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OpenOffice Is Now, Officially, Apache OpenOffice
rbowen writes "Apache OpenOffice has graduated from the Incubator, and now is officially a top-level project at the Apache Software Foundation." From the announcement: "As with all Apache software, Apache OpenOffice software is released under the Apache License v2.0, and is overseen by a self-selected team of active contributors to the project. A Project Management Committee (PMC) guides the Project's day-to-day operations, including community development and product releases. Information on Apache OpenOffice source code, documentation, mailing lists, related resources, and ways to participate are available at http://openoffice.apache.org." (Download mirror on Sourceforge, too.)
we all moved to LibreOffice
Where one-time promising projects go to die.
The problem with F/OSS office suites is that their audience tends to be uncritical, so much as in the fairy tale "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" (but in inverse), professionals have stopped listening.
I remember at least three incidents where I was instructed to evaluate Open Office, Libre Office or other F/OSS word processing or layout packages. In each instance, the F/OSS products fell short in fundamental ways, and were a total disaster for larger documents. Their main strength was that it was often easier to export data from them than it was in certain commercial products.
The point of this is that in order for one of these FOSS office suites to survive, people who are critical and have use requirements beyond short documents get involved. For these packages to be competitive, they need to rise to a higher standard than Grandma's recipes, Son's book report, a weekend memo to the boss, etc.
The big news with OO over the past couple of years have been a fork and a name change? Great.
This could be a fantastic thing for the Opensource Community.
Providing the OpenOffice (OO) and the LibreOffice(LO) developers can get past the bad blood of the past, they could merge their to projects back together and focus their efforts.
For those who know more about this than me, why choose OpenOffice over LibreOffice (or vice versa.)
I used OO until my distro (Debian/Ubuntu/Mint recently) switched to LO and I just went with it. I'm not familiar in detail with the reason for the fork and whether the issues persist. Nor am I aware of the status of each fork and what is the benefit of one over the other.
Thanks for any clarification.
Any particular reason why they won't merge with LibreOffice? I can see why Sun/Oracle might have some commercial and proprietary agendas, but what's stopping Apache? AFAIK, LibreOffice already made a difference from OpenOffice by integrating more languages, bugfixes and features. Is Apache OpenOffice going re-develop those improvements?
Often forks are due to project mismanagement or severely differing development goals, and if nothing like that exists, one of the projects is just going to die. LibreOffice forked due to mismanagement by Oracle. Also ref gcc-vs-egcs in the 90's.
I'm just using Libreoffice now since that is what our distros support out of the box (CentOS and Ubuntu). Since they are functionally the same, I haven't found any reason to cling to OO once all the noise started and resulted in the fork to LO. I haven't had any complaints.
Best,
Their projects have a strong tendency to be bloated in code size and kind of bureaucratic in the way they engage the development community. I think, given the history of OpenOffice that this is an excellent home for it. But I don't really think much of the development methodology of the original OpenOffice project either.
But, time will tell. If the OpenOffice people reach out to LibreOffice and actually try to convince that community to come back, they might have a chance of moving forward in a positive way. The LibreOffice fork was brewing a long time before Oracle dropped the ball on the OpenOffice project. I think that was just the last straw.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
More and more people work on mobile platforms. Is OpenOffice going to provide them with a solution?
Because you say so, and yet, you're not a writer :)
I was an OpenOffice fanatic for a number of years, but about 3 years ago Calc killed one of my spreadsheets I had been working on for a week. Like an idiot, I had not been saving frequent incremental drafts, so I lost nearly all the data, and a 1 week project turned into a 2 week project. Since that time, I've learned my lesson to save a new draft copy of an office document after every few hours of work. I've also switched to doing most of my document work in MS Office, as I found it more stable. However, I still keep a copy of LibreOffice on my system at all times, and I do find it much more useful for certain activities, such as importing and exporting a wider variety of file types, working with .csv files, etc. But, I still recall opening that empty spreadsheet after a week's work as the dark day my unwavering love for OOo died a miserable death.
I guess that's something. Still not holding my breath for something so redundant. LibreOffice works, has made great progress (with code cleanup in particular) and is tended to by a very active community. Diversity for diversity's sake is nice and all, but what's OO's unique selling point again?
I still have open office installed on some of my machines, why should I move if it still works and still has updates. For most documents that are meant for myself or my friends I actually use Google documents nowadays because it's easier than moving files around.
