've never had a problem with even complex documents with charts and tables, at least not in the last 2 years or so. Again, I don't work with many Word documents, but when I do, it's been fine.

Re:Large Deployments

[Anonymous Coward]

LibreOffice is hardly reliable, Writer craps out all the time, the bugginess of Calc is unbelievable and Impress is a piece of shit!

Re:Large Deployments

[exomondo]

There's a reason for that - Microsoft Office runs on Microsoft Windows. Imagine that!

Microsoft Office also runs equally well on Apple OSX.

Re:Large Deployments

[icebike]

You know, just because a software update comes out doesn't mean you have to buy it. Older versions of MS Office still work just fine.

You know, you should read to the bottom of a comment before you jump on it to post redundant remarks. Had you done this you would have seen
THIS:
        "As for Paying, I stopped upgrading Office/Word a long time ago".

Re:Large Deployments

[RubberMallet]

> Can Microsoft Office read LibreOffice files? No, it cannot. It is not supposed to.

Ummmm.. actually yes it can. MS Office 2010 supports ODF files just fine. You can read AND write ODF from MS Office. This is default for MS Office now.. not some obscure hidden plugin either.

Re:Large Deployments

[Daniel Phillips]

And what makes you think that is not simply because of bug fixes, not pushed back to the community?

Re:Large Deployments

[hobarrera]

Regrettably, LibreOffice is targeted strongly towards MS Office users, and dumps former OO users.
Every day, LO tries to imitate more and more MSO behaviours, dumping OO users without caring..

Clear exampes is the *inability* to open PPS files in edit mode. You need to *rename* files in order to open them in edition mode, which is a clear MSO behaviour as I came to learn. This means that if they're in my email or dvd, I need to copy to disk, rename, and then open, when previouly, it was just openable as it was. Also, the menus are very MSO-like, for example, having preferences in the tools menu. I had to google why it was missing to find the preferences menu in LO. Being that I never used MSO, and previouly used OO, I find using LO harder and harder every day, and feel sort of betray. All these bugs *have* been reported, and where closed as DONTCAREABOUTOOUSERS.

Re:Large Deployments

[olau]

Have you had a look at Evolution? They used to position it as an Outlook competitor.

Re:Large Deployments

[Patch86]

I'm not sure what your point is really. You're quite right that LibreOffice doesn't include an email client. However, an organization is allowed to user programmes from multiple sources. Aside from the dozens of rival email clients out there, bot open source and proprietary, it's also worth pointing out that you can buy Outlook separately from the rest of the MS Office suite. There's nothing stopping you ditching Word/Excel/PowerPoint/etc. in favour of LibreOffice, while keeping Outlook.

Re:Large Deployments

[squiggleslash]

LDAP is a directory service, not a contacts storage system. Think "phone book" vs "little black book."

Activity-based metrics tell us little

[Anonymous Coward]

I was never a big fan of activity-based metrics. Do they really tell you anything? Do you really care how many people it took to build your car? Or do you care how well it works? Would making a car with twice as many people make it better? Or worse?

Ditto with software. Don't tell me how much you spent, in subsidized and volunteer programmers. Tell me what you accomplished. Large numbers don't guarantee anything. And small numbers don't necessarily hurt you. Look back at earlier generations of office applications, where Quattro Pro was originally written by four programmers, and Emacs by one.

Telling us how many people it took to make a particular version of LibreOffice actually tells us nothing.

Re:Activity-based metrics tell us little

[Anonymous Coward]

A-effing-men. Libre/Open/StarOffice sucks and is perhaps the most glaring failure of the FOSS movement. I guess getting real work done just isn't cool enough.

Re:Activity-based metrics tell us little

[styrotech]

Telling us how many people it took to make a particular version of LibreOffice actually tells us nothing.

Sure it does. It tells us that more developers are now able or willing to work on LibreOffice and that the fork is working.

It tells us that the development community is growing and and momentum is building after stagnating under the watch of Sun and Oracle.

Surely a growing active community is better than a shrinking and stagnating one?

Re:Activity-based metrics tell us little

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it could merely indicate that there are now more part-time developers compared to the full-time developers that Sun had working on OpenOffice. But are you replacing X full-time with 2*X half-time developers? Or with 2*X developers working 25% time? The net result could be that there is now far less coding going on now than there was before. That is why looking at developer counts is meaningless. If you have feature accomploishments, real work that occured in LibreOffice, beyond merely integrated prior OpenOffice feature branches, then let's here that story. That would be interesting.

