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Apache OpenOffice: We're OK With Not Being Super Cool (theregister.co.uk)
The Register's Thomas Claburn, interviews Jim Jagielski, Apache Software Foundation President and Apache OpenOffice project mentor. From the story: Despite being the subject of a deathwatch -- perhaps mainly by fans of rival LibreOffice -- AOO appears to be rather popular, with the 4.1.4 update racking up at least 1.6 million downloads. [...] While AOO and the ASF formulate a formal statement of direction for the project, Jagielski said more or less that all's well. "AOO is not, and isn't designed to be, the 'super coolest open source office suite with all the latest bells and whistles,'" Jagielski continued. "Our research shows that a 'basic,' functional office suite, which is streamlined with a 'simple' and uncluttered, uncomplicated UI, serves an incredible under-represented community. "Other office suites are focusing on the 'power user' which is a valuable market, for sure, but the real power and range for an open-source office suite alternative is the vast majority which is the 'rest of us. Sometimes we all forget how empowering open source is to the entire world."
The whole point of OO is that it lets you load a MS Word document. Once loaded, you can get the text onto the clipboard and paste it into a text editor. And then, you finally have a fuckton of ridiculously powerful tools to do whatever it is that you need to do. OpenOffice, LibreOffice, MS Office, none of them can even get into the ballpark. But once you get the text freed from the weird file format, the sky is the limit.
I'm also totally OK with not being a billionaire and dating supermodels.
This gives the impression that AOO is all about being small, simple, and stable, but it appears they're having a tough time even getting critical bugfixes deployed.
One of the strengths of open source is the diversity of choice. But that diversity can also be considered a weakness when it spreads valuable developers too thin, to the detriment of the entire community.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
... make it not suck.
But that also means a significant number of people – 77,000-plus, according to SourceForge stats – have downloaded the macOS version which contains a significant bug: if Apache OpenOffice is used to create a diagram in a Calc spreadsheet, the file becomes corrupted when saved.
I don't respond to AC's.
LibreOffice or go home.
I thought their main competitor was LibreOffice, which is also open source. Are they in denial?
I will let the other guy know too about the article
http://saveie6.com/
Did they finally remove the Java dependencies?
Sounds like you should make one of those then.
...but that does not necessarily make it so. Everyone loves the idea of open source (including me) but the reality is that there is an awful lot of really bad projects out there. Without the cash incentive that comes with paid-for software, a lot of open source contributors don't want to do the hard stuff. There is plenty of 'grunt work' that goes into building a really good piece of software (documentation, fixing bugs, well designed interface, etc.) that no one seems to want to do right. If a particular project can get over that 'hump' to become popular enough that lots of contributors depend on it and have a financial incentive to fix its problems, then you can get a polished product for free. Otherwise, you generally get what you paid for...
Google docs is pretty bare bones too. But the online collaboration is a pretty big deal.
The UI is so 2003. Not doin' it. They need to port this cross-platform with Xamarin and get it a modern desktop and mobile interface. I'll just keep my monthly subscription office for now.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
VBA support? No? Didn't think so.
How are these multinational insurance companies supposed to build their risk models?
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
"Our research shows that a 'basic,' functional office suite, which is streamlined with a 'simple' and uncluttered, uncomplicated UI, serves an incredible under-represented community", then call us when you actually managed to achieve that, also add responsive and stable to the list.
...is completely delusional.
Apparently having a safe and functional office suite is for power users, while using a bug ridden obsolete builds of what was years ago basically the same thing is for normal users? WTF is he smoking?
Apache is doing a tremendous disservice to all OpenOffice users, who are still unaware of the actual status of the project, and in this case, to open source community as a whole.
This is really sad to watch and has been for a long time now.
When I built my computer 6 years ago, right around Black Friday, I decided to stay away from Microsoft and Adobe products. I installed LibreOffice, Thunderbird, GIMP and Foxit Reader, and have had a very good experience with them since. I haven't had any problems with any of them, they definitely feel faster, updates haven't broken anything, and I haven't had to deal with the pains of product activation once. I am still running Windows 7 on my main computer, I'm a gamer, but it's Linux on everything else.
"We're OK With Not Being Super Cool", "We are OK in our niche", "We are OK by only having the smart customers"... this is how fading away starts. OpenOffice is going down the road and they can not feel it while they are on their "1.6 million downloads" comfort zone. This is exactly is happening the Thunderbird, while they are happy with their monthly download rate they don't want to see what others are doing. This is how the begining of the end of the road feels.
This project team is completely irresponsible. They have unpatched bugs and haven't had a major feature addition in the past 4 years. They make Open Source software look bad. Yet they still tout the Black Knight line about their dying project. Tis but a scratch..
while many companies and their marketing geniuses always try to add more bling to their products, we just need to do the following:
1. allow user input and formatting without a mouse
2. spell check a bonus
3. grammar check a bonus
4. save/open, transfer/load, print a bonus
5. printing the fastest using the least amount of ink/toner in the best quality
i like aoo and libre office... while i am a microsoft guy some from late 80as and 90s..
Please tell us: What free / open source cross-platform mail client has recently overtaken Thunderbird in terms of feature-completeness and usability?
(I do of course know some, like mutt or Evolution, but did not notice any significant shift in their respective differences.)