A good reason to keep openoffice in existance is to make this list as long as possible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument#Software
Before Libre, Open, it was a Star, who was my office suite on linux back in y2k. I want my StarOffice back !
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
... that anyone sheepish enough to get freaked out by an OpenOffice to LibreOffice transfer would probably still be using Microsoft Office anyway.
* Emacs vs. VI
* Windows vs. Linux vs. Mac
* Debian vs. Redhat vs. Suse vs. etc.
* Gnome vs. KDE vs. XFCE vs. etc.
And now for your geek fighting pleasure!
* Libre Office vs. Open Office!
Let the battle begin!
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Won't somebody please make that go away? Libre/Open office should be more portable, meaning, it would be better if I could just copy it to any machine and run it. You know, the way Mac programs are 'installed'. All programs should be like that.
But is it really accurate to say that 100% of Ubuntu installs are used for document editing? And that 0% prefer LO to Abi or KOffice or Calligra or Google Docs or anything else? Those are optimistic assumptions, don't you think?
That's why I focus on download numbers. Someone who intentionally downloads clear has the intent to use the product.
So if you want to know relative usage numbers, then focus on an apples to apples comparison that makes sense, like the number of Windows downloads.
Speaking of names, is it actually "Apache OpenOffice" now? That would be an improvement over calling an office suite by the name of its website, "OpenOffice.org".
I mean, did anybody ever call it "Open Office dot org"? Judging by the comments in this thread, no.
Same for Postgres / PostgreSQL ("post greh ess queue elle").
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
The official name of the new ASF project (and the software it ships) is Apache OpenOffice. While the ASF now legally owns the trademarks associated with OpenOffice.org, going forward we'll be using Apache OpenOffice as our trademark. While normally we require Apache projects to live at an *.apache.org domain name, given the broad (non-technical) end-user base of AOO they will still provide a user-based homepage at openoffice.org. Developers should probably go to openoffice.apache.org for technical info. ---- I'm not a lawyer, but I was an Apache OpenOffice podling mentor
That and there's the trademark issue where OpenOffice is owned by someone else, so you have to say OpenOffice.org when you're talking about it.
Not anymore, now it's Apache OpenOffice (TM).
It's in TFA.
Knock yourself out: http://www.staroffice.com/
That's a great idea! Let's think it through, however. I don't own the data; that belongs to the client. Thus, I have to be somewhat vague. Further, I'm available for consulting at my usual rate -- my contact should be on my user page. I give very specific reports (not written in OO, LibreOffice or Word) to clients.
we all moved to LibreOffice
My main document producing software is now LaTeX, using TeXShop on my Mac. It does everything I need, and the documents look pretty. Most especially, I love the ability of LaTeX to typeset equations seamlessly. Perhaps there is a slight learning curve, but it wasn't bad. And when I need to do something unusual, I use the google manual.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Winner of this battle will be the first one to offer 100% compatibility with MS Office VBS macros.
Larry successfully destroyed OpenOffice, let it RIP.
I have been turned down for work because my resume looked like crap on their computers but fine on mine.
I switched back to Windows and Office and never looked back after that. IN the business world where you survive on 10% margins of profit a loss of a supplier, customer, or a good employee can have a staggering impact. When you hear on the phone sorry I have Xoffice people will think you are incompetent. It is like saying I do not have email or a fax number. I have a zigatron instead.
We got into similar arguments 10 years ago on slashdot on why Netscape and the beta version of Mozilla was alllll so awesome compared to the new IE 6. Fact is, 90% of the world used IE 6 and if you can't code sites for it you did not belong to rest of the world.
It wasn't until Firefox came along that a real alternative existed and a reason to leave IE behind. Now we have the freedom to use whatever browser because the stranglehold was broke. What does this have to do with office?
Easy. MS Office is still superior, lighter, and owns the standards the world uses to get shit done. Until there is a better product people like myself will continue to pay money for it and use it. I am not a troll here but this is a serious problem. No StarWritter (or whatever the fuck it is called now) is not fully compatible with Word nor its formatting issues.
You want the world to switch you need a lighter and supperior product. StarOffice and OpenOffice 1.2 5 years ago was slow as hell. Most users will just stick to what they know and that is Office.
http://saveie6.com/
Please mod parent up. Author "curcuru" was an Apache OpenOffice podling mentor.
The issue always comes back to reading and editing MS Office documents.
