Don't Expect an OpenOffice/LibreOffice Merger 192
Since Oracle has decided to give OpenOffice back to the community, a lot of people wondered if there would be some sort of re-unification with the ex-Oracle and the Document Foundation run by a lot of the original involved folks. The latter has released a statement saying, "the development of TDF community and LibreOffice is going forward as planned, and we are always willing to include new members and partners. We will provide as many information as we can with the progress of the situation. We are currently making every possible effort to offer a smooth transition to the project."
It's just fine the way it is now! (Score:5, Interesting)
Another Open Office based option. (Score:4, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What? (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly right.
Further more, everybody who mattered in the developer base already bailed out of Oracle, and is working for LibreOffice. There is very little that Oracle has left to merge.
Oracle has thrown in the towel, (but you can rest assured there will be a few poison pills in anything they release that is not already in LibreOffice) and at best the open-sourcing of this project is their way of telling the remaining developers on their payroll, "here's your hat, what's your hurry". Those that didn't leave probably didn't because they needed the pay check.
Point, Set, and Match to LibreOffice. This is probably one of the most significant watershed events in Open Source development. Even more so than when XFree86 was forked and Xorg totally took over X servers on every distribution, leaving XFree86 into obscurity.
That being said, the article title does NOT square with the source, which makes no blanket statements about NO possible merger. I read it completely the opposite way, they will accept new members, and they may well cherry pick the released code.
Re:What? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, LibreOffice has several features that the newest OpenOffice.org lacks. Sun/Oracle dragged their feet on accepting contributions from outsiders. Part of this was due to the fact that Sun/Oracle wanted to charge money for certain features, part was simple Not Invented Here syndrome. Either way, when LibreOffice split off from OpenOffice.org it was already the better fork.
Now that LibreOffice has shown that it can organize a community, set up the needed infrastructure, and make a release that is better than Oracle's release Oracle is starting to get concerned about what this says about Oracle's ability to lead in other Free Software communities. Larry Ellison paid a lot of money for Sun's various Free Software businesses, and he does *not* want people getting the idea that these communities would be better off if they were forked away from Oracle.
Re:better name (Score:5, Interesting)
I like LibreOffice better than OpenOffice, but you're right. It's still a bad name.
Personally I think "Document Foundation" sounds impressive. They should go with that.
"Document Foundation Suite" sounds pretty good.
Re:really? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why does the name have to reflect the fact that it's free? Those types of names always sound pretentious, and "Freedom Office" is much worse than LibreOffice ever could be (which is impressive). I shouldn't have to feel like a hippy just because of my choice of office suite. (Then again, maybe some people want that.)