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Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

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Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#221

Post by rectang »

davidgerard wrote: post #208
mindcrime wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The OP explains what the ASF expects in this regard.

    "In the case of Apache OpenOffice, needing to disclose security
    vulnerabilities for which there is no mitigation in an update has
    become a serious issue. In responses to concerns raised in June, the
    PMC is currently tasked by the ASF Board to account for this
    inability and to provide a remedy. An indicator of the seriousness
    of the Board's concern is the PMC been requested to report to the
    Board every month, starting in August, rather than quarterly, the
    normal case. One option for remedy that must be considered is
    retirement of the project. The request is for the PMC's
    consideration among other possible options."

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#222

Post by ocdtrekkie »

the_duke wrote: post #212
MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... clunky, unreliable clone of older Microsoft Office products. It was still better than a kick in the teeth though. That's exactly why i am using Open/Libre office; at some point Microsoft Office got such a complicate UI (ever since they pushed the ribbon bar - that's when they kicked me in the teeth) that i am unable to use it - the alternative uses a much less complicated UI so i am with it. Does the MS Office…

Am I alone here in actually liking the ribbon? I almost never use any MS Office product (Latex for serious writing, R for statistics, ...) but when I have to because of a client or whatever, I find the Ribbon to be convenient for a non-power user.

The ribbon is probably the best example of "people are resistant to change". In retrospect, because I was grumpy about it too at the time. But once you get used to it, it's vastly superior in every conceivable way to the old UI.

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#223

Post by lamarkia »

gpvos wrote: post #187
fluidcruft wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably the best workable solution if the projects were to merge somehow as it preserves the attempted marketing niche of each "name". I haven't followed this in a long time but I thought Sun/Oracle management of OpenOffice was crux of the problem? I've probably been out of the loop for too long.

That was the problem before it became an Apache project. It should not be a problem anymore.

Some AOO developers appear to have a superiority complex. It is visible in the discussion.

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#224

Post by bbatha »

antisthenes wrote: post #218
the_duke wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I alone here in actually liking the ribbon? I almost never use any MS Office product (Latex for serious writing, R for statistics, ...) but when I have to because of a client or whatever, I find the Ribbon to be convenient for a non-power user.

I love the ribbon. It brought the most used functionality to the front where you don't have to navigate a text menu to find.

It also makes shortcuts discoverable! Just hit the alt-key and virtually every thing pops up with it hot key. Hitting alt in a standard windows app only tells me what menus are available, not which actions are available.

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#225

Post by a3n »

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…

I've submitted at least one resume in plain .txt, and got the job.

I maintain my resume in .rst (and render it to .pdf via LO for now). Depending on the employer, it's conceivable that I could submit the .rst file.

As for "formatted" docs, I wish we could settle on some common version of .rtf. That's more than good enough for what most people really need to do.

Heck, even most email clients do pretty good formatting. It'd be nice if we could commonly write docs in our email client, and save to .pdf or .rtf or .someformat. (Now someone's going to tell me I can do that.)

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#226

Post by JetSpiegel »

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…

That second mail has more interesting stuff in the bottom.

> I would even suggest us considering going further and redirecting AOO traffic to LO

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#227

Post by a3n »

loeg wrote: post #219
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…

I still use LibreOffice for my day-to-day word processing and (limited) spreadsheet needs. I'd greatly prefer for it to continue functioning well.

Is there a "just the basics" mode for LO? I do a formatted doc so infrequently that I often have to relearn how to do even the most minimal thing.

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#228

Post by CopperWing »

mindcrime wrote: post #159
wjoe wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What reasons are there to prefer OpenOffice? From my perspective, I hear about LibreOffice updates often, and OpenOffice doesn't sound like it's being maintained as much. I don't know if this is actually correct, but I never understood what the need was for keeping them separate after Oracle gave up OO to Apache. LibreOffice seems to have 'won' popular attention if nothing else, and is the one included in distros now…

The two forks represent two different ideologies to a large extent - "permissive" licensing vs "copyleft". Some of us think it's important to have a full-featured, world-class office suite that's under a permissive license. Others think it's important to have a full-featured, world class office suite that's copyleft. Who's to say either is wrong? Feature wise, there may not be a lot of reasons to prefer AOO right now…

Well, LibreOffice is not "copyleft" licensed. It is distributed under a joint of licenses: GNU Lesser GPL v3+ and Mozilla Public License v2. The latter is not "copyleft".

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#229

Post by mindcrime »

grandinj wrote: post #206
mindcrime wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, I didn't say all LO developers. But from what I've seen (and to be fair, this recollection is a bit old) a lot of the LO people showed a lot of resistance to having code flow back the other way.

OTOH, maybe things have changed since I formed that impression. At any rate, your willingness to do so is appreciated. As far-fetched as it sounds, I still hold out hope that one day the two projects can have an amicable co-existence and collaborate to a greater extent (than today).

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#230

Post by mindcrime »

CopperWing wrote: post #228
mindcrime wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The two forks represent two different ideologies to a large extent - "permissive" licensing vs "copyleft". Some of us think it's important to have a full-featured, world-class office suite that's under a permissive license. Others think it's important to have a full-featured, world class office suite that's copyleft. Who's to say either is wrong? Feature wise, there may not be a lot of reasons to prefer AOO right now…

Well, LibreOffice is not "copyleft" licensed. It is distributed under a joint of licenses: GNU Lesser GPL v3+ and Mozilla Public License v2. The latter is not "copyleft".

I could be wrong, but from what I remember, the MPL has generally been considered a "weak copyleft" license.
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