Re:Activity-based metrics tell us little

[Zontar The Mindless]

IMO TFA comes off as a (lackluster and obvious) attempt at an anti-"BSD Is Dead" troll.

Now just find a better name

[Anonymous Coward]

And you're all set! :)

I wish I could use it

[ISoldat53]

But it crashes nine times out of ten when I try to open a document.

Re:I wish I could use it

[bogaboga]

In my case, I also wish I could use it. But the problem is its lack of a [credible] MS-Access like database. The one found bundled with it sucks big time! It's a non-starter for me.

I could pitch this suite to those who could find its other attributes compelling, but the fact that it's just too ugly (by default), kills the 'appetite' for those who would probably give it a chance.

Re:I wish I could use it

[Jorl17]

That happens to me with Office.

Re:I wish I could use it

[gbjbaanb]

you're complaining that it doesn't have Access!!!!!

Fine, Base might suck donkeys (I've never even bothered to try using it). Why don't you try a more functional DB. Even sqlite is better and that doesn't even pretend to be a competitor.

LibreOffice might do well to dump Base completely, Access-style DBs might have been useful 20 years ago, but today putting a (crap) DB in your office suite is a pointless exercise.

Re:I wish I could use it

[Anonymous Coward]

It can use any JDBC database. Try SQLLite, HSQL, or Derby. All really easy embedded DB's that are WAY more functional than Access

Re:I wish I could use it

[Anonymous Coward]

The database is one of their priority’s to fix, they have recently integrated a new database driver for a better database, PostgreSQL, to replace the current java based default bundled database. They hope to switch to using it full time for the next release (3.6). See
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/3.5#Base
for the current status.

Re:I wish I could use it

[Osgeld]

depends, for SOHO's access works fine, tons of normal people know how to use it and it there included with your office package.You tell someone like my dad who just keeps customer data in an access db that so and so showed him how to do however many years ago that "SQLite is a software library that implements a self-contained, serverless, zero-configuration, transactional SQL database engine." and watch the fun begin

Re:I wish I could use it

[Anonymous Coward]

Could you please submit a bug report?
My experience has been quite the opposite - it's Microsoft Office that's having problem opening its own files.

Re:I wish I could use it

[jimicus]

Fine, Base might suck donkeys (I've never even bothered to try using it). Why don't you try a more functional DB. Even sqlite is better and that doesn't even pretend to be a competitor.

LibreOffice might do well to dump Base completely, Access-style DBs might have been useful 20 years ago, but today putting a (crap) DB in your office suite is a pointless exercise.

Access may have a terrible engine under the hood but that's not the point. The point is the GUI makes it possible for someone who knows precisely zero about databases to put together a basic system very quickly and easily - meaning that if a department has a relatively simple set of needs, Dave (who happens to know quite a bit about computers) can do it rather than having to go to all the hassle of setting up a formal project, finding money in the budget and getting approval from higher up.

Is it desirable to let this happen in any decent-sized business? Well, probably not. We all know what happens with the database Dave puts together. But that's a battle you lost about sixteen years ago when Microsoft started to include Access with their Office suite.

Re:I wish I could use it

[gbjbaanb]

you wouldn't do that, you'd show him the sqlite GUIs, like

http://sqlitebrowser.sourceforge.net/
http://sqliteadmin.orbmu2k.de/
http://www.razorsql.com/features/sqlite_gui.html
or even
http://rsqlitegui.rubyforge.org/

Re:I wish I could use it

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought in 2011 all db-based apps were written on mysql+php (or the .nyet equivalents). Do Ms Access still serve ANY purpose better?

Stopped using office suites entirely

[Arancaytar]

Unfortunately LibreOffice hasn't yet managed to fix the horrible memory footprint OO.o had, so I've switched to writing all text documents in TeX (using Lyx) and using Gnumeric for spreadsheets. But for opening files others send me, this is easily the best. It'll even make an excellent effort at rendering shitty formats like .doc.

