Schaller: An Open Letter to Apache Foundation and Apache OpenOffice team
So dear Apache developers, for the sake of open source and free software, please recommend people to go and download LibreOffice, the free office suite that is being actively maintained and developed and which has the best chance of giving them a great experience using free software. OpenOffice is an important part of open source history, but that is also what it is at this point in time."
In this context, it's interesting to note that OpenOffice project chair Jan
Iverson recently stepped down, listing
resistance to an effort to cooperate with LibreOffice as one of the main
reasons. The project currently looks set to name Dennis Hamilton (who is
running unopposed) as its
new chair.
Posted Aug 18, 2015 1:14 UTC (Tue)
by torquay (guest, #92428)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Aug 18, 2015 3:47 UTC (Tue)
by roc (subscriber, #30627)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Aug 18, 2015 14:04 UTC (Tue)
by Rehdon (guest, #45440)
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Posted Aug 18, 2015 5:52 UTC (Tue)
by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)
[Link] (34 responses)
Posted Aug 18, 2015 7:08 UTC (Tue)
by BrucePerens (guest, #2510)
[Link] (33 responses)
Apache let itself get seduced by various companies who used the project for its own ends, hoping that the project's credibility would help them with those ends. If anything, it just diminished the project's credibility.
No use asking what they were thinking. Just take it as a lesson.
Posted Aug 18, 2015 13:05 UTC (Tue)
by dmarti (subscriber, #11625)
[Link] (20 responses)
Posted Aug 18, 2015 13:17 UTC (Tue)
by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)
[Link] (19 responses)
Posted Aug 18, 2015 13:34 UTC (Tue)
by davidgerard (guest, #100304)
[Link] (1 responses)
I researched all this mess in some detail when polishing up the related Wikipedia articles - it's really confusing just what Oracle did and did not grant Apache, and the AOO project has long been actively unhelpful in making this clearer.
Posted Aug 18, 2015 18:21 UTC (Tue)
by dmarti (subscriber, #11625)
[Link]
(LAST LISTED OWNER) THE APACHE SOFTWARE FOUNDATION CORPORATION DELAWARE 1901 MUNSEY AVE. FOREST HILL MARYLAND 210502747
According to http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/ the owner is the same for the OO.o logo.
Posted Aug 18, 2015 16:30 UTC (Tue)
by rfontana (subscriber, #52677)
[Link] (7 responses)
Posted Aug 18, 2015 21:27 UTC (Tue)
by BrucePerens (guest, #2510)
[Link] (6 responses)
Posted Aug 19, 2015 3:03 UTC (Wed)
by jimjag (guest, #84477)
[Link] (5 responses)
Posted Aug 20, 2015 3:26 UTC (Thu)
by BrucePerens (guest, #2510)
[Link] (4 responses)
Not FUD at all. Read any source code file from the foundation, the provenance isn't there. When I complained about Apache's poor IP provenance to Larry Rosen, who was the general counsel of the Apache foundation at the time, he simply didn't believe that maintaining the provenance of individual authors with the portion of the code that they contributed was important. What has changed since then?
Posted Aug 20, 2015 12:59 UTC (Thu)
by jimjag (guest, #84477)
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Posted Aug 20, 2015 13:23 UTC (Thu)
by jimjag (guest, #84477)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Aug 25, 2015 9:07 UTC (Tue)
by edomaur (subscriber, #14520)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Aug 25, 2015 17:06 UTC (Tue)
by jimjag (guest, #84477)
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Posted Aug 19, 2015 15:34 UTC (Wed)
by jimjag (guest, #84477)
[Link] (8 responses)
As you note, there were efforts to combine forces, but it always boiled down to ALv2 versus copyleft. As much as they (AOO) don't want to switch licenses (to a copyleft), they (LO) also don't want to switch licenses (to ALv2, or some other permissive one). It is useful to recall that one of the primary ways that LO was able to rebase and relicense their code was by basically consuming AOO and then relicensing THAT under MPL. It was only because of the software grant of OO to Apache, and the subsequent relicensing of that to ALv2, that LO was able to relicense itself, being based and forked from the original OO code. Placing full "blame" (for lack of a better term) under AOO is really disingenuous and quite unfair.
I find the whole situation both sad and ironic. After all, the whole point of copyleft licenses is basically to force someone to do something which they should do anyway, as a moral imperative (basically, in the case of weak copyleft, "give back" changes/fixes/patches of a consumed codebase back to the upstream community). It's basically to enforce a two-way street. Yet the whole AOO/LO debacle has been basically one-way. "Yeah, well, that's what you get when you license under the ALv2"... true. But that kind of misses the whole point, doesn't it. Choosing a license which forces others to do what you yourself won't.
Posted Aug 20, 2015 3:54 UTC (Thu)
by BrucePerens (guest, #2510)
[Link] (2 responses)
Although the Document Foundation might not have existed, the LibreOffice project did, and there were any number of proper 501(c)3 organizations that would have accepted code for the LibreOffice project and under their control. SFC, SPI, Mozilla Foundation, were all around. And then there were not-for-profits that were not 501(c)3s, like Linux Foundation, The Open Group, and probably another 100 organizations that we could have found in the community. It also would have been trivial for Oracle to found a legal entity to hold the code, to their custom requirements. So, yes, LO was able to use the code. But not only was the contributor not assisting LO, the contributor started a fork within Apache which was positioned against LO from day one, and had its own anti-LO PR spokesperson
whom I think IBM was paying for and tolerated for a good long time. So if you're gonna call folks disingenuous and unfair, I hope you can take what you dish out, because positioning AOO as any sort of attempt to help LO really sounds disingenuous and unfair. From here, it looks like LO has succeeded dispite the Apache Foundation and its partners Oracle and IBM. The rest of your comment is just venting your dislike of the GPL. And it's disingenuous to accuse GPL participants of not giving back because they used the GPL, when they might have been more willing to use the Apache license had you not presented them with an undesired fork and a great deal of hostility. From the outside, Apache seems to have developed some negative characteristics. GPL-hating worse than was ever expressed by Brett Glass when he was a BSD OS supporter. Willing to work against its own community. And yes, you don't see yourselves this way and thus it seems ironic to you.
Posted Aug 20, 2015 13:17 UTC (Thu)
by jimjag (guest, #84477)
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Posted Aug 20, 2015 13:37 UTC (Thu)
by jimjag (guest, #84477)
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Posted Aug 20, 2015 4:45 UTC (Thu)
by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)
[Link] (4 responses)
Posted Aug 20, 2015 13:03 UTC (Thu)
by jimjag (guest, #84477)
[Link] (3 responses)
"TDF did not exist. There was no legal entity to donate it to."
Which is true and was the whole point. Yet you conveniently chose to note quote *the exact next sentence* which ties it together. If the TDF had existed, as a *legal entity*, then it is possible that Oracle could have donated OO to it. But Oracle also wanted OO to be under a permissive ALv2 (or similar) license.
Posted Aug 20, 2015 17:24 UTC (Thu)
by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Aug 25, 2015 17:07 UTC (Tue)
by jimjag (guest, #84477)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Aug 25, 2015 17:15 UTC (Tue)
by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)
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Posted Aug 19, 2015 3:13 UTC (Wed)
by jimjag (guest, #84477)
[Link] (11 responses)
For those of us there, and actually actively involved, we remember it quite differently. It was *all* about cooperating. See http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ms... and http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ms...).
As far as "what they were thinking"... well, that's also easily found for anyone actually interested in facts, rather than FUD. For example, look at this discussion thread from the Incubation proposal to see the rationale behind it (http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-genera...). Hint: create an ALv2 license core office suite framework that could be used and leveraged by the *entire* OO/ODF community.
