The future of Open Office in doubt?

[Donalb]

On Digg the other day I came across a link to this post;
http://www.gnome.org/~michael/blog/ooo-commit-stats-2008.html
about the lack of developers working on OOo,
and another on Cnet discussing those same findings
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10129764-16.html?part=rss

I'm new to Linux myself, less than a year, and using OOo more since I went 100% Ubuntu.
We've seen plenty of new people, like myself, comparing MS Office & OOo. (My own problem was the ugliness of the GUI compared even to OfficeXP.)
Those comments are often disregarded in various ways, from aggressive point to point comparisons to the usual "hey it's free" retort.

Regardless of these debates, the above post on the devs actively working OOo is worrying and explains a lot why OOo seems to move slowly (or not at all in certain areas, especially to us Ubuntu users who are getting professional 6 monthly rollovers from Canonical.
It would seem to me that the only way to halt this slide would be in the way Canonical & Debian have tried to come together. (Granted that's from my reading of the historical divergences/convergences of Debian/Canonical).
Hoping that somehow Sun decide to throw more resources OOo's way or that a slew of new devs come on board (not a coder myself) seems naive.
An extension though of the alliance between Debian & Canonical to include Sun seems a more worthy idea. After all, without a comprehensive <AND DEVELOPING> iterative Office package, we cannot expect a continued increase in the supply of new users. (I'm not saying numbers will slow in short term, they won't). OOe seems to me as ESSENTIAL though to the success of Linux as the huge improvement in the Installer or LiveCDs.

That said though, I myself can't contribute anything to the project other than converting people I know to Ubuntu or discussing it so this should be interpreted, if possible, as a positive post!
Regards,

[aaaantoine]

The most I know about this whole thing is that Novell has been maintaining a fork with all of their own patches because Sun takes forever to accept any patches from them (or anyone, for that matter). So if Sun continues to neglect OO.o, Novell could likely become the new maintainer.

[Donalb]

I'm kind of the same, not understanding all of it, but because OOo derives from Star office, doesn't Sun Control aspects of OOo (despite the Open Sourcing of the code), such that it would impossible for Novell (or any other company) to just step in and take it over?
Also, Novell's alliance with MS and it's, shall we say, "declaration of ownership??" due to the SCO battle, over some of the UNIX code, make it a deeply suspect company to be involved in the Open Source community?
This is not bland MS or Novell bashing, but I don't believe Novell would be best placed to become a trusted part of the Open Source Community. (But I may be talking through my ****).

I'm mainly commenting though to keep the tread high up, because I've love to hear the thoughts of experienced community members and contributors about this. The bottom line in the original post is the actual lack of devs working on OOo. So it's not imaginary.

[amauk]

OpenOffice used to be the "free" off-shoot of StarOffice

but in recent years (read, last 5 or so) the tables have turned
Now, the proprietary StarOffice is little more than OpenOffice with a few non-free fonts and a MS VBA Macro converter thing

If Sun dies,
someone else will pick up OpenOffice

I wouldn't worry too much

[RussellGee]

The most I know about this whole thing is that Novell has been maintaining a fork with all of their own patches because Sun takes forever to accept any patches from them (or anyone, for that matter). So if Sun continues to neglect OO.o, Novell could likely become the new maintainer.

Ubuntu actually doesnt use upsteam OO.o, instead we use go-oo which is Novell's fork (although we have the sun branding).

[Delever]

OpenOffice is dead.


;)

[gnomeuser]

Ubuntu actually doesnt use upsteam OO.o, instead we use go-oo which is Novell's fork (although we have the sun branding).

I believe the correct answer is that Ubuntu uses upstream OOo with some of the go-ooo patches applied, a leg in both camps really.

[ibutho]

I think OO.or is ok for now, but many developers are not happy with the way Sun takes a long time to accept patches and the way that developers have to sign off copyright to Sun. It seems like many Linux distros now use the go-oo version instead of the version from Sun.

[RussellGee]

I believe the correct answer is that Ubuntu uses upstream OOo with some of the go-ooo patches applied, a leg in both camps really.

Nope, Chris Cheney (the ubuntu open office maintainer) confirmed on the devel mailing lists after an on going discussion that we use go-oo.

