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Apache OpenOffice, the Schrodinger's Application: No One Knows If It's Dead or Alive, No One Really Wants To Look Inside (theregister.co.uk)
British IT news outlet The Register looks at the myriad of challenges Apache OpenOffice faces today. From the report: Last year Brett Porter, then chairman of the Apache Software Foundation, contemplated whether a proposed official blog post on the state of Apache OpenOffice (AOO) might discourage people from downloading the software due to lack of activity in the project. No such post from the software's developers surfaced. The languid pace of development at AOO, though, has been an issue since 2011 after Oracle (then patron of the project) got into a fork-fight with The Document Foundation, which created LibreOffice from the OpenOffice codebase, and asked developers backing the split to resign.
Back in 2015, Red Hat developer Christian Schaller called OpenOffice "all but dead." Assertions to that effect have continued since, alongside claims to the contrary. Almost a year ago, Jim Jagielski, a member of the Apache OpenOffice Project Management Committee, insisted things were going well and claimed there was renewed interest in the project. For all the concern about AOO, no issues have been raised recently before the Apache Foundation board to suggest ongoing difficulties. The project is due to provide an update this month, according to a spokesperson for the foundation.
Back in 2015, Red Hat developer Christian Schaller called OpenOffice "all but dead." Assertions to that effect have continued since, alongside claims to the contrary. Almost a year ago, Jim Jagielski, a member of the Apache OpenOffice Project Management Committee, insisted things were going well and claimed there was renewed interest in the project. For all the concern about AOO, no issues have been raised recently before the Apache Foundation board to suggest ongoing difficulties. The project is due to provide an update this month, according to a spokesperson for the foundation.
Do they have an official build manager yet? Last that I remember was that they couldn't get a compiled version out the door because no one was left who knew how to build it.
Sorry Oracle but you are almost as bad for open source projects as M$.
Might it just be (gasp) finished?
Forks and derivative software
Well that looks like a mess! At least the re-mergers keep it from being a 100% textbook case of the xkcd on standards?
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This Space Intentionally Left Blank
For all the concern about AOO, no issues have been raised recently before the Apache Foundation board to suggest ongoing difficulties.
I think it would have to have some remaining users to have issues filed, wouldn't it?
Everyone switched to libre. Why should anyone care about it? Is it somehow better than LO? If you want us to care, convince us it is worth caring,. WTF with the privileged pity party.
Oracle has the Reverse Midas Touch. Everything Oracle touches turns to shit.
The wasted effort over multiple open office suites when we need a united front to counter the MS-Office behemoth. Thanks for keeping Microsoft's monopoly in the enterprise going.
Almost a year ago, Jim Jagielski, a member of the Apache OpenOffice Project Management Committee, insisted things were going well and claimed there was renewed interest in the project.
It's dead Jim.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Considering the LibreOffice success, why would OpenOffice continue?
Isn't one of the beauties of open source it's resilience when something becomes abandonware?
OpenOffice is dead... long live LibreOffice... or Neo... or whatever it's called....
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
As it stands, I don't even know what they would even *claim* to offer over LibreOffice, they haven't exactly conveyed anything except 'well we aren't dead yet', so I have no idea why I should even think about caring at this point.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Schrodinger doesn't actually possess the application so it should be "...The Schrondiger Application..." as in an adjective modifying the noun application...
nothing to see here - move along
LibreOffice is working fine and does not come with the baggage idiots playing politics have attached to OpenOffice. This is one fork that worked as it should: With all the smart and competent moving to the fork and leaving the idiots behind to fail as they deserve.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Waste Of Money, Brains, and Time.
There's little point in keeping it alive. But I guess everybody has to have a hobby.
It IS dead. Way back when the split happened all of the open source loving folks in my circle switched to LibreOffice, or started using Google Docs. No one I know still uses OpenOffice anymore.
Truly gay
Those that download OpenOffice are people that have not heard of LibreOffice.
What keeps the downloads of OpenOffice is the legacy name.
The development of OpenOffice has effectively stopped.
The people that offer to help OpenOffice are not experienced programmers.
They suggest to help with documentation and still the OpenOffice documentation is so out of date.
I still use OpenOffice Calc 4.1.5 on a daily basis to keep job book. I always download each LibreOffice, but have not taken the time to switch over. I always put work I get paid for at the top of my list ;) The one thing I do know is I will not use any online cloud based product, pointing at you Adobe DC, Microsoft Office local install or Microsoft O365 or Google docs in running my business.
;)
OpenOffice vs LibreOffice I am agnostic they are just tools. And I don't get paid to fiddle with tools I just use them to do work.
Just my 2 cents
Oracle killed it. OpenOffice never existed. It was called OpenOffice.org. Remember that? They named the software after the website. LibreOffice doesn't do that.
Hasn't OpenOffice effectively already been replaced by LibreOffice?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
The biggest weakness I've seen with OOO and its offspring is in the lack of VBA support. That's admittedly a very weak argument since very few people care about VBA. That said, if you feel like Microsoft hasn't done much with office other than make icons look prettier (and I think the vast majority of Office users fall into this category), then AOO/LibreOffice is a no brainer.
That is, until you see that you can get just about the same functionality and in some ways more from either MS or Google for free without ever downloading a thing.
