The State of Apache OpenOffice As Of Early 2021

[kpedersen]

It is not an actively developed project and is barely maintained..

Yep, this doesn't stop them from pushing all their other obsolete crap on the company does it? Internet Explorer 6 is a perfect example. How long was that ancient thing holding everyone back for?

FWIW, the momentum is behind things like Google Docs. Not MS Office.

I'm not sure. Almost every company I have dealt with is still invested heavily with Office (365 or proper). This is in the UK however where Microsoft has been placed oddly high on a pedestal for far too many years.

[RahulSundaram]

Yep, this doesn't stop them from pushing all their other obsolete crap on the company does it? Internet Explorer 6 is a perfect example. How long was that ancient thing holding everyone back for?

IE was for legacy compatibility requirements that was holding it as a necessity. OpenOffice.org just doesn't have a similar weight - nowhere near it. Without active collaborative features, it is toast. As for Office 365, it has some regional hold but not universal adoption.

[yoshi314]

why do they keep maintaining this.

at language school i attend, they use openoffice. probably because they have no clue of the alternative. i doubt they are required to use this specific office suite.

at this point, the existence of openoffice is detrimental to people using free office suites. it's practically trolling at this point.

[Awesomeness]

The best way to resolve this would be for the Apache Foundation to donate the OpenOffice.org trademark to the Document Foundation and make it a joint PR opportunity.

How is it Apache's fault that DTF's marketing sucks? I mean, just look at the recent "Personal Edition" debacle.

It's hard to make a selfless decision and for Apache that seems to be the case as well.

You could just as well direct that comment at TDF developers who refuse to work on OpenOffice. They happily import Apache-licensed code from OO but don't give anything back under the same license.

Meanwile the users are stuck with two office suites that both suck.

[Sonadow]

How is it Apache's fault that DTF's marketing sucks? I mean, just look at the recent "Personal Edition" debacle.


You could just as well direct that comment at TDF developers who refuse to work on OpenOffice. They happily import Apache-licensed code from OO but don't give anything back under the same license.

Meanwile the users are stuck with two office suites that both suck.

I am in agreement here. TDF created a hostile fork of OO, refuses to contribute to the original upstream project, and they have the balls to ask AOO to acknowledge LO, while sending 'open letters' during AOO's anniversary calling for Apache to officially recognize LO.

TDF can go fuck themselves.

[Mark625]

I am in agreement here. TDF created a hostile fork of OO, refuses to contribute to the original upstream project, and they have the balls to ask AOO to acknowledge LO, while sending 'open letters' during AOO's anniversary calling for Apache to officially recognize LO.

TDF can go fuck themselves.

I don't have a problem with any of that. I do have a problem with all this "Personal Edition" and "Community Edition" branding nonsense. WTF is wrong with TDF? If vendors want to market a commercial version they are entirely free to do so. But not at the expense of the core brand of the project. I mean that doesn't even make sense from the commercial vendor's point of view: "Hey guys, we made this cool commercial product based on that crappy 'Community Edition' of LibreOffice! Give us your money. Trust us, it's much better!" As a consumer I don't find that appeal believable (or appealing).

I used to think the public would be better served if AOO went away, due to them luring unsuspecting users away from the clearly superior and better maintained LO. But with these recent marketing shenanigans by TDF, I'm not so sure any more.

[Sonadow]

I don't have a problem with any of that...I used to think the public would be better served if AOO went away, due to them luring unsuspecting users away from the clearly superior and better maintained LO. But with these recent marketing shenanigans by TDF, I'm not so sure any more.

If you don't have a problem with that, then it is also not Apache's problem that their rights to the OO name allows them to lure users away from LO, and it is none of TDF's friggin business.

[Mark625]

If you don't have a problem with that, then it is also not Apache's problem that their rights to the OO name allows them to lure users away from LO, and it is none of TDF's friggin business.

I think we found one of the seven AOO contributors here, LOL.

Forking an open-source project is everyone's right. That is the whole point of having open source software in the first place. And LO cannot contribute back to AOO due to licensing differences and the AOO CLA. So untwist your knickers and relax. AOO and LO are destined to go down different paths now, they cannot be joined together again. And as I said, maybe that's a good thing after all.

Time will tell whether the TDF will fulfill its death wish of being just a "Community Edition" beholden to commercial vendors.

[chocolate]

I am in agreement here. TDF created a hostile fork of OO, refuses to contribute to the original upstream project

Quite the history rewrite.

[Sonadow]

So untwist your knickers and relax.

I honestly don't give a damn about LO or AOO: both are shit in many ways and I have tolerated both long enough. I'm not going to blink even if both projects were to be permanently wiped off the face of Earth overnight. The latest Git version of LO Writer still slows down to a frigging crawl if a document is loaded up with lots of images, tables and pages of different orientations because it refuses to use more than one CPU thread.

Even the web-limited version of Office 365 is so much faster and less frustrating to use than LO.

AOO and LO are destined to go down different paths now, they cannot be joined together again.

That's precisely what AOO is doing. TDF is the party that refuses to acknowledge this and just can't STFU about it.