Posted Aug 19, 2015 6:13 UTC (Wed)
by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)
[Link] (2 responses)
The entire assumption seems to be "we own the name, those guys are illegitimate, let's ignore them". And they did, but the community didn't.
Posted Aug 19, 2015 15:43 UTC (Wed)
by jimjag (guest, #84477)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Aug 20, 2015 4:14 UTC (Thu)
by BrucePerens (guest, #2510)
[Link]
Not sure why you are submitting that link as counter-evidence. I once had coffee with Louis and explained to him that for OpenOffice to gain vitality as a community project, it had to be separated from Sun. History has proven that was so. But on that day, Louis explained that he would never help with such a thing, because it would end his employment. So, you seem to have shown me an internal conversation in which someone whose first interest wasn't the community expressed hope that the community would be part of the picture. Well, that was hopeful, but the AOO side well and truly botched the relationship from day one.
Posted Aug 19, 2015 6:37 UTC (Wed)
by bronson (subscriber, #4806)
[Link] (4 responses)
Posted Aug 20, 2015 7:30 UTC (Thu)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link] (3 responses)
That's why Microsoft formats are so entrenched BTW. Microsoft realised a long time ago every app that took a MS Office document as input/output helpd it sell more licenses.
Ironically it's much easier to manipulate a slew of legacy documents nowadays thanks to the large number of filters that the Document Foundation sponsored, rather that touch the core Open Document Formats (because the filters were written as proper libraries, not mixed with the OOo GUI process).
Posted Aug 20, 2015 11:47 UTC (Thu)
by oever (guest, #987)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Aug 20, 2015 12:39 UTC (Thu)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
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Posted Aug 20, 2015 21:40 UTC (Thu)
by dlang (guest, #313)
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Posted Aug 19, 2015 8:03 UTC (Wed)
by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)
[Link] (2 responses)
The second post you link talks about possible triple-licensing, which is quickly shot down.
The message I get from that thread (what little I read of it) is that some were trying to scare LO into joining AOO, with the threat of irrelevance in the face of this Apache+Oracle+IBM behemoth. But it didn't work.
Posted Aug 19, 2015 15:40 UTC (Wed)
by jimjag (guest, #84477)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Aug 20, 2015 4:18 UTC (Thu)
by BrucePerens (guest, #2510)
[Link]
Posted Aug 18, 2015 5:58 UTC (Tue)
by louie (guest, #3285)
[Link] (74 responses)
So I guess I support Christian's call to fold up AOO, but adding more Apache developers to the LO mix does not seem likely to actually address the core challenge LO faces. :/
Posted Aug 18, 2015 6:27 UTC (Tue)
by pheldens (guest, #19366)
[Link] (38 responses)
Posted Aug 18, 2015 7:00 UTC (Tue)
by MKesper (subscriber, #38539)
[Link] (5 responses)
At work I have to use MS Office 2010. Every time I use my private LO I wonder how old the interface feels.
Posted Aug 19, 2015 4:18 UTC (Wed)
by ccchips (subscriber, #3222)
[Link] (4 responses)
Posted Aug 19, 2015 7:55 UTC (Wed)
by ovitters (guest, #27950)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Aug 20, 2015 16:01 UTC (Thu)
by ceplm (subscriber, #41334)
[Link] (2 responses)
Just saying.
Posted Aug 21, 2015 0:05 UTC (Fri)
by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75)
[Link] (1 responses)
This isn't necessarily a useful piece of information regarding how well the interface works. There are always hold-outs whenever an interface changes, and the more radical the change the more of them there will be. That resistance speaks more to the immediate cost of learning the new interface than it does to its long-term value.
Posted Aug 21, 2015 9:43 UTC (Fri)
by jonnor (guest, #76768)
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Posted Aug 18, 2015 7:12 UTC (Tue)
by louie (guest, #3285)
[Link] (31 responses)
Posted Aug 18, 2015 7:30 UTC (Tue)
by Felix.Braun (guest, #3032)
[Link] (30 responses)
I for one certainly don't feel that the ribbon interface is better. I know how to find the commands I regularly use. But the same is true of the "old" menu style interface copied by LibreOffice from Word2003. At the end of the day, I can get my work done in both. I still don't see the point of having been forced to learn the new interface. It's not really better for me, because I already knew how to use Word2003 efficiently. And judging by the documents I receive from less computer literate colleagues, they don't do significantly better in the new interface either.
Posted Aug 18, 2015 7:34 UTC (Tue)
by MKesper (subscriber, #38539)
[Link] (20 responses)
But they are now used to it, having used it for years probably. Switching to LO will _feel_ old.
Posted Aug 18, 2015 9:33 UTC (Tue)
by Rehdon (guest, #45440)
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Rehdon
Posted Aug 18, 2015 13:32 UTC (Tue)
by kreijack (guest, #43513)
[Link] (10 responses)
[Disclaimer: I am against the ribbon bar]
In this review http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2418419,00.asp the author put in the comment:
Cons: Clunky interface.
but without justifying it. This suggested me that creating the "Ribbon bar" Microsoft made all other software to appear as "old"; I think that this was an expected (and wanted) result by Microsoft.
Regarding the Ribbon bar there are several things that I hate
Apart that, I fatigue to see any gain in the ribbon interface.
Posted Aug 18, 2015 14:01 UTC (Tue)
by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389)
[Link] (9 responses)
Posted Aug 18, 2015 17:28 UTC (Tue)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
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Posted Aug 18, 2015 17:34 UTC (Tue)
by dakas (guest, #88146)
[Link] (5 responses)
Posted Aug 18, 2015 18:24 UTC (Tue)
by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389)
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Posted Aug 19, 2015 10:05 UTC (Wed)
by nelljerram (subscriber, #12005)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Aug 20, 2015 1:17 UTC (Thu)
by rahvin (guest, #16953)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Aug 20, 2015 1:31 UTC (Thu)
by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389)
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1st iPod: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lvlbRQq1UM
Posted Aug 20, 2015 1:20 UTC (Thu)
by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389)
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Posted Aug 22, 2015 4:18 UTC (Sat)
by shmget (guest, #58347)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Aug 22, 2015 4:37 UTC (Sat)
by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389)
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Posted Aug 18, 2015 19:43 UTC (Tue)
by bferrell (subscriber, #624)
[Link] (7 responses)
old, in this case, is a pejorative to denigrate a choice other than yours
Posted Aug 19, 2015 4:30 UTC (Wed)
by ccchips (subscriber, #3222)
[Link] (6 responses)
The word "old" is a dear friend to merchants and marketers.
I remember once reading about a marketing campaign by SCO encouraging people to give up on those "old Linux systems..." and go with their proprietary operating system. What was the name of that OS? Can't remember---it's too old.....
Companies like Microsoft love to talk about "Old."
Bach is "old." Beethoven is "old." Shakespeare is "old."
So what will people use 300 years from now when they want to get work done....the Ribbon or the menu system?
Posted Aug 19, 2015 4:40 UTC (Wed)
by bronson (subscriber, #4806)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Aug 20, 2015 16:11 UTC (Thu)
by deucalion (guest, #12904)
[Link]
:o)
Posted Aug 19, 2015 4:45 UTC (Wed)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
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Posted Aug 19, 2015 12:22 UTC (Wed)
by eru (subscriber, #2753)
[Link] (2 responses)
Direct brain interface. And that is assuming computers as we know them even exist at that time...
