back to article OpenOffice.org site goes offline, Oracle declines to comment

Two URLs including the OpenOffice.org domain owned by software giant Oracle are currently displaying error messages, but the Larry Ellison-run company is declining to explain why the sites are down. The openjdk.java.net is also currently failing to load. Both sites carry the same "Error 503 – service unavailable" message, and …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    java.sun.com

    is also down and has been for some time. "Unbreakable Oracle" ? :-P

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Facepalm

      Re: java.sun.com

      Perhaps the acquisition of BEA is truly complete and Oracle, having ruined something else which used to work, will be off to buy another Java application server provider.

  2. John Gaunt

    Now an Outage Message

    The URL http://openoffice.org/ now redirects to http://www.oracle.com/splash/www/index.html. That page has a more official-looking outage message that reads as follows:

    This site is experiencing technical difficulty. We are aware of the issue and are working as quick as possible to correct the issue. Please try again in a few moments.

    We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

    To speak with an Oracle sales representative: 1.800.ORACLE1.

    To contact Oracle Corporate Headquarters from anywhere in the world: 1.650.506.7000.

    To get technical support in the United States: 1.800.633.0738.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Mushroom

    Meh

    I thought anyone with an ounce of common moved to LibreOffice ages ago. I work with Oracle DBs but Larry, with his treatment of FOSS, can go take long walk on a short pier!

  4. davenewman

    The site has been falling over for a couple of weeks

    In particular, pages giving openoffice extensions have often failed to return quickly enough.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Upgrading?

    I have Open Office 3.2 installed.

    Can I upgrade to Libre Office 3.3 by installing over the top, or do I have to remove Open Office and install from scratch?

    Are there any functionality differences between Libre Office 3.3 and whatever the latest version of Open Office is?

    1. Scott Broukell
      Thumb Up

      you can even ...

      install them side by side no probs.

    2. Andus McCoatover
      Windows

      Depends I guess on your OS.

      Functionality-wise, I've not found any differences.Of course, I haven't used all the functionality that either provides. I guess I'm not alone.

      Upgrade experience? With Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty) for me the transition was completely seamless. I DID upDATE the entire OS ("sudo apt-get update && apt-get -y upgrade" mantra), but the thing went flawlessly.

      YMMV, and all them four-letter acronyms that geeks use.

      (Used to be TLA - Three Letter Acronym, then ETLA - Extended TLA. Gets worse. GSM --> CDMA? Get the drift?)

    3. Dave Bell

      What matters is trust

      If it's some technical failure there are ways of telling people. All sorts of companies are using Twitter and Facebook as ways of getting info out.

      Something like this, you expect something. How long before it starts to look bad (and timezones are a factor here) if nothing comes out but rumours, that's your choice.

      But the whole OpenOffice business is starting to look odd. Trouble is, putting together fragments like these is a good way to come up with conspiracy theories.

    4. Captain TickTock
      Trollface

      You can do that?

      I've never installed OpenOffice over a previous version. I've always tended to de-install and re-install. I think you used to have to, and I've just been in the habit.

      LibreOffice seem to load so much quicker, as you don't have an Oracle logo to look at ;-)

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Is Oracle deliberately trying to out-dick Apple?

    You can wonder if Apple are acting like dicks or just being oblivious to their customers, but Oracle is very clear about it.

    1. asdf

      at least

      Apple gives you a supposedly great experience as they drain your bank account. Oracle's experience is more akin to prison rape I suppose.

  7. Sir Alien
    Flame

    Floats for them servers...

    According to some noise on the interwebs it is due to a flood at the datacentre where all those sites are hosted.

    Would've thought they plan for things such as excess water

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Holmes

      the 'open' sites are not in production labs

      Anything that wasn't in the commercial interest of Oracle were moved to a lab in Santa Clara, one that wasn't fit for use for the number of systems being loaded into it. Also, there was no/very limited UPS power. Some of the systems had failover sites, but many did not. Note that all of the opensolaris.org systems are still unavailable, too. Totally expected this would happen at some point, just glad I'm not on the pager.

  8. big

    Problems with building cooling

    From Oracle:

    We are experiencing some problems with building cooling and had an emergency shutdown of many machines in our lab, including the openjdk machines that handle the repositories and mailing lists.

    http://blogs.oracle.com/kto/entry/openjdk_systems_down

  9. Ben 56
    Megaphone

    Netbeans.org is also down

    Conspiracy theories can stop now, seems like Netbeans is down too, unless the conspriracy is regarding all Oracle FOSS....

  10. MooseNC
    Devil

    And soon...

    The website will say;

    "

    (ORACLE LOGO)

    Dear consumer,

    You owe us billions of dollars for caching the image above.

    If you have questions, look down and say the name "Larry Ellison" three times while sacrificing a newborn kitten.

  11. John F***ing Stepp

    Must be the hackers again.