Re:Stopped using office suites entirely

[Mitchell314]

Part of the memory footprint issue is because OO.o (maybe LO too? never checked) had some odd default configurations. Though it's been a while since I remembered the things you need to tweak to make it lighter. I moved to google docs and just use [microsoft | libre] office when I need more functionality, which is fairly rare now.

While everyone else is bitching...

[elashish14]

I for one, am excited to see what changes are coming in the future. TDF has been in existence for only about a year and a half now. Here's a list of things it's not gonna achive in that short of a time:

1. It will not magically implement all the functionality that's been in MSOffice for over a decade.
2. It will not integrate with LO $REQUISITE_MS_PROTOCOL (and it's not like it's even possible because they're all proprietary anyways)
3. It will not instantly purge LO of all Java dependencies for which replacements are in development
4. It will not be able to make it run in under 10MB
5. It will not have a brand new shiny interface which can resurrect a living unicorn.

So seriously, quit bitching. Having a large, active community is a good thing and should hopefully signal that there's a lot of good stuff to look forward in the future. No, it's not gonna be here today or tomorrow. Like I tell my kids: learn to be patient. Please.

Re:While everyone else is bitching...

[Arancaytar]

5. It will not have a brand new shiny interface which can resurrect a living unicorn.

... why would a living unicorn need resurrecting?

Sorry, I overthink these metaphor thingies.

LibreOffice can't connect to Exchange?

[dgharmon]

"I believe that LibreOffice will never make it in the corporate world for one single reason: It doesn't include a program that can use MAPI to connect to Exchange. Outlook is very, very ingrained in the corporate world and that alone will prevent any organization using Exchange from switching.

What prevents you using Outlook to connect to Exchange after installing LibreOffice? Unless your corporation would lose the ability to do business if they couldn't click on 'File - Send - Document as E-mail' in MS Office?

Re:LibreOffice can't connect to Exchange?

[Shoe Puppet]

Unless your corporation would lose the ability to do business if they couldn't click on 'File - Send - Document as E-mail' in MS Office?

LibreOffice has that menu entry, too. There is a public API for sending email with the default mail client.

change tracking loses data

[Anonymous Coward]

We have about 50 seats using it in our US office. Our CEO was using it at my prodding with some lawyers to negotiate a contract for a building purchase. They were all using change tracking and all kinds of data was missing when displayed with LO. I took a lot of heat for it however the CEO was happy enough that I provided Word Viewer for him to see the correct data. I turned in bug reports but was told they wouldn't look at them without the file in question. I could not provide it since it was a contract that they did not want released into the wild. LO told me if I submit the contract they would not keep it private. I think the project will never be able to take over for MS Office.

Never going to happen and shouldn't

[dbIII]

Why do people think MS Exchange is so good? Don't they know anything about it at all?
Also don't give me the "no other single program" bullshit - MS Exchange is a suite and a not entirely well integrated one at that. Take a look at any mailing list where MS Exchange admins post their cries for help on weird mail munching bugs and you'll get an idea that it's still not yet as good as advertised a decade ago.
As to why it's never going to happen, you are asking to hit an obscured hidden target in a moving pile of spaghetti. A "feature" of MS Exchange is MS Office integration and MS Office integration only, and every time something else works with it a "fix" comes out to stop it.
As for thinking MS Outlook is good, do you actually believe that? I'm a *nix admin but I've wasted vast amounts of time helping out when the MS Windows people didn't have enough manpower to solve problems with corrupted mailboxes, virus infection and all the trouble that comes from using the throwaway free gift with MS Office which is Outlook.

Re:Never going to happen and shouldn't

[Amouth]

from your post i could make some assumptions to the environment that you have seen it used.. but i don't like taking stabs into the wind.. but i will say we do not have issues like you have described and what i see other people having. mainly because we do not even attempted to use a single tool for all jobs.

