OpenOffice.org runs away from Oracle

[pauxlo]

News of the day in the open source community:

Some parts of the OpenOffice.org community founded a new organization (The Document Foundation), to be independent of Oracle, which owns the code and trademark of OpenOffice.org.

Some history

The Germany based enterprise "Star Division" created (beginning in 1985) an office package called Star Office. In 1999 Star Division was bought by Sun Microsystems, who in 2000 opensourced this product under the name OpenOffice.org, and created an open community of the same name. (Sun still produced a commercial edition named StarOffice, based on OpenOffice.org.)
Contributors had to transfer the copyright of all code to Sun for it to go in.

In January 2010 Sun was bought by Oracle, and the less supportive stance of Oracle in regards to Open Source (compared to Sun) caused some irritations in the Open Source communities lead by Sun before (besides OOo there are Java, MySQL and OpenSolaris, at least).

The Document Foundation announced a beta version of »LibreOffice«, which is in fact only a rebranded OpenOffice.org, now including some patches from other vendors which did not go in the main software before.
They asked Oracle to transfer the trademark (and other resources) to this new organization, but are prepared to go ahead under the new name to continue an open development.

Opinions?

[johndh]

Fire the marketing team and get somebody who can come up with a name people will actually use, and that anglophones can pronounce. Seriously, is it lee-bra? Lee-bray? It's a word in both French and Spanish, and I'm fairly sure they both say it differently! If you want to pronounce it like the "re" on the end of "centre", then it's "lee-ber", and that's just awful in any language (and do they really have to make a compound word with CamelCaps? It's two words! Put a space!). Free Office, Freedom Office, Liberty Office -- hell, make it a pun and call it Libra Office! -- almost anything but LibreOffice. 'Sides, if you're gonna make the first word Spanish/French, then why is the second word English? Here's a thought: call it Oficina Libre in Spanish-speaking countries, and Free Office in English-speaking ones. Problem solved. A lot of people are hesitant to try software they've never heard of, especially when there's an established standard ("But I already have Office©™! It came with my computer!"), and when they can't even read it properly and confidently, that's a no-go. Branding is important, and "Microsoft Office" just looks friendlier and less cumbersome than LibreOffice or OpenOffice.org.

[Iris]

Hm. Wesnoth vs Warcraft. I can see why Warcraft is more popular than Wesnoth.
</deliberately_offtopic_tangent>

[Feufochmar]

It's a word in both French and Spanish, and I'm fairly sure they both say it differently!

It is pronounced differently (from the wiktionary for the IPA) : [libʁ] in French, [ˈli.bɾe] in Spanish. But in the two languages, it has the same meaning.

For the developpers, the name "LibreOffice" is a temporary name. They hope to retrieve the name OpenOffice.org from Oracle.
Also, FreeOffice can already be a trademark and the domain name freeoffice.org is already used by someone else.

[boru]

I don't know. I've tried OpenOffice and it just doesn't have the gameplay of Warcraft, and no orcs either.

[Ken_Oh]

I don't know. I've tried OpenOffice and it just doesn't have the gameplay of Warcraft, and no orcs either.

However, OpenOffice does have ocr.

[Iris]

It does? Hm.

Maybe I should give it a try again (if it weren't so awfully HUGE) ­— the last version I used was 1.9 IIRC, and I've sticked to Microsoft Office since then.

[thespaceinvader]

I wish I had MS office. I like openoffice for my own stuff, but when I come to sending out job applications, the slight inconsistencies between the way it renders .doc and the way word does often leave my carfully crafted CVs looking... less carefully crafted. It irks me. I usually try to send them exported as PDFs, but you can't always do that.

[Elvish_Hunter]

The Document Foundation announced a beta version of »LibreOffice«, which is in fact only a rebranded OpenOffice.org, now including some patches from other vendors which did not go in the main software before.

There are already some "forks" of OpenOffice. I think, for example, to Go-OO (that is the default OpenOffice on Ubuntu) and OxygenOffice (that is Go-OO with more cliparts and templates).