Posted Aug 19, 2015 14:16 UTC (Wed)
by louie (guest, #3285)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Aug 21, 2015 10:50 UTC (Fri)
by pboddie (guest, #50784)
[Link]
As noted already, the "Ribbon" is nothing truly new, and although I would agree that verbose menus are somewhat dated (remember the attempts to have "expanding" menus that just confused everyone?), there are plenty of places to look for other approaches. When people bring up phones and tablets as the driving forces for change, I can't help wondering if I imagined my desktop computing experiences over twenty years ago when the average display had far fewer pixels than today's smartphones and where certain desktop environments made a lot more use of pop-up menus, not just as extra contextual menus but actually as their primary solution for menus. Maybe people regarding the removal of menubars and the adoption of alternatives as "novel" stuck to the Mac or Windows and, if they were even using the Internet many years ago, stuck to arguments about whether it was better to have a menubar at the top of the screen or inside every window.
Posted Aug 18, 2015 7:37 UTC (Tue)
by louie (guest, #3285)
[Link] (7 responses)
Well, we can certainly objectively test discoverability, and I assume (since that was a stated goal of their design process) Microsoft's test data show exactly that. Again, it's worth reading the posts to understand what their goals were, and how they reached them. (Having watched people struggle on video with traditional toolbars, and having spoken to usability experts on the topic, I'd be shocked if MS's experiments show anything other than better discoverability.)
I'm not sure what "intuitive" means in this context, but if you mean "easy to understand for people who had access to desktop machines in the '90s'", then, sure, the LO-style toolbar is more intuitive. That's a rapidly diminishing market, though.
Posted Aug 18, 2015 11:35 UTC (Tue)
by pboddie (guest, #50784)
[Link] (6 responses)
Easy to understand for people who had access to desktop machines before the ribbon, perhaps. I personally strongly dislike this "forget about your VIC-20, grandpa, we'll have ten people to replace you shortly" attitude that has become even more popular in the age of outsourcing and "swipe to know what to swipe" user interfaces. And no, it's not about not liking new stuff. In fact, when I once made the regrettable choice of using Microsoft Word for something important (and regretted not using LaTeX of all things afterwards), the misery was compounded by the fact that I had already been using a more coherent and advanced document-processing solution for years (Impression Publisher, for anyone who may have heard of it) that had things like document stylesheets years before Microsoft's feeble implementation (that few people use anyway because it's easier to hit the different font effect buttons). Sometimes the old stuff is actually better because it was properly thought-through (not referring to Word in any incarnation here, though) instead of being some furniture-rearranging exercise to achieve some kind of "fresh look" for a decaying property.
Posted Aug 18, 2015 12:31 UTC (Tue)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (5 responses)
> Easy to understand for people who had access to desktop machines before the ribbon, perhaps. I personally strongly dislike this "forget about your VIC-20, grandpa, we'll have ten people to replace you shortly" attitude that has become even more popular in the age of outsourcing and "swipe to know what to swipe" user interfaces.
And going back to that era, I had access to two word processors, one of which I loved (WordMARC Composer, otherwise known as Pr1meWord). When WordPerfect came on the scene, I rapidly dropped the other two *from* *choice*. And if you're talking about a UI, it didn't really have one - it gave you a "blank sheet of paper" and let you get on with it!
It also had this wonderful feature that *let you specify* where you wanted things on the page! So you could do things properly, lay out the document in your head or on scrap paper, then *get it right* in the word processor. I don't know whether Word has improved or not, but it always used to lay things out how *it* thought best, usually moving all your graphics on to the wrong page, and things like that! (Writer, unfortunately, feels too much like a Word clone to me, so I don't like that either). Sadly, all of Windows, Linux, and hardware has moved on and my ancient copies of WordPerfect no longer run. I can't afford to shell out for a new copy, and ever since Corel rewrote it as a Windows program (v9), it's been a lot naffer anyway. I need to try and get Dosbox, Win3.11, and WP6.1 working and then I'll be happy as larry again :-)
The trouble with so many programs is they are designed FOR PEOPLE WHO DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO THEIR JOB. That's why WordPerfect was great - it was designed for *trained* *typists*, and they were very productive. That's why Word was such rubbish (and partly why it won out) - it was designed for people *who* *didn't* *know* *how* *to* *type* - so it appealed to managers who thought it was wonderful and foisted it on everyone else. And which is why the people who CAN type, HATE it.
Cheers,
Posted Aug 18, 2015 15:32 UTC (Tue)
by markhb (guest, #1003)
[Link]
Posted Aug 20, 2015 6:16 UTC (Thu)
by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648)
[Link] (3 responses)
It's not particularly easy to get working. You have to install a battery of ancient 32-bit glibc libraries and disable ASLR. But it's definitely possible, and, if you really love WordPerfect that much, it's probably worth the one-time futzing necessary to make it work.
And yes, WP6.1 in Win31 in DOSBox also works -- or maybe it was DOSEMU, can't say for sure. I've dealt with WordPerfect as the single biggest problem in a non-techie's switch to Linux, so I know all the various ways to get that piece of crap (sorry, still annoyed years later) running. The user rejected the native Linux version (too different from Windows version), modern WP running under WINE (occasional glitches), and WP6.1 in Win31 in some DOS emulator (too different from MODERN Windows version).
After years of WINE glitches, the ultimate solution was modern WP in not-modern Windows in VirtualBox. Not a single complaint since. You may find happiness with WinXP in VirtualBox running WP X9 or whatever they're up to now as well. Try everything, man; use what you love.
I personally stopped using word processors for anything after discovering LaTeX. But to each his own.
Posted Aug 21, 2015 9:23 UTC (Fri)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
WP fanatics probably should switch to Latex :-) I'll stop evangelising WP when you pry Reveal Codes from my cold dead hands (or you implement it, PROPERLY, in some other word processor!)
The problem is no other Word Processor I know has this window where you can edit AS TEXT, and see the gui changes appear. When I use WP, I work in Reveal Codes all the time (yet my wife hates it, and not surprisingly is quite happy in Word - because I can't see what (or more importantly, why) Word is doing what it does, I hate that).
And as I said, WordPerfect just lets me place anything I want, exactly where I want. If I want something *exactly* 1cm from the top and left margins, I can tell WP to put it there! It'll sort everything else around that, rather than sorting that around everything else! (As Word seems to do all the time :-(
Cheers,
Posted Aug 23, 2015 4:29 UTC (Sun)
by gomadtroll (guest, #11239)
[Link] (1 responses)
AOO vs LO, I really don't get most discussions..mostly poltical, not real workflow comparisons.
I use AOO because of its better document fidelity with my archived data, something LO did not give the same priority. That was my decision, LO does lots of other things well, none that would compel me to use LO over AOO.
I have both installed, the shining new LO5 just in case someone is brain dead enough to send me a ooxml doc instead of "exporting/publish to/pdf..
greg
Posted Aug 23, 2015 10:33 UTC (Sun)
by cortana (subscriber, #24596)
[Link]
Posted Aug 18, 2015 15:38 UTC (Tue)
by pbonzini (subscriber, #60935)
[Link]
There are three kinds of users: clueless, power users, _really_ advanced users. Clueless users love the ribbon because they don't know the keyboard shortcuts and they used to get lost in the menu and toolbar maze; now they have a combined menu and toolbar interface, captions below toolbar button or button groups, and more commonly-used functionality available within roughly the same screen real estate.
You and I are power users: we know the most common keyboard shortcuts, we know what functionality is there and we can find it in the menus.
Really advanced users don't really write documents, they prepare templates for others to use. They know _all_ the keyboard shortcuts and invent more with macros, automate the hell out of their documents with fields and styles and macros; stuff that power users think they know but actually can only scratch the surface of. They don't care much about the ribbon because they don't use menus as much as power users do.
