The "White Label Office" release candidate [LWN.net]

The "White Label Office" release candidate

Posted Dec 22, 2011 18:40 UTC (Thu) by mjw (subscriber, #16740) [Link] (2 responses)

3.3... It really has been a year since there was any openoffice release. The Apache Office effort seems stuck on the 3.4 beta sources, and is mainly concerned with tossing out features and code that has "the wrong free software license".

Meanwhile The Document Foundation has pushed out a steady stream of LibreOffice releases every couple of months not just for 3.3.x, but 3.4.x and recently 3.5 betas: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleasePlan

Although it is fascinating to see these openoffice forks trying to define new meaning for the old codebase, maybe more relevant would be the announcement of the first LibreOffice 3.5 Beta test days:
http://blog.documentfoundation.org/2011/12/21/tdf-announc...

Both LibreOffice 3.4 and LibreOffice 3.5 (beta) seem to have introduced lots of cool new features:
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/3.4
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/3.5

The "White Label Office" release candidate

Posted Dec 22, 2011 20:03 UTC (Thu) by nteon (subscriber, #53899) [Link] (1 responses)

I hadn't used {Libre,Open}Office in probably close to 2 years until yesterday, when I had a big presentation to write. I must say, LibreOffice 3.4's Impress has gotten quite slick and was fantastic to use. I had no problem banging out a great looking 30+ page presentation & exporting it to PDF (which I remember being somewhat of a gamble in the past). The {Libre,Open}Office contributors should be very proud of themselves.

The "White Label Office" release candidate

Posted Dec 23, 2011 17:25 UTC (Fri) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link]

Hmmmm, I'm less optimistic. In my experience LibreOffice is terribly unstable and it's always a surprise what will go wrong next. Sometimes, starting takes minutes. After another update, it's saving files which is broken. A couple of weeks later it's something else. Very, very annoying.

And some new features, while looking cool, are just annoying. The mouse over buttons on slides look nice but you disable slides half the time you try to select them... Those overlays probably are fine on a large screen and with a proper mouse but I work on a small laptop and it's a horror.

Showing True Colors

Posted Dec 22, 2011 20:26 UTC (Thu) by AnonExSunCoward (guest, #81947) [Link] (13 responses)

What we see here is exactly the reason Oracle shut down the openoffice business. The people in Germany always thought they knew best, rejected all outsiders and acted superior to everyone - community, management, whoever. The Oracle people quickly discovered that they didn't follow instructions or Oracle company rules, and at Oracle that's simply not OK.

Read their press release and learn. This "Team Openoffice" wants everyone to know they are the residual portion of that team, and Apache (and everyone else) should take careful note of that fact and observe it means they know better than you and will do just what they damn well please whatever you say. These people are "the real experts" who deserve your grateful donations... Unless Apache gets frisky with some trademark lawsuits, Team Openoffice will just stomp all over them.

Showing True Colors

Posted Dec 23, 2011 10:30 UTC (Fri) by henning (guest, #13406) [Link] (7 responses)

Would you mind to be a bit more specific about the "people of Germany" you refer to? I guess you wanted to write about the people from Star Division?

Thank you,

Henning (also from Germany ;-))

Showing True Colors

Posted Dec 26, 2011 21:07 UTC (Mon) by jmalcolm (subscriber, #8876) [Link] (6 responses)

For what it is worth, I understood him to mean the people at Oracle in Germany. So, some of us felt no more ill about German programmers than before the comment.

As a complete bystander, I agree that their has always seemed to be a certain amount of attitude out of the Star Division/OpenOffice.org Team. I would not have known where that stemmed from geographically.

Showing True Colors

Posted Dec 26, 2011 21:09 UTC (Mon) by jmalcolm (subscriber, #8876) [Link] (5 responses)

Sorry, "their" should be "there". Perhaps I should pretend to be from some country where English would not be my primary language.

Showing True Colors

Posted Dec 26, 2011 21:58 UTC (Mon) by viro (subscriber, #7872) [Link]

> Sorry, "their" should be "there". Perhaps I should pretend to be from some
> country where English would not be my primary language.

*snort*

Typos of that kind make a fairly good indicator of speaking English more often than reading and writing it... They usually show up a few years after one moves to an English-speaking country.

