Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

By Jake Edge
September 28, 2010

A group of OpenOffice.org developers has announced the creation of an independent foundation - called the Document Foundation - to guide the further development of the office suite, which is provisionally named LibreOffice. At the heart of this effort is longtime OpenOffice.org developer Michael Meeks. We had the good fortune to discuss the LibreOffice effort with Michael; read on for his comments on this new initiative

LWN: Probably the first question that will come to mind for most of our readers is "Why?" — why fork OpenOffice.org? And why now?

Well, it has been ten years since a foundation was promised as part of the original OpenOffice.org announcement, and there is now a confluence of circumstances to realise that goal. We want a vendor neutral body that lots of companies and non-profits can contribute to as peers. That foundation is called the Document Foundation, and for trademark reasons our product will be called LibreOffice.

LWN: What do you see as the advantages of LibreOffice for OpenOffice.org users? developers? distributions?

For developers, we are open for business - we have a realistic view of the code-base and as such we are interested in including people's fixes and improvements quickly. When we can get people working to clean up the code, translate German comments, remove dead code, fix ergonomic nits, write unit tests and so on - we are optimistic that we can produce a far better product, and one that (as developers) we can be proud of.

Linux distributions should find LibreOffice easier to package, as the development team has a vast amount of Linux distribution experience.

All of that of course leads to getting a better, more stable, and featureful office suite into users' hands.

LWN: Do you plan to require copyright assignment or contributor agreements? If so, what would those entail? And if not, why not?

There are no plans to require copyright assignment, clearly it is important to determine the origin of all code, so we will use a clear signing off / attribution trail, and familiar git tooling to make that easy.

Having to sign formal paperwork before contributing code is clearly a formidable barrier to entry, even if the rights end up with a well-governed non-profit. In contrast I believe LibreOffice needs an "All Contributions Welcome and Valued" sign outside, that says come in and help, there is a place for you here.

LWN: What are the near-term technical and community goals for the project? What about the longer-term?

In the near term, we expect to clean-up the code; we have a set of janitors tasks that require (in some cases) no previous programming experience whatsoever e.g. removing commented out code that was just left lying around (presumably due to a lack of faith in revision control). If you want to get the eternal glory of having your name in the LibreOffice code-base, now is a great time to get involved.

We also want to target tackling many of the problems that have traditionally made it hard to develop with, such as the arcane and monolithic build system.

Finally - there are a lot of ergonomic nits in OpenOffice, that individually are easy to fix but collectively add up to a big problem. We want to start tackling these in the short term.

Longer term - we are developing a plan, but somehow our press experts persuaded us to delay announcing it, expect to hear more around the Linux Plumbers Conference.

LWN: When might we expect the first LibreOffice release? Presumably it will incorporate the patches that go-oo has been maintaining, but are there patches from elsewhere that might make their way into the first release or two? Any exciting features on the horizon that we haven't seen in go-oo yet?

We have already released a beta. It is a distinct piece of code from go-oo for several reasons, most importantly being that we don't want to maintain patches anymore. Go-oo was maintained as patches, such that features could be enabled per-platform or per distribution simply by not applying them but this brings maintenance, and development problems of its own.

Instead with LibreOffice we will have several flat git repositories, such that the git diff output will be your patch, and committing is as simple as a git push. Of course many of the go-oo features have been merged, some are still pending review, and going forward go-oo will be obsoleted by LibreOffice.

LWN: Does LibreOffice plan to track OpenOffice development and incorporate changes from that code base or does it plan to go completely in its own direction? Or will there be a gradual shift from one to the other?

Clearly we are going to merge all (suitably licensed) code into the project from anywhere we can get it. Previously we would work from whatever Oracle released, but in future we will pick and choose the best changes and features from wherever they come.

LWN: Are you at all concerned about maintaining such a large body of code without the resources of a large company like Sun or Oracle behind the effort?