Exchange's lights shine as a work group server. while yes Exchange can handle all the functions of a general MTA it isn't good at it.. Sendmail is much much better, same with filtering spam and viruses out of incoming and out going messages.. we use Sendmail SA CAV to proxy/buffer/clean all incoming mail and also to handle external delivery of messages. our exchange infrastructure does not see the outside world except for mobile devices and OWA. we get all of the benefits of exchanges work group functions and integration without most of the headaches you read about.

in fact the only problem we have had in recent memory has to do with incoming message X- headers:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2009/04/06/3407221.aspx

lucky we where not adversely effected by it - but we did add it to our considerations for the next upgrade/roll-out

Re:Never going to happen and shouldn't

[dbIII]

from your post i could make some assumptions to the environment that you have seen it used

You'd be wrong anyway because it's several different environments spread over more than a decade and having to clean up other people's messes.
I agree with the way you have it - put it under adult supervision of something else to do the hard work and make it trivial to do backups of the mail that passes through it. The first time I did a full test backup and then bare metal restore of MS Exchange I just could not understand why anybody thought it was ready for release.
I think that once you have it there's no choice other than to keep it running as well as possible because it has it's obfiscated hooks in so deep into everything that there is no way to replace it a single compenent at a time.
Back to my main point - third party tools working with it have a very limited lifetime due to unexpected and often undocumented changes, so don't expect LibreOffice to work with it for very long if it ever works with it at all. Many of the MS Exchange problems I've seen resulted from the third party antivirus, fax etc not being entirely compatible with a new version or a patch. Of course there were others where nobody else was involved apart from Microsoft, like the OPEN RELAY BY DEFAULT behaviour after one patch that should have cost a few people at MS their jobs (but didn't because all the guys with a clue had left MS Exchange and they had to put up with the guys with half a clue).
Is for MS Outlook - I've had to set people up with VPNs purely to get mail due to it not being able to get it reliably via SSL itself.

Re:Never going to happen and shouldn't

[DogDude]

Exchange may be hard to administer, but from an end user's point of view, there's nothing that comes close to it, and that's really the whole point of the software. Administrative costs would have to be many many multiples of what the currently are for companies to consider NOT using Exchange. As is, they're a cost of doing business.

Libre Office refused to look at bug reports?

[dgharmon]

"We have about 50 seats using it in our US office. Our CEO was using it at my prodding with some lawyers to negotiate a contract for a building purchase".

What kind of business are you in. Tell me, were you converting the document to msOffice format before sending and then re-importing the msDocument back to ODF format in the other direction. If so, wouldn't it have been a lot easier to get the lawyers to use Libre Office.

"I turned in bug reports but was told they wouldn't look at them without the file in question".

That's really inconvient considering its a confidential legal document. Tell me this, where exactly did you file the bug reports and who told you they wouldn't accept them without the original document and couldn't keep it private?

Re:Libre Office refused to look at bug reports?

[Anonymous Coward]

Filed at https://www.libreoffice.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=41041

I talked with the courteous triager over email who told me they wouldn't look at it without publicly releasing the file. So I filed...

https://www.libreoffice.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=41049

Re:Libre Office refused to look at bug reports?

[Anonymous Coward]

"What kind of business are you in."

Manufacturing.

"Tell me, were you converting the document to msOffice format before sending and then re-importing the msDocument back to ODF format in the other direction."

They were all working in MS Word format but I don't recall if it was doc or docx.

"If so, wouldn't it have been a lot easier to get the lawyers to use Libre Office."

No the lawyers were in a different part of the country and I never met them nor did the CEO. There's no way I could have made them switch. These guys are dealing with 10's of millions of dollars and here I am trying to keep them from spending 300 bucks. I would NOT have won that battle.

Re:Libre Office refused to look at bug reports?

[drewjensen-libo]

Hello dghoarmon, I would like to address your comment directly. It is true that any attachment made to the TDF/LibreOffice issue tracking system is public, everything in our bug tracking system is public. However, it is also true that from time to time the issue of confidential documents must be dealt with, in those situations it is worked out between the reporter/QA person/Developer - normally this means having the user email the document to the developer directly - it is used and then discarded. Now to your issue specifically, I took a look at it, and at first blush it appears to be a duplicate of an existing issue, one fixed in the coming release. That release in RC stage at the moment BTW. I can't comment on any specific conversation you had with any volunteer, as I was not part of such, I did want to clear up any misunderstanding which may have resulted however. Thanks for you understanding, Drew Jensen

Re:Libre Office refused to look at bug reports?

[dgharmon]

"I can't comment on any specific conversation you had with any volunteer", drewjensen-libo

Check the parent posts, it wasn't me, but some AC poster who refers to a 'bug report` (Bug 41049) posted by user jkonecny over on libreoffice.org.
--

ref: link

Nothing new here

[n2rjt]

Developers are always become more robust. My own weight has increased more than 25% since I started developing software. Why would LibreOffice developers be any different?

