SUSE's LibreOffice team moves to Collabora [LWN.net]

SUSE's LibreOffice team moves to Collabora

Posted Sep 3, 2013 15:44 UTC (Tue) by rcweir (guest, #48888) [Link] (16 responses)

Wow. So SUSE does an Oracle and dumps LibreOffice. Or maybe it is more similar to the way they shed Mono?

Those who have followed my posts and blog know that I've argued for some time that the alignment to SUSE's business never made sense and was not sustainable. But I'll be honest -- I don't immediately see the alignment with Collabora's business either. Maybe someone can explain the synergy. I suppose time, and run rates, will tell.

I know such transitions can be stressful. So good luck to the fine developers impacted by this change.

SUSE's LibreOffice team moves to Collabora

Posted Sep 3, 2013 16:46 UTC (Tue) by AlexHudson (guest, #41828) [Link] (13 responses)

"Does an Oracle" seems to be hyperbole given the LibreOffice community has not already forked off en masse elsewhere, or other contributors being scared away. LibreOffice appears to continue to be vibrant and healthy, unlike the wrecks left in the Hudson, Mysql, Java etc. projects (I'm sure there are others but they fail to spring to mind).

Maybe if you understood better that LO is a diverse community than a project run by a single business, you'd worry less about the "alignment".

SUSE's LibreOffice team moves to Collabora

Posted Sep 3, 2013 18:42 UTC (Tue) by rcweir (guest, #48888) [Link] (12 responses)

You get me wrong. I'm very optimistic about this move. LibreOffice now has a huge part of their development coming from engineers at a far smaller company that has less far money to waste than SUSE did. I'm hoping this will lead to smarter decisions, including decisions to work cooperatively with Apache.

SUSE's LibreOffice team moves to Collabora

Posted Sep 3, 2013 19:18 UTC (Tue) by Zizzle (guest, #67739) [Link] (4 responses)

FUD. How has the LibreOffice crowd refused to work with Apache? Seems more like the other way around to me.

SUSE's LibreOffice team moves to Collabora

Posted Sep 3, 2013 20:04 UTC (Tue) by SEJeff (guest, #51588) [Link] (3 responses)

Google: Rob Weir Libreoffice. I'm not going to call someone a troll as I'd rather let their own words speak for them. This is LWN and unlike /. or Reddit, we *try* to stay civil. Primarily because Jonathan and company are a stand up crew, and I'd rather make their lives easier rather than harder.

SUSE's LibreOffice team moves to Collabora

Posted Sep 4, 2013 0:10 UTC (Wed) by Zizzle (guest, #67739) [Link] (2 responses)

I'm familiar with Rob's one man campaign (or IBMs campaign?) against Libre Office. The insult/warning/doubt wrapped in faint praise method he often employs.

The interesting part is what do you do... leave a troll's assertions unchallenged?

Those not familiar with his history may be fooled by his authoritative sounding tone.

SUSE's LibreOffice team moves to Collabora

Posted Sep 4, 2013 8:49 UTC (Wed) by rvfh (guest, #31018) [Link]

Agreed. We can't let the trolls unanswered. Just like we cannot let them litter the LWN comments space. Can we have a voting system so new people could get a feel of what old time users think about some commenters?

SUSE's LibreOffice team moves to Collabora

Posted Sep 4, 2013 14:20 UTC (Wed) by SEJeff (guest, #51588) [Link]

Fair enough, from the comment, I wasn't sure if you were aware or not of the ongoing FUD offensive. Just wanted to make sure

SUSE's LibreOffice team moves to Collabora

Posted Sep 3, 2013 20:16 UTC (Tue) by AlexHudson (guest, #41828) [Link] (5 responses)

You're optimistic about that? I doubt a simple change of affiliation will change the various habits of the developers affected, nor do I imagine that the balance of opinion within the entire LibreOffice community would suddenly change even if, for some reason, those developers affected had a surprising change of heart.