Clearly Oracle's contribution is real and substantial, and we would dearly like them to participate in the Document Foundation, a warm welcome is extended to them. Nevertheless - both Novell and Red Hat have support capabilities around OpenOffice.org and are confident that we can fix and improve the code. Clearly, having dependence on any single company to support or drive the project is a huge risk factor. There is a perception out there that the code is terribly tangled and impossible to develop with, but the reality is that it is just code. Sure you have to read some parts quite carefully, and empathise deeply with the authors before altering them, but this is true of all large pieces of code.

LWN: There have been occasional hints that Sun had patents on some StarOffice/OpenOffice components and we have seen that Oracle is not terribly shy about patent litigation; does the project have any concerns about patents or patented technology in the codebase?

The OpenOffice.org code-base that LibreOffice is derived from is licensed under the LGPLv3 - which gives us all a strong explicit patent license, and a good copyright license, so no. Clearly for new code we would want a plus ["or any later version"] license, so we are considering recommending a LGPLv3+ / MPL combination for entirely new code.

LWN: Who is involved with this new LibreOffice project? Undoubtedly there were individuals besides yourself, along with companies, and perhaps other groups, what can you tell us about who they are and what their roles will be?

Oh certainly, I, and Novell are only a small part of this effort, a large proportion of the non-Oracle OpenOffice.org community is of like mind, and are instrumental in helping to create LibreOffice. I anticipate the Foundation we create ultimately looking more like the GNOME Foundation than the Mozilla Foundation, i.e. with only a small staff for co-ordination, rather than for central development. I hope we will have similar elections of contributors for representatives and so on.

There is a list of people behind the foundation on the LibreOffice web-site, if I start naming them all we will run out of space pretty quickly. Of course, there are also a good number of heroes who managed somehow to get their code and fixes into an OpenOffice product in the past, that should find it a pleasure to contribute in future.

LWN: Have you had any discussions with Oracle about any of this? You are inviting them to join forces with the new project, have they expressed any interest, either formally or informally?

Clearly we have informed Oracle's StarDivision management ahead of time, as is only polite. As to their reaction - I have many developer friends in StarDivision whom I respect and have loved collaborating with in the past. My hope is, that we will work together again.

[ We would like to thank Michael for taking the time to answer our questions. ]

to post comments

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Sep 28, 2010 9:03 UTC (Tue) by johill (subscriber, #25196) [Link] (13 responses)

LibreOffice? Really? They couldn't think of a better name? I'm a bit disappointed.

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Sep 28, 2010 9:10 UTC (Tue) by JJ (subscriber, #2321) [Link] (1 responses)

Remarkably story & great effort - disappointing first comment.

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Sep 28, 2010 14:13 UTC (Tue) by cesarb (subscriber, #6266) [Link]

> disappointing first comment.

Not at all! If that is all one can find fault with the project, it must be in great shape indeed.

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Sep 28, 2010 9:28 UTC (Tue) by dwmw2 (subscriber, #2063) [Link]

The press release suggests that it's an interim measure and they're hoping that Oracle will let them continue to use the 'OpenOffice.org' name. Whether that's realistic or just posturing, I have no idea.

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Sep 28, 2010 9:54 UTC (Tue) by Felix.Braun (guest, #3032) [Link] (2 responses)

A name is just a name. You can get used to it pretty quicky.

A case in point is "OpenOffice.org". I don't think names get much clunkier than that. Still, by now it is an established brand, so it's worth keeping.

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Sep 28, 2010 13:03 UTC (Tue) by cesarb (subscriber, #6266) [Link] (1 responses)

> A case in point is "OpenOffice.org". I don't think names get much clunkier than that.

Everyone I know just calls it "OpenOffice" (even here in Brazil).

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Sep 28, 2010 18:58 UTC (Tue) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

Well that is what everybody uses everywhere. You just can not call it that officially since it's already trademarked by a company prior to the existence of OpenOffice.org

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Sep 28, 2010 11:00 UTC (Tue) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link] (4 responses)

I for one would like to take this opportunity to endorse "IceMuskrat" as a sensible and catchy name for a rebranded fork.

