Should Apache Concede OpenOffice Is Done With & Point Users To LibreOffice?

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Should Apache Concede OpenOffice Is Done With & Point Users To LibreOffice?

Prominent GNOME and Fedora developer Christian Schaller has published an open letter to the Apache Software Foundation and Apache OpenOffice teams asking them to redirect OpenOffice.org to the LibreOffice web-site...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Apache-OO-Redirect-LO

[ElectricPrism]

"OpenOffice is an important part of open source history, but that is also what it is at this point in time."

If AOO has any remaining developers I think that would be an indicator that it should continue existing.

It seems to me that LibreOffice wants to take AOO's users as they consider themselves a superior product. Whether or not LO is better than AOO is moot, however, where's the open source spirit "the more the merrier" and "fork everything" - maybe OP needs to consider that some developers may prefer the Apache Umbrella to the LO governance micro-political culture.

OP's point of view would be like Gnome asking MATE to immediately halt development and hand over their developers, and redirect all their website traffic to www.Gnome.org - ridiculous.

[ChristianSchaller]

OP's point of view would be like Gnome asking MATE to immediately halt development and hand over their developers, and redirect all their website traffic to www.Gnome.org - ridiculous.

Actually if you had read my original post you would have seen that I made it very clear that this suggestion comes in light of AOO being a mostly dead project. So yes, if MATE stopped all development for a year then maybe asking them to redirect users to GNOME wouldn't be so ridiculous?

[code19]

"OpenOffice is an important part of open source history, but that is also what it is at this point in time."

If AOO has any remaining developers I think that would be an indicator that it should continue existing.

It seems to me that LibreOffice wants to take AOO's users as they consider themselves a superior product. Whether or not LO is better than AOO is moot, however, where's the open source spirit "the more the merrier" and "fork everything" - maybe OP needs to consider that some developers may prefer the Apache Umbrella to the LO governance micro-political culture.

OP's point of view would be like Gnome asking MATE to immediately halt development and hand over their developers, and redirect all their website traffic to www.Gnome.org - ridiculous.

But the difference between GNOME and MATE is that both are developed actively. MATE is transferring to GTK3 and it is constantly maintained. However this is not the case with AOO. I have no problem with forking and developing something new. However, unmaintained code is bad(this AOO gives window user assumption that linux/free software is inferior). the main point here is that if you don't want to maintain and develop the code, how about lets put the effort together and make something good for all.

[efikkan]

The projects would be better of if they "merged"; all the devs moving over to LibreOffice and then replace the LibreOffice name with OpenOffice which is the better name.

[Ramiliez]

Today even asking is considered insulting. I have no doubt that SJW have already declared Jihad on you. Although i know some people who are still using OO so this isnt clear cut issue

[F1esDgSdUTYpm0iy]

Honestly, whether or not OpenOffice is a dead project is mostly moot -- If it is a dead project, it will die off naturally anyhow. I fail to see any specific reason to redirect people to LibreOffice. Over time, if indeed OpenOffice proves to be over and done with, LibreOffice will replace it completely naturally. As matters such as security, compatibility, extendibility will simply continue to develop for LibreOffice where they will not for OpenOffice and the package maintainers for the individual distributions will simply adopt LibreOffice as the default.

Which already is the case in several distributions.

People then electing to download and install OpenOffice manually, well... that is their own decision. Not EVERYTHING needs to be spoonfed. Any individuals to whom everything does need to be spoonfed have wholly different issues from whether or not OpenOffice is still the go-to office suite.

[ua=42]

I think openoffice hasn't had a patch in 6 months and all the build servers are down..... yeah.

[xeekei]

The projects would be better of if they "merged"; all the devs moving over to LibreOffice and then replace the LibreOffice name with OpenOffice which is the better name.

I would've agreed, if it weren't for the fact that the name is actually "OpenOffice.org", not "OpenOffice". Which IIRC is for legal reasons. You have no idea how hard it has been for me to explain to some people in the past that OOo isn't a website.

[gQuigs]

Their blog makes it pretty clear they are in trouble..

https://blogs.apache.org/ooo/

"Considering that OpenOffice is currently in the need to expand the number of its developers, we believe that seeing our release cycle slow down would damage the whole OpenOffice ecosystem."

Their last release was 21 August 2014. It's will be 1 year in 4 days...