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Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

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Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#261

Post by JohnTHaller »

erelde wrote: post #56
justin66 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in an American business context, "Libre" sounds stupid. Having it in the name hurts their popularity more than they know.

What connotation does "Libre" have in American English? (I'm French, to my ears it sounds perfectly reasonnable, if a bit "legalese")

Most Americans don't know what Libre means. It just sounds like a European word... French or Spanish, perhaps. They also don't know how to pronounce it... Lee-Bray-Office, Lee Brooff-iss, Li-berr-office? It always felt like a missed opportunity when they chose that name.

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#262

Post by int_19h »

bArray wrote: post #214
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…

"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.

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#263

Post by Sylos »

labster wrote: post #252
jasonkostempski wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coctothorp is how I pronounce C# :) That or C++++ because # looks like 4 overlapping +'s which I've always assumed is what they were hinting at.

If you pronounce it like that, what will the next version be? We don't have a nonathorp. I've always assumed the next version will be C𝄪 (for those of you who are non-musicians, that's a double sharp symbol).

Your description also helps for musicians whose font just doesn't display that symbol...

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#264

Post by davidgerard »

clintonc wrote: post #249
taserian wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd hesitate to claim that OpenOffice is "excellent software", if the security issues aren't being addressed in a timely manner.

There's a distinction between the software itself being excellent and the team being fast-moving.

AOO is neither, per the security problems that brought about discussion of retiring the project.

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#265

Post by davidgerard »

jimjag wrote: post #251
CopperWing wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenOffice and LibreOffice are already "merged". In fact in the past years, after the fork, LibreOffice developers regularly tracked OpenOffice source code repository and merged all the useful changes they could find, by either picking the original code or re-implementing it their own way. In addition to that they also completely overhauled and simplified the build system, removed tons of dead code and translated Ger…

" In fact in the past years, after the fork, LibreOffice developers regularly tracked OpenOffice source code repository and merged all the useful changes they could find, by either picking the original code or re-implementing it their own way. " And therein lies the problem... AOO was simply consumed. There was no quid-pro-quo where these were then donated back to AOO. Of course, the ALv2 does not require that, and s…

If only you could put it under a license that said "permissive, except those guys".

What you've written there is a wish for something that works like copyleft.

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#266

Post by JohnTHaller »

mindcrime wrote: post #143

Well, my prediction[1] came true even faster than I anticipated. I don't understand why so many people seem so desperate to see AOO fail and go away. Hey look, if you prefer LO, fine. Some of us prefer AOO for our own reasons. There's no reason to take glee in seeing a project struggle. Anyway, none of this means the project is actually going to be retired. It's just a discussion around something that might happen. […

OpenOffice was tarnished by Oracle when they bought Sun and some of that bad will was transferred to Apache when they got it.

OpenOffice has had unpatched security vulnerabilities with exploits in the wild for 6+ months at a time.

Users today are downloading OpenOffice thinking it is the best free office suite out there when it's had no feature upgrades since May 2014. They'd often find out that it didn't properly support something they wanted to do (like handling MS Office formats) and think they had to go buy MS Office. Meanwhile LibreOffice is sitting there ready to be downloaded for free and handles MS Office formats much better than OO does.

Sure, there are some people who are finding schadenfreude in it, but many of us want to see the confusion, security issues, etc go away so things can move forward.

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#267

Post by davidgerard »

ISV_Damocles wrote: post #250
rectang wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the time of the donation, The Document Foundation had an (understandably) antagonistic relationship with Oracle and legal foundations which were firming up but not yet solid. The assets were not going to TDF from Oracle directly. In accepting the proposal for a new Apache OpenOffice project, the ASF accepted not only the assets from Oracle but also a community, distinct from the LibreOffice community, that wanted…

What community? The only community around OpenOffice.org were the Sun/Oracle devs + the Go-OO devs getting it to work on Linux. The Go-OO devs forked it into LibreOffice and then Oracle shuttered their own work and reassigned their devs to other projects. Only a tiny handful of devs not part of Go-OO remained, and they had not been instrumental in actually maintaining the codebase as these other two groups had. There…

In fact, Oracle didn't even have many committers on OOo at the time - they'd reassigned most of the StarDivision devs to the abortive CloudOffice. At the time of the fork, LO had more dev resources on the codebase than Oracle did.

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#268

Post by rectang »

mzs wrote: post #258
sveredov wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Apache Foundation could simply have accepted the OpenOffice.org codebase+trademarks from Oracle, then donate to LibreOffice. But they did not do so. The Apache Foundation does not have experience with software that end-users use. They have experience with server software. That was their undoing.

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 then proceeded as it has for scores of other projects. It would have been completely inappropriate, unthinkable, for the Incubator (which oversees incubating projects) or the ASF Board (which oversees all projects) to take the assets away from that nascent community.

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#269

Post by davidgerard »

jimjag wrote: post #257
cesarb wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, that could have happened. Not only did LO make the effort of rebasing all their changes on top of a particular AOO release, they also were set up to incorporate all the new work from AOO into their branch. For instance, they quickly incorporated the sidebar code. Even today, one of the LO developers still goes over each AOO change, merging any worthwhile ones. What actually happened? For some reason, d…

I think you are proving my point... AOO was "plundered" by LO but LO never gave anything back. So any "co-opporation" was extremely one-sided and one-direction. It was hoped that LO, as good FOSS neighbors, would donate back, even though they didn't have to, just as we hope that our corporate neighbors also donate back. We trust in altruism rather than in forcing it. It just so happens in this case that our trust was…

Elsewhere in this thread, grandinj of LO notes that he tried to donate back and there weren't enough people at Apache to do anything with the patches.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12414681

So you did get your wish, but it's not the LO people at fault.

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#270

Post by Decade »

mindcrime wrote: post #143

Well, my prediction[1] came true even faster than I anticipated. I don't understand why so many people seem so desperate to see AOO fail and go away. Hey look, if you prefer LO, fine. Some of us prefer AOO for our own reasons. There's no reason to take glee in seeing a project struggle. Anyway, none of this means the project is actually going to be retired. It's just a discussion around something that might happen. […

I want AOO to die because it has the brand recognition. Frankly, AOO is slower, less stable, less secure, less pretty, and overall a worse product than LibreOffice.

LibreOffice should have been the successor to OOo, and it offends me that my non-technical friends still install AOO when LibreOffice would improve their lives so much more.

When AOO began and actually had a release, I was surprised. I expected it to fail sooner. It was a mistake from the beginning.

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