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Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

lwn.net

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Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#41

Post by davidgerard »

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…

They're one of the larger contributors in number of commits, about equal to Collabora.

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#42

Post by microtonal »

phkahler wrote: post #35
inefficient wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>> 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. A Linux distribution is more than the sum of its parts. Having out-of-the-box ability to read MS office docs is a huge deal. Nobody wants to fuck around installing something extra to read a defacto standard document format.

It's pretty much two or three clicks away with Flatpak and LibreOffice get to control the experience. People also install Microsoft Office or Apple Pages/Keynote/Sheets through the app store, and however Office is installed on Windows.

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#43

Post by redprince »

criddell wrote: post #34
thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #30

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://acces…

I think this is a small step in the right direction. IMHO, Flatpak (and similar schemes) with strict sandboxing should be the only distribution method for user applications. If I install LibreOffice, I want to be asked for permission before it tries to access my microphone or location or other sensitive resources. If you want to give that application access to everything your user has access to, that’s fine, but it s…

> If I install LibreOffice, I want to be asked for permission before it tries to access my microphone or location or other sensitive resources.

This isn't some untrusted unauditable binary blob from a possibly shady manufacturer. Everything it will or will not do is right there for everyone to see in the published source code from which it is compiled and packaged.

Furthermore nothing is fundamentally stopping anyone to apply SELinux policies to this application just like a flatpak would.

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#44

Post by [deleted] »

redprince wrote: post #43
criddell wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a small step in the right direction. IMHO, Flatpak (and similar schemes) with strict sandboxing should be the only distribution method for user applications. If I install LibreOffice, I want to be asked for permission before it tries to access my microphone or location or other sensitive resources. If you want to give that application access to everything your user has access to, that’s fine, but it s…

> If I install LibreOffice, I want to be asked for permission before it tries to access my microphone or location or other sensitive resources. This isn't some untrusted unauditable binary blob from a possibly shady manufacturer. Everything it will or will not do is right there for everyone to see in the published source code from which it is compiled and packaged. Furthermore nothing is fundamentally stopping anyone…

[deleted]

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#45

Post by rajamaka »

redprince wrote: post #43
criddell wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a small step in the right direction. IMHO, Flatpak (and similar schemes) with strict sandboxing should be the only distribution method for user applications. If I install LibreOffice, I want to be asked for permission before it tries to access my microphone or location or other sensitive resources. If you want to give that application access to everything your user has access to, that’s fine, but it s…

> If I install LibreOffice, I want to be asked for permission before it tries to access my microphone or location or other sensitive resources. This isn't some untrusted unauditable binary blob from a possibly shady manufacturer. Everything it will or will not do is right there for everyone to see in the published source code from which it is compiled and packaged. Furthermore nothing is fundamentally stopping anyone…

I always find this take so weird. Do you audit every single line of code from OSS you use?

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#46

Post by DonHopkins »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #29
WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't know so I'm asking: does LibreOffice solidly support live collaborative multi-user online editing, the way Douglas Engelbart intended? If not, then good riddance.

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#47

Post by microtonal »

redprince wrote: post #43
criddell wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a small step in the right direction. IMHO, Flatpak (and similar schemes) with strict sandboxing should be the only distribution method for user applications. If I install LibreOffice, I want to be asked for permission before it tries to access my microphone or location or other sensitive resources. If you want to give that application access to everything your user has access to, that’s fine, but it s…

> If I install LibreOffice, I want to be asked for permission before it tries to access my microphone or location or other sensitive resources. This isn't some untrusted unauditable binary blob from a possibly shady manufacturer. Everything it will or will not do is right there for everyone to see in the published source code from which it is compiled and packaged. Furthermore nothing is fundamentally stopping anyone…

This isn't some untrusted unauditable binary blob from a possibly shady manufacturer.

It is a program that reads unstrusted binary blobs (many document formats) using C++ deserialization code that has a history tracing back to the nineties and even eighties (through StarOffice). I sure as hell want such an application to be sandboxed and ask for elevated permissions. This is pretty normal on other platforms like macOS (Office and iWork from the Mac App Store run sandboxed), iOS, and Android.

Furthermore nothing is fundamentally stopping anyone to apply SELinux policies to this application just like a flatpak would.

You need more than policies. E.g. if a program cannot read outside its sandbox, you need some way to mediate access to files/directories on the user's request, which are provided by e.g. Flatpak/XDG desktop portals.

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#48

Post by redprince »

rajamaka wrote: post #45
redprince wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I install LibreOffice, I want to be asked for permission before it tries to access my microphone or location or other sensitive resources. This isn't some untrusted unauditable binary blob from a possibly shady manufacturer. Everything it will or will not do is right there for everyone to see in the published source code from which it is compiled and packaged. Furthermore nothing is fundamentally stopping anyone…

I always find this take so weird. Do you audit every single line of code from OSS you use?

> Do you audit every single line of code from OSS you use?

I audit some of it sometimes. I trust that other do the same. Many hands make light work.

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#49

Post by ekianjo »

Gigachad wrote: post #33
chrismorgan wrote: post #21

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…

This is probably how things will be moving. It doesn't make sense for every single distro to maintain customized versions of user level applications now that we have one package that works everywhere.

Works everywhere is a stretch. Flatpaked applications have multiple issues

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#50

Post by bonzini »

tlamponi wrote: post #31
chrismorgan wrote: post #21

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…

Well your excerpts aren't really clearing up all confusion IMO, but even the original message is somewhat confusing too: >> … 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. Here you left out the part that they'll do that only until older RHEL releases, that still have LibreOffice support are EOL:…

No, they plan to maintain the RPMs for RHEL 7/8/9 and to contribute fixes for Flatpak, which is how they expect people to consume LO (without Red Hat support) in RHEL 10 and perhaps in future Fedora releases.

I for one am a periodic LO user (for both work stuff and personal sheets like tax returns) on Fedora and will switch next week to Flatpak to start reporting bugs. I already use Flatpak for OBS, Ferdium and VSCode, with no issues except that I need to use ssh access to open VSCode projects on localhost (because of some known sandboxing issues).

> support for both, RPM and Flatpak, up again in Fedora

Fedora has a Flatpak repository that is separate from FlatHub. LibreOffice developers post their builds to FlatHub, and those are usable from Fedora without involvement from Fedora developets.

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