Where I do agree with you, is that the smaller, nimble, agile and product-focussed company is likely to make smarter decisions than the various "enterprise" behemoths with money to spend. The amount of waste that could be avoided is notable indeed.

SUSE's LibreOffice team moves to Collabora

Posted Sep 4, 2013 11:58 UTC (Wed) by rcweir (guest, #48888) [Link] (4 responses)

There is nothing that focuses the mind so much as the economics of a small company trying to meet payroll. This can even overcome bad habits. So, yes, I am optimistic.

Are you really so convinced that LibreOffice developers are incapable of change?

SUSE's LibreOffice team moves to Collabora

Posted Sep 4, 2013 14:01 UTC (Wed) by ThinkRob (guest, #64513) [Link]

> Are you really so convinced that LibreOffice developers are incapable of change?

I think he may be more convinced that this isn't much of a change for "LibreOffice developers" in the broad sense (although it obviously is for a small portion of them). Remember: LibreOffice isn't a single company's pet project like it was in the Sun days.

SUSE's LibreOffice team moves to Collabora

Posted Sep 4, 2013 14:36 UTC (Wed) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (2 responses)

Could you please take your AOO advocacy elsewhere?

Collabory is a profitable company. The LibreOffice business is profitable. Your assertions that there somehow is some fear/uncertainty is FUD.

Full disclosure: rcweir is a known AOO advocate who always complains about LibreOffice, mostly using weird logic and false statements.

SUSE's LibreOffice team moves to Collabora

Posted Sep 5, 2013 6:39 UTC (Thu) by ingwa (guest, #71149) [Link] (1 responses)

rcweir is a known AOO advocate who always complains about LibreOffice

This part is true.

mostly using weird logic and false statements

This part is false. I have never seen a real falsehood from Rob when it comes to figures or facts. I have seen some speculation on the motivation of people's actions but that is just as rampant on the other side.

SUSE's LibreOffice team moves to Collabora

Posted Sep 8, 2013 11:31 UTC (Sun) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

There's telling lies, and there's telling the truth with the intention to deceive.

Personally, I just wish Rob and the AOO crew would follow the LibreOffice example and just IGNORE the opposition, rather than picking fights.

If I wanted to know about AOO I would follow it. I don't want AOO guys filling the LO forums with AOO rubbish.

Cheers,
Wol

SUSE's LibreOffice team moves to Collabora

Posted Sep 4, 2013 14:31 UTC (Wed) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link]

That you don't like LibreOffice is very obvious already. Please cut out the advocacy already. This is not about Apache OpenOffice. This is not about AOO advocates thoughts about LibreOffice.

"smarter decisions" != what is good according to AOO advocates.

You've been pretty quiet in the previous LibreOffice post at LWN. Please revert your current behaviour.

SUSE's LibreOffice team moves to Collabora

Posted Sep 4, 2013 11:33 UTC (Wed) by bobdog1 (guest, #92071) [Link]

Rob is so quick off the mark that on Slashdot, he went to troll the version of this story that *didn't* make it out of the queue. http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=50205171

SUSE's LibreOffice team moves to Collabora

Posted Sep 4, 2013 18:30 UTC (Wed) by Doogie (guest, #59626) [Link]

So SUSE does an Oracle and dumps LibreOffice

LOL. OpenOffice was the project dumped by Oracle. Oracle figured out there was no business case in competing with LibreOffice. It is taking IBM a little longer to come to the same conclusion.

SUSE's LibreOffice team moves to Collabora

Posted Sep 4, 2013 4:44 UTC (Wed) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link] (6 responses)

Makes good sense: SUSE is an open-source operating system company, Collabora an open-source applications company. LibreOffice is an application, not an operating system, and it is widely used on other operating systems besides Linux.

SUSE's LibreOffice team moves to Collabora

Posted Sep 4, 2013 15:10 UTC (Wed) by torquay (guest, #92428) [Link] (4 responses)

This move can also be interpreted that SUSE isn't making enough money through developing and supporting LibreOffice. There's probably some money to be made, but it looks like a question of return-on-investment and opportunity costs: "do we employ X engineers to work on LibreOffice, or do we employ X engineers to work on the server OS side?"