I Agree - Zimbra Does This TODAY

[Anonymous Coward]

I Agree and Zimbra Does This TODAY.
Here's a comparison between Zimbra from a few yrs ago to MS-Exchange:
http://www.slideshare.net/agileware/zimbra-collaboration-suite-vs-microsoft-exchange-2008

We deployed Zimbra a few years ago because we needed enterprise calendaring. You know - seeing other people's calendars and setting up shared calendars for a group. We aren't a Microsoft-shop.

Zimbra made all that easy.

For a long time, using the calendar meant having to use the zimbra web-client or a java-based thick-client. That changed about a year ago when Thunderbird+Lightning finally started working with calendars properly.

Since June-ish, I haven't used the Zimbra web-client at all.
When MS-Office switched to the Ribbon, people my age with 15 yrs using the old menus were thrown for a loop. At that point, I dumped MS-Office and haven't looked back. The only Office-like tool I still use is Visio. There isn't any substitute for that and I don't see one on the way either.

Because I work in a smaller company now, we've switched to web-apps for every corporate app that we could. This means we don't mandate any specific desktop and encourage departments to use what works for them and their budgets. More and more are deploying Linux-based desktops AND solving real problems with it. I doubt it will ever completely replace Ms-Windows here. Some things just aren't possible with Linux, but we provide terminal servers for those groups. Business productivity software works great over the LAN using RDP - when and if it is necessary. Not having to deal with AV and viruses on the desktops constantly has this CIO happier. When a virus does hit here, it is on a server or a printer, not most desktops.

I know this method can't work for everyone inside every company. Heck, we can't do it for ours 100% either.

Zimbra has freed us from the MS-Koolaid. If you run Exchange, you must run AD ... DHCP, DNS and buy CALs from MS. Then MS-SQL becomes required and all the MS-Windows Server licenses ... sure, all these things are integrated but they are a bear to upgrade - at least MS-Exchange is. Exchange is the linchpin - Zimbra removes it.

Younger users - those in their 20s are used to integrated webmail+webcal+webIM+webdocs. It isn't a big leap for them to use Zimbra.

As a replacement for Sharepoint, we use Alfresco. It isn't perfect, but the price is right. Did you know that whitehouse.gov uses a Drupal front-end connected to an Alfesco back-end?

Costs for acquisition and support for both Zimbra and Alfresco are much less than the Microsoft options overall while providing competitive features. It is definitely worth a look.

Re:I Agree - Zimbra Does This TODAY

[ninetyninebottles]

The only Office-like tool I still use is Visio. There isn't any substitute for that and I don't see one on the way either.

If you use a Mac, OmniGraffle is much, much nicer its main drawback being, yeah its Mac only. One of the teams I worked with also used a Web based Visio replacement and seemed to like it, although it was software as a service with a subscription.

Re:I Agree - Zimbra Does This TODAY

[Anonymous Coward]

If only opemn-source alternatives such as dia could import the omnigraffle stencils, we could have a real Visio replacement soon, imho. I also don't see a lot of work going on in the oss field for diagramming apps, and the web based alternatives are nicer but don't cut it just yet (1. not oss, 2. don't work on planes).

Besides Visio, I'd say Powerpoint is the other app that is still significantly better than its corresponding LibreOffice counterpart - but the LO devs seem at last to hav picked up on improving the ugly duckling in the suite

LibreOffice is a bad idea now

[trifish]

Now that OpenOffice has been donated to the Apache Foundation, it is safe open source again. In this case a fork (LibreOffice) only makes things worse.

Instead of people focusing on the development of a single product, they are divided into two halves working on two forks for no good reason whatsoever.

Re:LibreOffice is a bad idea now

[Anonymous Coward]

How is that a troll post? It's spot on. The only troll is the moronic moderator.

Re:LibreOffice is a bad idea now

[ledow]

I think it can be easily argued that the Libre and Open codebases are so similar that a patch for one IS a patch for another. The differences are minor at this stage and more to do with what features they want in rather than what patches can be ported.

