OpenOffice Is Now, Officially, Apache OpenOffice 266
rbowen writes "Apache OpenOffice has graduated from the Incubator, and now is officially a top-level project at the Apache Software Foundation." From the announcement: "As with all Apache software, Apache OpenOffice software is released under the Apache License v2.0, and is overseen by a self-selected team of active contributors to the project. A Project Management Committee (PMC) guides the Project's day-to-day operations, including community development and product releases. Information on Apache OpenOffice source code, documentation, mailing lists, related resources, and ways to participate are available at http://openoffice.apache.org." (Download mirror on Sourceforge, too.)
Re:who cares? (Score:2, Interesting)
It's true that those looking inward who refer to themselves as "we all" might have moved elsewhere. Me, I've still got all my users on OpenOffice. I'm willing to bet I made the right decision... (I already bet my reputation at work on it)
The problem with FOSS office suites (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with F/OSS office suites is that their audience tends to be uncritical, so much as in the fairy tale "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" (but in inverse), professionals have stopped listening.
I remember at least three incidents where I was instructed to evaluate Open Office, Libre Office or other F/OSS word processing or layout packages. In each instance, the F/OSS products fell short in fundamental ways, and were a total disaster for larger documents. Their main strength was that it was often easier to export data from them than it was in certain commercial products.
The point of this is that in order for one of these FOSS office suites to survive, people who are critical and have use requirements beyond short documents get involved. For these packages to be competitive, they need to rise to a higher standard than Grandma's recipes, Son's book report, a weekend memo to the boss, etc.
Re:who cares? (Score:2, Interesting)
we all moved to LibreOffice
Who is "we"? Here's what I see:
Apache OpenOffice claims 20 million downloads of OpenOffice.
LibreOffice claims 20 million downloads of LibreOffice.
So they are equal, yes?
However, take a closer look. Apache had its first release just back in May, so they have 20 million downloads in *4 months*. Compare that to LibreOffice's 20 million downloads in *2 years*.
You bet on the faster horse. The one with the little head start was just passed.
Re:who cares? (Score:5, Interesting)
20 million since when exactly?
You can see the details here: http://www.openoffice.org/stats/ [openoffice.org]
I find it interesting that Apache gives the details to support their download numbers while LibreOffice merely waves their hands and makes claims.
Re:The problem with FOSS office suites (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if the problem isn't more that people are failing to recognize that there are different audiences with different needs. For example in office suites, there are loads of people who just need a decent work processor for typing up simple documents, and then there are people who really want integration between their word processor, spreadsheet editor, and groupware client, and groupware server. The latter audience may be well served by going with the full MS Office/MS Exchange combination, and that keeps a lot of people using MS Office.
It reminds me of an argument between a GIMP fan and a Photoshop fan. The Photoshop user was saying, "GIMP is terrible because it doesn't have good support for CMYK." and the GIMP user responded by saying, "Well nobody actually uses CMYK, but GIMP lets me script things easily, so GIMP is much better!" These two users were talking past each other, failing to recognize that each had probably chosen their solution well.
Re:who cares? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why would you bet your reputation on an office suite?
The nature of software changes rather fast. A perfectly logical and reasonable choice 6 months ago, today may be a bad decision.
When .NET started to get popular, I recommended that they if they are going to go with .NET they should do VB.NET not C#.NET because at the time more people knew VB over C# (in the current area). However after taking that direction in about a year C#.NET became more dominant. Mainly because colleges who taught Java liked doing C# more and didn't bother with VB any more.
OK I was wrong, but my reputation wasn't affected, why? Because I try to be right more than I am wrong, I had a good reasoning behind my decision. However this industry changes, we get factors such as change in college course changes, software delivery methods, Economic pressures, Mistakes made from other companies, unexpected success...
For Open Office vs Libre Office vs Microsoft Office. I wouldn't put my reputation behind it. Ok LibreOffice got popular but Open Office isn't that much better or worse so it may not be worth it to change.
Re:The problem with FOSS office suites (Score:5, Interesting)
OTOH, I have "saved" several Word/Excel documents that had become too corrupted to be used in Microsoft Office. All I had to do was load them in OpenOffice and then save them with a different name, and they suddenly worked again in MS Office.
Re:Why choose OO over LO? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, maybe I can clear this up. You see, they're both Open Source, but OpenOffice.org required code writing contributors (like me) to jump through hoops and assign my copyright over to the OpenOffice.org folks (Oracle), or else my contributions were denied. LibreOffice doesn't require copyright assignment to accept my contributions. So, that means it's easier to contribute to LibreOffice, and it gets updates faster. So, OpenOffice.org is missing some things that LibreOffice has. Bonus, because they're both from a common code-base, LibreOffice can just pull in anything that OpenOffice has -- The requirement of OO.o's copyright assignment meant that they could not incorporate LO code though. When Oracle decided to kill off the development of OO.o, instead of just gifting the name / trademark over to the newly forked LO folks (where most of the developers went) they gave us all the finger one more time for good measure by making OO.o an Apache project. I don't know if the Official Apache oversight of the project now means they're doing away with copyright assignments, nor do I care at this point. The name itself brings back infuriating memories of frustration and wasted efforts squandered on bureaucracy. LibreOffice already exists, so if it weren't for the older install base, it would be complete waste of time to re-do the work of merging the code back into OpenOffice.org... From a developer's perspective it IS a complete waste of time. That and there's the trademark issue where OpenOffice is owned by someone else, so you have to say OpenOffice.org when you're talking about it.
TL;DR: Stay with LO, it's actually better and not a waste of time like OO.org is.
OpenOffice dot org? (Score:5, Interesting)
Speaking of names, is it actually "Apache OpenOffice" now? That would be an improvement over calling an office suite by the name of its website, "OpenOffice.org".
I mean, did anybody ever call it "Open Office dot org"? Judging by the comments in this thread, no.
Same for Postgres / PostgreSQL ("post greh ess queue elle").
Re:Posting test cases (Score:4, Interesting)
That's a great idea! Let's think it through, however. I don't own the data; that belongs to the client. Thus, I have to be somewhat vague.
You couldn't modify the example enough to use the documents already examined in your tests? Or, if the problem was a missing feature instead of a bug, you couldn't explain it without that specific set of spreadsheet data?
I'm available for consulting at my usual rate -- my contact should be on my user page.
So you're saying that you don't volunteer your time to someone's project. Pay to play, right?
From your journal post earlier today:
Despite having other demands on my time, I've begun spending a half-hour or so every day making submissions to Slashdot and trying to write quality comments. I am doing this because I think Slashdot is an important part of the internet, which like other forms of media, for good or ill is a part of our "culture."...It's not perfect...I've been modded -1, Flamebait for a post I thought was insightful too. Nothing is perfect...Support Slashdot. With your energy, time, money, whatever. It's worth it.
Hold on now. If you're willing to take that stance regarding Slashdot, why not just be honest about F/OSS office suites? You don't care about them and have no interest in seeing them succeed. There really is nothing wrong with that position.
Re:The problem with FOSS office suites (Score:2, Interesting)
I have published a couple of books in Create Space using OO and Libre Office to create the interior PDFs. I used templates supplied by Create Space that were intended for MS Word. The documents were both several hundred pages and included illustrations. I used The Gimp to create front and back cover images and free fonts from Font Squirrel for the title fonts. OO worked perfectly. I would not hesitate to recommend it to anyone publishing a print on demand book.