As a corollary, this (sadly) implies the Linux desktop isn't exactly a money spinner, which in turn implies there isn't much demand for a supported Linux desktop.

There are lots of free distros out there that provide an unsupported desktop, which on first sight seem to satisfy the desktop need in general. By "unsupported" I mean there is no guarantee of: API/ABI stability across multitple versions, bugs getting fixed, unified way of installing user facing software (ie. one version for all Linux distros), etc.

This contributes to a chicken-and-egg problem: if there is no stability, vendors aren't exactly encouraged to develop (or port) software for the desktop, which in turn means no commercial entity (such as SUSE or Red Hat) sees the need for a stable Linux desktop, and hence doesn't devote much resources to it. (Both SUSE and RH do have desktop teams, but they're miniscule in comparison to the effort put into servers, etc)

SUSE's LibreOffice team moves to Collabora

Posted Sep 4, 2013 19:58 UTC (Wed) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link]

keep in mind that SUSE is a large company. As stated, Collabora can simply divert more attention to LO. And, being smaller, they have less overhead and can thus grow the team.

SUSE's LibreOffice team moves to Collabora

Posted Sep 8, 2013 11:35 UTC (Sun) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (2 responses)

Personally, I think a supported desktop is a (worthwhile) loss-leader!

We need a Compaq-linux, a Lenovo-linux, a Dell-linux, etc etc. Go back to the Windows 3.1 days, and all the PC vendors customised their versions, and it was very profitable (as in driving profits elsewhere). MS has killed that model.

Kill Windows as the "default comes with every pc" model, and we'll get supported desktops back as it becomes worth the OEM's while to support it.

Cheers,
Wol

SUSE's LibreOffice team moves to Collabora

Posted Sep 8, 2013 15:47 UTC (Sun) by viro (subscriber, #7872) [Link] (1 responses)

Oh, joy. So... the boxen loaded with adware and spyware from the very beginning. With a rootkit or two thrown in to make it harder to find and remove^W^W^W^W^Weasier to do remote troubleshooting. Wonderful, innit?

SUSE's LibreOffice team moves to Collabora

Posted Sep 8, 2013 22:12 UTC (Sun) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

What a cynic ... :-)

Though I'm inclined to agree with you a bit.

Thing is, though. If the boxes come with a WORKING linux distro installed (hopefully they'll subcontract maintaining the basic OS to a linux company like Red Hat or SUSE or Canonical), anybody who knows what they're doing will be able to just put any distro they want on.

Bit like today with Windows where you *can* (okay it's rather tricky ...) get hold of a clean install and over-write the vendor's adware-laden rubbish.

Cheers,
Wol

SUSE's LibreOffice team moves to Collabora

Posted Sep 5, 2013 3:27 UTC (Thu) by maxiaojun (guest, #91482) [Link]

If considering SUSE LibreOffice's "Technical Information" [1] only, I'd presume SUSE is an ISV for Windows.

https://www.suse.com/products/libreoffice/technical-infor...

SUSE's LibreOffice team moves to Collabora

Posted Sep 4, 2013 19:36 UTC (Wed) by maxiaojun (guest, #91482) [Link] (5 responses)

To all Rob Weir haters, do you know that he is one of the chairs of ODF TC?
Source: https://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbr...

But AOO: What do you still have besides a vacant brand, some code dump from former IBM product and a small team from IBM?

SUSE's LibreOffice team moves to Collabora

Posted Sep 5, 2013 18:26 UTC (Thu) by luya (subscriber, #50741) [Link] (4 responses)

I think most readers here are aware about Rob Weir being one of chairs of ODF TC which must not use his position to abuse his authority for something else. The dislike of what you called "Rob haters" is mainly due to his hostility towards LibreOffice.

SUSE's LibreOffice team moves to Collabora

Posted Sep 6, 2013 7:47 UTC (Fri) by edomaur (subscriber, #14520) [Link] (3 responses)

Indeed.