That said, LibreOffice has over a year's headstart and they are much more pushing towards the "Let's clear out the crap" philosophy - and doing a good job. They also have almost all the original OO.org developers contributing too.

I think it's OO that's going to die off quicker than you think. It's going to be EGCS/GCC again - the fork runs off, gets a headstart against a project that has a delay in evolving and eventually "becomes" and takes over from the original project. Given a few years, I see OO basically sucking in 99% of the LibreOffice work. Until then, they are a year ahead in cleaning up and understanding the code and a significant proportion of the new features are patches that work on both Libre and OO with little effort.

Re:LibreOffice is a bad idea now

[theCoder]

You're right, but I think there's a licensing issue that will get in the way. LO is primarily LGPL/GPL. OO is now under the control of Apache, and thus will not want to use GPL code. In essence, any patches will only flow from OO into LO, not the other way.

KOfffice

[unixisc]

While my Linux box was still working, I used KOffice a bit, and it was minimally okay. Didn't try doing much of the stuff I was used to doing in MS Office under Windows. However, in KSpread, some of the Excel nicities, like autofill, where by highlighting 2 successive cells filled w/ 1 and 2 and then dragging it, one could get a whole list of numbers, seemed to be missing.

All this I did w/ the KOffice that came w/ KDE 3.5 (I'm not talking Trinity here). So my question is - has anyone tried KOffice lately, and how is it? Has it borrowed features from LibreOffice or even Office that would let it be more functional? Whenever I do get back to using it (once I get PC-BSD), I'd like to work using it, but I'd like to know what other users' experiences have been like.

Re:KOfffice

[lbbros]

KOffice is basically dead commits-wise. What you might be interested in is the Calligra Suite, a fork which is under heavy development. More info: http://calligra-suite.org/

Re:KOfffice

[unixisc]

Thanks for pointing me that way. It definitely looks better. Looking @ the site, two things weren't clear:

• Is it forked from the latest KOffice 2.3.3, or something earlier?
• Feature wise, how does it compare w/ the latest LO, if not MS Office?

Any idea?

Re:KOfffice

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a very recent fork... I think it happened last year.
I think the vast majority of people who were working on Koffice are now working on Calligra... The only component I have given a serious workout is Krita and it is coming along quite well...

Re:KOfffice

[makomk]

I think Calligra Suite has mostly been focused on developing office applications for Nokia's now-dead Meego phones, as were most of the KOffice devs prior to the fork, so don't expect it to have improved much as a desktop Office application. (In fact, I seem to recall that some of the patches merged to make it more suitable for Nokia's use even broke functionality in the desktop applications.)

Re:KOfffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Feature wise LO and MSO beat it. It is still nice to use if all you do is basic editing without complicated stuff thrown in.

I heard table support has improved lately, but didn't test that.

Re:KOfffice

[unixisc]

Krita is one thing I've worked on as well, and that too in the context of overlaying thumbnail images on a background image, plus adding some text. I found it a bit difficult to use, but less overkill than GIMP or Photoshop Express.

Re:KOfffice

[unixisc]

For spreadsheets, they previously had KSpread (which I used), but their more recent version was KCell. Calligra's version is called Tables. I wish Calligra had given all the apps proper names, instead of staying w/ names like Kexi, Krita and so on.

Re:KOfffice

[unixisc]

A couple of questions:

1. Wouldn't Calligra then be focussed on Tizen, or is that project not a Qt based project?
2. KDE itself has different projects for different platforms - one for desktops, one for netbooks and one for Plasma Active. Similarly, wouldn't they be having different projects for Calligra on an x86 (or other) based desktop, vs an ARM based phone or netbook/tablet?
3. Or is the KOffice team totally independent of KDE?

Re:KOfffice

[makomk]

I believe that Tizen is indeed pretty much dropping Qt. There is also still a seperate desktop version of KOffice, it's just that it hasn't been getting much love aside from the big code merge to split away the core code in order than it can be used on mobile. I don't think that KOffice has been co-operating much with KDE in general either - the mobile office application was as I understand it not aimed at KDE at all.

Re:KOfffice

[Smask]

Krita is a very clever name, because the programmers went with the double association to drawing. Krita means crayon or blackboard chalk in Swedish. (Krita originates from the latin word for chalk, creta.) And with the habit of putting "K" in front of names in KDE it still rings true, rita means draw/sketch in Swedish.

