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#1 2012-08-01 15:06:21

olive
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From: Belgium
Registered: 2008-06-22
Posts: 1,490

apache openoffice and libreoffice

I have seen that Oracle has given openoffice to the Apache foundation. One question I have is if the libreoffice fork still necessary. It was my understanding that Oracle prevented good development of openoffice and claim too much control. But now? What's the main reason to keep to have two versions?

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#2 2012-08-01 15:54:50

joshdmiller
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From: California
Registered: 2010-04-25
Posts: 51
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Re: apache openoffice and libreoffice

LibreOffice was actually pretty much forked prior to the whole Oracle fiasco. It was called "go-openoffice" and included a lot of features not found upstream. When Oracle refused to give the codebase and trademark to a foundation, it was forked officially and the go-openoffice changes were merged into LibreOffice.

Long-term, there probably shouldn't be two versions, but for the meantime it makes sense. LibreOffice has additional features. Also, while Apache excels at nurturing codebases, LibreOffice could nurture the community, too. Apache doesn't have a lot of experience with end-user applications that are competing with products from multi-national conglomerates; having a foundation that can focus on brand and partnerships should be a plus for the project.

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#3 2012-08-01 16:08:19

Lone_Wolf
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From: Netherlands, Europe
Registered: 2005-10-04
Posts: 11,868

Re: apache openoffice and libreoffice

Apache Openoffice appears to target enterprise and business users, while libreoffice focuses more on individual users.
They also use different licenses, so i doubt the 2 will merge again.


Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.


(A works at time B)  && (time C > time B ) ≠  (A works at time C)

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#4 2012-08-01 16:18:22

olive
Member
From: Belgium
Registered: 2008-06-22
Posts: 1,490

Re: apache openoffice and libreoffice

Lone_Wolf wrote:

Apache Openoffice appears to target enterprise and business users, while libreoffice focuses more on individual users.
They also use different licenses, so i doubt the 2 will merge again.

You may be right but I can't prevent me to think that this is sad. How business users can be so different to individual users in regards of an office suite? (M$ sell basically the same office suite to both clients, apart some differences that do not justify a new product). As for the license, do we really need two projects for that? The LGPL as well as the apache license allows proprietary linking...

I wonder if Linux distributions (and archlinux in particular) will now ship openoffice again. I thought after the fork that Libreoffice will have been just the continuation of openoffice while openoffice itself will die (recalling the Xorg fork of Xfree86). But now? We can't just say that the Apache foundation do everything wrong as we may have said with Oracle.

Last edited by olive (2012-08-01 16:19:34)

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#5 2012-08-01 17:03:57

joshdmiller
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From: California
Registered: 2010-04-25
Posts: 51
Website

Re: apache openoffice and libreoffice

olive wrote:
Lone_Wolf wrote:

Apache Openoffice appears to target enterprise and business users, while libreoffice focuses more on individual users.
They also use different licenses, so i doubt the 2 will merge again.

You may be right but I can't prevent me to think that this is sad. How business users can be so different to individual users in regards of an office suite? (M$ sell basically the same office suite to both clients, apart some differences that do not justify a new product). As for the license, do we really need two projects for that? The LGPL as well as the apache license allows proprietary linking...

I wonder if Linux distributions (and archlinux in particular) will now ship openoffice again. I thought after the fork that Libreoffice will have been just the continuation of openoffice while openoffice itself will die (recalling the Xorg fork of Xfree86). But now? We can't just say that the Apache foundation do everything wrong as we may have said with Oracle.

The distros didn't all ship with OpenOffice before; Ubuntu and OpenSuSE both shipped with go-openoffice. Anyway, the OpenOffice brand took a pretty big hit, so I don't see any distros switching back.

As far as licensing is concerned, Microsoft does make different versions of Office - Student, Professional, etc., targeting different segments. Feature segregation won't really apply here, so I am also not sure I buy the enterprise-consumer split either.

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#6 2013-01-16 18:27:54

DonJaime
Member
From: Berlin
Registered: 2013-01-16
Posts: 7

Re: apache openoffice and libreoffice

I can provide anecdotal evidence that LibreOffice isn't as good at picking up bugs and fixing them. There are bugs in LibreOffice that were fixed in OpenOffice months ago. Possibly in lesser-used features, but because of them I had to install openoffice from the AUR.

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