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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.
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?
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. . . .
Look, Oracle is out to make money, no more, no less.
They are also seeking a Sith apprentice to work with Lord Ellison.
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.
Depends on what you mean by finished?
LibreOffice has added more Calc functions than AOO. LO also has patched up UNO allowing for faster run and has added wrappers for VBA scripts into UNO calls. OOXML support in AAO is horrible, LO has greatly improved OOXML since the split. The backends for Base in LO is moving away from Java, slowly, but eventually Java will not be needed unless you need JDBC connectivity. LO included recent ODF updates that allow font embedding in documents, AOO lacks this ability. AOO is using the old IBM Symphony libs for the sidebar and some other UI elements. LO has redone these to move away from the dependency on IBM libs. IBM has also deprecated those libs.
So yeah AOO might be finished and focuses on just polishing the features they have, but at the same time LO is adding features which because of the licensing differences between the two any LO updates cannot be imported into AOO. But any AOO updates can be merged into LO.
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
I have a 10 year old computer that used to lag running OO, but the past few years it runs libreoffice without any problems.
The thing Sun wrote was bloated and slow. OO added a lot of features. LO is basically "finished" IMO.
One of the great things about IBM, when their old software sucks, they deprecate it. There was a time they were even bribing their professional services clients to switch from AIX to Linux, because AIX didn't have any use case other than "change is hard." Not very much of the software I use is from IBM, but when it is I welcome it. They don't always have my interests in mind, but that's OK because they're honest about their technology in a way that few companies are. I'm not going to use DB2, but they don't try to force me; their stuff integrates fine with PostgreSQL! $lt;3 But yeah, let Lotus Symphony die. There are still people who love Lotus Notes, which is fine for them, but who loves Lotus Symphony? It was like Geocities website builder but for creating proprietary apps. That works better for having semi-technical people write custom report apps than for real software that would get distributed.