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Collabora and OwnCloud Announce LibreOffice Online (itworld.com)
sfcrazy writes: Collabora Productivity, a UK-based consulting company, has collaborated with ownCloud Inc. to release a developer edition of online LibreOffice, which they call CODE (Collabora Online Development Edition). "The office suite implementation runs on ownCloud server. That's where all the processing and heavy lifting is done. The rendering happens at the client side. Currently there are three apps: writer (equivalent to MS Word), spreadsheet (Excel) and presentation (PowerPoint). At the moment users can create new documents and edit them. Other functionality, such as collaborative editing, is in the pipeline."
I like LibreOffice, It is my default tool. But the reason why I like it is because it installs on my PC, so I can use it without internet. If I want a cloud office tools I would go with office. And not deal with compatibility issues.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Hopefully they've improved this. I tried this software about a year ago and it was nearly unusable due to the lack of features. It didn't even support page breaks at the time. Some functionality is optional (bibliographies), some is required (page breaks). They probably shouldn't have included it in ownCloud before it had all of the required functionality, because that bad impression stuck with me.
Why would you name a product "code" when that term already has meaning? Name it "Own Office" or "Collabora Online" or even "Snicker Pig." Those are all terms that do not already have meaning. I can't ask a someone "Do you use code?"
It's easy to see why commercial software providers would want to push users toward the cloud: they get to charge subscriptions instead of a one-time buy.
But for users, there aren't any compelling advantages that I can see.
Sure, you outsource software maintenance, and if all goes right availability could be higher. But that comes at a high price: your data being exposed, absolute reliance on your internet connection, no control over e.g. the upgrade schedule, no more communication between applications etc.
Being able to access my documents from anywhere is no argument. My laptop goes everywhere with me, so I already have that without having to store my documents on the cloud.
The nice thing about the web-based version is that - if it's done well - it's easy to share documents with others and you can access your documents from anywhere.
I don't do anything fancy with Word/Excel/Powerpoint or their LibreOffice equivalents Writer/Calc/Impress, so this would be fine for me - except my itch has already been scratched by the open source web-hosted equivalents Etherpad/Ethercalc/Hacker Slides running on the open source Sandstorm platform (sandstorm.io).
I guess the killer feature the LibreOffice web-hosted versions would have is interoperability with the Microsoft Office and Libre Office versions - I don't need that, but for someone trying to convince a company to ditch Office 365 for hosted Libre Office, I guess it's a critical requirement. (For all I know, Etherpad, Ethercalc, and Hacker Slides have that interoperability. I never checked.)
I have five computers at home and share them with my wife and kids. So being able to access my files from a browser window instead of monkeying with rsync is nice.
Remember that this is the UK, not the US. "Snooping" is guaranteed to the government, there is no fight about a Constitution. MI5 and MI6 have full access to anything you do in this product.
Sure, there is some cost benefits to using "Cloud" but that comes at the risk of Security. People may not like it, but I refuse to use Ubuntu for the same reason I would not use this product.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
It would be somewhat nicer if the collaborative editing features worked in the proper non web based version too. There's no reason it couldn't and the native version is much better since web browsers are a bloaty, inefficient VM. You could have the best of both worlds. Online access and collaborative editing, with the efficiency and resource usage of native code.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
LibreOffice on the desktop is mediocre
I respect your right to your opinion, based on your own criteria in your own environment, but I find LibreOffice excellent. It does everything I need 100% of the time. I've done anything from letters to 500 page books and it's all been good.
..that they told me MS equivalent apps, otherwise how could I ever have guessed what they were: Write - for writing; Spreadsheet - for spreadsheets; Presentation - for presentations. Gosh that was difficult, but I worked it out in the end!
I am sure that that is coming. Not next week, and help is welcome (even if just by convincing your company to buy LO), but it is on the agenda...
You could install an owncloud server and five clients in 1/2 hour... no need to do everything in a browser.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
OwnCloud is usually self contained. Not out on the Public Internet. OwnCloud is a replication service that keeps Synchronization between different machines. It is a good stop-gap measure to address the LibreOffice Android issues.
Actually, I use sandstorm.io + Etherpad, Ethercalc, and Hacker Slides.
I like LibreOffice, It is my default tool. But the reason why I like it is because it installs on my PC, so I can use it without internet. If I want a cloud office tools I would go with office.
...but if you go with owncloud, you'll get a cloud office that is free/libre opensource software - just like libreoffice.
and it installs on your server, so :
- you can use it without relying on some other potentially not secure 3rd party provider
- you and colleagues can use it without internet if all your laptop are on the same network as your server.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
If I want cloudy office Google is there (or Office 365 which I seem to keep getting with various employments).
BUT... these cloudy office suite that you mention (Google Docs and Microsoft Office 365) are proprietary and closed-source.
Your only possibility to use them is to connect to the servers of said companies.
(Although there are possibility of local install, but they cost way too much).
Whereas owncloud is opensource, and you can install it on your own servers. You can build your very own cloud if you want - hence the name.
If there are document that you don't want to (or can't legally afford to) transit through untrusted 3rd party, you basically only have 2 options:
- pay out the huge amount required to have a local server of Google Docs or Office 365 (some university actually do it. But they have the necessary rebate and microsoft makes a rebate).
- deploy an opensource solution on a local server
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Now you're just talking hipster talk.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Actually, I use sandstorm.io + Etherpad, Ethercalc, and Hacker Slides.
I have mod points but I would rather say thanks for the pointer to sandstorm.
The use of randomized hostnames for separation to increase security is an interesting design choice, but it will have to be self-signed wildcard certs because wildcard certs are still pretty pricey.
I gave the demo at https://demo.sandstorm.io/ at a run through, it is actually a pretty neat framework.
I noticed mongo mentioned in the the debug log, I need to take look at the code because I hear Postgres does NoSQL pretty well these days.
Over the years slashdot comments have really gone downhill, just when you are about ready to give up reading the comments you discover something cool.
Thanks!
A man who wants nothing is invincible
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I second this. Been using OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice for around 10 years, personally and within my business. No problems whatsoever. Saved a small fortune in licensing fees. Admittedly I had to learn where a few things were initially, but that is no different to when I used to shell out for the latest Microsoft Office.
If you host your own sandstorm instance on your own server, they give you a wildcard certificate. I have one running right now.
I keep reading criticisms of Mongo, so its use bothers me a little. On the other hand, at work we're ditching Postgres. We've found Postgres to be ironclad and bulletproof, but the open source high availability options we've tried for it sucked - the logs are littered with dropped connections. From our internal testing, MySQL + Percona works better - at least so far. (I have no formal affiliation with Postgres, MySQL, or Percona.)
Long COMPILE times? What, you're (frequently?) building versions of LibreOffice? Whatever for?
Compile times for LibreOffice are of little interest to 99.99% of the users. (And who knows what compile times for MS Office are anyhow?)
Doesn't "render" Excel properly? What does that mean? Are you talking about VB macros or something? Won't open your PowerPoint? Huh?
If you're already using MS Office for your work, I don't see your point.