    Hey guys, how do you start a flood?

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It figures...

    Ever since Oracle took over I've been working very hard to move everything over to other environments. My 2 Solaris 10 (low budget) company servers are now Win2k3 servers, outside Internet hosting servers have always been Linux, no issues there, and well; the same goes for Office.

    When looking into MS Office the thing which eventually got me hooked was reliability as well as some features I considered very useful. Like for example onenote which allows me to dump and keep all my snippets right in one place. Even serves as a yellow-note sticky like app.

    So well, a not too steep price, getting sunk into onenote and knowing that my support for Office won't risk being dropped "just because" was enough for me to go drastic some months ago. I think Oracle has done much more damage than they may realize (concluded from the java updates which still list "you can have office for free").

    NOW I really wonder why OpenOffice never had an application such as OneNote. Sure, I had knote (iirc); a yellow sticky like thingie in KDE but finding stuff back again was not that easy. Also not quite intended for a large dose of notes IMO and didn't really "link up" to other applications. Which is another pro IMO; I can send (for example) websites; copy snippets or whole pages (also using SeaMonkey or FF or...) to onenote. Then if I want to use that as resource material for a letter or other document (presentation for example) I can simply "link" the onenote stuff right in.

    iow; having 2 windows to look at. One is my document, the other my onenote stuff. Obviously I can also link stuff, but thats a whole different story.

    No disrespect for the project but I do get the feeling that they kinda stood still with regards to some of the developments and features.

    Alas; As to the NetBeans site also being down (previous poster)... Doesn't have to be related at all; the NetBeans website has a very large history so far with sometimes being more down than up. Been around a NB irc support channel for a while; very nice to direct people to download sections or bugzilla only to hear "it doesn't work" (which happened way too often for my liking).

    1. A J Stiles
      Meh

      Solaris to Win2300?

      Why would anyone downgrade your Solaris servers to Windows, instead of sidegrading them to Linux? You probably could have even kept your existing software -- I bet most of it would have built just fine on a Linux server.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Support terms

        A very good question. My main issue is the durance of support. Ubuntu LTS for example will expire after 3 years and then upgrading the versions can become quite the hassle (last time I tried I ended up in a situation where several people told me a clean re-install would have been the better solution).

        The same applies for other distros as well; take Centos (which runs on my Internet servers). Which even has issues on its own given that most stuff needs to be "ported" from RHEL. Linux isn't the answer for me. I have seriously looked at FreeBSD (due to the ZFS support) but that seems even worse wrt support, for example:

        http://security.freebsd.org/#sup

        8.2 with a support lifespan of 2 years is pretty short when looking at Ubuntu LTS which can provide 3 years.

        And well, to get to the point:

        http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=3198

        As well as my Office environment:

        http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=2488

        I can use the 2k3 environment for at least another 4 years with security updates. And it is not too unlikely that this cycle is going to be extended. Would I then consider upgrading the hardware (probably a good idea) I can then look into 2k8 (which by that time should be more affordable as well) and then also enjoy several years (at least 4 - 5+) of updates.

        Office; I bought it cheap and I can use that for 3 whole years with full security updates as well.

        "Free as in beer" sounds cool, but when you're trying to run your own (small) business you'll soon notice that "free" only goes so far. The moment I need to stop working and instead work on maintaining the software I use for my business its no longer free; then its costing me money.

        Like it or not; but paying for an older product which gives me a longer support lifetime is much cheaper for me than not paying for a product while having to upgrade it much more often.

        1. Rebajas
          Linux

          5 years...

          Ubuntu Server LTS has support for 5 years - taking 10.04 support out to 2015:

          https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTS

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            True, but...

            After trying in vain to perform a regular Ubuntu LTS upgrade (where I ended up being told the best way was to either upgrade per-release to the latest LTS and if that didn't work perform a clean upgrade) I've deliberately ignored this one because I get the feeling that the more regular Ubuntu releases you skip the harder the upgrade process becomes.

            So you'd still end up with a very likely requirement to do a clean install.

            And I simply can't have that. That takes up way too much of my time, esp. when other competitors do manage to provide cleaner ways to upgrade.

  13. Spaller
    Megaphone

    Up now

    Web site is up. Move along. Nothing to se here.

  14. Anonymous IV

    What a difference a night makes...

    As of 07:00 this morning, the OpenOffice.org website seems magically restored to health.

    On to the next conspiracy theory!

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Calm down dear...

    ...It's all just part of the orderly migration to LibreOffice.

  16. Chris 58

    Move

    Dudes, they simply moved it to be hosted by the new Apache Incubator. The site tells you that on June 1, 2011 it moved. And just below that it says that the move to the new system is complete. No conspiracy, they just off-loaded.

  17. Homer 1
    Alert

    I blame LulzSec

    Why not, everyone else does.

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