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What's next for Apache OpenOffice

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Re: What's next for Apache OpenOffice

#21

Post by ZenoArrow »

polaic_lake wrote: post #17
ZenoArrow wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "That and a little bit of wanting to support the underdog, and compete with the perceived front-runner." Dude, I get it, I really do, and if that's what you want to spend your free time on you should feel good about aiming to do the right thing. However, I can't help but feel we're missing out the 800-pound gorilla in the corner of the room. If you want to compete with the perceived front runner, there's only one o…

At least some on both sides of the LibreOffice/OpenOffice split hate each other with the heat of 10,000 suns. There will be no reconciliation.

Why is that? What has fueled this divide?

Re: What's next for Apache OpenOffice

#22

Post by cesarb »

mindcrime wrote: post #19
ploxiln wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AOO IS NOT MAINTAINED. It can't do builds, it can't make releases. It can't apply a security bug fix and build a release within 9 months. For an office suite, that's not OK. LO is where all the active OpenOffice developers went to, LO is the continuation of OO.o. AOO is an old and unmaintained snapshot of OpenOffice, with an apparently long-broken release build process. I don't think there should be just one office s…

it can't make releases. We're working on a 4.1.3 release right now. Yes, the project has had its issues, yes there's been adversity. But we'll fight through it and come out better in the end.

> > it can't make releases.

> We're working on a 4.1.3 release right now.

Sorry, but I saw that before. The last time people said AOO couldn't make releases, they made a herculean effort and managed to make one release (4.1.2 IIRC). And here they are again, struggling to make a release.

I'll believe it not when they say "look, we made a release", but when they show the ability to do so consistently.

Re: What's next for Apache OpenOffice

#23

Post by Grishnakh »

mindcrime wrote: post #11
Grishnakh wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We're starting a new, more focused recruiting effort to recruit developers to the cause. Perhaps you yourself have given some thought to working on an OSS office suite? Why would I want to waste my time working on a has-been office suite when I can work on the leading FOSS office suite, which is LibreOffice? Why would I want to commit my time to a project that seems to only seems to exist because of a licensing disp…

Ultimately, if you don't want to work on AOO, there's probably not much I can say to convince you. And that's fine. No hard feelings. So the rest of this really isn't even for you, it's for other people who are reading and who don't already have their minds made up: Why would I want to waste my time working on a has-been office suite when I can work on the leading FOSS office suite, which is LibreOffice? Because you…

>Because you like competition and you want to knock that "leading FOSS office suite" off its perch.

So, basically spite.

The real competitor is Microsoft Office; that's what all FOSS software is competing against in trying to get people comfortable with using FOSS software and stop being locked-into proprietary software and file formats. You're actually harming the FOSS cause by promoting factionalism and fragmentation over silly issues.

>3. Everybody loves an underdog and here's your chance to be a hero.

OO isn't the underdog, LibreOffice is. Microsoft Office is the reigning champion and bully. OO is just muddying the waters and sowing confusion.

I do appreciate the candor in your response though, but it completely validates all my suspicions about the motivations of the few people still hanging on, much like Mr. Dawes keeps hanging onto XFree86 and refusing to throw in the towel even though everyone has abandoned him.

Re: What's next for Apache OpenOffice

#24

Post by Grishnakh »

cesarb wrote: post #10
ChuckMcM wrote: post #5

I think the answer to the headline is "sadness." but the situation is important to understand on two levels, both from technical level and from a governance level. In my experience, understanding governance is not something that comes easily to engineers. This project however provides a textbook example of the forces involved. Governance, or the right to set direction, can be imposed if the governed are prevented fro…

> Libreoffice (LO) and Apache Open Office (AOO) both existed at a point in time of the fork, when a portion of the governed (in this case the developers) withheld their assent to the impositions by AOO and started LO. I'm sorry, but this is wrong. LibreOffice was started almost a year before AOO. Take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice#History for details.

That's basically quibbling, though the OP did err in his history a bit. AOO existed before that point too, it just wasn't called AOO and it wasn't part of Apache; it was run by Oracle, and before that, Sun. It was still the same project before Oracle dropped it on Apache. The portion of the governed were mad at the impositions by Oracle, not Apache, and started LO. A year later, with almost no developers left and all the Linux distros having switched to LO, Oracle finally threw in the towel and gave the dying OO.o project to Apache, where it became AOO, and the few people still hanging in there yell at clouds.

Re: What's next for Apache OpenOffice

#25

Post by Grishnakh »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #12
ChuckMcM wrote: post #5

I think the answer to the headline is "sadness." but the situation is important to understand on two levels, both from technical level and from a governance level. In my experience, understanding governance is not something that comes easily to engineers. This project however provides a textbook example of the forces involved. Governance, or the right to set direction, can be imposed if the governed are prevented fro…

> "There doesn't exist any sort of neutral arbitration board that would allow troublesome developers who were out of sync with the governed to be removed from the project." Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the problems with OO.org started/accelerated when Oracle bought Sun. If that's the case, how are you meant to kick out the owners of the project? Forks are an effective defense mechanism against problems at t…

You're exactly right. The developers were mad at the project governance, and it hit a peak when Oracle bought out Sun. They created Go-OO, where they had more freedom to do their work without being stifled by the project's management, and this became LO.

And yes, forks are an effective defense mechanism against governance problems in FOSS projects. We saw it here, and we saw it years before with XFree86. Forks are an expression of democracy, where the people who actually do most of the work decide their leaders are ineffective or bad, and leave and make their own project, but thanks to FOSS licensing, they don't have to start from scratch, and are able to "fork" the code and continue their work largely without interruption.