I a fan of his work for the ODF TC, but I really dislike his attitude regarding anything LibreOffice/AOO. In fact I dislike it so much that I do not want to have anything to do with AOO at all.

Side note, purely personal opinion :

I remember - perhaps erroneously, but I was following the mailing lists - that it was the rejection by Oracle of the then "experimental-tree" initiative and its members that initiated the fork, and not as it was implied many times by rcweir a malicious intent to dismember the OO.o project. After that, I see almost anything AOO says as lies. It's a gut reaction, without any rational thinking behind it, but it's still there.

SUSE's LibreOffice team moves to Collabora

Posted Sep 10, 2013 8:45 UTC (Tue) by branden (guest, #7029) [Link]

Well, Rob certainly leapt to correct you here...

SUSE's LibreOffice team moves to Collabora

Posted Sep 10, 2013 9:43 UTC (Tue) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]

Certainly AOO is dying, concretely of rcweir poisoning. What I'm not sure is if this is intentional or not. Also a personal opinion.

SUSE's LibreOffice team moves to Collabora

Posted Sep 10, 2013 15:49 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

Ignoring name changes, LO actually goes a lot further back than that.

Back in the Sun days, Go-OO was a set of patches that was merged with OpenOffice. I'm not sure at what point LO actually forked - I think it was after the Oracle acquisition of Sun, but the Go-OO patches simply absorbed the OO codebase officially into its tree and renamed itself LO.

In other words, LO is a lot older than its superficial history suggests.

Cheers,
Wol

SUSE's LibreOffice team moves to Collabora

Posted Sep 5, 2013 3:34 UTC (Thu) by maxiaojun (guest, #91482) [Link] (5 responses)

> Collabora Productivity offers a broad range of solutions and services based on LibreOffice, and backed by the largest group of TDF certified developers: small size incremental updates for LibreOffice for Windows, Level 3 technical support, enterprise software integration, feature and extensions development, and advanced technical training (http://www.collabora.com/projects/libreoffice-welcome).

So "small size incremental updates" is only available on Windows or Collabora only cares about Windows?

Source: http://www.collabora.com/press/2013/09/collabora-producti...

SUSE's LibreOffice team moves to Collabora

Posted Sep 6, 2013 7:49 UTC (Fri) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link] (3 responses)

I guess they only have to do something in this regard for Windows, since Linux package managers usually can deal with delta updates just fine.

SUSE's LibreOffice team moves to Collabora

Posted Sep 6, 2013 10:59 UTC (Fri) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link] (1 responses)

LibreOffice does not use delta updates for Linux nor OSX...

SUSE's LibreOffice team moves to Collabora

Posted Sep 6, 2013 11:09 UTC (Fri) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]

It's not LibreOffice's decision how updates are distributed. It's the Linux distributions'.
openSUSE for example does have delta updates like libreoffice-base-3.5.4.7_3.5.4.13-1.1.2_1.4.5.x86_64.drpm and I'm sure other distributions do as well.

SUSE's LibreOffice team moves to Collabora

Posted Sep 8, 2013 12:12 UTC (Sun) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

As an LO dev (and my info could well be out of date) Windows is a PIG PIG PIG to develop for. Incremental updates probably make sense.

My 3-core AMD builds LO from scratch in a couple of hours on linux.

Last I heard, the 8-core timberwotsit server that builds the windows version took roughly a WEEK per build.

Anything to reduce the stress of building the windows version is probably seized at with every hand available.

Cheers,
Wol

SUSE's LibreOffice team moves to Collabora

Posted Sep 7, 2013 1:39 UTC (Sat) by salimma (subscriber, #34460) [Link]

Most Linux users get LO from their distribution, and the major RPM-based distros (Fedora, openSUSE... Mandriva?) offer delta-RPM incremental updates.

Not sure about Debian-based distributions though, one would think Canonical should push for something like this in Ubuntu...

One would think they should bring incremental updates to OS X, that platform used to lag behind when it comes to FLOSS office suite availability (then again more people there could afford MS Office)