So, if we were to use MS Office, we'd be screwed. Now if only LO Impress didn't break multiple-object selection (4.4.5.2, no I didn't open a bug because I'm going to upgrade to Fedora 23 and 5.0.0 next week anyway)...
Posted Aug 18, 2015 7:14 UTC (Tue)
by BrucePerens (guest, #2510)
[Link]
Posted Aug 18, 2015 7:20 UTC (Tue)
by vasvir (subscriber, #92389)
[Link] (19 responses)
1) It runs in the browser
These coupled with a free cloud based storage (GDrive) makes it a very compelling offer (in return for your data of course).
None of these two features are easily addressable from LO. There are some efforts that are trying to build the technology stack but they are probably not very near yet.
* http://www.webodf.org/
Maybe if they build the collaboration support as a (REST?) service backend (like skype or firefox helo) that negotiates the connection and leaves the clients into P2P mode to edit the document collaboratively would be something that LO could take advantage of.
Posted Aug 18, 2015 7:59 UTC (Tue)
by luya (subscriber, #50741)
[Link] (7 responses)
Posted Aug 18, 2015 8:47 UTC (Tue)
by vasvir (subscriber, #92389)
[Link] (2 responses)
Yes I know LO does a terrific job in the existing codebase and I personally enjoy a lot the blog posts of Michael Meeks.
I just feel that collaborative editing is such a killer feature that may move people over and make people ignore import, transition and formatting issues.
I mean not having to sync edits by e-mail is a major win and something I could talk my company doing it given that the data stays with us and they don't go to GDrive,
Posted Aug 18, 2015 12:36 UTC (Tue)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
I've been digging at the project to implement something like "reveal codes", as a feature "to kill WordPerfect" - THAT is the feature WP fanatics like me refuse to surrender ... You'd think, with documents now in XML that would be dead simple, as there's a fairly close mapping between reveal-codes and XML. But because of Writer's internal layout, it's an almost total rewrite to get it to work :-(
That said, I believe a lot of the cleanup work going on is going to make this a lot easier :-)
Cheers,
Posted Aug 19, 2015 1:00 UTC (Wed)
by luya (subscriber, #50741)
[Link]
Posted Aug 18, 2015 14:18 UTC (Tue)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Aug 18, 2015 17:23 UTC (Tue)
by luya (subscriber, #50741)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Aug 18, 2015 19:27 UTC (Tue)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
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Posted Aug 19, 2015 0:54 UTC (Wed)
by luya (subscriber, #50741)
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Posted Aug 18, 2015 10:26 UTC (Tue)
by halla (subscriber, #14185)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Aug 18, 2015 12:10 UTC (Tue)
by oever (guest, #987)
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Posted Aug 18, 2015 11:19 UTC (Tue)
by eru (subscriber, #2753)
[Link] (6 responses)
The problems with Google Docs become apparent when you have a slow or unreliable network connection. May not matter for some use cases, but is a killer problem in many common ones, like writing on a laptop while travelling.
In my opinion, is is not really a competitor to classic office suites.
Posted Aug 18, 2015 18:11 UTC (Tue)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
[Link] (5 responses)
Posted Aug 18, 2015 18:28 UTC (Tue)
by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389)
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Posted Aug 19, 2015 4:50 UTC (Wed)
by eru (subscriber, #2753)
[Link] (3 responses)
No. Actually have not used Google docs for some time, precisely because of the network issue I mentioned. Besides, according to the page you linked to, the offline feature works only with the Chrome browser, which I don't use. This requirement gives it an unpleasant whiff of lock-in.
Posted Aug 19, 2015 6:01 UTC (Wed)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Aug 19, 2015 12:18 UTC (Wed)
by eru (subscriber, #2753)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Aug 19, 2015 13:57 UTC (Wed)
by pboddie (guest, #50784)
[Link]
All these people now look to "the cloud" to solve all their document management problems, meaning that they now have another problem to deal with. Especially when Office 365 becomes Office 360, as has been known to happen. In short, there are lots of stupid/ignorant people who actually think lock-in is good, hard as it is for us to believe.
Posted Aug 18, 2015 12:14 UTC (Tue)
by oever (guest, #987)
[Link]
Posted Aug 18, 2015 13:19 UTC (Tue)
by davidgerard (guest, #100304)
[Link]
Posted Aug 18, 2015 10:37 UTC (Tue)
by keeperofdakeys (guest, #82635)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Aug 19, 2015 14:03 UTC (Wed)
by nye (subscriber, #51576)
[Link] (1 responses)
(To a person that doesn't use them, a bash prompt and a DOS prompt are indistinguishable.)
Almost everything about it has changed, in some cases in major ways.
The similarity between Word 2007's UI and Word 2010+'s UI is comparable to the similarity between Vi and Vim (or sh 1.0 vs bash 4.3): conceptually it uses most of the same ideas, so at a quick glance it might look like it's almost the same program, but in fact pretty much every aspect has been improved.
I'm not certain that I've ever come across a feature I've used even once that was missing from the ribbon in Word or Excel (I have in Outlook, in one case, but then Outlook was spawned in the pits of hell so it seems unfair to use it as an example), but you can always add your own tabs, or add your own groups into existing tabs, if necessary. When doing this, you can look at a categorised list or available functions, where some of the "categories" are actually pseudo-categories like "commands not in the ribbon". You can also define your keyboard shortcuts here, in case you have a burning desire to map "Paste as Source Formatting" to "ctrl+shift+p", or whatever.
Posted Aug 19, 2015 15:40 UTC (Wed)
by raven667 (subscriber, #5198)
[Link]
With the MS Ribbon, they documented a long research and testing process which brought them to that design, it's hard to take criticism seriously from people who don't have the foggiest idea of how the design was made. I don't even care about MS Office, I just dislike poorly thought out criticism.
Posted Aug 18, 2015 11:50 UTC (Tue)
by ledow (guest, #11753)
[Link] (4 responses)
I hate the new ribbon. But I will defend to the death a user's right to choose them.
As such, I deploy as much as possible where there are OPTIONS. This is where MS kills itself and loses users. Provide the OPTION to have an old classic start menu, or a "Modern" desktop (e.g. via Classic Shell) and everyone is happy. Go one of the other and you automatically annoy 50% of people.
I am a heavy LO user but I have absolutely NO objection to a ribbon interface. So long as it's optional. It can be turned off. And everything works on both interfaces.
You're talking about forcing people to work in your preferred manner. DO NOT. Talk instead about how to carry two huge UI paradigms simultaneously in order to active internal functions that are IDENTICAL no matter the button that was clicked to do them.
This kind of thing annoys me so much in "human interface" design. Do you want X or Y? Neither. And both. And an option to do what I like. It's really not that huge a burden to maintain an optional ribbon interface for those who switch the option on. Hell, make it the default. Just give me a way to go back to how it looks currently, i.e. no ribbon, without loss of functionality.
Posted Aug 18, 2015 12:42 UTC (Tue)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
+100
Why oh why do they have to keep on changing things! "OOOhhh SHINY!!!" (and usually it's re-inventing the wheel, POORLY, at that!!!)
When you hit 50+ people have difficulty learning new things. It's not that we don't want to, but unfortunately many illnesses like Alzheimers, Parkinsons, just plain old ageing, and all that stuff are beginning to make themselves felt, and they all interfere, to some extent, with the learning process. I'm lucky, I'm young for my age, but far too many of my contemporaries are beginning to have noticeable problems.
