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Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

lwn.net

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Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#21

Post by chrismorgan »

This LWN article makes the matter supremely confusing. The linked mailing list post is way better and clearer and it would be good to get this submission changed to it:

https://lwn.net/ml/fedora-devel/20230601183054.12057.45907@m...

Key excerpts:

> … the LibreOffice RPMS have recently been orphaned …

> … will contribute some fixes upstream to ensure LibreOffice works better as a Flatpak, which we expect to be the way that most people consume LibreOffice in the long term.

> Any community member is of course free to take over maintenance, both for the RPMS in Fedora and the Fedora LibreOffice Flatpak, but be aware that this is a sizable block of packages and dependencies and a significant amount of work to keep up with.

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#22

Post by [deleted] »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #19

How much have RH been contributing to LO? They warn that it's a lot of work. It would have been interesting to know how much ... is this a sign that RH can't afford to run their business? People are saying 'well, easy enough to install it from elsewhere' but surely the point is a major Linux company are no longer willing/able to support a principle business application. I'm assuming that support also included bug-fix…

[deleted]

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#23

Post by pbhjpbhj »

psychphysic wrote: post #10
hannob wrote: post #5

When IBM bought Red Hat this was the kind of thing I worried might happen: That Red Hat might stop supporting the Linux Desktop. I have no idea how their announcement makes any sense. They want to improve workstation experience by... not offering an office application any more? Like, what do you even mean by workstation?

They are pivoting the work they do for workstations away from applications to HDR etc. That 'for' doesn't mean they are pivoting to Workstations. Guess it's a bit ambiguous, but anyways so libre office won't be a package on RHEL that's no big issue so long as the RPM and flatpak work fine.

>that's no big issue so long as the RPM and flatpak work fine. //

RH are no longer putting any effort into that, when they were doing before, so ... if RH are saving anything then LO will have more issues for RH users than it has up to now.

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#24

Post by touisteur »

miohtama wrote: post #14
WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not what support means. Who can you call if you have a technical issue with LibreOffice? One possible answer used to be Red Hat if you had the entreprise version and a support contract.

It would be simple matter of having two software support licenses. One for operating system and one for application. This is how most software works today. Red Hat knows if their customers are buying Red Hat license to get support for LibreOffice. I would assume this is a case only for very small number of customers, as Red Hat is mostly focusing on server product. And today companies can buy the same support from Li…

Following this, does it mean they'll reduce the price for RH subscription? Just because one can buy support elsewhere (yay OSS - BTW who offers enterprise support for LibreOffice on RHEL I'm curious?) doesn't mean one can't be salty to have support for a major part of their subscription go away with no compensation.

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#25

Post by WastingMyTime89 »

miohtama wrote: post #14
WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not what support means. Who can you call if you have a technical issue with LibreOffice? One possible answer used to be Red Hat if you had the entreprise version and a support contract.

It would be simple matter of having two software support licenses. One for operating system and one for application. This is how most software works today. Red Hat knows if their customers are buying Red Hat license to get support for LibreOffice. I would assume this is a case only for very small number of customers, as Red Hat is mostly focusing on server product. And today companies can buy the same support from Li…

I don’t think you can buy support from the Document Foundation, can you?

Even then it would be vastly different than working with Red Hat/IBM. Most procurement offices probably wouldn’t be fine dealing with such a small partner.

The fact is with Oracle and Red Hat having withdrawn, no serious company nowadays supports OpenOffice/LibreOffice. This part of the market which was already mostly dead when serious online solutions arrived is now pretty much officially buried.

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#26

Post by jillesvangurp »

I guess users would still be able to install common desktop and productivity applications via flatpak or snap. Is there much value to using rpms for this at this point? I know it's a sensitive topic to some people who just don't like any change unless its on their terms. But I think the reality is that with so many linux distributions around the job of packaging up software for those is a rather tedious and thankless one. Or in the case of IBM/Red Hat also one without a lot of revenue/profit opportunities. So, I can see why IBM would want to reduce the number of packages they have to worry about.

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#27

Post by inefficient »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #19

How much have RH been contributing to LO? They warn that it's a lot of work. It would have been interesting to know how much ... is this a sign that RH can't afford to run their business? People are saying 'well, easy enough to install it from elsewhere' but surely the point is a major Linux company are no longer willing/able to support a principle business application. I'm assuming that support also included bug-fix…

I wouldn't be surprised if the reason has more to do with the number of users. I haven't used LO in some time, but back when I only used linux, I never found it to be a particularly pleasant experience. It definitely looks better now that I'm looking at it, but I switched to using google docs back at university. If RH find it to be a lot of work that is supporting very few users, then it doesn't have to say anything about their solvency. Just a spreadsheet cost calculation.

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#29

Post by godzillabrennus »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #25
miohtama wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be simple matter of having two software support licenses. One for operating system and one for application. This is how most software works today. Red Hat knows if their customers are buying Red Hat license to get support for LibreOffice. I would assume this is a case only for very small number of customers, as Red Hat is mostly focusing on server product. And today companies can buy the same support from Li…

I don’t think you can buy support from the Document Foundation, can you? Even then it would be vastly different than working with Red Hat/IBM. Most procurement offices probably wouldn’t be fine dealing with such a small partner. The fact is with Oracle and Red Hat having withdrawn, no serious company nowadays supports OpenOffice/LibreOffice. This part of the market which was already mostly dead when serious online so…

It’s telling how good the browser based productivity suites are if Redhat customers aren’t relying on LinreOffice anymore.

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#30

Post by thesuperbigfrog »

Flatpak will be the recommended way to get / install LibreOffice on RHEL and Fedora.

In https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fe... it states:

"the engineers doing that work will contribute some fixes upstream to ensure LibreOffice works better as a Flatpak, which we expect to be the way that most people consume LibreOffice in the long term."

Install instructions are already written:

https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterp...

I would not be surprised if more desktop applications also go to Flatpak on future versions of RHEL. It lets them focus on more enterprise-y features and improve overall security.

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