And while Oracle may have meanwhile passed the corpse on to somebody else, it still has Oracle's foul stench of pure corporate evil on it. I don't think anyone who worked with or on LibreOffice wants to smell that stench ever again.
Could someone at Google steal your book, or ideas from your book?
"... it still has Oracle's foul stench of pure corporate evil on it."
Don't you hate it when people are overly positive about Oracle?
I'm OK with Apache OpenOffice being useless and dead as well because there are alternatives
I tried to switch to Libreoffice but then I discovered a that paragraph borders look terrible. Filed a bug and they responded with some jargon about not being their fault but rather "Cairo" is the one to blame, and they set it to FIXED. Whatever. Still their text borders look like a joke and anyone can test my claims, just type some text, select it, create a thick border around it and look how it appears awful and prints with jaggies on the edges.
AOO works for me. I've been using Writer and Calc for many years without any issues.
Google agrees: no matter where you are, you've needlessly chosen to trust a spy agency with your work instead of carrying a USB key with strongly-encrypted copies of your documents with you, or setting up a server carrying strongly-encrypted copies of your documents with proper access controls (so even if someone breaks in, they get an encrypted file). I suggest switching to something that makes it a little more difficult to get to your data.
Digital Citizen
Superfluous comma after "Claburn".
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I wanted to use LibreOffice, but couldn't. Having already lots of Excel spreasheets filled with information and formulas, I needed something compatible. Opening the .xls files with LO (Libre Office) would break the formulas because there's a function incompatibility (Indirect's syntax), where OpenOffice would open them just fine.
Actually the incompatibility is this one:
https://superuser.com/question...
Why would they do that?? Can't understand. Even if there were a simple solution, I already have lots of macros written for OO and adapting them to LO would be a total waste of time.
I'm not that sure about LO, STABLE software is really appreciated and OO is just fine. We need stuff that works fine for years, so we can get stuff done.
Seems like a huge waste of development effort to maintain both projects. TBH, the only thing that The Document Foundation needs from AOO is the name. OpenOffice is a much better name than LibreOffice. It's also more well known.
LibreOffice phones home, while Apache OpenOffice does not.
And while Oracle may have meanwhile passed the corpse on to somebody else, it still has Oracle's foul stench of pure corporate evil on it. I don't think anyone who worked with or on LibreOffice wants to smell that stench ever again.
What's worse, "pure corporate evil" (OpenOffice), or a bunch of panty-waste minority groups (LibreOffice) surreptitiously usurping the USA socio-political & technological infrastructure? Tough choice, huh?
This reminds me of the articles in Windows Central about his Windows Phone was not competing with Android and the iPhones—and thus not failing tremendously—because it was a completely different product to a smart phone. How long until AOO is dead? Everybody I know has moved to Libre Office years ago.
I used to use it briefly in my very old, updated Windows XP Pro SP3 desktop PC since LibreOffice refused to work. :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Aren't you tired of idiot underachievers telling you that their software has no features because it's "fast and lightweight"? It's fucking pathetic that now we're de-evolving software back to the simple shit we had in the early 1990s which can't get serious work done.
>>>
The whole point of OO is that it lets you load a MS Word document. Once loaded, you can get the text onto the clipboard and paste it into a text editor.
>>>
Nobody will hinder you to save a document from MS Word or OO or LibreOffice as text file.
We're okay with not being super cool creates the opposite effect, making them extremely cool; it's like saying No, I will not be running for President
Apparetnly, not even LibreOffice is their competitor as they are "too cool".
so hurray for openoffice if it crashes less often.
When LibreOffice forked from OpenOffice the latter was not being well maintained. Important bugs had been left unfixed for years, it was locked to Java and there wasn't much development happening. Since then the LO team has done a tremendous amount of work improving the underlying code. The result is a faster and more stable office platform.
OpenOffice burnt it's brand through neglect. Now LibreOffice is better known and it's earning a good reputation. However odd the name might be that fades away when people get used to it. I now see LO being installed side by side with MS Office in business environments and that was not happening with OpenOffice.
I do not block ads. I do block third party scripts.
At work - Office all the way, and I am glad for it. Yes, it's annoying, and the integration with the cloud/OneDrive can be maddening! OneDrive has a hiccup synching, and all of my open Excel documents freeze and never come back. There's a reason that it creates recovery files, because it crashes a lot.
I don't care about Word, I basically use it to convert things to PDF. I use Excel and Powerpoint a lot, Visio on occasion. For the home user, LibreOffice for sure, but if you want to do anything significant MSOffice is the way to go.
And I don't have a problem saying that. It's just better. I run Linux at home so it's not really an option, but the two times a year I need to use LibreOffice for something I find the general operation to be confusing. I am sure if I used it more I might get used to it.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Go to file -> account -> Update Options -> Update and then restart your PC. This will upgrade both Office as well as OneDrive for business.
http://saveie6.com/
Ok, time to try OO again. LO has become increasingly annoying, failing to implement simple features from MS Office that existed in year 2005, while declaring all bug reports to be "enhancements" that will never be fixed, and making the UI ever worse.
Checkout https://www.collaboraoffice.com/code/ to get LibreOffice running in your browser with Nextcloud, ownCloud and many others =)