Apache insists OpenOffice is alive, well, and flush
The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has sought to downplay fears over the future of OpenOffice, following a rather dramatic statement from original members of the team, begging for donations. Shane Curcuru, one of the mentors on the Apache OpenOffice podling, told The Register that the ASF was continuing development of the …
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Compatability
seems to have gone out of the Window.
My Oracle version of OO 3.3 running on Windows XP can open MS Powerpoint presentations and allow me to work on them, but these cannot afterwards be opened with MS Powerpoint or Powerpoint Viewer on Windows 7.
Progress ?
Alfazed.
You should try LO. OOo hasn't been updated for many months.
Choice
I don't mind in the slightest if both OpenOffice and LibreOffice are succesful, or if they diverge. I suspect that both will benefit a bit from M$'s continual tinkering with its user interface.
Both have rough edges to be removed, but I wish both of them well.
Still using OpenOffice..
I'm just slow to change - OpenOffice worked just fine..
Rising contributors
I wouldn't be surprised to see more contributions with it having moved to Apache. I expect some people are now contributing to Open and Libre.
I jumped to LibreOffice with their first release, if only to try out the new formula editor. Mostly though the biggest impact has been typing localc instead of socalc (or was it oocalc?) to run Calc.
Still looks like a code dump to me. Is Apache planning to wait until LO has 8 to 10 releases under its belt and three new platforms (Android, iOS, and browser-based) before "competing"?
As a user of LibreOffice
I wish the best of luck to OpenOffice and waiting for any improvement fix or innovation so we can have it imported/merged in LibreOffice.
Of course the whole work of the DF on LibreOffice is available for OpenOffice if their Apache license would allow it.
So far the best bet is to move to or stay with LO since they will always be able to match OO functionality.
@if their Apache license would allow it
An Apache license allows you to take the code, with few if any obligations.
A GPL allows you to take the code, but you have to respect GPL's redistribution clauses.
So, while the Apache license allows a GPL app to benefit from it, the reverse is hardly true. An Apache app would be violating the GPL license by using GPL code under an Apache context.
If I my license says I give my code away freely, you have few conditions to meet. If your license puts conditions that I am not willing to meet on the reverse, you can hardly "blame" my license for not letting me benefit from your code. That's basically saying I can use your code, as long as I use your license, a condition that I did not put on my own code.
Not dissing the GPL, but flames are still expected.
Having said that, all the best to both. Sun & Oracle were not the greatest sponsors and I need a way to avoid the #*%)~ Office ribbon ;-)
OpenOffice works.
I tried LibreOffice, and had a few problems with getting it to open a file in Windows. The Linux version was fine. That's one of the reasons I started using OpenOffice, the same program for both Windows and Linux, so I switched back to OpenOffice.
Addition
To add a minor correction - search and replace can replace with nothing, but not if you've also selected an alternative, - you can't select nothing from the drop down list. Software should really focus on the most commonly used tools, and really polish those, rather than adding new bells and whistles.
If users are frustrated by commonly used features, they will abandon you.
Finally, many thanks to the open office / libre office developers! And Linux too ;-)
Why would you want to select nothing from a drop down list?
Anything but Microsoft
Having been forced to use Microsoft's latest version due to a system upgrade at work I've come to appreciate the more rational interface of Open Office more.
Many of us users just want it as a word processor for typing simple letters & reports. We don't need to wade through lots of irrelevant functionality to do the basics.
So long as Libra/Open Offices don't go too far chasing Microsoft's version of a usable interface they will have plenty of users between them.
Libre Office for me
Open Office has been stagnating, Libre Office is hopefully continuing to move much faster.
I've edited my Novel on Open Office and now LibreOffice with Language Tools.
If I had to change things, it's attention to detail about how dragging text works - please insert spaces correctly!
And the annoying inability to add a word to a dictionary (in linux) without a short cut for add to standard dic. You have to use a mouse.
The find / replace is limited and this is used intesively by me. For example, you can't have nothing as a replace, so if I want to replace wanted with "want" I have to use the mouse to click on the word and edit.
It's attention to detail, the little things, that make a program a joy to use.
Also, the formatting is screwed up when reading MS documents. As usual. And more speed is needed when opening the application.
It's 2011 - it shouldn't take several seconds to open an app! Grrrrr
But two programs competing, Open Office and Libre Office, is healthy. Competition will mean that progress is faster, and finally developers can get involved, hopefully. They were excluded before.
Mobile versions?
Until I can get a mobile version for Android (for iOS too tho I don't use it atm) I'm not getting excited by OO/LO.
There is some development in LO to that end, but the Ios toolchain seems to be hampering things there
Maybe if they put as much energy into coding as they do into forking-related politics then OpenOffice and its variants wouldn't suck as much as they currently do.
Flush as in toilet ...
I guess either way we can be glad we've got an open source alternative on Linux, Mac and Windows. Don't wanna flame or anything, I ran office 2007 on Linux using Wine (I only use Linux personally but fix Windows boxes for my sins), I have to admit I quite liked it. Is that wrong? ;-)
Oh just an aside why can't one post a comment using 'The Registers' Android app? Seems a bit boff to me, unless I'm missing something?
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