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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.
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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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.
Sorry Oracle but you are almost as bad for open source projects as M$.
Yea, just look at what they did for Solaris.....
Look, Oracle is out to make money, no more, no less. If FOSS helps, they will support it, if FOSS isn't helping them make money, they are going to ignore it. I'm guessing Open Office falls in the latter category, while Java in the former (not that Java is Free Open Source Software, just traditionally free).
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
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.
Look, Oracle is out to make money, no more, no less.
They are also seeking a Sith apprentice to work with Lord Ellison.
Oracle doesn't want to deal with the consumer market or the small business market. They want the big contracts.
Java, helps them with that, because Java is still the "Enterprise" Programming language. So the big dev shops still use Java.
OpenOffice though, those are just for people who are too cheap to use MS Office, besides LibreOffice took over so there is even less intensive.
Solaris and the UltraSparc platform by the time Oracle bought them was already on it way out. It was a great architecture, however (Linux/Windows)+Intel PC Servers just offered more bang for the buck. And most UltraSparc users were just using them to run Oracle anyways.
Oracle probably prevented Solaris and Java from falling off the map, because Sun Micosystem probably wouldn't had survived for today.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
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
WW2 was sort of like if Larry Ellison owned a country.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
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.
Sorry Oracle but you are almost as bad for open source projects as M$.
Look, Oracle is out to make money, no more, no less. If FOSS helps, they will support it, if FOSS isn't helping them make money, they are going to ignore it.
History shows that when they buy a company making money off of FOSS, they change all the policies to be anti-FOSS and happily stop making that money.
Oracle cares where their money comes from. If it doesn't come from doing Evil, they don't want it to tarnish them. They would sooner cut off their hands than accept money from FOSS.
If I see an executable named "ooffice" it is a symlink to libreoffice, and that's exactly how Oracle wants the world to be.
Larry Ellison fires employees for saying "hi" to him. People who claim that a company he runs only cares about money are living in an Ayn Rand fantasy world where being rich and powerful guarantees logical action. In the real world, some companies are run by spoiled adult children who care more about being seen as powerful and in control than they care about making money for their investors. It isn't like he personally would make less money one way or the other, his compensation is based on industry norms for a rising gap between executive and worker pay.
Too cheap? How about smart enough to know that paying for basic local word-processing applications is crazy?
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.
Look, Oracle is out to make money, no more, no less. If FOSS helps, they will support it,
If FOSS helps Oracle make money, then Oracle will try to find a way to possess it. I say that based on their history.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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.
Put a "Smokey the Bear" hat on it and call it "Carl"!