I used to tell everyone who wanted MSOffice for basic usage to save their $300 and download OpenOffice for free. Now I just tell them to go to drive.google.com and create whatever they want there.
Features can go OO->LO but not the other way around.
The upside is that you could imbed OO into your own product.
Stable software should not need continual development.
People think that applications need to under continual development of they are "dead"? This is part of the problem with software today.
Code is all about doing something once, so the machine can repeat it endlessly for you. Continually re-writing your code is pretty dumb.
Not under active development does not mean dead. It fucking means complete.
Sorry guys, that was just me looking to see whether it was still possible to convert 15 year old files from .SDW format to .ODT when I transferred old data to a new PC.
When the project arrived in Apache Foundation's hands, LibreOffice had already started moving forward and improving...
Instead of trying to catch up, they started to change the code to replace GPL parts with non-GPL for political reasons, resulting in being even more late in the race.
Most developpers saw an active community, working on improving a tool and another one who was fiddling around, doing some pointless work... and those who wanted to improve OpenOffice went to the most active one : LibreOffice.
Add to that that most Linux distribution include LibreOffice as default Office application (not AOO)... and most users also switched to LibreOffice...
Apache could have managed to get OpenOffice back to it's feet back when the project was transferred to them, by acting quickly and starting to improve it... but they wasted too much time... Now, I think that it's too late... They will never catch up on LibreOffice and IMHO, with time, more and more people will leave AOO... both users and developpers.
My needs office suite wise are very light. I don't have a job that requires the use of one, and I am long past school age (and not going back). Essentially, I've got a novel I've been working on for the last 20 years or so that I add a paragraph or two to (No, I don't expect to finish, it's just a very occasional hobby), and I need it to read the occasional document someone sends me. That's mostly it. There are perhaps a few extra things I use it for that aren't coming to mind immediately, but it is not one of the most used programs on my PC by a longshot.
Actually, I use wordpad more. Office suites kind of impose formatting and such on things, and I'm not good with spreadsheets. So, if I'm doing a very simple household budget or something of that nature, text files and a calculator app are really all I need and what I am most comfortable with.
So, from a word processor perspective, I like the idea of something I know how to use and don't have to spend time relearning constantly when I only actually use the thing occasionally. I've got it set to the font size and line spacing I want, and just go from there.
Obviously, for my use case, and being someone without much in the way of financial means, Microsoft Word would be overkill. Google Office is cloud base, and I prefer a program. So, the choice narrows to LibreOffice and or OpenOffice very quickly. OpenOffice stays familiar to me and meets my needs. Most of LibreOffice's improvements come to the parts of the office suite I don't use at all, and the talk of changes like adding a ribbon to the word processor are exactly what I don't want in an office suite- I use it so rarely that relearning how to use it every time I open a document is not ideal. Plus, I don't like ribbon interfaces in general. I feel like most UIs were about where I wanted them when they had a file menu and so forth, and adapt software through options and add-ons to get back to that place whenever possible.
I think there is a place in the market for a word processor that just continues to do what it does and look how it looks. Actually, with regular security and bug fixes, if the UI and other elements stay the same, it could turn into the most reliable word processor out there. The major changes to other suites result in a whole raft of new bugs and security issues, whereas a relatively stable program could just fix existing security and stability issues without introducing new ones and thus wind up safer and less buggy, comparatively speaking.
In addition to security and stability patches, such a word processor, basically OpenOffice as it seems to exist, needs to make sure it is compatible with the latest operating systems and document formats. If it can do those four things, I could see it being the best choice for a lot of people who have relatively simple needs when it comes to this stuff, and who value stability. Optionally, a fifth category people always like is improvements under the room (less disk use, less ram use, faster load times, etc.).
The one big concern I have is that sometimes it seems as though there may be no one manning the ship over at OO. I hope that if it falls too much behind on fixing known security issues, someone will let the users like myself who are hanging on know that it's over, so we can move to an office suite that gets continued support. I would imagine if it comes to that point, I would switch to LibreOffice, as that seems the easiest transition to make, and maybe a good solution if it comes to it would just be to give the OO domain to LO and have it be agreed that will issue an upgrade to OO users to an OO branded version of the latest LO release, and just have them be one suite with two names available from the same people.
For now, though, this whole situation is what open-source software is supposed to be all about- a project that's forked into two branches, resulting in (perhaps unintentionally), one piece of software that attempts to be cutting edge in design and features, and another with a classic
Only idiots who don't know what LibreOffice is still thinks it's a thing.
Not quite. For code that must be compiled before installation, there is the need to maintain the code even if nothing changes. Programming standards change and what was once legal may not be so later on.
They chose to become a foundation encompassing all (java) web applications, then (java) webservers, then (java) search engines, then (java) office suites. They made it ideological with their license design and relicensing attempts, then stretched themselves too thin by not looking at what community they were trying to cater to. As a result they got lots of funding, but have been steadily losing developers for years. Going all-in on java didn't help them, then allowing harmony to whither and die before reaching feature completion made things worse again. And then taking on Open Office. All the while Apache has been getting pushed out of web servers by nginx and other lighter web servers, who literally took over the niche apache once had, becoming the competitor Apache was too old and slow and bloated to be.
https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/89256/does-libreoffice-snoop-on-users-documents-really/
It's just resting.
Put a "Smokey the Bear" hat on it and call it "Carl"!