An analogy to another MS proprietary product is IE. The fact is when IE 6 had 90% of the market you couldn't win by emulating IE hacks. Therefore, developers only targeted it and users refused to upgrade. People say Mozilla at the time was perfectly compatible most of the time but that 20% of sites that told you to leave Netscape( as they assumed anything non IE was that) otherwise.
Until something was much better users had no reason to leave. Once Firefox started gaining 10 to 15% of the market website developers stubbornly had to write 2 versions of the website and then the world could finally leave.
What does LibreOffice and OpenOffice offer that MS Office does not? Nothing other than trying to re-implement features and be bug compatible with Microsofts formats. Why not just use the real thing and not have to worry about hassles?
You want people to switch you need to make it very fast and include something innovative that is not in MS office. Cloud integration? Another app? Groupware support that doesn't require exchange? Blogging tool? I don't know something worthwhile. Make it a killer app.
http://saveie6.com/
whOracle bought a company, and could have had their name well in the brainshare of the world, but instead, they were greedy, and that greed and disrespect for the open source community has come home to roost. Instead of trying to shake a well-earned bad reputation, I think that OpenOffice should climb on the bring out your dead cart.
I am not so sure whOracal should be inhibit the Librieoffe steering committee, because that cannot be trusted, and they will wedge proprietary technology into it.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
No, absolutely not. But in this case, I'm full up with projects and so this should be pay-to-play. As you can see, I give a lot of my time to free projects.
Not really. But having an audience that can't tell "doesn't work" from "works" means I wouldn't waste my time on that particular product.
Further, my belief is that having more different types of word processors is more important than cloning MS Office.
Speak for yourself there, bub. In my US, we have an ass-kicking President who will be reelected because his imaginary race is insignificant by comparison to his actual deeds, to his predecessor, and to his current opponent. The part of the US that actually works well goes well together most of the time, and it outnumbers those who think otherwise.
And officially Over...
I have been turned down for work because my resume looked like crap on their computers but fine on mine.
I switched back to Windows and Office and never looked back after that. IN the business world where you survive on 10% margins of profit a loss of a supplier, customer, or a good employee can have a staggering impact. When you hear on the phone sorry I have Xoffice people will think you are incompetent. It is like saying I do not have email or a fax number. I have a zigatron instead.
We got into similar arguments 10 years ago on slashdot on why Netscape and the beta version of Mozilla was alllll so awesome compared to the new IE 6. Fact is, 90% of the world used IE 6 and if you can't code sites for it you did not belong to rest of the world.
It wasn't until Firefox came along that a real alternative existed and a reason to leave IE behind. Now we have the freedom to use whatever browser because the stranglehold was broke. What does this have to do with office?
Easy. MS Office is still superior, lighter, and owns the standards the world uses to get shit done. Until there is a better product people like myself will continue to pay money for it and use it. I am not a troll here but this is a serious problem. No StarWritter (or whatever the fuck it is called now) is not fully compatible with Word nor its formatting issues.
You want the world to switch you need a lighter and supperior product. StarOffice and OpenOffice 1.2 5 years ago was slow as hell. Most users will just stick to what they know and that is Office.
Use PDFs for resumes. Everyone accepts them now, they look identical across platforms and are immutable -- unless you really need the HR person to make changes for you.
You make a really good point:
To a businessperson, this can mean hours of time wasted with OO/LO when MSO is only a few hundred dollars.
This is a problem in that it teaches people a simple lesson: FOSS is bullshit.
Naturally, I don't agree with that, as a longtime shareware/FOSS user; I want people to see the good examples of FOSS, not the incomplete ones.
For this reason, I give my professional opinion here: OO/LO is not ready to replace MSO, much less the professional packages.
We discredit all of FOSS when our solution to non-working FOSS products is zealotry. Zealotry is what happens when people point out flaws in FOSS, and instead of deciding to look into it, the FOSS community spends its time fighting back, and calling them idiots and trolls. That's a hateful and self-destructive attitude.
The correct response is to value community feedback, and improve the product, not pound on the walls and scream and claim it's perfectly viable. Until that happens, it's stupid and brain-dead to blame the users for not flocking to the defective product.
I might as well be officially dead. Everyone has already moved on to LibreOffice.
Openoffice has (much ) better icons than LibreOffice
1. SLOW! Slow to start. Slow to open documents, slow to do anything.
2. Formatting compatibility. Create MS Office document and save it in any version from 2000 to docx. Open it in Open/Libre Office... shit scattered everywhere.