Cheers,
Posted Aug 18, 2015 15:55 UTC (Tue)
by ovitters (guest, #27950)
[Link]
Anyway, just speaking as someone who uses MS Excel a lot, has loads of colleagues using MS Excel. Discoverability of options using the ribbon is way better than menus. It's still not perfect, but it gets better with MS Excel version. Calc is pretty annoying to use, MS Excel is way more helpful. With MS Excel it seems like Microsoft watched people who use MS Excel for way too much time per day, then tried to assist the users in making things easier. Calc is pretty far off in this (various small things).
Posted Aug 18, 2015 22:51 UTC (Tue)
by HelloWorld (guest, #56129)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Aug 25, 2015 11:10 UTC (Tue)
by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164)
[Link]
But one good ui always beats two or three crappy ones.
Posted Aug 18, 2015 13:16 UTC (Tue)
by davidgerard (guest, #100304)
[Link]
So if there's someone who wants ribbons that much, it's now in the realms of the feasible, if not easy :-)
I'd say the main competition point with Google Docs is (a) live collaborative editing (this is IME a killer app for Google Docs, it's one we use at work a whole lot) (b) convenience (it's always RIGHT THERE in your browser). LO Online has potential for this, and unlike GDocs it'll be able to convert a random OOXML document with any fidelity whatsoever. (Seriously, GDocs is utterly incompetent at docx, but you never see people complain about this.)
Posted Aug 18, 2015 16:46 UTC (Tue)
by david.a.wheeler (subscriber, #72896)
[Link] (1 responses)
I think the ribbon user interface was patented by Microsoft, and while they would sometimes license it, they were hostile to the idea of another office suite using it. I'm not sure if that's true, but that's what I recall. Yes, this is like patenting the idea of a car steering wheel.
Thanks to recent Supreme Court rulings that patent may no longer be enforceable, or Microsoft may be willing to license it. But it'd be wise to check out legal issues before adding a ribbon.
Frankly, I'm happy that LO does not have a ribbon, but I'd keep using LO even if it had a ribbon.
Yet another example of why patents are a bad idea.
Posted Aug 19, 2015 6:41 UTC (Wed)
by louie (guest, #3285)
[Link]
To be clear, I'm fairly sympathetic to Michael and team here: good UX work is very hard; harder still without the data that Microsoft and others now take for granted. But that's really got to be the focus, not quibbling with Apache.
Posted Aug 19, 2015 2:31 UTC (Wed)
by ldo (guest, #40946)
[Link]
The trouble with the Microsoft Office Ribbon is that its design comes from a time before modern wide-screen monitors became popular.
These monitors have a lot more available space horizontally than vertically. Yet the Ribbon takes up precious vertical space.
Compare the Sidebar in LibreOffice, which is positioned beside the document, instead of above or below it: it gives room for the view of the document to take up more of the height of the screen, corresponding more naturally to the portrait orientation of normal printed pages. Which evolved over centuries to maximize readability, after all.
So no, we don’t want to copy the Ribbon in a modern UI.
Posted Aug 19, 2015 4:16 UTC (Wed)
by ccchips (subscriber, #3222)
[Link] (1 responses)
The ribbon interface was supposed to reduce complexity, but, as I have said before, it doesn't do squat if people can't SEE IT AGAINST THE BACKGROUND.
For starters.
HINT: When I have to be on Windows, I still use the command line for a lot of things. That PATH environment variable is awfully useful if you want to get things done fast.
For starters.
If LO needs to abandon the menus for something else, let's hope it has more inclusiveness than the
Posted Aug 19, 2015 14:28 UTC (Wed)
by ovitters (guest, #27950)
[Link]
If your big issues aren't a big issue at all, then maybe visit some companies / heavy MS Excel users sometimes. It took me quite some time to get used to the ribbon interface (habit). But it was just habit. Ribbon mostly tries to show me stuff that is useful. IMO it way better makes use of screen space.
"Hidden" functionality like "remove duplicates" now actually is discovered by a few. "AutoFilter" and sorting is used way more often by people noticing it themselves. Unlike before...
Posted Aug 18, 2015 13:56 UTC (Tue)
by bokr (guest, #58369)
[Link]
Seems like a link to LibreOffice would
Posted Aug 18, 2015 18:09 UTC (Tue)
by jb.1234abcd (guest, #95827)
[Link] (19 responses)
Why so little uproar about LGPL-licensed systemD(efeat), which is not only an intrusive and over-featured system layer, but also dangerously inviting to integration with other software in user space ?
Posted Aug 18, 2015 18:33 UTC (Tue)
by corbet (editor, #1)
[Link] (18 responses)
Oh, and OpenOffice isn't LGPL.
Posted Aug 18, 2015 18:41 UTC (Tue)
by jb.1234abcd (guest, #95827)
[Link] (17 responses)
There are many comments full of critic of LGPL-licensed OpenOffice.
Btw, OpenOffice is LGPL-licensed:
Posted Aug 18, 2015 19:49 UTC (Tue)
by pboddie (guest, #50784)
[Link] (14 responses)
If you follow the link from Wikipedia and read the page (like the people editing Wikipedia should have done), it has a heading that reads "Licenses of Legacy Releases of OpenOffice.org software" and then goes on to mention LGPLv3, whereas directly above that heading it says, "Apache OpenOffice releases are made available under the Apache License 2.0." Meanwhile, not one person has been criticising OO or LO for having a copyleft licence. It just sounds like you want to start an argument about something completely unrelated to the topic actually being discussed and that this is your feeble way of doing so. (I personally remain sceptical about systemd, but it wouldn't occur to me to troll random articles on LWN to make people argue with me about it.)
Posted Aug 18, 2015 20:14 UTC (Tue)
by jb.1234abcd (guest, #95827)
[Link] (13 responses)
And I stand by it that OpenOffice is still LGPL-licensed software:
"Sections or single pages are covered by certain licenses. If a license notice is displayed, you may use the content of that page according to that license.
In all other cases, the page is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (ALv2)."
Well, it should be clear that Apache License does not apply retroactively !
Next, please:
"Licenses of Legacy Releases of OpenOffice.org software
Apache Releases follow specific policies concerning licensing that are closely tied to the branding of the product. It still may be possible, however, to find older releases through third parties or Internet archives that lie out of the control of the Apache Project. For this reason it is highly recommended to review carefully the documentation included with the software."
That means, in the spirit of open and free software (and GPL, which was created, among others, to disallow waste of past software - who would argue with that ?), anyone can pick up LGPL-licensed past software base of OpenOffice and fork it, and continue development under that same license.
So, LGPL is one of valid licenses for OpenOffice, past and present.
Btw, all I asked was why the double standard w/r to LGPL-ed OpenOffice and systemD(efeat) ?
Posted Aug 18, 2015 20:41 UTC (Tue)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (12 responses)
> "Sections or single pages are covered by certain licenses. If a license notice is displayed, you may use the content of that page according to that license.
> In all other cases, the page is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (ALv2)."
> Well, it should be clear that Apache License does not apply retroactively !
Well, that makes it clear also that your grasp of English isn't up to much either ... this section you've just quoted doesn't make sense unless you assume it is talking about pages on the website - ie it's irrelevant to any discussion about OpenOffice.
Cheers,
Posted Aug 18, 2015 20:49 UTC (Tue)
by jb.1234abcd (guest, #95827)
[Link] (11 responses)
Posted Aug 19, 2015 10:19 UTC (Wed)
by pboddie (guest, #50784)
[Link] (10 responses)
Now, from the Wikipedia page you referenced, it says this: "OpenOffice.org (OOo), commonly known as OpenOffice, was an open-source office suite." This indicates that OpenOffice.org is not a current product and that the page therefore effectively describing an older version of Apache OpenOffice. We could discuss at length what effect the licensing of that software has on some peripheral debate about something else, but no-one really cares about the OpenOffice.org code any more (perhaps apart from some people in a basement office at IBM).
