Open Office might be fading

[lexon]

http://www.networkworld.com/article/311 ... picks=true

Have to alert friends who I convinced to download OO sometime ago. They would not switch to Linux but happy with the App so far.

L

[jimallyn]

Tell them to install LibreOffice.

[InkKnife]

OO.o was doomed once LibreOffice took off. The problem is licensing. It was a collision of licenses that was very much in favor of LibreOffice. LO is GPL, OO.o is Apache. This meant that the LO devs could freely incorporate any OO code into LO but OO could not incorporate code from LO because of the viral nature of the GPL.
If they had had compatible licenses the competition would have continued but when the code can only flow one way there can be only one in the end. Never did like OO, it smelled like Oracle.

[Fred Barclay]

Now you've depressed me! I hate it when anyone's project dies...

I never tried OO but I'm grateful for all the contributions they've made. Without 'em we wouldn't have LibreOffice.

[sphyrth]

Without [OpenOffice] we wouldn't have LibreOffice.

Umm... Isn't Apache OpenOffice the very reason we have LibreOffice?
Anyway, I also find it sad that projects like these die out.

To think that Open Source projects aren't easy to kill.

[Portreve]

A friend of mine in Germany was still using some God-only-knows what version of OO. When I found this out, I pointed her to the LO website, and she downloaded the (then) latest version, and was quite happy.

[xenopeek]

Umm... Isn't Apache OpenOffice the very reason we have LibreOffice?

Nope. LibreOffice predates Apache OpenOffice.

Basically Sun and later Oracle mismanaged the OpenOffice project, making it hard if not impossible for developers and others outside those companies to contribute to OpenOffice and play a role in the decision making process. This culminated in the eventual formation of The Document Foundation as a home for the LibreOffice project, a fork of OpenOffice born out of the frustration of its developers. Most outside developers quickly moved to LibreOffice and later Oracle laid off its own remaining OpenOffice developers. As Oracle had contractual obligations to IBM regarding OpenOffice they donated it to the Apache Foundation where mostly IBM developers continued to work on it (as IBM had contractual obligations to its customers). Over time development of OpenOffice has continued to decline to the point where now the Apache Foundation has put the project on monthly report for its inability to handle security issues. This leading to the discussion if the project shouldn't be finally closed.

The history of Apache OpenOffice explains as much: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_OpenOffice#History

If you're interested in more look up the history of StarOffice, OpenOffice, LibreOffice, and The Document Foundation on wikipedia.

[InkKnife]

On the bright side: IBM will continue to need a native Linux office suite so they will in all likelihood switch their professional developers from OO to LO.
I love the diversity of the FOSS software world but a platform really needs a great office suite so maybe having all the energy that was split between the two combined into LO will help LO in their long quest to catch up with MS Office. I have heard quite a few people say that they would love to use Linux full time but the office suite situation prevented them from doing that.
Personally I know nothing about Office suites. My background is in printing and when I want to make a complex document I use a page layout application and "print" to PDF for distribution.

Pro tip: If you are preparing a document to be output somewhere else, always use Print to PDF instead of saving as a PDF. This flattens the file and gets rid of practically all specific application weirdness or incompatibility.

[kyphi]

The article on "The Document Foundation" published by Wikipedia sums it up very nicely but one has to be able to "read between the lines".
I remember only too well reading about the restrictive actions imposed on its developers by Oracle leading to their mass exodus and the formation of a new beginning.
Add to that when a request was made to retain the OpenOffice.org name because it was established and widely known, it was ignored. Hence a new name was found: LibreOffice.

The Apache foundation is reported to have only six developers left to maintain or develop OpenOffice.

LibreOffice has undergone a radical change regarding its code base and bears little resemblance to the original OpenOffice.org.

There is no quest to "catch up" to MS Office. LibreOffice has gone far beyond that. Think of how many countries in the world have switched from MS Office to LIbreOffice.

One of the reasons as to why MS Office is dominant is that it was deemed to be financially expedient by IT departments of corporations to consolidate support to only one office suite and that saw the demise of Lotus and WordPerfect in these organisations.

