OOo contributors make a dash for LibreOffice

More than 30 OpenOffice.org contributors are preparing to break free of Oracle’s code base in favour of LibreOffice. Last month the OOo project revealed a massive rejig that ended Oracle’s dominant control of the code, with the group of developers declaring themselves independent of Larry Ellison’s company. The OOo project …

[Anonymous Coward]

The OO committee can't match their warranty of archival standard software.

I mean I really DO like Open Office - but a FEW really really fundamentally STUPID omissions - like the prohibition of the embedding of ones own fonts into ones own documents, is indefensible.

There are two parts to graphically conveying information:

1. The first and most important part IS the layout - it's the image. It's the FONTS, it's the location, it's the tables, the diagrams, the margins, the headers, headings and the foot notes and the pictures etc...

2. And every part of the document - revolves around the font and the font size.

And if you cannot embed your own fonts into your own documents - when a document is constituted with a specific layout, font types and sizes;

And when those specific layouts are re-opened on a machine without the system fonts in it - then there goes your entire project - everything turns to shit.

The very structure of a document - IS it's FONTS.

Then you get the people who refuse to allow people to embed their own fonts as a native function; and then you get moderators who defend that position - and who ban you and side line the issue when you confront them.......

In spite of the OO committee's claims that it meets the standard for public storage, and backward compatibility etc., what the lack of embedding does is make the software NON archival quality... It cannot be pulled out of storage 50 years after it was produced - in the as produced layout.

My money is on the group who make functional software, instead of fundamentally inescusable restrictions - that at a core level - are even worse than Microsoft's IDIOT ribbon interface.

[Stuart Henderson]

Awesome!

Now I can not use OpenOffice AND LibreOffice! i'm pumped!

[Jack]

Splitters!

Oh, well, yeah, right, but what have the Romans ever done for us?

[ElReg!comments!Pierre]

Splitters? Nah...

.. the word Ellison probably used was "forkers". That was just after they asked if they could take the name with them and suggested that Oracleś version be renamed "Larry's Leisure Suite".

[MacRat]

Any Commits from Them?

Considering that the S,nOracle OOo engineering team rejects most external contributions, does this announcement really matter to the code base?

[breakfast]

Odd question

Well if the Snoreacle OOo engineering team rejects most external contributions and most of the external contributors have just left to start a new fork, surely that means that this is very likely to bring significant changes to the codebase? About as significant as one could get.

[DrXym]

I hope they use the opportunity to pick a decent name

Neither OpenOffice nor LibreOffice rolls off the tongue. If they're going to rebrand (as seems likely) I hope they pick a name which is snappy, easy to say and a bit more memorable.

As for the current situation I wonder what Oracle will do now. They're rapidly learning the first rule of open source - keep the developers happy or they will branch. Oracle could still salvage the situation but only if they accept the new charter. Otherwise they're going own a worthless and dead property while LibreOffice development goes off in a new direction which Oracle have no influence in.

The sad part is what it means for Oracle devs who work fulltime on this stuff. If Oracle loses interest, what happens to them?

[Giles Jones]

Alternate names

How MikeRoweSoft Office?

It's been done before though:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_vs._MikeRoweSoft

[tony2heads]

or even

MyCrowsLoft office

[Jimmy 1]

Forking hell!

"Neither OpenOffice nor LibreOffice rolls off the tongue."

Well then for the sake of poetic assonance they could call it "Fork Orf" as in "Norf n Sarf"

[Rob Davis]

As long is it doesn't begin with G or K

...as in Gnome, Gwibber, KDE and all the other utterly awful nerdy geeky Linux software names.

[Kurgan]

this is bad!

Now we have 2 openoffices, that means less support, more fragmentations, more issues.

M$ is surely really happy about this.

[copsewood]

Not the first time

Disputes about the management of the XFree86 windowing system resulted in the X.org fork. No one bothers with XFree86 anymore, this has effectively been killed by the X.Org fork proving itself the more vigorous and effective development.

Disputes over project management will occur. The advantage of open source here is the evolutionary benefit of survival of the fittest. When there is a dispute over the management of a closed source program there is no guarantee that the leadership chosen by management are the fittest for purpose. Does a genome care if one branch becomes incompatible with another ? Most of the time the better branch will survive, in other cases 2 species emerge into different evolutionary niches.

[Graham Wilson]

I wish the LibreOffice people lots of luck but I'm not holding my breath just yet.

I'll finally rejoice when I ACTUALLY see LibreOffice finally get the shortcut editing capability that M$'s Office 2000 had a decade ago (right, not the latest MSO but the 10-year old one)!