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Sep 28, 2010 23:19 UTC (Tue) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

Well given that 'iceweasel' is a play on 'firefox' probably the name following the same theme for 'OpenOffice.org' would be something like 'ClosedStorefront.com'.

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Sep 29, 2010 9:50 UTC (Wed) by mfedyk (guest, #55303) [Link] (1 responses)

a recurring theme uses sea gulls so I propose "IceGull".

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Oct 5, 2010 12:51 UTC (Tue) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link]

That would be a sensible and more serious suggestion, which is great but makes the joke less obvious.

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Oct 4, 2010 7:44 UTC (Mon) by jiu (guest, #57673) [Link]

And i would warmly support renaming it to Offrreece. Seriously a catchy name is important,too bad it's always an afterthought for free software projects.

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Sep 28, 2010 13:08 UTC (Tue) by clump (subscriber, #27801) [Link]

I much prefer LibreOffice over the six syllable original name. Even with the original name, the contribution matters -- the name is just nitpicking.

I really appreciated that Sun made StarOffice free software. It certainly enhanced the project and its reach. I'm hoping LibreOffice will push the software further.

Libre Office

Posted Oct 2, 2010 17:34 UTC (Sat) by alinhan (guest, #65347) [Link]

Yes, I also wondered why they did not take this opportunity and use a "normal" looking name, like "Libre Office". CamelCase looks weird for non-programmers.

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Sep 28, 2010 11:21 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Personally I'm amazed it's taken this long. The untar-and-tweak-stack-of-patches workflow is so tiresome compared to git...

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Sep 28, 2010 12:51 UTC (Tue) by philipstorry (subscriber, #45926) [Link] (2 responses)

Thanks for a superb interview.

The only real shame is that non-subscribers won't see this for a week, which will leave some people speculating about things that have been said clearly and fairly here.

I'm sure they'll be repeated elsewhere, but it's still a shame...

Thanks to Jake and Michael for their time on this.

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Sep 28, 2010 13:05 UTC (Tue) by cesarb (subscriber, #6266) [Link] (1 responses)

You can always use the "Send a free link" button.

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Sep 28, 2010 14:54 UTC (Tue) by philipstorry (subscriber, #45926) [Link]

D'oh!

I'd not noticed that. I shall do so shortly. Thanks for pointing it out! :-)

Phil

Go Qt, perhaps?

Posted Sep 28, 2010 18:00 UTC (Tue) by smokeing (guest, #53685) [Link] (10 responses)

I almost know the answer would be a big No, but perhaps on this occasion of such a profound change forthcoming to OOo, I venture to ask it here: Could it so happen that OOo's UI be rewritten to use Qt rather than its own Windows95-like toolkit? They would shed a ton of weight in doing so, wouldn't they, and remain just as platform-independent as they has been.

Mozilla holds on to XUL for a reason I think, it's *the* language everything renderable is described in in Firefox, but what's the point to have its own toolkit for an office suite?

(Was about to post this in /. as well, but there we go: http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1801996&...).

And secondly, there is so much dross among the heap of rubble the feature set of OOo has become. Fair enough, users will want a picture placed on a page in Writer, but really, who needs a *movie* in what is, by definition, an essentially printable document? I understand those features had been accumulated per Sun market people telling programmers to catch up with a similar --questionable in its own right-- additions to MS Office, but now what's the pressing need to maintain it? The entire Web-oriented Writer should also be ripped out and cast into eternal fire.

Go Qt, perhaps?

Posted Sep 28, 2010 18:20 UTC (Tue) by nicooo (guest, #69134) [Link] (3 responses)

I imagine the movies are for presentations.

Go Qt, perhaps?

Posted Sep 29, 2010 0:24 UTC (Wed) by smokeing (guest, #53685) [Link] (2 responses)

In a word processor or spreadsheet? How?

Go Qt, perhaps?

