ASF Lays Out Its Plan For OpenOffice.org 129
Thinkcloud writes "In an open letter, the Apache Software Foundation has made its plans for OpenOffice clear, including an Apache-branded OpenOffice suite targeted at developers coming next year."
From The H: "The ASF says it does not want to force any vision on the ODF community noting that 'it is impossible to agree upon a single vision for all participants, Apache OpenOffice does not seek to define a single vision, nor does it seek to be the only player' in the large ODF ecosystem. Instead, it wishes to offer a neutral 'collaboration opportunity' and notes that its permissive licensing and development model are 'widely recognised as one of the best ways to ensure open standards, such as ODF, gain traction and adoption.'"
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Re:One (Open)Office to rule them all (Score:5, Informative)
Apache Software License 2.0 is GPL3 compatible. Which doesn't actually matter ; LibreOffice and OOo are actually released under the same license - LGPL3
The main license issue was that Sun / Oracle wouldn't accept patches without copyright attribution. This kept their options open - because they owned the copyrights of all the source, they could re-license it as they saw fit, including as a commercial product (StarOffice).
Since then I am not aware of The Document Foundation demanding copyright attribution. There was basically no point doing so - the copyrights were still owned by Oracle, so it's not as if they could ever re-license the code as anything other than the license they acquired it under. The positive effect this has is that patches are easier to get into the code because contributors don't have to enter into a legal agreement with the foundation (which they may or may not be permitted to do, depending on their employment conditions, age, etc).
Because the licenses continue to be LGPL3, LibreOffice can continue to merge patches from OOo at their leisure. Apache may only merge patches from LibreOffice if they have abandoned the practice of demanding copyright attribution (as of right now, the relevant page [openoffice.org] still demands that you sign the Oracle Contributor Agreement).
So until Apache makes it very clear what their position on copyright attribution is, they remain the less Free of the two projects, and LibreOffice definitely has a purpose, and continues to have a technical advantage, despite being somewhat overshadowed by the brand capital that the OpenOffice.org name has accrued.
Re:Why don't they just kill it? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Why don't they just kill it? (Score:2, Informative)
A Frenchman will actually pronounce it Libroffice, and bro exists in English (brother)
Re:OT, but comparison of LibreOffice to OpenOffice (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, yes, yes, yes, and again yes to all of your questions!
LibreOffice has not only merged countless improvements that OO.o cannot merge (because of license issues), but has cleaned up a lot of code, removed dead code, fixed known problems, improved work flow, removed limitations, improved compatibility with other software, upgraded to ODF 1.2, and made the program better in countless respects. They're also providing explicit release schedules for major and minor versions (e.g. 3.5.0 is due Feb 8, and 3.5.1 is due in the first week of March, then 3.5.2 is due in the first week of April, etc.), and are properly open about the coming features, the road map, funding, etc.
Sure, you can certainly get plenty of mileage out of existing installations of OO.o today, but if you have no compelling reason to stay with OO.o you should definitely consider upgrading to LibreOffice. I'd wager that you'll be very glad to have done it.
Bottom line, OO.o is dead and gone in all but name. I really don't see much point in continuing to spend energy on OO.o these days.
The core difference between browsing the web and working with documents is the persistence of data and how predictable (consistent) your data is presented. Nobody in their right mind expects web pages to look the same, regardless whether you use Opera, Firefox, Chrome, MSIE, or Lynx. But when it comes to documents, people get upset if a word wraps earlier in one product than another, their carefully crafted one page document suddenly overflows by two words onto a second line, their embedded images aren't properly aligned, etc. Sometimes these are legitimate concerns, sometimes it's just a matter of mismatched expectations, but overall it's a different ball game.
So if you want to play in the office/document playground, you can't afford to alienate too many people before you start stepping out of line, and improving on the old and trusted formula that so many people take for granted.
Comment removed (Score:2, Informative)