[gnomeuser]

Nope, Chris Cheney (the ubuntu open office maintainer) confirmed on the devel mailing lists after an on going discussion that we use go-oo.

I stand corrected

[forrestcupp]

I'm kind of the same, not understanding all of it, but because OOo derives from Star office, doesn't Sun Control aspects of OOo (despite the Open Sourcing of the code), such that it would impossible for Novell (or any other company) to just step in and take it over?
Nobody can just "take it over", but OpenOffice.org is under the LGPL license. So no one can just take it over, but anyone in the world is allowed to fork it and start developing a new version from that point.

[Vince4Amy]

I think that OpenOffice will be fine, I know a lot of people who use it and that's not just Linux users, but Windows as well. I'm sure that it will continue development, it is one of my favourite pieces of OpenSource software.

I always use Suns version lately because I use version 3 and it's not included in Slack or OpenSUSE 11.0. So I download the rpm version from the official website.

[ibutho]

I think that OpenOffice will be fine, I know a lot of people who use it and that's not just Linux users, but Windows as well. I'm sure that it will continue development, it is one of my favourite pieces of OpenSource software.

I always use Suns version lately because I use version 3 and it's not included in Slack or OpenSUSE 11.0. So I download the rpm version from the official website.

If you setup the openoffice unstable repo (http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/OpenOffice.org:/UNSTABLE/openSUSE_11.0/) you can install openoffice 3.x from the openSUSE repos. When I used openSUSE 11.0, the packages worked fine for me.

Edit: I've noticed that even in the openoffice stable repo (http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/OpenOffice.org:/STABLE/openSUSE_11.0/) OOo 3.x is available.

[gaffurabi]

LaTeX FTW!

[fatality_uk]

Linux politics raises it's head again :D





p.s. There is NO Swedish conspiracy!!!

[Donalb]

"I think OO.or is ok for now, but many developers are not happy with the way Sun takes a long time to accept patches and the way that developers have to sign off copyright to Sun."

I think so to, in general. Nor am I predicting its demise. But based on the dev numbers I would be worried, and that's medium term, esp for Calc (which I don't use much but have previously used Excel for heavy stat. analysis work and know the power of Excel therefore).

I'm not given to negative predictions however the facts, ie the number of active devs, are saying a lot.



What are the chances of Novell (or anyone else) forking OOo?

[Dragonbite]

Don't forget there is somebody else who is using OpenOffice code base; IBM. Their Symphony office suite is OpenOffice modified (and better in some cases).

So if Sun drops it, then it opens it up to be more Novell or IBM controlled, both of which have a stake in seeing it stay alive (enterprise users), be MS Office compatible and even enhanced further than MS Office is now!

So OpenOffice as you see it now may or may not go the path of demise, but if it does the successor(s) are already in the wings.

[gnomeuser]

I think the biggest danger is not Sun dropping OpenOffice but Sun NOT dropping OpenOffice. Their copyright assignment policy and general ironfist control over the project is greatly hampering it's progress. I sincerely hope they will do the right thing and relinquish control to a non-profit foundation.

The only way we are going to get OpenOffice cleaned up is by adding more contributors and the tactic Sun is taking has proven to actively discourage contributions.

[sdowney717]

here are the DEB packages for version 3

https://launchpad.net/~openoffice-pkgs/+archive

add this line to software sources for an automatic update

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ubuntu intrepid main

So, just how is the future in doubt seeing how popular it is? And what would replace it?

[gnomeuser]

So, just how is the future in doubt seeing how popular it is? And what would replace it?

Popularity != active development nor ability to support users.

There are relatively few developers working on OpenOffice as compared to the amount of users it has and the size of the codebase. Combined with the complexity of the OpenOffice codebase this is the receipe for disaster.

What would replace OpenOffice. Probably an online offering long term such as Google Docs and offline maybe GNOME Office e.g. AbiWord is already equiped to do advanced collaboration (which OOo can't do and has no prospect of doing in the near future) and it has massive existing deployment in the OLPC (it powers the write activity).

[Dragonbite]

What would replace OpenOffice. Probably an online offering long term such as Google Docs and offline maybe GNOME Office e.g. AbiWord is already equiped to do advanced collaboration (which OOo can't do and has no prospect of doing in the near future) and it has massive existing deployment in the OLPC (it powers the write activity).