Posted Sep 29, 2010 1:31 UTC (Wed) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link]

I'd assume that it's a byproduct of their embedding scheme. If the embedding code is shared between applications, then by default any application can embed any file type allowed by any other application. When they let presentations embed movies, spreadsheets got the same capability automatically. It's easier to leave embedding up to the users than to deliberately disable specific types for specific applications. If nobody wants to embed movies in their spreadsheets, then the ability to do so will wind up being an unused feature.

Go Qt, perhaps?

Posted Sep 29, 2010 6:39 UTC (Wed) by spaetz (guest, #32870) [Link]

OpenOffice impress?!

Go Qt, perhaps?

Posted Sep 28, 2010 18:49 UTC (Tue) by oever (guest, #987) [Link]

I do not think so, Michael Meeks is not out of the closet about his love for Qt yet.

Go Qt, perhaps?

Posted Sep 28, 2010 19:06 UTC (Tue) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link] (3 responses)

The same could be said for GTK+, FLTK, or any number of other GUI toolkits. Which one they use is more or less irrelevant. Qt is likely the most advanced and easiest to use of them all, though (I'm a big GNOME fan myself, and I can't stand KDE at all, but I really wish GTK+ would bite the dust and Qt would become the de facto standard -- GTK+ is lightyears behind Qt in just about every way).

That said, converting an entire codebase to a new toolkit is a truly massive undertaking. It's also one that's relatively difficult to do piecemeal. Without a really solid reason to do so -- which entails some use case where the existing toolkit simply doesn't work -- I don't foresee a toolkit change.

Go Qt, perhaps?

Posted Sep 29, 2010 1:09 UTC (Wed) by smokeing (guest, #53685) [Link] (2 responses)

> The same could be said for GTK+, FLTK, or any number of other GUI toolkits.
No, not all toolkits are born equal, and while yes, gtkmm might be up for the task (inkscape uses it, to everyone's satisfaction I believe), it would be natural to use something natively written in C++. And that is Qt. Look at Scribus.

No arguing it may be, in the short term, as unrewarding a task as it appears impossible. Ultimately, though, UI designers^w^w even the dreariest clerks will start to laugh at the 1990-ish look of OOo. Even the most conservative toolkit, GTK+, makes passes at OpenGL-enabled widgets (Clutter project), which I do believe will become as useful as a well-tuned compiz in lieu of your default wm.

Go Qt, perhaps?

Posted Sep 29, 2010 6:48 UTC (Wed) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link]

even the dreariest clerks will start to laugh at the 1990-ish look of OOo. Even the most conservative toolkit, GTK+, makes passes at OpenGL-enabled widgets

OOo has usability problems, but the lack of shine and glitter in widgets is not one of them... I'm desperately hoping the "new management" will not get sidetracked with eye candy, and instead will address the more serious problems first. Eg. try to do something about the ridiculous resource usage, which is one place where using a standard toolkit could actually help, provided the same toolkit (and version!) is used by other programs running on the same machine. This would be the case with QT in a KDE environment, or GTK on Gnome.

Go Qt, perhaps?

Posted Sep 29, 2010 21:10 UTC (Wed) by daniel (guest, #3181) [Link]

And, if undertaken in earnest, porting it to Qt will help separate the many processing and rendering layers the editable stuff goes through in OOo. Heck, I remember, around 2004, I had OOo 1.x installed on a Mac, and saw it bring along the entire X server to run on!

If an interested observer were to demonstrate a QT port patch that at least brings up part of the suite in not too ugly a way (a proof of concept) then I would be not at all surprised to see our new Libreoffice stewards react in favor of at least opening up an experimental branch.

Go Qt, perhaps?

Posted Sep 29, 2010 8:19 UTC (Wed) by ibisum (guest, #59406) [Link]

I've used the embedded-movie feature a few times.. you know what its good for? Transcriptions. I get a movie of some meeting, I put it at the top of the Document, I start transcribing .. someone else needs to add their own notes (translations perhaps) - I just send them a single file containing everything they need to get the work done. Its very useful in this case, and I would encourage you to think outside the box.

