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Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

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Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#301

Post by int_19h »

david-given wrote: post #54
jnbiche wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and a fairly resentful one for a few more years --- he still misses the old GNOME user interface and loathes Unity Why doesn't he use Mate? Ubuntu Mate is readily available on the Ubuntu website. Is he aware that it's a continuation of the old Gnome (Gnome 2)? And well-maintained to boot.

I've tried him on it a few times (I maintain his machine for him). It's always been too buggy, by which I mean, obvious visible UI bugs immediately after installation. Unity may be horrible, but it has much more robust QA testing. Entertainingly, when I let him play with a bunch of different Linux desktop environments, the one he liked best was actually Haiku, which I threw in as a joke.

Cinnamon might be another worthwhile thing to try.

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#302

Post by int_19h »

type0 wrote: post #48
jnbiche wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and a fairly resentful one for a few more years --- he still misses the old GNOME user interface and loathes Unity Why doesn't he use Mate? Ubuntu Mate is readily available on the Ubuntu website. Is he aware that it's a continuation of the old Gnome (Gnome 2)? And well-maintained to boot.

MATE is really a better GNOME2, some ppl don't want to believe it. There is somehow a parallel to OpenOffice and LibreOffice. Many non techy ppl don't know what forking is (for them it sounds as fornication). It adds to the confusion and we end up with a lot of users hesitating to try a better software.

I'm not sure MATE can be treated as "Gnome2 under a different name" at this point. While it started as a fork, they're doing some pretty massive refactoring, like gradually moving to Gtk3.

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#303

Post by int_19h »

jimjag wrote: post #283
mindcrime wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 amicabl…

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 I will share a story. Awhile ago I was employed by Red Hat and, as we know, Red Hat has a number of developers working on LO. I was talking w/ our CTO at the time and suggested that it would be a Good Thing if Red Hat al…

>> The "enemy", lest we forget, is MSO, not any of the OO implementations.

If the purpose of the "war" is to increase userbase by stealing users from MSO, then having a single implementation that is broadly supported and has brand recognition is vastly preferable to the current situation with two forks, one of which has the branding, while the other one has the features.

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#304

Post by mzs »

rectang wrote: post #268
mzs wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I recall Sun and IBM had a contract cause OOo was used for Lotus Notes. Then Oracle bought Sun. Oracle had obligations to IBM from that contract. Oracle could not figure-out how to make money on OOo so wanted to get rid of it. Oracle offered it to IBM but IBM did not want it. Instead IBM suggested ASF take it on. So Oracle relicensed under ASL and transferred everything hence Apache OpenOffice was born. IBM provid…

> I have a suspicion that there were terms agreed to between IBM, Oracle, and ASF that prevented ASF from donating anything to anyone. There were no secret deals. The Apache Incubator PMC voted on a public proposal ( " rel="nofollow">http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/OpenOfficeProposal> ) which included both a community and the promise of assets. Those assets were later delivered as promised. The incubation process th…

Tank you for the excellent link, my speculation was false. I wonder then why reuniting did not pan-out. Here is a working version of the link: http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/OpenOfficeProposal

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#305

Post by bArray »

int_19h wrote: post #262
bArray wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Does the MS Office UI conform with the Windows UI guidelines ?" Definitely not. The ribbon style and circle menu are a different design universe entirely. I agree that moving things around was annoying. "As for 'unreliable' - i can't share this perspective; LibreOffice works for me; didn't have any problems with OpenOffice either - before i switched to LibreOffice. I switched because LibreOffice is supposed to have…

Ribbon is part of Windows UX guidelines these days, and has been for a long time now.

Where else is it used? Admittedly it's been a while since I dirtied one of my machines with Windows.

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#306

Post by GirlsCanCode »

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...

Not me! I use real Microsoft Office. And it works great.

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#307

Post by vorg »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #166
krylon wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think OpenOffice is a better name than LibreOffice. It rolls of the tongue more smoothly, and it is easier to explain to people. On the other hand LibreOffice has the lion's share of the developers (and probably of the users by now). So a "takeover" of OpenOffice by the LibreOffice project would probably be the best solution at this point (at least as far as I can tell).

I'm not entirely sure of the current situation, but ... If you look they call it "Apache OpenOffice". Previously what we term "OpenOffice" was only called "OpenOffice.org (OOo)", why? Well because there was already a product trademarked and marketed as Open Office and IIRC there was a legal challenge. So OOo was the open version of StarOffice. Perhaps Sun/Oracle or Apache bought that trademark? A brief search at USPT…

If OpenOffice is retired as specified in 7.3(b) in the submission...

> 7.3 There is no active attention to preservation of the trademarks related to Apache OpenOffice. (a) Inappropriate use of Apache and its symbols in names of offerings will be defended when brought to the attention of branding@. (b) Uses of OpenOffice, Open Office, openoffice.org and other similarities without attribution to Apache are not addressed.

...then LibreOffice could start using the OpenOffice brand, e.g. "Libre OpenOffice".

I think Apache giving up the brand like that would create a bad precedent, though. Another of Apache's projects might get forked and renamed by the subset of its PMC that do the programming, who then later claim their brand back using this as a precedent. E.g. Apache Groovy might be cloned by the Grails crowd and renamed the Grails Language, and with the programmer in Groovy's PMC who adequately knows his way around Groovy's codebase joining them. When Apache Groovy has further atrophied, the Grails people could then claim the "Groovy" brand using the "OpenOffice Precedent".

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#308

Post by int_19h »

bArray wrote: post #305
int_19h wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ribbon is part of Windows UX guidelines these days, and has been for a long time now.

Where else is it used? Admittedly it's been a while since I dirtied one of my machines with Windows.

Most stock apps - e.g. Explorer, Paint, WordPad.

It's part of Win32 API now, so it's readily available to any app: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd3...

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#309

Post by Drdrdrq »

blakeyrat wrote: post #297
Drdrdrq wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I am using it almost daily for years now and still hate it. So it probably depends on a person.

It wasn't optimized for "people like it", it was optimized for ease-of-use and discoverability. You could simultaneously hate it with a passion, and also be 3 times more efficient at editing a document while using it, and that counts as a success.

No. I hate it because while ease-of-use is better, discoverability is much worse. I am constantly seeking answers to UI problems on Google.

Also, how is it a success if I hate my tool with passion, no matter how efficient I am? We must have different value systems... :)

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#310

Post by chengiz »

keithpeter wrote: post #236
chengiz wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's one. Never thought it necessary to change. OO works just fine.

And another one to some extent: oOo uses its own font rendering, the LO team (I gather) moved over to using libraries (harfbuzz) available in host OS for font rendering. I seem to have better results on former under some circumstances. I have not had any round-trip editing problems flitting between the two under Linuxen of various kinds.

I didnt know this but at a more general level I am reluctant to "upgrade" what's already working fine due to this very fiddling with new stuff which is a common failing of the FOSS model in my experience (people wanting to add shiny things instead of making existing stuff better - Firefox, GNOME etc). This is one of the main reasons I did not migrate to LO.
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