Whats the story with Open Office?

[oxf]

Whats the story with Open Office vs LibraOffice? It seems all the talk is now about Libra Office. Is Open Office being discontinued? I'm not sure I have it in me to learn a new one!

[vasa1]

The story is more than a year old.

[Primefalcon]

LibreOffice is just a fork of Open Office... if you know Open Office... you know LibreOffice.... No biggy.

LibreOffice is now the one everyone is backing though OO was crapped on by Oracle after they bought Sun

[vasa1]

Here are two links:
http://www.h-online.com/open/feature...s-1270296.html
http://www.h-online.com/open/feature...n-1355159.html

[oxf]

Here are two links:
http://www.h-online.com/open/feature...s-1270296.html
http://www.h-online.com/open/feature...n-1355159.html

Thanks!
Katya

[Tombgeek]

Actually, Apache has continued developing it and OpenOffice 3.4 was recently released.

[t0p]

I prefer the name LibreOffice. I am very much on the "Free Software" side of "Free" vs "Open", and the use of the French word libre clears up the misunderstanding over whether Free software is liberated or doesn't cost anything (even though LibreOffice doesn't have to cost anything either...) You know, the difference between libre and gratuit. Of course, this all assumes that you know what libre and gratuit actually mean... but I'm a pedant sometimes, what you want me to say?

As I'm being pedantic here: OP, it's LibreOffice, not LibraOffice. So there.

[vexorian]

Whats the story with Open Office vs LibraOffice? It seems all the talk is now about Libra Office. Is Open Office being discontinued? I'm not sure I have it in me to learn a new one!

There was once a pretty company. Often touted as the symbol that free software peeps can trust big corporations as some can be friendly to it. We had to trust Sun as they got some control over many important things, like Java, OpenOffice, Solaris, mysql, eventually even VirtualBox.

But of course, the main reason behind free software and copyleft is that , even when there are good intentions behind a company right now. The future is uncertain. Chairs change. Deals with MS are signed. Whole corporations can be bought, etc. So, Oracle bought Sun, seemingly only with the objective to get some control over mysql and sue google over Java patents. They neglected OpenOffice and Oracle is not really very reliable, which caused a group of developers to make the LibreOffice fork. Apparently, giving control to the community was just what open office needed as optimizations and improvements were coming very quickly. Suddenly LibreOffice needed far less seconds to open, had more beautiful logos and icons...

So, of course, Oracle just found out about LibreOffice. They could have just killed OpenOffice and let the community be happy with LibreOffice. But of course, their CEO probably thought to himself "How can I use OpenOffice to hurt FOSS the most?" (A question he probably asked himself with Java in the past). So, they decided to give OpenOffice to Apache. Probably because Apache dudes don't like copyleft. So, Apache could just let the code be merged and everyone would be happy. But instead, they decided to change Open Office's license to the Apache license. Which means that we are now forked by life.

OpenOffice is preferred by the mixed source fans. The guys who still harbor the sentiment that it is good that a project can be forked by proprietary companies any minute now. Which is ironic, because the whole issue would not have happened if it wasn't for mixed source. And OpenOffice would have died at the hands of Oracle if it wasn't for copyleft. Thanks to copyleft, the answer to Oracle's CEO's question could barely be forking the efforts. It could have been much worse. I love the GPL.

So far, besides of the logos, the licenses and that LibreOffice has a vibrant developer community, there are not many differences between the two.

I for one, am just glad this whole thing happened as we now got LibreOffice. It has improved so much in comparison to Sun-era OpenOffice.

[Hagar Delest]

Apache OpenOffice has been long to be released due to code cleaning last year. 3.4.0 has been released beginning of May and 3.4.1 is due within few days.

Not all devs have switched to LibO and features of Symphony could be merged into AOO in the future.

[KiwiNZ]

Both Open Office and Libre Office are falling way behind,IMHO.