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Sep 28, 2010 20:43 UTC (Tue) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359) [Link] (15 responses)

I thought I would test this new openness to contributions.

3 yeas ago I filed a bug report with code fix included.
http://tools.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=80637
Result: nothing.

Last night I sent a patch with that code fix to the new project.
Result: it is in the git tree already.

This looks promising!!!

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Sep 28, 2010 20:46 UTC (Tue) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359) [Link] (12 responses)

On the flip side:

------------------------------
Your mail to 'Libreoffice' with the subject

[PATCH] Improve randomisation in 'dissolve' transition.

Is being held until the list moderator can review it for approval.

The reason it is being held:

Post by non-member to a members-only list

-------------------------------

This is not quite the level of openness we expect in the kernel community (where member-only lists are frowned upon).
Only a small negative though.

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Sep 28, 2010 22:08 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (4 responses)

true, but this isn't the kernel community.

I don't know where they are having their list hosted (and I can understand them not wanting it on kernel.org), but one of the reasons so many linux lists can allow posting by non-subscribers is that the mail admins for kernel.org go to heroic levels of effort to maintain the spam filters.

the one set of spam filters covers all the @vger.kernel.org lists, so the investment of effort has a very large payback for the community.

but I can understand why people whithout this level of service are reluctant to loose what little protection the members-only requirement gives them.

I think the approach the kernel community takes is better, and it may be worth the hassle (and accusations that LO is too linux centric) to move to @vger.kernel.org and gain the benifit of the existing spam filtering.

Spam filters

Posted Sep 29, 2010 7:59 UTC (Wed) by mfuzzey (subscriber, #57966) [Link] (3 responses)

Well I don't know a great deal about spam filters but wouldn't it be possible for kernel.org to publish a git tree of spam filter configuration that other list admins could use to get best of breed spam filtering?

Spam filters

Posted Sep 29, 2010 9:35 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (2 responses)

to some extent, if the spammers can find out what filters you are using they can work around them.

to a large extent the fact that they are willing to host just about any opensource software list on vger is a pretty effective way of distributing the results without giving away the details of the filters.

Spam filters

Posted Sep 29, 2010 14:31 UTC (Wed) by jrn (subscriber, #64214) [Link] (1 responses)

Don't they give away (at least some of) the filters?

http://repo.or.cz/w/git.git/blob_plain/todo:/taboo.perl

taboo.perl

Posted Oct 2, 2010 9:32 UTC (Sat) by ldo (guest, #40946) [Link]

I notice that m/From:.*MAILER-DAEMON/i occurs twice, and there seems to be a typo in m!Conetnt-Type:\s*application/msword!.

Who do I report these to? ☻

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Sep 29, 2010 0:08 UTC (Wed) by foom (subscriber, #14868) [Link]

It seems to me that the problem is that it's *hard* to run a widely-known open mailing list and not have it get overwhelmed by spam. Only a dedicated few can manage, such as kernel.org and lists.debian.org. Whereas, it's nearly trivial to run a closed list and not have it get overwhelmed by spam.

(I'll note that in debian, not even all the lists are open: lists.alioth.debian.org seems to have different infrastructure and admins, so those lists seem to be closed fairly often, and if they're not, are more likely to have spam.)

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Sep 29, 2010 7:02 UTC (Wed) by spaetz (guest, #32870) [Link] (4 responses)

> Post by non-member to a members-only list

You might be spoiled by the kernel infrastructure. But I hardly know any email list that is open for posting from non-members. It's annoying but hardly a deal-breaker, IMHO :). If that is the worst problem of the new project, then they have everything under control :).

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Sep 29, 2010 22:21 UTC (Wed) by madscientist (subscriber, #16861) [Link] (3 responses)

All the GNU lists I run require subscription to post without moderation. It's simply the only way to get the smart folks you want to track the lists to continue to subscribe to them: no one has time to wade through spam.

