Apache OpenOffice 4.1.11 Released - Increased Font Size In Help, Other Mundane Changes

[kpedersen]

There are WAY better contenders to TDF and MS than Apache. Are you forgetting WPS Office and ONLYOFFICE (sorry, it's stylized that way)?
AOO is nonexistent in comparison.

OpenOffice sees *far* more downloads than the alternatives (there were stats earlier on in this thread). It is a massive contender.

[kpedersen]

Eh, I don't see TDF listed on the Collabora partner page, so how exactly are they partnered?

Collabora is one of TDF's commercial partners. The following article explains a little about the relationship.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/open-source-libreoffice-tells-businesses-get-off-our-community-version-you-are-hurting-development/

Also check out the TDF financial reports.

https://www.documentfoundation.org/foundation/financials/

[reavertm]

I am all for merging those projects now. Given how few changes were actually done to OpenOffice since fork happened, preparing merge requests with those patches on top of LibreOffice HEAD should not be too much of work for OpenOffice folks, right? .. right?

[matsukan]

Apache foundation is still full of "dead" projects which should terminate as soon possible. One of is OpenOffice and other good example Apache SVN. Only thing what keeps OpnOffice to run is that good brand name, not product itself. And someone is still fund it for reason what don't know.

[matsukan]

I am not sure that OO is in a vegetative state. Looking at the download number [1], it seems that even now OO is downloaded about 35.000-55.000 times per day.
Instead LO 7, was downloaded [2] 422000 times in a week = ~60.000 times per day.

The point is that despite LO is far better than OO, the downloads counts are comparable.

[1] https://www.openoffice.org/stats/downloads.html
[2] https://blog.documentfoundation.org/...week-in-stats/

How much it download per week or year doesn't prove anything about it's popularity. LibreOffice will installed for each Ubuntu installation by default and that doesn't count for these LO numbers.

[omer666]

As said, the TDF will focus solely on their cloud partners (i.e Collabora). This means that their needs will be prioritized over the many. An example of such a need would be, better Emscripten support vs say, improved desktop performance.



If TDF only focuses on their cloud partners needs, AOO will pick up the slack and overtake them. So this has a great influence over that focus. It means TDF and Microsoft both can not focus entirely on cloud nonsense.

More players in an area driving up competition is *always* good.

That would be the case with a healthy competitor. What's the point of running faster when the guy behind you is - literally - your grandfather?

I am among those who want more competition among Open Source software, but OOo has long proven its inability as even before LibreOffice, distributions were shipping a fork that could have gtk and Qt theming and propet font smoothing, because OOo maintainers didn't want these features.

About TDF working with Collabora - a company also working with Valve on the futex patches and a regular contractor in the Open Source world - I couldn't be happier about it. What can be better for competition than having a commercial partner?

[kpedersen]

That would be the case with a healthy competitor. What's the point of running faster when the guy behind you is - literally - your grandfather?

Because when the youngster loses focus and veers off the race track into the world of "cloud". The grandfather can pick up the slack and provide usable software until the kid stops wasting time chasing fads.

I am among those who want more competition among Open Source software, but OOo has long proven its inability as even before LibreOffice, distributions were shipping a fork that could have gtk and Qt theming and propet font smoothing, because OOo maintainers didn't want these features.

Yes, but do understand that many many people don't care about these features.

About TDF working with Collabora - a company also working with Valve on the futex patches and a regular contractor in the Open Source world - I couldn't be happier about it. What can be better for competition than having a commercial partner?

Companies do great things, sure. However they also serve themselves. If that means dragging everyone into the nonsense cloud. They will do this without hesitation.

The big worry here is that the head of the TDF board is working for Collabora. Valve not so much.

[chocolate]

OpenOffice sees *far* more downloads than the alternatives (there were stats earlier on in this thread). It is a massive contender.

Again with the downloads. First of all, that's a non-argument. People unfortunate enough to ACCIDENTALLY download OpenOffice without being redirected to LibreOffice are simply being conned. And of course I meant that OpenOffice is nonexistent compared to commercial alternatives in terms of functionality and features.

Secondly, this is unrelated to what you stated previously, which is that Apache would "pick up the slack" in case LibreOffice somehow stopped caring about desktop users, and "overtake them". Again, other commercial alternatives such as ONLYOFFICE stand in a far better position right now to surpass LibreOffice in popularity if that were to happen.
Even if OpenOffice kept conning naive users, no sane person would consciously choose it over alternatives. And for what? Just to be stuck 10 years in the past and be open to 0-day exploits? So, eventually word of mouth would spread far enough to close the Apache leaking faucet once and for all. And even if that were to take until eternity to happen, in the meantime Apache would never find the resources to do 0.001% of what LibreOffice accomplished. It would be more plausible for the community to fork LibreOffice again. Which in itself is also stupid because of course that's what the "Community" branch is for. The rest has to be there to give LIbreOffice credibility in the enterprise and in public administration.

[kpedersen]

Again with the downloads. First of all, that's a non-argument. People unfortunate enough to ACCIDENTALLY download OpenOffice without being redirected to LibreOffice are simply being conned..

Not really. They get value out of some free software. They don't care about much else. Why would they?

Apache would never find the resources to do 0.001% of what LibreOffice accomplished..

Much more than 0.001% or even 90% of LibreOffice code is based on OpenOffice and was achieved by the OpenOffice project under various governance, not LibreOffice. So I am not entirely sure this argument is valid. Frankly, had TDF started the code from scratch, it would have been a non-starter. We would all be retired before it hit the 0.1 alpha version.

[finalzone]

Much more than 0.001% or even 90% of LibreOffice code is based on OpenOffice and was achieved by the OpenOffice project under various governance, not LibreOffice. So I am not entirely sure this argument is valid. Frankly, had TDF started the code from scratch, it would have been a non-starter. We would all be retired before it hit the 0.1 alpha version.

The Document Foundation are founded by the very original OpenOffice.org members (some of them from Star Division days) dissatisfied with Oracle actions after buying SUN and LibreOffice, formerly Go Open Office, was practically OpenOffice with more features and improvements from the very OpenOffice members unapproved by SUN/Oracle at the time.

Take a look at the timeline: https://www.libreoffice.org/about-us...fice-timeline/