[sphyrth]

Putting the great historical trivias aside, it's just sad to know that the real reason for AOO's slow development cycle is that they were slow to fix rather than slow to update.

Quick question, though: Is this one reason Open Source projects die - people stop coding (Yeah, I know it's oversimplification, but still)?

[kyphi]

History is never trivial since it can explain the reason for where we are today.

"Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it" (ascribed to Edmund Burke in the 1700s).

There are many programs that have been abandoned and new ones have emerged often based on the same foundation code. To answer your question, yes, people stop coding. There are other things in life beside writing code for free.

[Fred Barclay]

Quick question, though: Is this one reason Open Source projects die - people stop coding (Yeah, I know it's oversimplification, but still)?

Yes. It's actually not an oversimplification at all. People move on, they develop other interests, and so their projects stall or die.

If the code is open-source and interesting enough, there will often be a new maintainer to step into the gap. If it's closed source or no one is interested in continuing it, the project dies.

[Alexiy]

I'm not sad. I have used both OO and LO and chose LO because OO was more buggy and I couldn't get it in my language.

[InkKnife]

The article on "The Document Foundation" published by Wikipedia sums it up very nicely but one has to be able to "read between the lines".
I remember only too well reading about the restrictive actions imposed on its developers by Oracle leading to their mass exodus and the formation of a new beginning.
Add to that when a request was made to retain the OpenOffice.org name because it was established and widely known, it was ignored. Hence a new name was found: LibreOffice.

The Apache foundation is reported to have only six developers left to maintain or develop OpenOffice.

LibreOffice has undergone a radical change regarding its code base and bears little resemblance to the original OpenOffice.org.

There is no quest to "catch up" to MS Office. LibreOffice has gone far beyond that. Think of how many countries in the world have switched from MS Office to LIbreOffice.

One of the reasons as to why MS Office is dominant is that it was deemed to be financially expedient by IT departments of corporations to consolidate support to only one office suite and that saw the demise of Lotus and WordPerfect in these organisations.

I strongly dislike Microsoft and use none of their products.
That being said, the reason the MS office suite of applications is so dominant is because they are integrated better and a business can "buy" a turn key, fully compliance audited, back office to front desk system on the MS platform in a way it is harder to do with Linux.
A similar comparison can be made between GIMP and Photoshop. Both are powerful image editors, only one is part of a fully integrated, production quality graphics and publishing suite that is tightly integrated.
LibreOffice is a great product, so is the GIMP but they both lack the kind of ecosystem integration that MS office or Photoshop have.

[Portreve]

My present job requires me to trade in MS Office documents; particularly Excel and Word. LibreOffice Calc and Writer, respectively, work perfectly in this regard, and enable me to do these tasks.

It would be great, from my perspective, if TDF started focusing on other MS Office program replacements, particularly note-taking and project development.

[sphyrth]

FUD Over

[Tomgin5]

I never had any problem with Open office and had 3 different suites of it in the computer i used at home from 2007-2015. It ran ME then XP Pro.
I did a lot of writing on them. I started to download one into LM17.3 because I liked it so much then I noticed they were so similar. LibreOffice is a bit more stable.

[thom_A]

I stuck with Open Office even when Libre Office was reaching high profile state because OO seemed more accurate when it came to opening MS Word documents, ie, rows and columns were in the right places in tables, etc. I was running them both in Windows back then. Since that was a long time ago and don't use office apps that much anymore, I have welcomed Libre Office as my office app alternative and just assumed Libre Office had fixed those issues. Not to mention having learned that OO is no longer developed and maintained on a regular basis. I can always go back to using OO if needed. I still have copies of its installation files.

[Reorx]

FUD Over

To paraphrase Monty Python and the Holy Grail - "It''s not quite dead yet..."

[lexon]

"Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there's usually only one thing you can do."
lol

I am sure Open Office will be around for a while.
Told my MS friends just to get LibreOffice. They are not into looking around for Apps.
I started using LibreOffice with Mint up grades. It has got better over time.

L