The GNU lists (based on mailman) do have a nice feature that "known spam" is automatically deleted from moderation queues. This, plus giving moderation privileges (which mailman can assign separately from list maintainers privileges if you like) to a number of trustworthy people, means that it's easy to keep on top of the moderation list and it's very rare that email gets held up more than an hour or two.

On the other hand, I am subscribed to a few lists where it seems like people only check the moderation queue once a month or so: then I get a huge chunk of new mail, often backdated a number of weeks. That's pretty lame, I do agree.

This is a small price to pay and if you don't feel like paying even that price, you can always subscribe and then disable mail delivery (again, at least for mailman...) so you don't get moderated and you also don't get any mail (say you read through some other medium).

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Sep 29, 2010 22:54 UTC (Wed) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359) [Link] (2 responses)

I tried to identify what I really didn't like about the "Your message awaits moderator approval" email I got and it seems to come down to the "to a members only list" part. It comes across as saying "we are a closed community and aren't interested in what others have to say" - which clearly isn't true, but does seem to be implied by the text.

Had the message been more friendly, e.g.

------------
Thanks for your email with subject: $SUBJECT
As this is your first post to $LISTNAME the message will require approval
by a moderator after which it will, if acceptable, be forwarded to the
list. This normally takes $AVERAGE_WAIT_TIME. Subsequent posts by
you will then be accepted without moderation.
------------

then I would have had nothing to complain about.
I think it is important that newcomers feel welcomed and "members only" doesn't sound welcoming.

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Sep 30, 2010 5:40 UTC (Thu) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link]

Honestly, this is probably best filed as a bug report with mailman. I'd prefer that message on the lists I moderate too, but not enough to actually set it up... (esp. since someone would have to make sure $AVERAGE_WAIT_TIME stayed accurate, which is best done in software).

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Sep 30, 2010 12:05 UTC (Thu) by spaetz (guest, #32870) [Link]

Filed as https://bugs.launchpad.net/mailman/+bug/651980

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Sep 30, 2010 8:16 UTC (Thu) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

> Your mail to 'Libreoffice' is being held until the list moderator can review it for approval.

Just a wait a bit until the list is connected to Gmane...

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Sep 30, 2010 9:12 UTC (Thu) by wingo (guest, #26929) [Link]

Wow, that's a wonderful story :) But shouldn't you be complaining about the name instead of sending patches? ;-)

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Sep 30, 2010 20:52 UTC (Thu) by jmalcolm (subscriber, #8876) [Link]

I have never contributed to OpenOffice.org.

On the day LibreOffice was announced I sent in a patch. It was accepted and in 'git' within a couple of hours with a nice "Thank you" reply as well.

I was so impressed I sent in another one the next day. Same experience.

Later, I sent in a third patch. That resulted in a little exchange on the email list where they pointed out that I had made a mistake in the code. The tone was still friendly!

Now, I feel like I owe them for my mistake and plan to help out with some of the janitorial work.

I would say this project is off to a very good start.

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Oct 1, 2010 5:31 UTC (Fri) by rahvin (guest, #16953) [Link] (12 responses)

Probably a superfluous comment but I'll just add my quick note that I like the name.

The choice of Openoffice was always flawed because a company already owned the mark for OO so they had to add the .org to the name which is so silly. I never understood why they didn't simply pick a different name rather than co-opt some other product name by sticking .org to it. I think the new name is a good idea, I don't think they should use OO even if Oracle allows it. Yes the OO name has brand recognition (and they damaged an existing product gaining that recognition), but it's been proved many times in FOSS that name changes simply aren't that big of a deal.

Once Libreoffice is dominant the name change will propagate and OO will fade into the past. I also doubt there is already a LibreOffice product name (given the combination of a French word and English word in the same name), although I'm not up on French (particularly if office is a word in French) so a name check particularly in french speaking parts of the world is probably in order, just to be safe of course.

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Oct 2, 2010 13:17 UTC (Sat) by magnus (subscriber, #34778) [Link] (11 responses)

In my opinion the word libre that the free software community have started to use doesn't look good, and it just reeks of smugness to my ears. Besides, how are you supposed to pronounce it, french-style (li-brr with throat-r) or US style (lie-burr)?