Meanwhile, the Wikipedia page about Apache OpenOffice is referenced in the first paragraph of the article mentioned above. And that Wikipedia page indicates that the Apache 2.0 licence applies, using a link to the same licensing page I mentioned earlier. So it would seem (as everyone else commenting is quite aware) not even a licensing coincidence can provide an excuse to start an argument about some other software.
It's easy to get caught out, I will admit. People will find that Wikipedia page and think that it describes the current software, as you have demonstrated. And I forgot that I needed to make a distinction between the different things, which is something I should have kept in mind given that we're dealing with the involvement of two of the most pointless-rebranding-happy companies in technology (Sun and Oracle).
Posted Aug 19, 2015 13:23 UTC (Wed)
by jb.1234abcd (guest, #95827)
[Link] (9 responses)
The Apache OpenOffice (considered itself the unbroken continuation of OpenOffice.org, by others regarded as a fork or a separate project) and LibreOffice forks (actual or perceived) allowed them to change a license or introduce dual-licensing and other code licensing shenanigans they felt necessary to achieve their goals in their product development and market positioning.
The attempt of LibreOffice crew to monopolize OpenOffice suite licensing and marketing goals has failed.
I think Mr. Schaller's open letter is naive and self-serving. He tries to ressurect LibreOffice's attempt at monopoly by other means now -
Let's hope it ain't going to happen.
Ideally there should be at least two competing centers of free and open source OpenOffice suits, with somewhat different licensing schemes that would serve the market and all of us.
Posted Aug 19, 2015 14:12 UTC (Wed)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link] (4 responses)
...I honestly have no idea what you're talking about, are attempting to propose, or what your point is.
And so far, I get the impression that you don't either.
Posted Aug 19, 2015 14:31 UTC (Wed)
by jb.1234abcd (guest, #95827)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Aug 19, 2015 14:53 UTC (Wed)
by seyman (subscriber, #1172)
[Link] (2 responses)
At this point, I feel the Calligra suite and the Abiword/Gnumeric combo are better alternatives to LibreOffice than AOO. So I'm not convinced it's imperative for FLOSS the latter sticks around.
Posted Aug 19, 2015 15:29 UTC (Wed)
by jb.1234abcd (guest, #95827)
[Link] (1 responses)
The presence of an alternative OpenOffice-like provider and license holder in this space is important strategically - consider it a state of
Posted Aug 19, 2015 21:26 UTC (Wed)
by bronson (subscriber, #4806)
[Link]
Being open source already gives us that. The moment LO goes off the rails, someone will fork it and onward we go. It's happened lots of times and usually works out great. There's simply no need to keep AOO on active standby, ready to take over if circumstances warrant. (also, can AOO be considered a healthy player...?)
The reason there are so may distros is because they are a constant source of innovation and experimentation. If that had been your argument, then I would agree. But that doesn't seem to be the case here.
Posted Aug 19, 2015 14:23 UTC (Wed)
by pboddie (guest, #50784)
[Link] (3 responses)
Nothing stops anyone from forking LibreOffice right now. And I don't know whether that relicensing ever took place given that it seems like a colossal amount of messing around that provides little or no technical benefit while only really opening the door to questionable "business opportunities" for those people who want to make proprietary software. And if the copyright isn't centrally owned, such an exercise potentially takes on the work of rewriting stuff that objecting contributors have provided, which might not even lead to a result that is beyond legal question if one of those contributors objects to the result.
If you're saying that there needs to be a permissively-licensed OpenOffice for people who want to ship proprietary software then I understand your point, even though I strongly disagree with it and think that Apache OpenOffice is just a sideshow that enables the likes of Oracle (if they are still interested) and IBM to do just that, all the while exposing the "corporate source" nature of projects when the "open source not Free Software" crowd take the reins.
Posted Aug 20, 2015 0:59 UTC (Thu)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (2 responses)
Which relicencing is that? Rebasing LO onto AOO rather than OOo in order to inherit the Apache licence? I know a lot of that work has been done, but I don't know whether it's all been done.
NB, LibreOffice is MPL - at least, that is the licence that is (and always has been) required for contributions. Any code contributed to LO will definitely be MPL. The waters are muddied, however, by the fact that AOO code has been copied into LO (acceptable, because the Apache licence permits distribution under MPL or GPL), and that the original code dump by Oracle was LGPL. So if the rebasing hasn't been done, the only safe licence for binary distribution is (L)GPL, despite that not being the LO licence.
Cheers,
Posted Aug 20, 2015 7:49 UTC (Thu)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link] (1 responses)
In their hate of anything (L)GPL-ish AOO stripped AOO of any dep licenced a way they didn't like, going so far as removing standard freedesktop.org components people had slaved on for decades to bring to the state of the art, and had taken a lot of time to agree on (to avoid cross app/ cross desktop discrepancies).
Pretty much what Google did to avoid the GPL in Android, without the manpower to bring the replacements up to par (IIRC AOO even removed bits Google kept in chromebooks), and ruining any serious Linux integration as a result.
Posted Aug 25, 2015 17:10 UTC (Tue)
by jimjag (guest, #84477)
[Link]
Posted Aug 18, 2015 19:49 UTC (Tue)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link]
Posted Aug 18, 2015 19:57 UTC (Tue)
by edomaur (subscriber, #14520)
[Link]
Posted Aug 19, 2015 7:15 UTC (Wed)
by johannbg (guest, #65743)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Aug 19, 2015 15:44 UTC (Wed)
by jimjag (guest, #84477)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Aug 20, 2015 3:23 UTC (Thu)
by luya (subscriber, #50741)
[Link]
Posted Oct 27, 2022 15:01 UTC (Thu)
by InternetRebel (guest, #161846)
[Link] (8 responses)
Posted Oct 27, 2022 15:48 UTC (Thu)
by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389)
[Link] (7 responses)
Note that I suspect some of the problems came from Apache projects being required to use Apache infrastructure and that mean(t?) using Subversion. Which for a project of a size like LibreOffice that had been on Git before seems like self-inflicted pain on a level I can't blame anyone for not wanting to deal with.
Either way, all of that is history. The inability of ASF to see the reality of what a vestigial and neglected hunk of software AOO is today is…sad. Incendiary comments like this 7 years after the original posting doesn't help matters.
> I mean, is AOO even closed source?
No. Whatever has been committed to AOO has been merged into LO long ago. Given that nothing much happens in AOO anymore, their pull rate from AOO is probably right where it needs to be.
Posted Oct 31, 2022 18:20 UTC (Mon)
by flussence (guest, #85566)
[Link] (1 responses)
They do send a pretty strong signal (for lack of any other signal from Apache whatsoever) that *this* is the only type of person the project attracts, and *this* is how ridiculously misinformed they are.
They couldn't really do much better to bury OpenOffice if IBM were to hire another full time reputation assassin to do it.
Posted Nov 1, 2022 13:20 UTC (Tue)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
Why oh why did he do it - if a manager told me to destroy my own reputation like that ... fortunately, I've never been in a position where that's been at all likely, and I have a reputation of being rather forthright in my beliefs - trying to force me to go against them is unlikely to end well ...