Showing True Colors

Posted Dec 27, 2011 5:29 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (3 responses)

Won't work :)

Non-native English speakers rarely make these kinds of mistakes, mostly because we've learned the English grammar consciously. Besides, most of us are more accustomed to written English rather than spoken English.

Showing True Colors

Posted Dec 27, 2011 11:55 UTC (Tue) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link] (2 responses)

Quite so. There are distinctive mistakes that non-native speakers of English tend to make, depending on their native language (too many articles; no articles; getting "fun" and "funny" mixed up), but homophone foulups aren't one of them.

Showing True Colors

Posted Dec 29, 2011 22:13 UTC (Thu) by roelofs (guest, #2599) [Link] (1 responses)

There are distinctive mistakes that non-native speakers of English tend to make, depending on their native language (too many articles; no articles; getting "fun" and "funny" mixed up), but homophone foulups aren't one of them.

That's not true in my experience, though the counterexamples have usually involved Asian speakers. Some of the "typos" are only approximate homonyms (and I wish I could remember an example, because some have been quite amusing).

Never having asked, it's not clear to me whether the speakers were simply typing on autopilot (which is how I make such errors) or if they had actually never seen/understood the proper word in the first place. My vague recollection is that most cases have involved idiomatic phrases (probably heard rather than read), so logic doesn't necessarily provide much guidance on what's correct.

Greg

OT: ESOL

Posted Jan 13, 2012 21:30 UTC (Fri) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link]

My particular least favorite non-primary-language usage item is the tendency of (I think primarily) German-speakers -- I assume it's based on that language's grammar -- to say "since $DURATION", as opposed to the English-standard "since $TIMESTAMP"; you might hear "since a couple weeks" instead of "since last month".

Since it's often the case that this sounds like a simple missing "ago", I tend to have Garden Path Syndrome reactions to it, waiting for that "ago" while I barge forwards into an entire new sentence.

Showing True Colors

Posted Dec 27, 2011 22:21 UTC (Tue) by rebentisch (guest, #69660) [Link] (4 responses)

Apparently the "Team OO.org" is an independent charity which exists since 2003 and organised OO.org community events. I assume that the use of the TM oo.org was properly licensed then by SUN. Otherwise it would have been near impossible to register the charity at the court. You have to consider that SUN used OO.org as a mere community label. Ironically ASF may appear as the actual ursupator.

Showing True Colors

Posted Dec 28, 2011 13:49 UTC (Wed) by steffen780 (guest, #68142) [Link] (3 responses)

ASF "may appear"? They ARE. And this Team OOo is hardly any better, but at least they don't waste their time throwing out perfectly good code just because IBM has a problem with copyleft. Mr Gates must be laughing himself half to death over these two entirely pointless hostile forks of LO.

IBM

Posted Dec 28, 2011 17:43 UTC (Wed) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link] (2 responses)

"IBM has a problem with copyleft" is probably an unhelpful generalization here. Usually when dealing with large companies there are friendly, hostile, and neutral individuals involved, and it's best to avoid characterizing the opposing position as the position of the company. People unfamiliar with the issue are likely to take the position you don't want them to, out of company identity/loyalty. Quite a few IBMers are great contributors to copyleft-using projects.

IBM

Posted Jan 1, 2012 5:05 UTC (Sun) by shmget (guest, #58347) [Link] (1 responses)

"it's best to avoid characterizing the opposing position as the position of the company"

But this case is _all_ about corporate position and has nothing to do with individuals.

A corporation, 'Oracle', had a contractual obligation to another corporation 'IBM', which resulted in a copyleft-purge via a code drop to Apache.
Despite Apache's protest, this has nothing to do with the interest of the public, the users or the community. The sole point of the maneuver is to accommodate what IBM perceive being its interest.

It is quite sad to see Apache being used and abused that way.

Why is it sad? Isn't it par for the course with Apache Foundation ?

Posted Jan 1, 2012 9:38 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

From the outsider's POV this is what ASF is all about.

Apache Group was concerned with creation of software which was usable on it's own (the infamous Apache HTTPD) and accompanying libraries for said software (Apache APR). Later it added side-projects (mod_jserv, mod_perl, mod_php) which were supposed to add functionality to these "central" project.

But at some point Apache Group transformed itself and become ASF as we know it: and almost from the very beginning ASF acted as "dumping ground" for the software which is mostly useless without proprietary components.

