Where Do I Go Now That Oracle Owns OpenOffice.org? 510
eldavojohn writes "So I noted that there was better support for my processor in the latest BIOS for my mainboard. After downloading the update, there was a .doc file containing flashing instructions. No matter, I have OpenOffice.org installed on this machine and just opened it up. And, as should be no surprise, there was an Oracle logo splash screen while OpenOffice.org 3.2 started up. At my job, I've had a less than favorable history with Oracle that I'm not going to get into — rather let's just say I never want anything to do with them again. Including installing any of their software on my machine. So I'm facing a dilemma. I've looked into the forked LIbreOffice but that's still in beta and I'm a little wary of depending on that. Has anyone used LibreOffice (it's installing as I type this) extensively? Does it handle complex Powerpoint files okay? Is there some alternative out there that I'm completely overlooking for open source? Can anyone convince me that there's no reason to fear the Oracle OpenOffice.org? Will it remain the de facto standard? Will it eventually lock me into a commitment with Oracle? If you get by without one of these heavyweight monster editors, what do you use and how do you handle doc, ppt, (etc.) extensions?"
libre office (Score:2, Interesting)
just go where 90% of developers have allready gone: http://www.documentfoundation.org/download/
Should be fine... (Score:4, Interesting)
Seeing as libreoffice is just a fork of openoffice (they're probably almost identical in code right now), you can probably rely on it just as much as openoffice now, and possibly even more in the future.
Re:Should be fine... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Write to the manufacturer (Score:5, Interesting)
And after, that stop acting irrationally. Sure, ignore Oracle products if you wish, if you ask me that's a good thing. However, refusing to use a FLOSS computer program just because it's written by Oracle (btrfs), or just because it has the Oracle name on the splash screen (OpenOffice.org) is simply stupid. Yes, Oracle are going to fuck up OpenOffice.org, and yes, we're moving to better alternatives (LibreOffice), but there is no need to rush, unless you want to help with writing bug reports. Unless you plan to do just that, jumping to install LibreOffice before distros switch is irrational and stupid. It's too early to worry about that.
OpenOffice.org is not a product, it's a computer program, that happens to have a Oracle splash screen on it. You aren't buying it, and the code is still virtually unchanged since the acquisition by Sun, so you can't claim that by using it you're supporting Oracle in any way. RELAX.
Re:Should be fine... (Score:4, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Don't be launching VirtualBox either. (Score:5, Interesting)
Make it a pic of your cat instead. (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not usually the one to post these types of 'fix it yourself' OSS comments...
Download the source
replace oracle logos with something else
compile
problem solved (profit?)..
Re:Try Google Docs (Score:3, Interesting)
It's possible the submitter requests open source because he doesn't trust running closed source software on his machine, which would make Google Docs kosher, as it's 100% web-based.
Re:Write to the manufacturer (Score:5, Interesting)
Because Adobe keeps threatening to sue Microsoft [infopackets.com] if that feature is added.
Re:Be Patient (Score:4, Interesting)
You can also give http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Lotus_Symphony [wikipedia.org] a shot as the current version is based upon open office. Interestingly enough software development is done IBM China Development Laboratory, located in Beijing, so there is very likely to be a huge surge in the number of users in the not to distant future.
I wouldn't be so sure about that one. I'm thinking that IBM based development of Symphony in China as a measure of cost reduction, not because they are targeting a Chinese audience. Further, even if their target is a Chinese user-base I don't think Symphony will take off there; things like linux-based Ylmf OS [ylmf.org] (which is developed by a Chinese company for a Chinese user-base) have trouble gaining traction. China already has Kingsoft WPS Office [kingsoft.com] which is free for personal use. (The English version [kingsoftna.com] is a 30-day free trial.) The only Chinese I know that don't use Kingsoft WPS Office are the ones doing graduate study in the US. They're using bootlegged copies of Microsoft Office instead.
Re:It can't be that different already, right? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, given licensing, etc., there *could* be an immense change. I don't think there has been, but that's not a given. Particularly with Oracle talking about putting out a non-free version of the JVM. (That's one thing I thought was totally standardized.)
Given the recent news, I can understand being hesitant to trust anything with Oracle's name on it, or around it. This despite my being quite willing to trust similar products with Sun's name on them.
OTOH, I don't feel any pressing need to switch from OpenOffice to LibreOffice. I'll want to do it soon, but I don't see any reason to do it immediately. I did, however, scrap all plans for doing the project I've just started in Java. I'm currently considering a bunch of alternatives. At the instant Common Lisp is leading the pack, but it could easily change before next week. Lisp, however, is looking better than C or C++, because it has garbage collection and a standardized way of handling utf8 files. Python could do the same thing, but it's slower. Go is still beta, and it has lousy documentation. Etc. Also, I may have occasion to write some self-modifying code, and that's easier in Lisp than in most compiled languages. (Yeah, scheme. But Scheme doesn't support classes in any standard way. And there aren't many r6rs schemes out, and all the r5rs schemes support utf8 in non-standard ways. [They've got to. It's not a part of the standard.])
