Slashdot Mirror
Apache OpenOffice Downloaded 50 Million Times In a Year
An anonymous reader writes with this quick bite from the H: "Just a few days after the one year anniversary of the release of the first version of OpenOffice from the Apache Foundation (Apache OpenOffice 3.4) on 8 May 2012, the project can now boast 50 million downloads of the Open Source office suite. 10 million of those downloads happened since the beginning of March. In contrast, LibreOffice claimed it had 15 million unique downloads of its office suite in all of 2012."
and LibreOffice gets everything else. LibreOffice is such a better piece of software after all the hard work done since the fork. But sometimes even when talking to my techy friends I have to elaborate when I say I created the doc in "LibreOffice".
If you're going to make the comparison between the two download counts they need to be the same as in unique vs unique or total vs total but not total vs unique.
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
downloads of all the distributions that use it.
^ So, so much this. Seems like only the geeks have figured out that LibreOffice exists, and these numbers only confirm my suspicions.
LibreOffice needs some kind of marketing push to get people to switch.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Whoopdie doo. I honestly moved to LibreOffice as soon as it forked. True that OO.o has more mindshare, but LibreOffice is better. I simply tell people "they renamed it", lol.
I have nothing clever to put here...
LibreOffice comes pre-packed in most Linux distributions. If you want OpenOffice you have to download it from Apache.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
OpenOffice is now proper open source as it is under Apache Foundation. There is absolutely no reason to maintain two branches of it now. It only dilutes the effort and weakens the well-known OpenOffice brand. You should end the fork before it does even more harm.
They should have called it OfficeLibre and used a syilized picture of Che for their logo.
Personally, I say "OpenOffice" anyway when I mean LibreOffice. It has more currency with less technical people and those who never update, and only occasionally does it prompt a concerned stare when someone actually knows the distinction. Maybe we could just go back to calling it StarOffice?
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Personally, I say "OpenOffice" anyway when I mean LibreOffice.
*concerned stare* ...that's very interesting.
It has more currency with less technical people and those who never update, and only occasionally does it prompt a concerned stare when someone actually knows the distinction.
Speaking as a LibreOffice user and contributor, I am impressed that the OpenOffice name is so well known these days. I remember a number of years ago when *nobody* knew the name "OpenOffice" ("Is that some kind of template pack plugin thing for Word?"). It's very interesting to hear that now the name is well known enough that technically-minded users use the OpenOffice name to refer to both LO and AOO. Brand recognition is really quite strong!
Questions for you:
Maybe we could just go back to calling it StarOffice?
Well the binary is still called "soffice" :-)
coding is life
Rather convenient Slashvertising, comparing total downloads for AOO with unique downloads for LO.
AOO has been too busy removing functionality (my personal favorite: the wpd filter), having a license inquisition, and taking potshots at LO to get much done.
Here it's now almost 2.5 years since OO 3.3, the last Oracle version, and the latest AOO version has no significant advances over OO 3.3-- instead it's got reduced functionality. In the meantime LibreOffice 4 has come a long way.
Don't know why anybody bothers giving press to OO anymore.
... of the arguments over which FOSS office suite had got most users, people should recognise that there have been at least 65 million users of them not using Microsoft Office.
This is a good thing.
mind you, Microsoft says there are 750 million Office users worldwide, so we have a little way to go yet.
I would say the fact that e.g. IBM is making use of the code (and possibly/probably willing to contribute) and they probably don't like LibreOffice's license might be one of the main reasons for OO to still exist.
What do you think LibreOffice should do to make its brand more recognizable?
I've been using LibreOffice for a number of years, and love it (having written two, and typeset three, books with it), but the name is a hindrence. When I speak to my wife and use the term LibreOffice her eyes glaze over, whereas Open Office has a natural name people understand.
Free Office would have been better than LibreOffice, or any of a dozen other names I can think of (Community Office, OpenSource Office, New Office, World Office, even abbbreviating it to L-Office ...anything like that would lead to far better name recognition).
That said, LibreOffice is great, and I wouldn't necessarily spend too much energy trying to get agreement to change the name at this late date (well, maybe the abbreviated "L-Office"). You've all done fine work...now the word needs to get out.
I also find the stats suspicious...Gentoo folks like me are probably counted in the stat as downloads occur on an emerge, but how many copies of Fedora, Scientific, CentOS, RHEL, etc. have shipped with LibreOffice and aren't counted?
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I've been using LibreOffice for a number of years, and love it (having written two, and typeset three, books with it), but the name is a hindrence. When I speak to my wife and use the term LibreOffice her eyes glaze over, whereas Open Office has a natural name people understand.
Free Office would have been better than LibreOffice, or any of a dozen other names I can think of (Community Office, OpenSource Office, New Office, World Office, even abbbreviating it to L-Office ...anything like that would lead to far better name recognition).
I personally think the name LibreOffice is pretty good. Yes, the abbreviations aren't great ("LO"? "LibO"? "LibOff"? ...), but the name itself captures a bit more about the project and its purpose than some other names out there. When I tell people about the Free Software Foundation, I have to explain to them what "Free Software" means and how it's different from Open Source. Have you ever tried to google for "Free Software"? Now try "Libre Software" -- much better :-)
So basically you get the concept of "Free Software" + Office suite, wrapped up in a name that is much less ambiguous, at least in English. Unfortunately (fortunately?) it sets up all users/contributors to be in the position of explaining this to everyone they talk to. Tradeoffs, tradeoffs...
I wasn't involved in selecting the name, but I wonder if there was a strong preference for keeping the word "Office" in the title. I understand that the name might help people understand that the project is an Office suite in a similar fashion to Microsoft Office, Corel Office, etc..., but perhaps a distinct name like "Firefox" or "Inkscape" would make for a much more recognizable and powerful brand?
coding is life