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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.
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
most of the openoffice devs are now libreoffice devs, so most of the recent development happens there. libreoffice is working on an android version.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/07/libreoffice-for-android-advances-document-viewer-is-on-the-way/
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.
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.
I heard there was a little button thingey you could click to run it without Java. And I heard there was a website called "portableapps" that has portable versions of OOo and LO that you can put on a thumbdrive and run on any computer. I heard all that - but I'm quite sure its all lies - nasty, nasty lies.
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
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)
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.
You couldn't modify the example enough to use the documents already examined in your tests? Or, if the problem was a missing feature instead of a bug, you couldn't explain it without that specific set of spreadsheet data?
I'm available for consulting at my usual rate -- my contact should be on my user page.
So you're saying that you don't volunteer your time to someone's project. Pay to play, right?
From your journal post earlier today:
Despite having other demands on my time, I've begun spending a half-hour or so every day making submissions to Slashdot and trying to write quality comments. I am doing this because I think Slashdot is an important part of the internet, which like other forms of media, for good or ill is a part of our "culture."...It's not perfect...I've been modded -1, Flamebait for a post I thought was insightful too. Nothing is perfect...Support Slashdot. With your energy, time, money, whatever. It's worth it.
Hold on now. If you're willing to take that stance regarding Slashdot, why not just be honest about F/OSS office suites? You don't care about them and have no interest in seeing them succeed. There really is nothing wrong with that position.
The Apache license (like BSD, but better), has the clear advantage of allowing anyone to use the code. Including people who want to add it to something GPL. It's the universal donor.