I suppose I could check things like Haskell or OCaML, but I find it hard to wrap my head around them. Erlang *is* a possibility, and maybe I should look into it more carefully. Last I checked it didn't have any GUI capability, and the default database wasn't large enough. (Maybe I could partition things, or use Mnesia instead of the built-in methods.) That would mean using C FFI's, but I'll need to do that with Lisp anyway...and multiprocessors *are* becoming more common...
Re:Should be fine... (Score:4, Interesting)
Considering that even Microsoft has trouble supporting VBA (i.e. the lack of VBA in various versions of Office on Mac), I wish the LibreOffice people luck in their efforts :)
Re:Write to the manufacturer (Score:5, Interesting)
"I visited some technical factories in China earlier this year and they have gotten to the point where they know they have a high, high turnover rate. The average worker jumps ship in 18 months to get a much, much higher salary."
This means nothing but that those companies will need to be much less labour intensive. To-date, due to very low wages they chose man labour against automations every day; luckily for them (and for companies selling these kinds of automations) they have a big and obvious path for optimization by automation (in some cases you can find the same kind of factory that currently uses 1000 workers in China totally automated in Japan with just 2 or three workers).
Re:Write to the manufacturer (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Be Patient (Score:2, Interesting)
Posting as AC 'cos I work for the place.
You do NOT want Symphony. It's based on a much earlier release of OO.o and is for some reason shipped without Draw and a few other bits. WTH would you _remove_ apps from a _free_ suite??!? If that weren't enough, the branding has really ruined the experience.
In fact, you may want to step around anything from Lotus at all. They/we/it (not me!) are also building a wiki system, and some of the design choices are just ... mind-bogglingly archaic (no per-page permissions, no versioning, ...).
Re:Write to the manufacturer (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't you know we are living in a post-productivity world? It's all about the churn now,
Speak for yourself. Maybe you are living in a post-productivity USA, but that's not "the world". Meanwhile, my country of residence is making its money by selling machinery and cars to the rest of the world. And I'd bet that countries like China, that actually produce stuff and sell it to countries like yours, would equally disagree.
Re:Be Patient (Score:2, Interesting)
Hopefully they keep the Java API. One of the biggest things about OpenOffice is the easy accessibility from Java. Hope they don't lose that since that's the only competitive advantage they have over MS Office. Definitely doesn't require Java to run and do normal office tasks. It's a real good balance right now, please don't break it...
Rant mode on. Seriously guys, "Libre" Office. That is the DUMBEST product name I've ever heard. Did anyone give it any thought at all? I'm not going to be able to convince anyone to give it a try with that horrendous name. Argh. Rant mode off.
Re:Write to the manufacturer (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Microsoft Office (Score:3, Interesting)
Then we have a few people that interact a great deal more with other companies, local government and etc. For them we have to buy license of Microsoft Word, because abovementioned external parties continue to mindlessly send us stuff in Word format, often @#%$@#%&^%$#*& .DOCX format, and the users aren't happy with Word Viewer, Catdoc, or other tools. Worse, many have to send docs to other agencies who insist on a proprietary format from a monolithic single-source vendor.
WordPerfect mostly works ok and about 30% of my users don't realize they aren't using Bill's program. It has a few issues. There's a piece of code that sits in memory after you print until you're done until you exit WP. After printing the second doc with complicated images and layout, that piece tends to lockup and take 100% of the cpu. It never finishes what it was doing. So we just kill that piece, don't even exit WP, and life goeth on.
I love "reveal codes." Why don't all wordprocs have that? Untangles some really twisty little problems, especially when my users import docs from another source, edit it, and the result is a tangled mess.
You want to know the funniest part of this? As part of the support team for this, I have to assume when users call and say they are having a problem with "Word" that they mean "WordPerfect:" because that's what they all call it.
Re:Koffice has just split! (Score:3, Interesting)
This post is full of FUD. As the KOffice marketing dude, let me clear it up.
It's true that the KOffice community is splitting up. Right now it looks as if group A is going to be more or less one person, and group B the rest of the community. I won't write any more about that and I'll let you speculate freely on it.
Nokia has *not* forked anything. At the point when the feature freeze came along before the release of KOffice version 2.3, Nokia wanted to continue developing some features. As good citizens in the community this is being done in a work branch in SVN. In the mean time the team working within and together with Nokia does both lots of bugfixes and some new features. All the bugfixes go directly into SVN trunk, and the new features go into the work branch. This is how it should be.
Once KOffice 2.3 is released, the new features in the work branch will be individually presented to the community for review. If the community accepts the feature, it will go into trunk, and if not it will be reworked until it's accepted.
This said, It's not impossible that team B (being almost all of the previous KOffice community) will continue to work from the work branch as the new trunk, but then it can be regarded as the community accepting the new features.
Inge Wallin
KOffice developer