Google Docs (or even Microsoft Office available via cloud) is possible. KOffice is supposed to be pretty good as well and if KDE continues its attempt to port to Windows may gain some following.

[gnomeuser]

Google Docs (or even Microsoft Office available via cloud) is possible.

I believe Microsoft are doing a full implementation of Office in Silverlight. That would probably get the job done very well, performance should be more than acceptable.

Miguel de Icaza also talked about doing some open source office suite with collaboration in Silverlight in a recent Herding Code podcast. The latter would be very interesting as it would allow companies to run their own local instance of their Office suite retaining the advantages of online capabilities while not giving up control over their content to someone else for storage.

[forrestcupp]

Don't forget there is somebody else who is using OpenOffice code base; IBM. Their Symphony office suite is OpenOffice modified (and better in some cases).
It's the 1.x line, though. Symphony has some great features, but in my opinion it's pretty slow, clunky, and buggy. I also don't like the "everything in one window" interface. There are a lot of features that I do like, though.


And we could always use Opal Office (http://www.officebestdeal.com/?gclid=CMXazsfOhZACFQGdPAodVRvqsw) if you don't mind paying $11.95 to download it! :lol:

[sydbat]

here are the DEB packages for version 3

https://launchpad.net/~openoffice-pkgs/+archive

add this line to software sources for an automatic update

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ubuntu intrepid main

So, just how is the future in doubt seeing how popular it is? And what would replace it?So I added this and get a warning about it not being authenticated. It should be safe to go ahead, right? It is from Launchpad so...

Also, is Canonical married to Sun's version? Couldn't they just choose another fork for the repo's if Sun gives it up?

[gnomeuser]

So I added this and get a warning about it not being authenticated. It should be safe to go ahead, right? It is from Launchpad so...

Also, is Canonical married to Sun's version? Couldn't they just choose another fork for the repo's if Sun gives it up?

The warning means exactly that, the packages are not signed with a key that is trusted. As a general rule you should never installed untrusted packages. It means putting software on your machine that is not from your vendor.

In this specific case though, you know where they are coming from, you know who is behind them, you can see who is commiting changes. It can elect to install them if you want but generally trust the warnings to guide you to making good decisions. If they scary there is likely a reason.

As for being married to Suns version.. we all are really, even go-ooo. Sun is upstream, and even considering that Ubuntu uses go-ooo as their base there is a need to either fork OpenOffice entirely to continue to fight Sun when feeding changes upstream.

[inxygnuu]

IMO, OO.o will not die, unless someone finds a better professional text editor...:)

[sdowney717]

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=984122

those debs are from an ubuntu developer named calc

they worked fine for me.

[directhex]

The primary reason people use go-oo is for ooo-build. Sun's build system is a mess, a waste of space which simply doesn't work except for Solaris & Windows. And, as others have mentioned, Sun are uninterested in fixing it (as it works for StarOffice, they don't consider it a problem).

Every distro other than Fedora uses ooo-build, because not doing so is insanity.

On top of that, there are a lot of system-integration patches which don't interest Sun, but which are vital for a smooth desktop experience - for example, the use of native GTK file chooser windows (i.e. Gedit-style) in Ubuntu's OOo comes from a go-oo patch, as does the use of native Gnome (Tango) icons rather than the Sun-specific icons of the default. go-oo patches also provide features that are normally second-class citizens on upstream Linux OOo (e.g. embedded video), or easier time moving from Windows to Linux (support for MSWorks files).

There is general distrust of Novell within the community, and they ARE corporate sponsors and heavy backers of go-oo. However, as has been mentioned, Sun's anti-contributor methodology makes it very hard for patches to become integrated - and there is a genuine need for a "community" OOo, which go-oo goes a way towards providing. The ideal, of course, would be a non-profit OOo foundation which Sun and Novell and IBM and regular people can all contribute towards on an equal footing, but I don't see it happening

[Zlatan]

Google Docs (or even Microsoft Office available via cloud) is possible. KOffice is supposed to be pretty good as well and if KDE continues its attempt to port to Windows may gain some following.

Is Koffice2 going to be compatible with MS Office file types, e.g. *.doc or *.xls?
Thank you