I don't know. I've tried OpenOffice and it just doesn't have the gameplay of Warcraft, and no orcs either.

Maybe I should give it a try again (if it weren't so awfully HUGE) ­— the last version I used was 1.9 IIRC, and I've sticked to Microsoft Office since then.

According to Wikipedia, the latest version for the 1.x branch was 1.1.5. I'm using OpenOffice from 2003, and, at that time, some functions, like FontWork, still needed a lot of work. From 2.0 FontWork really improved and now can do some nice works.

I like openoffice for my own stuff, but when I come to sending out job applications, the slight inconsistencies between the way it renders .doc and the way word does often leave my carfully crafted CVs looking... less carefully crafted. It irks me. I usually try to send them exported as PDFs, but you can't always do that.

Don't forget that the specifications of Office file formats are still mysterious. Anyway, also compatibility improved in due time. About your problem, you can consider exporting in RTF - but I don't know if this will keep all the formatting that you need. Or you can use an online conversion service, for example: you upload it as ODT and get it as DOC. To check the result, you can use MS Office Viewers (Word/Excel/Powerpoint Viewer), that are free and should work also under Wine (because Office works under Wine - am I right, shadowmaster?)
EDIT: I just checked the WineHQ apps database for you, and Word 2007 Viewer is rated as Gold, Excel 2007 Viewer as Platinum and PowerPoint 2007 Viewer as Silver. (http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.p ... on&iId=202)

[thespaceinvader]

Exporting as PDF works fine, as long as the recruiter websites will accept them =) If I'm printing and sending, it's not an issue.

I know the issues, and money is not the only reason i still support openoffice. It just annoys me that I can't send ODTs for word to read. Open source programs often seem to read closed-source files, but not the other way around. It irks me.

[Iris]

Maybe I should give it a try again (if it weren't so awfully HUGE) ­— the last version I used was 1.9 IIRC, and I've sticked to Microsoft Office since then.

According to Wikipedia, the latest version for the 1.x branch was 1.1.5.

Maybe I was using a 2.0 beta?

[johndh]

I use Google Docs, which is especially handy since I use multiple computers. That's only when I need the special formatting and whatnot, as most of the time I just use the same text editor I use for markup.

[Feufochmar]

About word processing, I prefer LyX or LaTeX. I have no problem with formatting with them (but I can't export to the doc / docx format, only to pdf or ps).

[sur.nhm]

According to Wikipedia, the latest version for the 1.x branch was 1.1.5.

Maybe I was using a 2.0 beta?

It seems that the latest stable version is 3.2.1, and 3.3 is in beta stage. It weighs ~140 MB (or at least the windows installer does).
Anyway, because of money concerns (and general hatedom of MS) I use OO, both on my Windows and Xubuntu PCs. I do find the compatibillity issues annoying (because most all of my correspondents use MS Office), no more, but for word processing, it, MS Office and Lotus Symphony are all zelbe drek (read: I really hate word processors).

[Iris]

I haz Office 2007 on Linux now, for free. (Using Wine 1.3.3, and a Home & Student Office license I got for free along with dad's laptop on July.)



Only Word and Excel work for me, although that might have something to do with using a development version of Wine instead of the stable 1.2 branch.

I don't really have any need for this at the moment, but meh. My actual text editor of choice is Kate, and I use it to store random loose notes as well because I'm too dumb to use a proper software program for that. Microsoft Office is, nonetheless a must-have for me at university, even if I could probably get away with KOffice or OO.o — I just really prefer Microsoft's suite over the rest for some unknown reason.

Failing Wine, I also run several virtual machines on my laptop, Windows XP SP3 included, so I can always use Windows applications in their native environment if the need arises. So far I've only had that with Maple, a maths application that does have a native Linux version that doesn't suit me — mainly because we are forced to use the classic worksheet UI, which is long deprecated and no longer maintained for any platform, and at least the Windows build of that component is less crashy than the Linux/X11 build.

P.S. I wish I could also switch MS Office's UI language to English for free. Does anyone know if this is legally possible?