What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 10, 2016 10:27 UTC (Sat) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
In reply to: What's next for Apache OpenOffice by karath
Parent article: What's next for Apache OpenOffice

I think what people want is recognition of the work gone into LO, and an end to the perception of "neutral" third parties they're some sort of marginal fork of AOO, or at best some sort of equal to AOO.

The way AOO continues to exploit the good will associated to OO.o (a brand that was largely built by the people that went to the TDF, SUN marketing being abysmal), while letting the codebase rot, is infuriating to many.

Many people there are sick of getting answered "I tried AOO and it was junk" when they state they are proud of what LO accomplished.

AOO does not stand on its own merits. Remove the confusion between AOO and OO.o, and what is left?

Another project, that tried valiantly to survive without claiming a brand that was built by others, would generate very different feelings. There is little continuity between OO.o contributors and past or present AOO contributors.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 10, 2016 10:50 UTC (Sat) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] (2 responses)

So just to be clear from an LO proponent there could be three positive issues:

1. AOO finally does something worthwhile with the OO.o codebase (people are quite sceptical of this given the project past lack of traction and focus on deceptive marketing over coding)
2. AOO makes crystal-clear it's just one of OO.o inheritors, and lets users evaluate each of them on their own merits (ie competes honestly)
3. AOO crashes and burns. Confusion solved.

Frankly, 3. seems the most likely right now.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 10, 2016 16:24 UTC (Sat) by branden (guest, #7029) [Link]

Agreed. AOO can do a very few things to help LO (and AOO's own user community, as it happens), and a very few things which will hurt, albeit very little, and make no difference in the long run.

AOO has already done its worst to LO. The outcome is clear.

Time to see if the Apache board has a sense of community larger than the ASF.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 10, 2016 21:47 UTC (Sat) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link]

Well, continuing to accuse Apache and/or the AOO people of deceptive marketing (I have no idea whether warranted or not, that's not material at this stage) isn't going to be helpful when you want to achieve (2).

That being said, the ball is in their court. A "Hello. If you're looking for an end-user-ready product based on OpenOffice.Org, please go to http://www.libreoffice.org/" type of statement should have been added to the oo.org homepage a year ago, when it became clear that the CVE wouldn't get fixed any time soon.