Cheers,
Posted Nov 12, 2022 5:46 UTC (Sat)
by InternetRebel (guest, #161846)
[Link] (4 responses)
Posted Nov 27, 2022 16:41 UTC (Sun)
by flussence (guest, #85566)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Nov 28, 2022 0:05 UTC (Mon)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (2 responses)
It would be nice if comments got locked automatically after a decent (six months?) period of time, then we wouldn't be getting zombie articles coming back to haunt us ...
Cheers,
Posted Nov 28, 2022 1:03 UTC (Mon)
by corbet (editor, #1)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Nov 28, 2022 1:30 UTC (Mon)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
Cheers,
from Jan Iverson's email:
Schaller: An Open Letter to Apache Foundation and Apache OpenOffice team
- the attempt to make a cooperation with LO, caused many discussions, but ended with adding restrictions, ...
Obviously counterproductive, but that's fine. The quicker AOO dies, the better for everyone concerned. In the Kübler-Ross model of grief, AOO is somewhere between step 1 and step 2: denial and anger.
Schaller: An Open Letter to Apache Foundation and Apache OpenOffice team
Schaller: An Open Letter to Apache Foundation and Apache OpenOffice team
Schaller: An Open Letter to Apache Foundation and Apache OpenOffice team
Schaller: An Open Letter to Apache Foundation and Apache OpenOffice team
Is Apache a party to some kind of contract that prevents the org from working with LO?
Contractual obligations?
No contract as such AFAIK, but the original OpenOffice.org code was LGPL-licensed. When Oracle donated the code to Apache it chose the Apache licence (and the fact that they donated to Apache and not TDF suggests antipathy with the TDF/LO people). IBM too donated source for Symphony to Apache under the Apache licence. Both corporations stated their preference for Apache versus LGPL, so that was an early hurdle. Meanwhile, at this point LO had already been developing substantially, but taking new contributions under dual LGPL/MPL licenses. There was talk three years ago of rebasing it to the AOO apache-licensed version, going MPL-only and getting rid of LGPL, and apparently that work has progressed: today the LO webpage offers the product under the MPL but apparently some individual pieces are still LGPL'd or under other licences. But I suspect this is still the main hindrance to the Apache foundation just merging with LO -- they (AOO) don't want to switch licences.
Contractual obligations?
There's also who actually owns the OpenOffice.org trademark, e.g. if Apache could even give it to someone else at all.
Contractual obligations?
Searching the US trademark
Filing Date March 7, 2005
Registration Number 3063339
Registration Date February 28, 2006
Owner (REGISTRANT) Team OpenOffice.org e.V. e.V. eingetragener Verein (registered association) FED REP GERMANY Team OpenOffice.org e.V. c/o Matthias Huetsch Hertogestra e 14 Hamburg FED REP GERMANY D-22111
Contractual obligations?
https://www.apache.org/licenses/software-grant.txt
I assume the same is true of IBM and Symphony.
Contractual obligations?
Contractual obligations?
Apache's IP provenance
Apache's IP provenance
Apache's IP provenance
Apache's IP provenance
Apache's IP provenance
Contractual obligations?
Oracle and Apache
Although the Document Foundation might not have existed, the LibreOffice project did, and there were any number of proper 501(c)3 organizations that would have accepted code for the LibreOffice project and under their control. SFC, SPI, Mozilla Foundation, were all around. And then there were not-for-profits that were not 501(c)3s, like Linux Foundation, The Open Group, and probably another 100 organizations that we could have found in the community.
It also would have been trivial for Oracle to found a legal entity to hold the code, to their custom requirements.
They did. It was the ASF.
They wanted a legal entity to "have" the code, as well as for it to be under an ALv2 permissive type license.
Are you honestly saying that if, for example, the SFC would have accepted the code, and it would have then been under ALv2 there as well, that things would be "different"???? Or are you suggesting that Oracle should have donated it to SFC, for example, to simply "hold" until TDF was legal? Well, maybe, but they didn't. That is hardly Apache's fault.
And let's not forget, if Apache had not accepted the code, and had not then been able to relicense the entire suite to ALv2, then LO would not have been able to relicense their code to what I assume is a Good Thing for them.
As far as "disliking" the GPL, well, I submit that TDF/LO also "dislike" the ALv2 (and yet, Apache is being painted as the intolerant one... interesting). But even though I don't dislike the GPL (it's not my favored license, yet I code quite a bit of GPL code and have no issues supporting said projects), it is clear that for you and others, it's all about not seeing the need or desire for a permissively licensed OO suite or framework. That's fine.
Oracle and Apache
And it's disingenuous to accuse GPL participants of not giving back because they used the GPL, when they might have been more willing to use the Apache license had you not presented them with an undesired fork and a great deal of hostility.
The hostility was there way before Apache got involved.
I submit that if TDF had existed as a legal entity and if they had been willing to have LO under ALv2 (or some other permissive license) that Oracle would have donated it to them.
I will go further. If the conditions of the above had been true, and Oracle had not donated it to the TDF, then the ASF would not have accepted it. I and others would have strongly rejected any such proposal.
Oracle and Apache
Contractual obligations?
At the time that Oracle was looking for a place to donate OO, TDF did not exist.
Odd that you would say that shortly after linking to mails from the time on a list called tdf-discuss. Yes, the legalities weren't yet done, but TDF very much existed.
Contractual obligations?
Contractual obligations?
Contractual obligations?
Contractual obligations?
Schaller: An Open Letter to Apache Foundation and Apache OpenOffice team
Schaller: An Open Letter to Apache Foundation and Apache OpenOffice team
1. nowhere acknowledges the effort that LibreOffice had been putting in, including a stable release six months previously and additional development since then
2. Nowhere suggests whether their efforts, and previous efforts from go-oo.org (which got merged into LO), would be folded in into this "reference" implementation of the ODF standard
3. Says nothing about how this late incubation proposal would benefit the community, given that most linux distros had already switched over to LibreOffice.
Schaller: An Open Letter to Apache Foundation and Apache OpenOffice team
Schaller: An Open Letter to Apache Foundation and Apache OpenOffice team
Schaller: An Open Letter to Apache Foundation and Apache OpenOffice team
Schaller: An Open Letter to Apache Foundation and Apache OpenOffice team
Schaller: An Open Letter to Apache Foundation and Apache OpenOffice team
Schaller: An Open Letter to Apache Foundation and Apache OpenOffice team
Schaller: An Open Letter to Apache Foundation and Apache OpenOffice team
Also, looking at your two mailing-list posts that supposedly highlight the desire to "cooperate". Both those messages are on a libreoffice list, in response to a suggestion that everyone in LO should, purely out of self-interest, individually join the AOO proposal as initial members. I'm not sure whether this person is/was an active LO member himself, but he is posting on the LO list and clearly not speaking for AOO in that mail (he talks of just having "headed over" to Apache to find out what was happening). The first mail you quote is from him. It says Schaller: An Open Letter to Apache Foundation and Apache OpenOffice team
Regardless of individual feelings, the best the TdF
and its members could do at this point would be to put on a smiling face,
magnanimously congratulate the ASF for joining the community, and at least
make it look like they were working closely with IBM to bring the best
possible open document technologies to the world. If most or almost all of
the LO contributors joined the Apache OpenOffice project, if only to lend
moral support and help heal the rift, that would only be good for LO and the
TdF. The best time to do that is now.
If he is an AOO member (which it doesn't seem like), it hardly looks like a good example of "reaching out" to me. And no mention of whether the LO code, too, would be merged into AOO, and how that would come about.
Schaller: An Open Letter to Apache Foundation and Apache OpenOffice team
Schaller: An Open Letter to Apache Foundation and Apache OpenOffice team
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
As virtually all business users will have converted to ribbon interface by now, your only chance of migration will be offering something similar.