3. Printing. I still can't print envelopes properly, the orientation does not shift correctly from one printer to the next.
4. Support! The above are not new complaints they have been present since the beginning. Responses to complaints about them are;
-- It's not that slow, MS uses tricks to make theirs seem faster.
-- Maybe you shouldn't use crappy LaserJets. I use obscure xyz inkjet and I don't have your problem.
-- Did you file a bug report? Yes, it got folded into a duplicate dead bug report from two years ago. Nothing has changed, but they triaged my report, again, in under four hours!
-- Well it's free, what do you expect?
-- Well it's Free, you could fix it yourself.
5. Compatibility. It doesn't support macros of VBasic automation in a useable fashion so it is not a drop in replacement.
6. Features, It doesn't have many specific features that are absolute requirements for word processing professionals.
7. WordPerfect is still available and even it is VASTLY superior.
The fact is that open office had some major issues, not just with the software but also with its development, but the switch to Libre Office set everything back considerably. Development is even slower now and nothing is being fixed. The project appears, from the outside, to have reached its zenith some time ago and is on its way down. A fact that is causing me to seriously consider abandoning Linux for desktop use, as I have used it solely since 2000.
In Openoffice, I once tried some weird footnote stuff (required by a publisher). It would work in MS-Office but not in Openoffice. So, I tried the support list and described the problem. Answer 1: Explaining to me what footnotes and endnotes are. -After me explaining the problem again, answer 2 from someone at Sun: Nobody needs that.
So, for now I still run Openoffice at home, just because it is installed. And once both projects are past the clean-up stage, I'll pick whoever has a culture that doesn't resemble the old Openoffice.
... Ubuntu vs. intelligence :-)
though the problem was with Codeweavers/Wine under Office, instead of with LO, but it's the *kind* of thing that fscks-up people's work...
Say you get a document of 1 kind or another, so you open it,
but it's got embedded other documents in it ( word in excel, or vice versa ),
and the embedded document doesn't exist in your Libre-based system,
but it's there as far as your client is concerned?
Do you fight with your Libre system?
Or do you discover that this bug was reported 2 years earlier, realize you will economically DIE if you don't change horses, right now, and switch...
MS deliberately makes their file-format as impossible to work-with as they can, and it works: it's part of their anti-competitive method. Perfectly legal, so long as no prosecutor prosecutes it, right? & they lobby, now, so that won't happen.
Choose, though.
If you're some not-for-profit, maybe you can make-do, but when your clients documents don't work in your Libre system, and you can't legally submit their documents as test-cases, do you keep off the streets, by working effectively, even if it means the spyware + DRM infested MS junk?
Sometimes paying the bills IS important...
Cheers,
I'm really surprised; normally, OSS guys are the first in the row to welcome diversity, just with the office packages it's different. Haven't you seen the code being under control of a single entity, and now you want that back under LO? Surprisingly it seem to be the same people who declared Sun and Oracle being 'bad' which now oversee who is mainly behind LO financing. Just google for Novell and where the money comes from, and these guys are still not worried in the slightest sense. Defending something (or better christianizing something?) just because you believe you are on the 'only' 'right side' is a sign of religion, not OpenSource. At least ASF is guaranteed truly independent...
Many good points, but these two hit me as particularly relevant:
Steve Jobs left us a hell of a legacy, even for Apple haters. His legacy is the idea that the complete experience is the measure of a product. That includes everything from ordering it, to unboxing, to whether it "just works" when it starts up, to customer service and its ability to stand up to daily real-world use.
I don't think this is necessarily in opposition to what we conventionally think of as good engineering, which is making the back-end of the product work efficiently and elegantly. In fact, I think these two are different facets of the same goal, but are often seen by developers as oppositional.
Great summary. And yet, "real business world issues" and "all aspects of user experience including UI, functionality, expectations, interoperability, etc." are how users pick software. They want it to Just Work. When FOSS accommodates that, it succeeds. Same as for commercial software.
I remember in the early 1980s how some of the early software firms lost users. They were accustomed to getting calls from harried secretaries and businesspeople who were hopelessly ignorant of basic computing principles. They didn't like taking these calls, and so they started to retaliate by telling users to RTFM.
The problem was that then, "RTFM n00b!" (or "m0e") became the default response to all user questions or complaints. As a result, people switched to software companies with professional documentation and/or gentler tech support lines. The same thing is true for FOSS: if MSFT (or APPL) seems to care about the user more, people will pay for that.