For example, OOo 3.3.x is STILL missing even a full set of editing basics such as the equivalents of MSO's editing shortcuts, CTRL-Q, CTRL-T etc. If you can't get even these right then there's lots to do.

And then when LibreOffice finally gets a half-decent grammar checker I'll use it. (Even a grammar checker the equivalent of the brain-dead MSO one (which has not been updated-for-ten-years) would do.

I wish the LibreOffice people lots of luck but I'm not holding my breath just yet.

[Anonymous Coward]

A joke right?

OO is cross platform: would that translate to cmd-T on a Mac or option-T?

Try auto complete in OO - a dream! I have never figured out how to set MS word up for that - maybe you can help given you are a word guru.

Q: What version of office do you use? Do you ask recipients if they have Office 2007 or later? If they have 2003 do you tell them they need to upgrade to read a .docx?

OO ain't perfect that's for sure but when it comes to assessing superiority of products please don't use KB shortcuts as the ultimate test: get a life and get a real OS! I use Mac, Linux and Windows now what file format will you send me?? Hint: Try reading the comparisons of OO v MSO that may be a good place for you to start.

[Geoff Campbell]

2003 will read .docx and .xlsx quite happily

Microsoft released a compatability pack some time ago, which works well.

GJC

[Avatar of They]

The secret is in the name,

It's a compatibility pack. It isn't editing pack. I work in the NHS and the compatibility pack plays havoc with all our existing templates and anything we get from outside sources in 2007. Because it is to be honest, crap.

It is an obvious con from M$ to try and tempt people over to their attempts at buying a monopoly (again), but margins and spacing errors, header and footer issues just make the whole thing a walking advert for OOo.

OOo is better at reading the hamfisted attempt at international standards (that the docx is.)

[Nick Kew]

Fail

Get a decent X11 platform, and you have a far better set of editing shortcuts for free. No need for different applications - like an office suite - to go around reinventing that wheel.

If M$ windows 2000 instead of Office 2000 had got generic, cross-application facilities, it could've caught up with 1990 leading-edge technology.

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft will be laughing their sox off?

Now that instead of *one* Office competitor, they now have two half-competitors.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Oracle thought processes ?

Don't really understand this.

Oracle only has two interests, making money and pissing off Microsoft.

They can't make money from OOo, nobody want's to buy a copy it doesn't leverage sales of Oracle kit, and they can't sue anybody for using it.

It does piss MSFT off - but only if it's successful. Treating it like the rest of Sun's technology ie, burying it in a big hole or killing it off doesn't make any sense.

The only thing that would make sense to Oracle is flogging it to IBM for a few quid, or posting a CD of it to every windows user in the world.

[Anonymous Coward]

Big Blue

Have their own version built on OOo - Lotus Symphony

[Curt Vile]

Hah!

Well, that would certainly explain why Symphony is so sucktacular.

[Ian Davies]

Does anyone care?

Even the latest release of OOo has an interface, and general usability, that looks like it was cobbled together from twigs and bottle tops and held together with mud. I use it purely for legacy operations. It doesn't matter if I use the shitty office apps from Oracle, or the shitty office apps from TDF. The time spent actually in the apps are generally measured in seconds.

[Anonymous Coward]

Libre, Libra

I can't help but think of Libra when I see the word Libre... it's a brand in Australia that promotes freedom... for woman, via its range of sanitary products

[Rogerborg]

ForkOff

ice.

[Matt Hawkins]

OpenOffice or LibreOffice?

I currently use OpenOffice at home. I could use MS Office 2010 which I can get for £8 through work ... but why waste £8? OpenOffice does everything I need without that irritating ribbon.

I'm waiting to see who releases the best version. I don't care less about their management structure. For 99.9% of users the proof is in the pudding. Performance and features matter not Foundations and focus groups.

Libre or Open I don't care. Just create the best product and I will download that.

[Spikehead]

Title? What title?

We use MSO at work, but I have a WinPenPack release of the latest LibreOffice beta. Been many a time I've used LO as opposed to MSO due to Microsloth's limitations. (spreadsheet row/column number limitations, row height limitation, and text file import).

Use open office at home with no issues whatsoever. the only reason I'm using the LO version occasionally at work is the OO version has that damn ugly Oracle logo on it's splash screen and it complaining about a missing file.

Libre Office does have some patches implemented in it that OO doesn't (don't recall the extra features/improvements) so it's probably going to have improvements happen faster than in OO.

[Anonymous Coward]

And I should care because?

