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Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

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Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#21

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

ekianjo wrote: post #16
luibelgo wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the language, it's very easy to pronounce in Spanish

In French too.

But not the same way! I've never known whether the Spanish or French version is the canonical pronunciation for LibreOffice.

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#22

Post by davidgerard »

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #21
ekianjo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In French too.

But not the same way! I've never known whether the Spanish or French version is the canonical pronunciation for LibreOffice.

In English I just say Lieber-Office, as in Beiber-Office. I have had zero people confused at this pronunciation in the last six years.

(edited to clarify)

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#23

Post by josteink »

cstross wrote: post #18
okket wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody is using LibreOffice, except a poor few that get misguided by search services to the Apache OpenOffice website. IMHO there is no sane reason why Apache OpenOffice still exists. Edit: Looks like there are a lot more OpenOffice users out there than I thought, sorry. I really thought the world would have moved on, at least since 2013/14, see https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fb/St...

This is not actually true; I am aware of lots of non-technical users who know nothing about Sun, Oracle, or Apache and who haven't heard of LibreOffice but who continue to quietly use the free office package they were recommended at some time in the previous 15 years. (For example: I'm a member of an online community of working novelists and just last week someone was advocating OpenOffice to another irritated Micros…

> The optimum strategy would be to turn openoffice.org into a redirect to LibreOffice, or to reassign the OpenOffice name rights to the LibreOffice project ... but egos are gonna ego.

This is so simple. It would solve everyone's problems.

So of course that's never going to happen. Welcome to the real world :(

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#24

Post by theallan »

hannob wrote: post #11
verbify wrote: post #2

I thought everyone interested in a FOSS office suite was using libreoffice.

Actually for many years we have told people "if you want a free alternative to MS Office use OpenOffice". And we told this to people who are not closely following tech news. It's an established brand and it's not easy to undo. Many people will still google for openoffice. It would be helpful if they'd just get a message "OpenOffice is outdated, you can still download old versions, but you really want to get Libreoffi…

One of my OSS bits of software has an XSLX data export options, so I've been interested in the OpenOffice / LibreOffice split because of a bug in OpenOffice causing the file I was outputting to be read as empty. I've changed the file format now, but even for a tech based audience I got a number of questions about OpenOffice.

Just did a Google Trends on the topic [1] and it shows the two surprisingly close, confirming what you say, the openOffice brand still has momentum.

1: https://www.google.co.uk/trends/explore?date=all&q=openoffic...

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#25

Post by davidgerard »

okket wrote: post #3
verbify wrote: post #2

I thought everyone interested in a FOSS office suite was using libreoffice.

Everybody is using LibreOffice, except a poor few that get misguided by search services to the Apache OpenOffice website. IMHO there is no sane reason why Apache OpenOffice still exists. Edit: Looks like there are a lot more OpenOffice users out there than I thought, sorry. I really thought the world would have moved on, at least since 2013/14, see https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fb/St...

This is horrifyingly incorrect. AOO still gets a shitload of downloads. It wasn't until last year that LO overtook AOO alone's download total.

You would be amazed. Ordinary people know MSO sucks and want a free alternative. "OpenOffice" is the name they've heard as their exit.

The project is entirely trading on the goodwill that FLOSS activists built up for the name "OpenOffice" from 2002-2010. That brand is still powerful!

So whatever you do, make sure everyone you know uses LO instead of AOO.

e.g. I wrote this last year for Tumblr. Target audience was writers and creative people who aren't geeks but just want to do their stuff. Written after I encountered yet another innocent user who'd just got AOO. Please excuse the apocalyptic tone, (1) that's how you write to catch attention on Tumblr, (2) this was during the six months they had a massive hole in the default install and were spending their time defending the product on blogs rather than fixing it:

http://reddragdiva.tumblr.com/post/128873352708/urgent-get-t...

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#26

Post by evacchi »

davidgerard wrote: post #22
Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But not the same way! I've never known whether the Spanish or French version is the canonical pronunciation for LibreOffice.

In English I just say Lieber-Office, as in Beiber-Office. I have had zero people confused at this pronunciation in the last six years. (edited to clarify)

so, neither?

Edit to reflect parent: I do think that's probably easier to pronounce for English-speaking people than both French and Spanish

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#28

Post by davidgerard »

SyneRyder wrote: post #4

Anyone know if this would impact on NeoOffice, the Mac native port? They seem to draw code from both LibreOffice and OpenOffice. [Side note: the way NeoOffice asks for yearly donations in order to access binary updates is very smart. Synergy also uses this method, and NeoOffice & Synergy are the first GPL projects I've regularly contributed to as a result.]

Not at all. As I understand it (I looked into this when I was doing a big fix-up on the OpenOffice cluster of articles on Wikipedia), NeoOffice tracked OOo (and then ooo-build/Go-oo) until 3.1.1, when it stopped doing that and just maintained that codebase. Though they pull in fixes from LO and AOO, but I don't know how substantial that is - NeoOffice is only two guys.
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