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
(This probably shouldn't be dignified with a response, but...)
It's worth reading Microsoft's careful explanation of the Ribbon. Long story short, they actually talked to and extensively tested on users. They also had data from over a billion sessions from 2003. So they have a very good idea of what users do and don't "want when not forced". Part 7 is particularly relevant to this comment: "Our internal discussions [were] peppered with [...] wild guesses, justifications, and personal "anecdotes" served up as fact" just like... comments on a blog post. With this data, and user testing, they have a much better grasp of what users actually use, and how to show it to users, then they did in the '90s when, well, when the current LO UX was designed. (And it shows; as someone who used to have to use Word every day for work, 2010 is light-years ahead of 2003 and LO.)
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
> _feel_ old.
1)not all the icon have a text; with the old menu interface, you can help by phone another colleague. With the ribbon this is more difficult because you can't name an icon . And if I am searching a function which vaguely remember, a text helps more than an image.
2) the ribbon have an "automate adjustment" behavior. So if you resize the window the icons are moved e/o resized. This make more difficult to find it sometime.
3) the ribbon bar interface is big, leaving less space to the other function!
4) the ribbon bar interface is located on the top instead on the left/right (the monitor is wide, so why still use the top/bottom area ?)
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
I love how we still use a 3.5" floppy image for saving.
So when did you last actually use scissors for cutting text? And then used, uh, a clip board?!? for pasting it somewhere else? Uh what? I think the floppy disk should be the least of your worries.
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
VHS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kesMOzzNBiQ
Typewriters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfxRfkZdiAQ
Game Boy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pCp8g-VjOs
Rotary phones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkuirEweZvM
Old computers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF7EpEnglgk
Cassette players: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk_vV-JRZ6E
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
it usually depict a shape of phone from the 70's.... a decade before the 3.5 floppy.
and yet somehow even kids today, who may have seen one in a museum or an old movie, still have no problem selecting the right 'icon' on their cell-phone to make a call.
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
So what will people use 300 years from now when they want to get work done....the Ribbon or the menu system?
FutureUI
FutureUI is already here
FutureUI is already here
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
I'm not sure what "intuitive" means in this context, but if you mean "easy to understand for people who had access to desktop machines in the '90s'", then, sure, the LO-style toolbar is more intuitive. That's a rapidly diminishing market, though.
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Wol
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Wol
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
2) It enables cooperative multi-editing
* https://ethercalc.net/ - Spreadsheet with synchronous collaborative edits
* https://github.com/owncloud/documents
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
2) It enables cooperative multi-editing
Cooperative multi-editing was made possible with Sugar interface version of Abiword first developed for the XO laptop.It will be hardly surprised that is where Google Docs got some inspirations.
Let remembers LibreOffice is much more complex than GoogleDocs, is currently in a process of cleaning remaining old codes and has features not found on GoogleDocs from Drawing to Formula and support of Open Document Format.
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Wol
I just found out LibreOffice Calc allows sharing document under Tools->Share Documents menu.
It appears codes for collaboration mode are already in place but are under low priority for Writer.
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
1) It runs in the browser [...]
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Are you sure you've actually enabled offline editing? Yes, there are some glitches, but Google Docs DO work offline!
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Are you sure you've actually enabled offline editing?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
The question was whether Google Docs is a competitor to LibreOffice and MSOffice. People don't really care about vendor lock-in or else MSOffice would not have been a contendor.
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Many users (in addition F/OSS enthusiasts) are in fact beginning to care about lock-in, as witness the various initiatives around the world to require open document formats in public administration. I think it is a result of electronic documentation becoming mature. When the final archived version is no longer paper (which is universally readable by anyone with working eyes), the file format starts to matter a great deal.
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
I hate Metro. But I will defend to the death a user's right to choose it.
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Wol
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Actually it is, it's a huge chunk of code that needs to be developed and maintained, leaving the developers with less time to implement other, potentially more useful features. Also, good software is created by keeping your focus, and not by trying to be all things to all people.
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Is ribbon patented by Microsoft?
Is ribbon patented by Microsoft?
Re: use ribbon or something ribbon-like to make complexity easier to deal with
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?
Hej Schaller: An Open Letter to Apache Foundation and Apache OpenOffice team
help promote it ;-)
Schaller: An Open Letter to Apache Foundation and Apache OpenOffice team
You will now please stop trying to get yet another unrelated flame war going. This isn't the first time. Next one gets your troll bit set.
Stop
Stop
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org
"License Dual-licensed under the SISSL and GNU LGPL (OpenOffice.org 2 Beta 2 and earlier)[7]
GNU LGPL version 3 (OpenOffice.org 2 and later)[8]"
Stop
Btw, OpenOffice is LGPL-licensed
Stop
http://www.openoffice.org/license.html
Stop
Wol
Stop
when applied to web pages, source code, or whatever else. I made a mental shortcut.
I admit, English is not my native language.
Stop
Stop
But because the new licensing schemes are not retroactive, the LGPL-licensed OpenOffice.org software base was and obviously still is LGPL licensed.
And that's my point not to be forgotten.
As I already stated, anybody can restart LGPL-licensed OpenOffice suite at any time by creating a new fork and offer it to us as a new alternative suite.
That's a safety valve and check that should be kept in mind by everybody just in case ...
I would suggest you re-read this article (and comments):
Relicensing and rebasing LibreOffice
https://lwn.net/Articles/498898/
basically telling Apache OpenOffice to throw their hands in the air and give themselves up. That's silly.
If for no other reasons than because LibreOffice crew, and GPL and other licensing meisters and smooth operators in general (Apache License, LGPLv3, GPLv3.0+, LGPLv3.0+, AGPLv3.0+, MPLv2+, to name a few ...) can not be trusted with that responsibility (there are too many "world domination" militants, subversive manipulators, and troll-button pushing hillbillies in their ranks who should be kept in check by all true free and open source software participants).
Anything less would be uncivilized.
Stop
Anything less would be uncivilized. [and much more]
Stop
Any silly open letters to the contrary are counterproductive and pure nonsense.
Tell me again what are you missing ?
Stop
Stop
healthy checks and balances, in which a stray player can be replaced by a healthy one if warranted by cicumstances.
That's also why we have many Linux distros - I thought in the distant past that it was a distraction and waste of resources, until I realized that it is a safety check against degeneration.
Stop
Stop
Stop
Wol
Stop
In their hate of anything (L)GPL-ish AOO stripped AOO
"hate" is such a nasty and incorrect word. Of course, it's a great word to use if the intent is to fan flames and perpetuate FUD.
Stop
Stop
Stop
Schaller: An Open Letter to Apache Foundation and Apache OpenOffice team
Schaller: An Open Letter to Apache Foundation and Apache OpenOffice team
Schaller: An Open Letter to Apache Foundation and Apache OpenOffice team
Schaller: An Open Letter to Apache Foundation and Apache OpenOffice team
Schaller: An Open Letter to Apache Foundation and Apache OpenOffice team
Schaller: An Open Letter to Apache Foundation and Apache OpenOffice team
Schaller: An Open Letter to Apache Foundation and Apache OpenOffice team
Wol
Schaller: An Open Letter to Apache Foundation and Apache OpenOffice team
Schaller: An Open Letter to Apache Foundation and Apache OpenOffice team
Schaller: An Open Letter to Apache Foundation and Apache OpenOffice team
Wol
I've thought in the past about closing comments after a period of time, but occasionally somebody posts a useful update to an old topic and I'd hate to block that. I suppose we could send comments on old articles to moderation... Will ponder.
Comments on old articles
Comments on old articles
Wol