Maybe LibOffice instead? or SlivOvice perhaps? :)

Apart from that, sounds like this could bring some new energy to the OOo project. It's very useful software, but it still has a long way to go to becoming the perfect office suite.

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Oct 3, 2010 19:14 UTC (Sun) by jebba (guest, #4439) [Link] (1 responses)

Spanish style, of course: lee-bray ;) I like the name and think the project looks mighty fine.

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Oct 3, 2010 20:19 UTC (Sun) by magnus (subscriber, #34778) [Link]

Ahh now I see! That sounds much better..

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Oct 3, 2010 23:11 UTC (Sun) by mfedyk (guest, #55303) [Link] (1 responses)

"Besides how are you supposed to pronounce it, french-style (li-brr with throat-r) or US style (lie-burr)?"

I'm from the US and I pronounce it as lib-ray with lib as in liberty not library.

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Oct 4, 2010 5:24 UTC (Mon) by magnus (subscriber, #34778) [Link]

OK, I stand corrected.

Maybe Michael Meeks could record a sound clip on how he pronounces libre as lie-bre...

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Oct 5, 2010 2:06 UTC (Tue) by daglwn (guest, #65432) [Link] (4 responses)

lie-burr? I'm from the U.S. and I've never, ever heard that in my life. I don't believe there's yet a standard English pronunciation. Wikipedia claims "lee-bra" (like "zebra") but I use "lee-bray."

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Oct 5, 2010 4:53 UTC (Tue) by magnus (subscriber, #34778) [Link] (3 responses)

OK, I stand corrected.

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Oct 5, 2010 5:01 UTC (Tue) by magnus (subscriber, #34778) [Link] (2 responses)

Just for curiosity, if it had been called FibreOffice instead how would you have pronounced that?

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Oct 5, 2010 11:14 UTC (Tue) by jpetso (guest, #36230) [Link] (1 responses)

Fee-brayOffice, of course.
No seriously, but if people can't tell how to pronounce it just by looking at it, it's not a good name from a marketing point of view. As much as the concept of libre is laudable, calling it LibreOffice will help bringing word-of-mouth promotion to a halt all around the world, except in Spanish-speaking countries.

LibreOffice

Posted Oct 6, 2010 13:43 UTC (Wed) by alanr (guest, #396) [Link]

Well then, it shouldn't have an troubles in the US. English being the lingua-franca of all the world except the US - where Spanish is required for many occupations.

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Oct 6, 2010 10:12 UTC (Wed) by jiu (guest, #57673) [Link] (1 responses)

True but it only applies to the pronunciation in English. The pronunciation is unambiguous in the few other languages I know.

They should really have a naming contest and get some creative and literary people together with the devs to pick the best proposition.

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Oct 9, 2010 16:15 UTC (Sat) by tigerbob (guest, #70539) [Link]

The concerns for naming the product are legitimate and need due attention. We all acknowledge the ambition to include in the name statements about our values and the product's utility. I get the international view of using "libre" to declare the product's inherent freedom. But, it will be a steep hill to climb in the English speaking world. The meaning is hidden and phonetically challenging for Anglophiles. Can we get radical with our suggestions as long as they keep an eye on the communication objective with a name? Can we consider names like FreedomWorks or FreedomTools or FreedomDesk? Just because Microsoft successfully branded a suite of productivity tools under the office moniker doesn't mean we are locked into the same constraints. Long term success of the product will in part depend on the branding. Mozilla was very astute with picking the name Firefox rather trying to think of some name derivative of Netscape Communicator or Internet Explorer. LibreOffice may be intuitive with the French and Portuguese speaking masses, but among the Anglophiles, discovery of the product's virtues will probably have to come despite the name.

Michael Meeks talks about LibreOffice and the Document Foundation

Posted Oct 10, 2010 16:17 UTC (Sun) by FreeBooteR69 (guest, #70548) [Link]

How about LibreBureau - keep it all french?