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."

Comments

It is a shame that OpenOffice gets the nice name..

[duckgod]

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".

unique vs total?

[trybywrench]

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.

Re:unique vs total?

[thomasw_lrd]

Not to mention that Ubuntu has LibreOffice pre-installed, so none of those users have a reason to download LibreOffice. That could skew the download counts.

Bet that LibrOffice download count doesn't include

[Anonymous Coward]

downloads of all the distributions that use it.

Marketing

[MrEricSir]

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".

^ 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.

Re:Marketing

[kimvette]

Better yet, merge projects. Use LibreOffice as the new base and port whatever optimizations and enhancements OOo has over. Now that Oracle has washed their hands of OOo there is no "philosophical" reason not to do it.

I prefer LibreOffice over OOo myself, but I prefer either one over the user-hostile ribbon interface of Microsoft Office where it has been turned into a game of hide-and-seek.

Re:Marketing

[TrollstonButterbeans]

LibreOffice is absolutely excellent. Except I think of the "Nacho Libre" movie and I can't see myself saying "Libre" in casual conversation and it sounds exceptionally geeky and not mainstream. Not as bad as "The Gimp" in the name department, but yes the name absolutely falls in the "not helpful department". Versus, say, Firefox which always had a good name or MYSQL was always a good name.

Meh...

[ndtechnologies]

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.

Of course OO has a higher number of D/Ls...

[Bill_the_Engineer]

LibreOffice comes pre-packed in most Linux distributions. If you want OpenOffice you have to download it from Apache.

Good Job

[trifish]

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.

Re:Good Job

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Fine by me, end the OpenOffice fork and give LibreOffice the name. That is what Oracle should have done when they decided to hand OO over to someone else.

Re:Good Job

[wisesifu]

I disagree,

OpenOffice brand was already damaged by Oracle and I believe by giving it to Apache they wanted to continue the damaging effect of the way they handled to community.

Why not give it to LibreOffice? When they realized they where wrong and it was time to dump the code, why give it to Apache? Why not give it to the people already doing development, previous community members?

I think OpenOffice while it may have been downloaded more times its LibreOffice with the uptrend, with the following.

Re:Good Job

[Microlith]

I doubt they will be able to get them to go from the MPL3 to the Apache license. The transition from LGPL -> MPL3 maintained the copyleft nature of the license, going to Apache would eliminate it. I suspect it would be significantly more difficult to get people to agree to that.

Re:It is a shame that OpenOffice gets the nice nam

[Samantha Wright]

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?

Re:It is a shame that OpenOffice gets the nice nam

[Qubit]

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:

• What do you think LibreOffice should do to make its brand more recognizable?
• How 'known' would the project need to be for you to start calling it "LibreOffice" ?

Maybe we could just go back to calling it StarOffice?

Well the binary is still called "soffice" :-)

Rob Weir, is that you?

[jensend]

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.

Re:It is a shame that OpenOffice gets the nice nam

[FreeUser]

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?