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Apache OpenOffice 4.0 Released With Major New Features
An anonymous reader writes "Still the most popular open source office suite, Apache OpenOffice 4 has been released, with many new enhancements and a new sidebar, based on IBM Symphony's implementation but with many improvements. The code still has comments in German but as long as real new features keep coming and can be shared with other office suites no one is complaining." The sidebar mentioned brings frequently used controls down and beside the actual area of a word-processing doc, say, which makes some sense given how wide many displays have become. This release comes with some major improvements to graphics handling, too; anti-aliasing makes for smoother bitmaps. In conjunction with this release, SourceForge (also under the Slashdot Media umbrella) has announced the launch of an extensions collection for OO. Extensions mean that Open Office can gain capabilities from outside contributors, rather than being wrapped up in large, all-or-nothing updates. You can download the latest version of Apache OpenOffice here.
For IBM, Open Source == Out Sourcing.
Cheaper than employing programmers in faraway places is to get them to volunteer for free to maintain their code.
Not new really... They have been doing that for years.
No sig. Move along - nothing to see here.
I'm a Dutchman, my native language is dutch, and I use english for all comments because using my native language seems to screw with the industry-standard english terminology in programming.
Anybody here who comments his/her code in his native language? How do you deal with the jargon and what are the benefits of using your native language, apart from being able to type TL;DR-size comments with ease?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Yes a few years ago some who did not like OO.org structure created an alternative which some prefer, and there is an issue with Oracle buying OO.org, but now Apache has it.
So before we start modded up the MS shills who want to promote the OO.org versus Libreoffice battle, remember that OSS is about choice, and MS is about the destruction of choice.
Thanks to all the people who have put work into OO.org. It is very appreciated. I have downloaded the new version and will look at it as I need it.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Because they use different licenses. OpenOffice uses the Apache license, LibreOffice mostly GPL. Merging them is not feasible since either of them would have to give up something they don't want to in return.
They are merging! LibreOffice imports all useful bits. They even keep a running commentary on any commits that are still going into apache office saying which are useful, which are not useful or which libreoffice commits fix something in a more elegant way: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/log/?h=aoo/trunk&showmsg=1
LibreOffice 4.1 is out later this week and they already imported all the bug fixes from Apache Office. According to https://www.libreoffice.org/download/4-1-new-features-and-fixes/ they picked up at least these improvements:
"A very large number of bugs have been fixed at an estimate of around 3000 bugs, of which 400 came from authors with apache.org mail addresses."
and
"Sidebar (Apache OpenOffice/IBM Symphony) with resizeable layout (LibreOffice team)"
I wonder when apache office will merge fully with LibreOffice.
Finally, somthing that makes sense on 16x9 monitors, instead of the idiotic idea of taking up vertical space in a "ribbon"
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Don't worry, LibreOffice already has all the improvements imported from Apache, see https://www.libreoffice.org/download/4-1-new-features-and-fixes/
Given that it's damn near impossible to find a 4:3 monitor larger than 17" and very hard to find even 16:10, it makes more sense to put in sidebars to use the abundant horizontal space rather than the vertical. Of course, once you get to around 24" monitors, it starts to become much more commonplace to have two apps side-by-side, in which case the argument goes back to having toolbars on the top and bottom.
Or we could, you know, have both as options.
*Two* open source offerings competing against each other instead of against Microsoft.
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This is garbage. 5% of contributions to LO 4.1 came from apache.
Claiming everything came from apache is an IBM marketing lie and they've been called out on it.
Well since they laud the new sidebar so much for better use of widescreen monitors they should love the fact that LibreOffice will have it within a few days...
4.1 is due in a matter of days which has an improved sidebar that's resizeable and not just a static part of the screen.
I really question what the point of AOO is at this juncture given that LO is clearly the more active project and has two years of code clean up and development over AOO due to the way Oracle let it stagnate for so long.
If you want to try 4.1 now it is on the pre-releases page and it's the final RC there ... ie the same that will be released as final GA in a few days.
Does it have a WordPerfect-like Reveal Codes feature?
No?
No dice.
Here we go again with all the ranting about the mexican wrestler version. *sigh*
Or we could, you know, have both as options.
That's crazy talk.
How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean.
Strange how no-one "rejected change" in any other office version. Except for the one with Clippy.
How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean.
As an added benefit you can store your documents in a source control system such that you can actually keep track of changes. (The change tracking I have seen build into some office suites was fundamentally flawed. They could only compare with one previous version and not show in which order changes were made. And they were relying on all the software used by the various parties to accurately record what was changed. Not really useful as anything other than a toy.)
