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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Saturday 15th October 2011 17:57 GMT Al fazed

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.

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1. Sunday 16th October 2011 01:48 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  You should try LO. OOo hasn't been updated for many months.
  
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Saturday 15th October 2011 18:05 GMT Robert E A Harvey

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.

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Saturday 15th October 2011 18:07 GMT Anonymous Coward

Still using OpenOffice..

I'm just slow to change - OpenOffice worked just fine..

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Saturday 15th October 2011 18:09 GMT Anonymous Coward

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.

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Saturday 15th October 2011 18:16 GMT Anonymous Coward

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"?

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Sunday 16th October 2011 01:43 GMT Anonymous Coward

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.

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1. Thursday 20th October 2011 08:18 GMT Jean-Luc
  
  @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 ;-)
  
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Sunday 16th October 2011 10:29 GMT Dave Bell

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.

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Sunday 16th October 2011 10:32 GMT Stuart 25

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.

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Monday 17th October 2011 07:47 GMT eldakka

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.

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1. Monday 17th October 2011 08:14 GMT Robert E A Harvey
  
  There is some development in LO to that end, but the Ios toolchain seems to be hampering things there
  
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Monday 17th October 2011 14:29 GMT Anonymous Coward

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.

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Monday 17th October 2011 15:30 GMT Fatty Eglon

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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