Frankly for the outsider the transformation was quite baffling (why anyone will drop what they are doing well and where they can drive their own destiny and willingly become flunkeys for various large corporations?), but hey, that's their choice.

The "White Label Office" release candidate

Posted Dec 22, 2011 23:23 UTC (Thu) by hamjudo (guest, #363) [Link] (7 responses)

In the weekly edition for December 22nd our editor wrote this about Apache OpenOffice project releases "This project hopes to start making releases again in early 2012; how many people will care remains to be seen.".

As a long time subscriber to lwn.net, I'd like to say that I am entertained by this. So I like to see the occasional note about OpenOffice silliness. In that sense, I care. On the other hand, I can't foresee a situation where I would downgrade from LibreOffice. So I am unlikely to ever actually use anything from either of these OpenOffice forks.

The "White Label Office" release candidate

Posted Dec 23, 2011 0:24 UTC (Fri) by cesarb (subscriber, #6266) [Link] (6 responses)

> As a long time subscriber to lwn.net, I'd like to say that I am entertained by this.

I'd guess the correct popular expression would be "pass the popcorn".

But I am more annoyed than entertained by this situation. It is like watching a slow-motion trainwreck, where while you are rooting for it to narrowly avert the impending disaster, you cannot see how it could escape.

> how many people will care remains to be seen.

I can see at least two classes of people who would still care.

* Those who did not get the memo, and still think "www.openoffice.org" is the place to go for a free office suite.
* Those who have some kind of religious aversion to the GPL.

There are probably more.

The question is, are there enough people in these classes to keep viable such a large project, especially when a more advanced yet very similar alternative is available?

The "White Label Office" release candidate

Posted Dec 23, 2011 7:28 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (4 responses)

I think you left out a third class

* IBM

The "White Label Office" release candidate

Posted Dec 23, 2011 10:54 UTC (Fri) by mjw (subscriber, #16740) [Link] (3 responses)

I think people underestimate how big and pragmatic IBM is. IBM does everything at least three times. And they have no problem pulling a whole group of developers out of a project without any notice and/or just switching to a completely different code base. IMHO it is nice if you get the backing of some part of IBM, but it isn't something you can rely on if you want to make sure your project is sustainable.

Back in the day I was one of the founders of Harmony (a now defunct project that we started as a bridge between the GNU and Apache free java efforts [1]), IBM contributed to GNU Classpath and gcc/gcj (and still distributes and supports that code through the IBMS's AIX Toolbox product) and also based one of their java runtime VMs (JikesRVM) on GNU Classpath code, these are different groups within IBM though, that just happen to use and contribute to the same code base without much coordination it seems. But another part of IBM (the OTI group) also had written some core java library code, that group was very aggressively pushing everything towards an ASL license, even claiming they didn't understand and couldn't use any GPLed code [2]. When the Harmony effort failed because the community wasn't that interested in a non-copyleft core java library seeing that GNU Classpath and gcj was that much ahead and Sun eventually adopted the GNU Classpath license for their OpenJDK effort [3], they simply pulled out completely and let the project die (though Google did grab some of the [non-copyleft] core library code and used that in their android effort, but they never contributed anything back). Now IBM joined the OpenJDK effort and publishes all their contributions under the GPL (although this again seems a new group within IBM because none of their new contributions are based on either their GNU Classpath work, nor based on their Harmony corelib work). Then there is also IBM's work on Eclipse, which produces among others a java compiler as alternative to the one in OpenJDK (this time under yet another EPL license, which is sadly GPL incompatible and regarded as a category B license by Apache, but can be used as a standalone source to bytecode compiler). IBM also maintained another (now also defunct) java source to bytecode compiler project called jikes, written in c++ under a special case IBM Public License.

[1] https://gnu.wildebeest.org/blog/mjw/2005/05/08/harmony/
[2] https://lwn.net/Articles/184967/
[3] http://developer.classpath.org/pipermail/classpath/2006-N...

The "White Label Office" release candidate

Posted Dec 23, 2011 11:37 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (1 responses)

I very well understand IBM may not be pig headed about Apache Openoffice and might jump ship, cut their losses and figure out how to work with the winning project. IBM's response when Red Hat's LVM2 won over their choice of EVMS was classy

https://lwn.net/Articles/14816/

However they are currently pushing hard for Apache Openoffice and I would say there are the primary if not the only reason it even happened and hence not a factor that should be ignored at this point.