Re: What's next for Apache OpenOffice

#26

Post by ZenoArrow »

mindcrime wrote: post #18
ZenoArrow wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "That and a little bit of wanting to support the underdog, and compete with the perceived front-runner." Dude, I get it, I really do, and if that's what you want to spend your free time on you should feel good about aiming to do the right thing. However, I can't help but feel we're missing out the 800-pound gorilla in the corner of the room. If you want to compete with the perceived front runner, there's only one o…

If there was a viable path forward to a (re)-merger of AOO and LO, I'd be totally fine with it. But I've heard enough rhetoric from both sides that I've essentially quit believing such a thing could ever happen. But hey, miracles do happen now and again. In the mean-time, MS Office isn't even part of my consciousness. But I'm a pretty rabid FOSS ideologue who has used Linux and FOSS office suites as his primary deskt…

Thank you for being open to the idea of a merger, even if the possibility seems remote, and thank you for your work on open-source office suites (regardless of the project in question), they're a highly important part of the open source software ecosystem.

I'll leave with one more idea, just in case a full on merger doesn't work out, and that's what I'll call a soft merger. If a goal of modularity is pursued, there may be room for collaboration on shared components across projects. For example, the libraries for reading and writing to proprietary formats would be good candidates to be developed as modules, which could have benefits for more than just office suites. Just something to consider.

Re: What's next for Apache OpenOffice

#27

Post by mindcrime »

Grishnakh wrote: post #23
mindcrime wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultimately, if you don't want to work on AOO, there's probably not much I can say to convince you. And that's fine. No hard feelings. So the rest of this really isn't even for you, it's for other people who are reading and who don't already have their minds made up: Why would I want to waste my time working on a has-been office suite when I can work on the leading FOSS office suite, which is LibreOffice? Because you…

>Because you like competition and you want to knock that "leading FOSS office suite" off its perch. So, basically spite. The real competitor is Microsoft Office; that's what all FOSS software is competing against in trying to get people comfortable with using FOSS software and stop being locked-into proprietary software and file formats. You're actually harming the FOSS cause by promoting factionalism and fragmentati…

So, basically spite.

Not at all. Where did you get that? It's just a basic human desire to compete and win. The same reason people play football, play chess, arm wrestle, compete in spelling bees, etc. And still, all of that said, for me personally the "competition" factor is one of the least important.

The real competitor is Microsoft Office; that's what all FOSS software is competing against in trying to get people comfortable with using FOSS software and stop being locked-into proprietary software and file formats.

Meh... I could care less about competing with MS Office. I don't even think about them at all these days. As long as free software and file formats are available to those who want them, I'm not all that concerned with trying to change the world and make it so that everybody is using F/OSS. That's a challenge I'm happy to leave to rms or whoever.

You're actually harming the FOSS cause by promoting factionalism and fragmentation over silly issues.

Yeah, yeah... same thing they said 16 years about about Gnome vs KDE. But yet there are still Gnome and KDE, and even more. There's always somebody crying "fragmentation" and pleading for the end to something: AOO, BSD, KDE, whatever it happens to be.

I do appreciate the candor in your response though, but it completely validates all my suspicions about the motivations of the few people still hanging on

Please don't make the mistake of assuming that my motives are the same as anyone else's. I certainly don't claim to speak for anybody else on the AOO team besides myself.

Re: What's next for Apache OpenOffice

#28

Post by woodandsteel »

AOO supporters want to get more developers working on it. But I think whether or not new developers decide to do that is going to depend greatly, for most of them, on whether or not they think AOO is going to succeed in the future.

So let me ask the AOO supporters, where do you predict that AOO will be in a year from now, and two years? And give some specifics, like code clean-up, infrastructure, security fixes, new features, and so on.

And finally, if a year from now, AOO is far behind what you have predicted, will you still keep telling people that AOO is going to be a success? And ditto for two years from now.

Re: What's next for Apache OpenOffice

#29

Post by SwellJoe »

Grishnakh wrote: post #23
mindcrime wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultimately, if you don't want to work on AOO, there's probably not much I can say to convince you. And that's fine. No hard feelings. So the rest of this really isn't even for you, it's for other people who are reading and who don't already have their minds made up: Why would I want to waste my time working on a has-been office suite when I can work on the leading FOSS office suite, which is LibreOffice? Because you…

>Because you like competition and you want to knock that "leading FOSS office suite" off its perch. So, basically spite. The real competitor is Microsoft Office; that's what all FOSS software is competing against in trying to get people comfortable with using FOSS software and stop being locked-into proprietary software and file formats. You're actually harming the FOSS cause by promoting factionalism and fragmentati…

> The real competitor is Microsoft Office

Is it? I haven't used any desktop office suite in more than five years, at least. I would think the real competitor is Google Docs, and I don't see any current credible path forward that brings OO or Libre Office to the web.

Re: What's next for Apache OpenOffice

#30

Post by dragonwriter »

mindcrime wrote: post #11
Grishnakh wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We're starting a new, more focused recruiting effort to recruit developers to the cause. Perhaps you yourself have given some thought to working on an OSS office suite? Why would I want to waste my time working on a has-been office suite when I can work on the leading FOSS office suite, which is LibreOffice? Why would I want to commit my time to a project that seems to only seems to exist because of a licensing disp…

Ultimately, if you don't want to work on AOO, there's probably not much I can say to convince you. And that's fine. No hard feelings. So the rest of this really isn't even for you, it's for other people who are reading and who don't already have their minds made up: Why would I want to waste my time working on a has-been office suite when I can work on the leading FOSS office suite, which is LibreOffice? Because you…

> Because you like competition and you want to knock that "leading FOSS office suite" off its perch.

If I prefer competition among OSS office suites, and am unsatisfied with the leader, why would the competitor I choose be the one that's basically a trailing, less maintained for several years, version of the same codebase as the leader, rather than something that's both more genuinely different and has been more actively maintained, like Calligra?

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