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
I'm sure you can make the huge contribution of the AOO Sidebar look numerically 5% if you do two things:
1) Count the entire Sidebar UI as a single commit, which Ohloh does because the work was done on a branch, not the trunk. (Ohloh counts only the AOO trunk)
2) Bloat your own commit counts with insignificant "behind the scenes cleanup" like translating German comments, or other stuff that no user will ever benefit from.
But if you look at features of actual significance, what the users actually want and will benefit from, the code from Apache is actually quite significant in LibreOffice.
I wish LibreOffice supporters would stop acting like it makes them small to acknowledge some gratitude to other open source projects which they are dependent on.
I don't know about you, I feel like exposing my erotic story I write to NSA. If openoffice does not have a back door to NSA, it will not cut it for me. Just saying.
Nothing like one-way leeching to keep a project going. Seems silly to split because of lack of activity from Oracle and then devolve into leeching changes from Apache.
Comment? Yes. Of the various approaches to argument, the strongest one is to take your opponent's most valid point, the key of their argument, and then to logically rebut it. On the other hand, one of the weakest arguments is the ad hominem attack, declining to engage logic entirely and instead trying to win by bravado and superficial slight of hand. I dismantled your argument, by showing the flaws in how you calculated and interpreted your "5%" claim. You responded (no not responded, but dodged entirely) with an ad hominem attack. I assume if you had a stronger argument to make you would have done so.
I don't think it is juvenile at all to point out that comparisons of committer counts is meaningless where the contents of the commits, in terms of how many files are changed, varies by a factor of 4 between the projects. The difference in VCS used as well as what kinds of contributions are measured by Ohloh (and are not measured) makes any naive comparison hugely problematic. In fact I'd say it is intellectual dishonest to perpetuate these kinds of apples to oranges comparisons. On the other hand, if your only story is Ohloh code statistics, what else are you going to do?
Rather than looking at the code, I've focused more on looking at the users, doing apples-to-apples comparisons, looking at name recognition, usage stats, user satisfaction, etc., comparing OpenOffice and LibreOffice. And the real world numbers show LibreOffice is in a bad position and declining:
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2013/06/the-power-of-brand-and-the-power-of-product-part-2.html
So please, tell us more about how many lines of code were removed by your long tail. We'll all entranced and want to hear more about how hard you think you are working. But also occasionally take a peak at the real world and see how you are really doing. There is a big difference between riding a stationary bicycle in a gym versus traveling cross country. Personally, I think LO is mainly churning code and spinning its wheels, though the sweat you feel is real.
If Libreoffice does end up dominating (Openoffice still has the most old and new users because of inertia and name recognition) then it will be convincing evidence of the evolutionary superiority of copyleft.
At this point I'm betting on Libreoffice + LGPL. Hope I don't get any "libertarian license" jihadis steamed about that, but this just seems like reality.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
I'm not a Libreoffice developer, just a reader of these fora and a former OpenOffice user who is sick and tired of reading your bull. (I originally left OO because your license purge removed features I needed; so much for your silly attempt in another post to try to take the "pragmatic high ground" by characterizing LO's position as "that license bullshit.")
I'm not interested in hearing your eternal rationalizations about why your statistics are so much better than LO's. I've been hearing this crap for years now. You start frothing at the mouth any time somebody says something positive about LO, you don't release anything notable for 2 1/2 years, and you call this "letting the code speak for you."
Meanwhile LO may
Aargh, mistakenly submitted when I brushed off something that'd fallen on my keyboard.
Anyway, meanwhile LO may commit the oh-so-very-grievous sin of putting out some PR once in a while trying to promote their project, but they don't waste their breath continually trying to tear AOO down. Instead they've busily been putting out a stream of releases with features I needed. That's who's letting the code talk for them.
Is that the same way Linux and FreeBSD are "merging"?
And yet Linux doesn't yet have a modern file system...
ZFS works great on FreeBSD. HAMMER from DragonFly BSD is damn good as well. BTRFS still sucks, YEARS after it SHOULD HAVE been stable.
Having a license that supposedly allows you to suck the marrow out of the upstream project doesn't really solve your problems for you, and you can certainly still fall behind.
If the LibreOffice guys were smart, they'd be contributing as many of their changes as possible to the upstream project, so they won't have to do extra maintenance, and more people would benefit from them. Of course, if those LO guys were smart, they would have picked a slightly less horrific and painful NAME for their project...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Can we please get past calling AOO the upstream project of LO? This is like calling gorillas the upstream project of humans...
Yes they share a common ancestry but that is it at this point... sure some stuff can be transplanted from one to the other but there is no upstream/downstream relationship that one would usually understand that term as in the FOSS world (eg Fedora -> RHEL).