EVMS tools

Posted Jan 1, 2012 10:59 UTC (Sun) by gvy (guest, #11981) [Link]

> IBM's response [...EVMS...] was classy
Hm, and I haven't heard of EVMS UI tools running on top of LVM ever since (mind you, I used EVMS since 2003 or so and I'm *still* actually using libevms wrapped for guile as a part of ALT Linux installer -- worked on by Sergey Bolshakov for the most part, btw).

Am I missing something or was it so much for the spoken intent?

The "White Label Office" release candidate

Posted Dec 23, 2011 12:12 UTC (Fri) by halla (subscriber, #14185) [Link]

"I think people underestimate how big and pragmatic IBM is. IBM does everything at least three times. And they have no problem pulling a whole group of developers out of a project without any notice and/or just switching to a completely different code base. IMHO it is nice if you get the backing of some part of IBM, but it isn't something you can rely on if you want to make sure your project is sustainable"

That's probably true for all big companies. Dirk Hohndel warned about that in his Desktop Summit keynote. And I'm quite convinced that he back then already knew that Intel would pull out of MeeGo and was just warning us about that. It sounds weird, a big company handing out hundreds of devices, asking people to start writing code for a platform that they had already binned. Just as weird as the Nokia pavillion at the 2011 Mobile World Congress which hadn't been adapted to the new Windows Phone party line yet.

In short, if you want your project (or small company) to survive, it pays to have lots of little baskets for your eggs, widely spread out.

The "White Label Office" release candidate

Posted Dec 23, 2011 16:53 UTC (Fri) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]

What is the disaster that you foresee?

If the disaster is to Apache OO and/or Team OOo, I guess the answer is "who cares"? If you foresee a disaster to the larger free software community, I disagree -- none of this will foresee LibreOffice, which is already more than a year ahead of the other projects.

The only hope for Apache OOo is to merge with LibreOffice. And it is Apache who should make that effort. Otherwise, the future is with LibreOffice, and it looks bright enough to me.

Already many people I know use Google Docs, so the old hold that Microsoft Office had is gone. And if Google Docs is "good enough", LibreOffice is much more than "good enough".

OpenOffice is dead. Long live LibreOffice

Posted Dec 23, 2011 13:37 UTC (Fri) by erich (guest, #7127) [Link] (4 responses)

Face it: Oracle killed OpenOffice quite some time ago.

Everybody has now moved on to LibreOffice. Is there any Linux distribution who has not switched to LibreOffice?

OpenOffice is dead. Long live LibreOffice

Posted Dec 23, 2011 16:18 UTC (Fri) by cesarb (subscriber, #6266) [Link] (3 responses)

> Everybody has now moved on to LibreOffice. Is there any Linux distribution who has not switched to LibreOffice?

The Linux distributions do not matter. Even before LibreOffice existed, they were already using go-oo, which was absorbed into LibreOffice as soon as it began its existence. You could even say they were already using LibreOffice before LibreOffice existed.

What matters here is the Windows and MacOS users. They are the ones who are probably still using an outdated OpenOffice.org release, not knowing they could switch to LibreOffice while they wait for AOOo (incubating) to finally do its first release.

OpenOffice is dead. Long live LibreOffice

Posted Dec 23, 2011 17:56 UTC (Fri) by lenov (guest, #15428) [Link]

I entirely agree. What you, I or Joe geeks use does not matter a bit. Personally I use mostly LaTeX, then Libre Office, then Google doc, and the occasional KWord when LO cannot open an MS document. If a new soft comes out tomorrow, that does something I need, I will just add it to my toolkit.

OpenOffice started to matter on the global scale when governmental agencies over the world started to migrate from MS Office. Such migration are huge. They involve hiring entire teams of experts (or train the existing IT support), redeveloping entire pipelines of work, and deal with the legacy documentation.

Most people have no idea how consequential where the moves of Oracle when it forced the community to move from OOo to LO, and then gave the project to Apache. This entirely shattered the little trust in FOSS people had spent a decade to instill. OpenOffice was THE successful FOSS project (Linux is not perceived as such by the public at large because it is invisible for non-geek, e.g. hidden in my parents' wifi router. And Firefox did not matter because all browsers are gratis). The entire domain of FOSS lost credibility, and the wide perception is that community-maintained projects lack maturity and robustness, and are something you must avoid at all cost.

