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Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

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Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#201

Post by davidgerard »

mindcrime wrote: post #190
davidgerard wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what you're saying is, LO vs AOO is real-world testing that shows a conclusive defeat of "permissive" at the hands of "copyleft", in terms of appeal to the class of users who know the difference.

Gerard, take your anti-AOO trolling somewhere else. I've had enough of it.

I think the problem there is that you are, literally, one of the AOO developers who spent his time commenting on blogs and forum sites, flaming people who were pointing out the Emperor's new security policy - while not lifting a finger to actually stop distributing security holes to your own users. It is possible you don't have the moral high ground here. Dab hand at flaming people, though, well done.

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#202

Post by rectang »

espadrine wrote: post #53
Swizec wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a technologist who follows tech news, I was never sure which one was the more active/appropriate prohect. Switching to Google Docs and various plain markdown editors has been a huge relief. A few years ago I said fuck it and bought MS Office. I may only need it once a year when markdown or gDocs doesn't suffice, but the price is worth avoiding the OpenOffice vs LibreOffice fuckery. It also works better.

Wikipedia is usually pretty good at giving an overview of the situation. > In September 2010, the majority of outside OpenOffice.org developers left the project, due to concerns over Sun and then Oracle's management of the project > […] > In April 2011, Oracle stopped development of OpenOffice.org — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org#History But the OpenOffice brand was already built, so obviously a lot of…

Development of OpenOffice continued after it landed at Apache, notably in the form of a large IBM donation of code from Symfony. It is only recently that maintaining the project has become an issue, and as the OP illustrates, the remaining community is engaged and grappling with how to deal with that.

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#203

Post by [deleted] »

the_duke wrote: post #153
okket wrote: post #89

Parallel universe: http://www.mail-archive.com/dev@openoffice.apache.org/msg282... If we look at LibreOffice and compare: LibreOffice, that is *good* (not more) software and *excellent* public relations. OpenOffice, that is *excellent* software and *pretty bad* public relations. Proof: http://www.mail-archive.com/dev@openoffice.apache.org/msg282... Secondly, as alluded to above, we should prepare ourselves for the FU…

How exactly is OO excellent and LO good ? What is that based on? Please back that up.

[deleted]

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#204

Post by ryanmarsh »

Why does Open/LibreOffice matter anymore?

This is a sincere question. I'm well aware of why OO was a big deal circa 2000 when I was using it (if I'm getting the dates right). I cannot figure out why it matters anymore, or why it will matter in 10 years.

Back when every year was going to be the year of "Linux on the desktop" the linchpin was MS Office. That's because we didn't have the million different SaaS products we have today, products tailor made for jobs only Office would be considered for.

Basically MS Office was a hammer and everything was a nail. This is not the world today.

Today there are a number of viable alternatives and there continues to be innovation around the jobs MS Office was traditionally used for.

Someone is going to bring up: vendor lock in, Freedom, etc... I don't get those arguments any more.

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#205

Post by jnbiche »

blockednbcads wrote: post #183
jnbiche wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's always been too buggy, by which I mean, obvious visible UI bugs immediately after installation. Really? I've installed Mate on ~10 computers, and have never run into UI bugs. I run Mate, my two kids run it on their computer, and I'm sometimes on that one helping them with school related stuff. Never run into UI bugs. I don't doubt that there are such bugs, but in my experience they're pretty rare (unless the p…

I tried MATE recently, I wanted to like it too but found it to be slower than Xfce.

> too but found it to be slower than Xfce.

Yes, I wouldn't be surprised if Mate is slower than Xfce, since it's traditionally considered more featureful. Besides, even using a cheap $200 netbook, desktop environment speed is just not an issue for me as long as I use linux + any reasonably fast DE.

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#206

Post by grandinj »

mindcrime wrote: post #160
the_duke wrote: post #157

See also this discussion on the mailing list, where I asked (recently, August 3rd) if it is a viable idea to somehow combine efforts with LibreOffice again: http://www.mail-archive.com/dev@openoffice.apache.org/msg277...

There's effectively a one-way merge already. LO can - and do - consume patches contributed to AOO. But, for a variety of reasons, that are mostly historical as far as I can tell, the LO developers have generally been unwilling to contribute code in the other direction. An outright "merger" of the two projects seems unlikely due to the licensing differences and the associated thinking. Some people prefer permissive li…

That's not true. Seversl of us are quite happy to contribute our LO patches to OO. But they just don't have any manpower to merge them.

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#207

Post by WilliamDhalgren »

ryanmarsh wrote: post #204

Why does Open/LibreOffice matter anymore? This is a sincere question. I'm well aware of why OO was a big deal circa 2000 when I was using it (if I'm getting the dates right). I cannot figure out why it matters anymore, or why it will matter in 10 years. Back when every year was going to be the year of "Linux on the desktop" the linchpin was MS Office. That's because we didn't have the million different SaaS products…

It'd be a very interesting argument, if you could provide statistics to back up the notion that Office products today are really as marginal as you make it out to be. I'd expect them to be comparably central to corporate and civil service jobs in the economy in total as ever, just because economy in bulk is a very sluggish thing and they do the job, but I'd be thrilled to be wrong.

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#208

Post by davidgerard »

mindcrime wrote: post #191
the_duke wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I pointed out in the mailing list, there has been practically no development on OO this year though.

As I pointed out in the mailing list, there has been practically no development on OO this year though. And? I mean, yeah, it would be nice to have more cool new stuff coming out, but it's not like AOO owes the world anything. It's open source, it's volunteer driven. If people want more new features, more development, etc, then more people need to volunteer. If they don't, well... the world gets what it gets from the…

> it's not like AOO owes the world anything.

It arguably owes its users not distributing security holes to them. Sitting on the vulnerability since October 2015, only revealing it in July because the reporter said they were going public with it ... there is no way that is responsible stewardship of end user software.

In fact, I just checked - I went to www.openoffice.org, went all the way through to download, and it still gives me the vulnerable version and doesn't give me information that there's a vulnerability or a fix.

You're an AOO dev. What do you see as your responsibility in this regard?

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#209

Post by zgramana »

babayega2 wrote: post #45
evacchi wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so, neither? Edit to reflect parent: I do think that's probably easier to pronounce for English-speaking people than both French and Spanish

But libre mean "free" in French whereas there is no such word in English. Why would it not be more easier for us French speaking peoples?

FWIW, I think the closest English analog would be 'liberated', a synonym of 'free', though not that this a substantial improvement.

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#210

Post by rectang »

sveredov wrote: post #195
jimjag wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Apache had not accepted it, Oracle was NOT going to donate it to TDF. Instead, Oracle would simply have shuttered it, or sold it to IBM. There was no workable plan ever that would have resulted in the OO code going to TDF. Even if AOO had never done a single release, LO still benefited enormously from OO going to Apache, since once at Apache, there was known and public IP provenance, AND the code was relicensed to…

The Apache Foundation could simply have accepted the OpenOffice.org codebase+trademarks from Oracle, then donate to LibreOffice. But they did not do so. The Apache Foundation does not have experience with software that end-users use. They have experience with server software. That was their undoing.

At the time of the donation, The Document Foundation had an (understandably) antagonistic relationship with Oracle and legal foundations which were firming up but not yet solid. The assets were not going to TDF from Oracle directly.

In accepting the proposal for a new Apache OpenOffice project, the ASF accepted not only the assets from Oracle but also a community, distinct from the LibreOffice community, that wanted to work with those assets. That community had to be given a chance. Without all those things, the deal could not have been completed.

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