The only unique feature in OpenOffice is the ability to make MS Word look almost usable.

[ZenCoder]

No worries here.

The current version of Open Office takes care of 100% of my letter writing, envelope printing, spreed sheet needs. I store my documents in a Drop Box folder so everything gets synced between systems, with a local copy on three computers and one out there in the cloud.

if OO stagnates under Oracle, LO can pickup the torch and run with it. If not I see a lot of utility in having a fork that allows for more innovation, experimentation and creativity, with the best features being ported back into the more conservative original.

[chrisjw37]

Time to start agin?

Time to start again, only this time lets have the cocks off the table shall we boys?

[Fred Flintstone]

Libre - Open, not too bothered at the moment.

Personally I think Oracle shot itself in the foot, and will get a lesson in what Open Source actually means. At the moment, the OOo code is good enough for basic needs and I think there should be EU competition questions why no PC supplier pre-loads either version on a PC, but does stuff the box with a 30-days-to-get-you-addicted MS Office copy.

The question is who will get the brain power, and Oracle has already blotted its copybook there. Time will tell.

[Anonymous Coward]

Clever Idea.

"At the moment, the OOo code is good enough for basic needs and I think there should be EU competition questions why no PC supplier pre-loads either version on a PC, but does stuff the box with a 30-days-to-get-you-addicted MS Office copy."

Very Good Idea:

I REALLY do LIKE Open Office / Libre Office....

I am So grateful that there is a BACK DOOR to Microsoft and their bullshit...

But I also have a tendancy to wind off the dial when faced with "free range losers" who call "having opinions in forums" as a valid substitute for a social life and being generally innovative and productive.

It especially irks when they do REALLY dumb shit like "The Microsoft Ribbon"...with the unreserved mentality of "Oh the car jack and spare tyre are features that we want you to be aware of, so we will mount them on your cars dash board"....

As one poster noted in the idiots that were clowning around with a hand gun at a Russian wedding video - and one "guest" assumed the hand gun was empty - and grabbed it from the other guy, stuck it to his temple and pulled the trigger and shot himself in the head....

The poster said, "Yeah good one dick head."

And so it is with the Open Office crowd - and one pill of a moderator in the forums...

Open Office DOES NOT embed the fonts used in it.....

AND they do NOT allow you to embed your own fonts into your own documents either;

So when you produce your "Jumbo the Circus Elephant" poster, in amazing fonts, with great layouts and spiffy word and letter spacing, and in curves, and letter outlining etc...

When that document is sent to someone else, OR moved to another machine, or archived and reconstituted for later use on a different system - your Circus Maximus font - and all the layout reverts to 12 point times new roman....

There goes your poster.... or ready to publish book, or flyer or what ever.....

You can buy CD's with 10,000 fonts on them - for $10..... and the people who put OO together deliberately STOPPED people from embedding their own fonts into their own documents; then you get moderators in the OO forums who DEFEND that position.

Then they ban you for calling them on their "put the spare wheel and car jack on the dashboard and call it a feature" mindset....

I mean I really DO like Open Office - but a FEW really really fundamentally STUPID omissions - like the prohibition of the embedding of ones own fonts into ones own documents, is indefensible.

There are two parts to graphically conveying information:

1. The first and most important part IS the layout - it's the image. It's the FONTS, it's the layout, it's the tables, the diagrams, the margins, the headers, headings and the foot notesand the pictures etc...

2. And every part of the document - revolves around the font and the font size.

And if you cannot embed your own fonts into your own documents - when a document is constituted with a specific layout and font types and sizes;

And when those specific layouts are re-opened on a machine without the system fonts in it - then there goes your entire project - everything turns to shit.

The very structure of a document - IS it's FONTS.

Then you get the people who refuse to allow people to embed their own fonts as a native function; and then you get moderators who defend that position - and who ban you when you confront them, "Hey guys - the spare wheel and jack on the dash board - it's a fucking stupid idea - or hasn't this occured to you? And I don't want my car to come with this configuration"..

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually my big forum fight with OO is here:

http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=107456

"What? Your stopping the embedding of ones own fonts in one's own documents?"

This is the bullshit that the people and the moderators of Open Office try to pass off as "things you should not be talking about" so they just play games and try to side line the issue...

I bought the $10 CD with 10,000 fonts on it - and your saying I can't use them and keep them in my own documents?

Well as much as I do hate Microsoft - I think I shall toodle off to the computer swap meet and buy a copy of Office 2003 - and say to the Open Office Idiots and all your bullshit - "Stick it up your arse".