We will suffer a long time from that mess.

OpenOffice is dead. Long live LibreOffice

Posted Dec 23, 2011 22:14 UTC (Fri) by Kluge (subscriber, #2881) [Link]

MacOS users with a clue use NeoOffice (www.neooffice.org) which I believe used to pull code from go-oo, but has lots of Mac-specific code as well.

OpenOffice is dead. Long live LibreOffice

Posted Dec 31, 2011 14:17 UTC (Sat) by erich (guest, #7127) [Link]

Well, many of the "old" OOo users are influenced heavily by us geeks. So for example my mother and my dad now have switched to LibreOffice as well (and will in turn recommend it to their friends).

OO has still quite a lot of bugs, so there is some pressure to update every now and then. And well, when my dad asked me about an OOo update, I switched him to LibreOffice.

The "White Label Office" release candidate

Posted Dec 23, 2011 14:42 UTC (Fri) by lkundrak (subscriber, #43452) [Link] (4 responses)

I'm a bit confused here. What's the reason these people ("Team OpenOffice") elected to ignore the Document Foundation and LibreOffice?

It is actually being developed and has regular releases; would it not be a perfect base for their "dream of building a profitable and professional company?"

The "White Label Office" release candidate

Posted Dec 23, 2011 17:09 UTC (Fri) by jmalcolm (subscriber, #8876) [Link] (3 responses)

From my perspective purely as an observer, it seems that Team OO (the original Star Office team) wants the world to see them as the center of the OpenOffice.org universe. LibreOffice seems to have successfully positioned themselves where Team OO wants to be. I imagine that Team OO would simply like everyone to abandon LibreOffice and work with Team OO.

This seems to be the situation:

- Team OO wants to continue as the primary driver of development as they were for many years under Star Division, Sun, and briefly Oracle.

- Apache, based on their open letter to the ODF community, clearly wants to be the "official" seat of innovation. It seems generally believed that IBM will back the Apache effort.

- The Document Foundation (LibreOffice) has been widely accepted as the successor to the OpenOffice.org legacy. Much of the community has moved to them, they have grown the number of contributors impressively, they are actually shipping new code, and every major Linux distribution has migrated to LibreOffice.

What a mess.

My own opinion is that the world would be best served by letting the LibreOffice momentum continue. I like the Apache Foundation and license so if they can build in strength without derailing the current momentum then I wish them luck. It is a shame Oracle did not donate OpenOffice.org sooner.

Things did not seem to advance particularly quickly or collaboratively while the seat of power was at Star Division, Sun, or Oracle. So far, Team OO, sounds like they would move us back in that direction. It would be a shame to lose their engineering talent but I would gladly trade it for LibreOffice style governance, community, and communication.

Let's hope Team OO decides to back LibreOffice or Apache instead. Sadly, I would not bet on it.

The "White Label Office" release candidate

Posted Dec 27, 2011 21:55 UTC (Tue) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link] (2 responses)

It's hard to be sure whether the ASF has been a net contributor to or parasite on the Free Software body. Apache the web server has carried a heavy load, but many ASF activities have been deeply negative: continuing to promote projects that should never have released, or have passed into senescence, or have something to do with Java. Absent these, does ASF have anything to hang its hat on? Spam Assassin lives on as an integration vehicle, and Subversion still serves a purpose in a few places, but that's not much company. "Apache" sounds a lot like "a pasture".

Putting OpenOffice into the Apache project may reasonably be interpreted as simply trash-canning the project. It's easy to see why anyone who still identifies with the OO label would object to such a fate.

The "White Label Office" release candidate

Posted Dec 27, 2011 22:49 UTC (Tue) by raven667 (guest, #5198) [Link] (1 responses)

By starting from the premise that anything to do with java is deeply negative then sure, you can ignore all of the widely used java frameworks and applications that are under the ASF and makes the bulk of their active projects, but why would you do that unless you had some sort of axe to grind?

Well, RMS was right, after all...

Posted Dec 28, 2011 9:02 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

RMS explaned what's wrong with java long ago. The funny thing is that while he changed the article when IcedTea was released it was quite obviously premature as Oracle later showed.

You can not use Java without fear of reprisal and thus all Apache projects which promote Java should be put in "deeply negative for free software" bin. Sad, but true.

The biggest disappointment here is Android: it's tainted with Java, too - and this is direct result of ASF's work.