Re:KOfffice

[unixisc]

Fantastic for a Swedish spin of the UX. Nothing against Sweden, but for an English spin of it, most people wouldn't make head or tail of it!

It just needs a decent name.

[jjohn_h]

>>>
I really think Libre Office could take off...

It just needs a decent name.

Zimbra TODAY? Joking, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

So I go over to the website which URL you pasted above and the first thing I see is "Zimbra collaboration suite & Microsoft Exchange: How to choose".

Dude, that presentation is over 4 years old. That doesn't make them look very good you know; a lot has changed in those 4 years, especially with regards to Office.

Then I went over to the Zimbra website to be greeted with a recent news update from... 08/10/2010.

That is never going to work out. A software product which hasn't updated their news for over 2 years now? If they care so little about the news then what about security updates and the likes?

Truth be told; many people will judge a product by its presentation. And in that aspect Zimbra fails horribly.

Developers refuse to fix jumping toolbars

[Anonymous Coward]

Its a piece of unusable junk.
Toolbars pop in and out and refuse to stay in fixed places causing the entire text to jump up and down all the time.
This basic bug has been in for years and developers refuse to even acknowledge it as a bug.

It will never be a usable until the current crop of developers are replaced.
It doesn't matter how cool other features are if it has basic usability problems.

Re:Zimbra TODAY? Joking, right?

[zig007]

That's very, very strange.
However, http://blog.zimbra.com/ has stuff from november 2011 and they are obiously hiring : http://jobs.vmware.com/search?q=zimbra.com%2Fcareers
But still, it is owned by VMWare, I mean they must be aware of the impression a 2 year old "latest news" item gives to a visitor.

Re:maybe oo will stop sucking so hard

[Anonymous Coward]

It's still missing that clogged artery of a UI called the ribbon.

Does this mean they get to Bug 3959?

[Tsu Dho Nimh]

So when will they implement [Bug 3959] Outline View. It's been on the request list for 10 years, has 343 votes, and it's the only thing that keeps me using MS Word.

Re:Calligra (was: KOfffice)

[ingwa]

No, this is not correct although I understand why you might get that impression.

Here is the short story on the Calligra Suite:

Calligra was indeed spun off from KOffice about a year ago. Some call it a fork but it was actually more of a split. Some applications moved to Calligra (KPlatoPlan, Kexi, Brainstorm, KPresenterStage), some others were indeed forked ( KWordWords). Many of them got new names as did the whole suite (which you can see in the previous sentence).

KOffice was a nice enough office suite for users with simple needs, but the Calligra team has bigger plans. One of the big strengths oof Calligra is that it's both very modular and the UI is well separated from what we call the Office Engine which handles loading, storing, saving, and rendering of documents but not editing. This is the result of the work from the last 2 years, much of it sponsored by Nokia. During the same time the engine itself has also been much improved with a completely new text layout engine, automatic tests to ensure that we don't get any regressions, many new features and improved stability. There is a company called KO GmbH that does commercial work on Calligra, and they have had most of their business around the engine and the import filters for Microsoft formats.

So during this last year much much energy has been put into the office engine which benefits all platforms / UI's and a number of new UI's have been developed: Nokia Harmattan Office for the N9, Calligra Mobile for the nokia n900 (this one is actually a bit older), Calligra Active for the Plasma Active environment which just got announced will be used in the Spark tablet.

What has indeed been lagging behind was the desktop UI which would give you the impression that you got. But the last few months we have also seen a lot of work here. The style manager has been improved, the text formatting dialogs (actually dockers in the case of Calligra desktop) are much nicer now and new features like footnotes/endnotes and many others have been developed and integrated. Note that these features were already present in the engine so it was a relatively minor effort to implement them in the UI. Also other applications than the word processor have gotten a number of new features but Calligra is so modular that it's sometimes difficult to say which application benefits the most from a new feature. If it's available in one application it's also available in the others provided that the feature makes sense in them.

Now we are getting closer to the first release. We hope it will be at the beginning of March, and we have great hopes that people will like what we have done.

Re:Calligra (was: KOfffice)

[ingwa]

Hmm, there used to be arrows behind the old and new names for the applications.
KWord -> Words
KPresenter -> Stage
KPlato -> Plan