Linux and Open Source

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols & Paula Rooney

Apache vows to develop, protect OpenOffice

By Paula Rooney | October 14, 2011, 10:15am PDT

Summary: The Apache Software Foundation issued a statement today officially naming the open source project Apache OpenOffice.org and emphasizing to naysayers that it will continue to develop the open source office suite and prevent fragmentation.

Citing its success with other donated projects, the Apache Software Foundation vowed to protect OpenOffice.org and prevent fragmentation.

In a lengthy statement issued to naysayers and concerned parties today, the ASF rejected claims that OpenOffice would be neglected and pointed to its success with other adopted open source projects such as SpamAssassin as proof that the “Apache Way” will grow and develop OpenOffice.

The ASF also noted that the project would be known under the name Apache OpenOffice.org and is officially in incubation status.

Oracle donated OpenOffice to the ASF in June. Enhancements and updates will be issued when they are ready, the statement said.

“As with many highly-visible products, there has been speculation and conjecture about the future of OpenOffice.org at Apache. More recently, destructive statements have been published by both members of the greater FOSS community and former contributors to the original OpenOffice.org product, suggesting that the project has failed during the 18 weeks since its acceptance into the Apache Incubator,” the statement noted.

“Whilst the ASF operates in the open –our code and project mailing lists are publicly accessible– ASF governance permits for projects to make information and code freely available when the project deems them ready to be released. Apache OpenOffice.org is not at risk.”

The ASF also noted that there’s plenty of room for competition and pledged cooperation with LibreOffice, another OpenOffice,org project that spun off from the original OpenOffice.org after Oracle acquired it from Sun.

“At the ASF, the answer is openness, not further fragmentation. There is ample room for multiple solutions in the marketplace that are Powered by Apache. We welcome differences of opinion: a requirement at Apache is that a healthy project be supported by an open, diverse community comprising multiple organizations and individual contributors,” the statement read.

“We congratulate the LibreOffice community on their success over their inaugural year and wish them luck in their future endeavors. We look forward to opening up the dialogue between Open Document Format-oriented communities to deepen understanding and cease the unwarranted spread of misinformation.”

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RE: Apache vows to develop, protect OpenOffice

Raid6 21st Oct

@linux for me

Me thinks it was no accident to cause, or pray for, a fork.

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That's great

statuskwo5 14th Oct

"We congratulate the LibreOffice community on their success..."

What success? We have two open source communities developing same, yet different projects. How about joining forces so that OpenOffice/Libre Office doesn't suck as much?

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Agree 100%

wackoae Updated - 14th Oct

@statuskwo5 There are two things they need to do:

#1- Join forces
#2- Get rid of the stupid name LibreOffice and keep OpenOffice (without the .org)

I was a user of OpenOffice.org since 1.x all the way to 3.1 .... when it was of acceptable quality. Then Oracle took over and from 3.2 on the project became bloated, ridiculously sluggish (ie: slow) and unacceptably buggy.

When LibreOffice was release, I gave it a try .... and turned out to be WORST than OO.org. I would create a document, save it, come back the next day and find that all the formatting is screwed up. I could not create a document that would look the same on two machines or even the same machine that created it.

My company gave me a legal license of MS Office to use at home. So I kind of given up on Open/Libre. I may eventually give it another try ... but for now, at least I don't have to pay or resort to pirated software to get the job done.

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Seems like people just want to hate Oracle

otaddy 16th Oct

@wackoae What exactly did they do to OO? It was buggy and slow before Oracle acquired it and they did nothing to fix it.

What a joke it is that the devs cant collaborate...instead we get a lot of wasted effort..just cause some devs hate oracle.

Avoid the childish bickering and buy Office...and then get your work done. Office is a much better product anyways.

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RE: Apache vows to develop, protect OpenOffice

d.marcu 14th Oct

@statuskwo5, don't forget IBM's Lotus Symphony based on the same code

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Yeah ... because OpenOffice is built on top of Eclipse SWT

wackoae 14th Oct

@d.marcu Lotus Symphony is based on Eclipse SWT. There is a HUGE difference in the source code for Symphony and the source code use in OpenOffice.

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RE: Apache vows to develop, protect OpenOffice

Atomic1fire 17th Oct

@d.marcu Ibm also announced they were giving the source from lotus symphony to apache, so hopefully a lot of those improvements are included.

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RE: Apache vows to develop, protect OpenOffice

timspublic1@... 14th Oct

@statuskwo5 Nothing Oracle touched will ever be put onto my PC. That's why.

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I hope you are checking closely, you may be surprised

otaddy 16th Oct

@timspublic1@... Seems like a childish attitude,but whatever.

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RE: Apache vows to develop, protect OpenOffice

BrentRBrian 17th Oct

@statuskwo5 You are more than welcome to join in the effort, volunteer your time and fix the parts that "suck".

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Probably never happen.....

linux for me 17th Oct

@statuskwo5

The LibreOffice has all the coders from the original OpenOffice project and have been updating the LibreOffice suite already. The Apache coders will need to learn the OpenOffice code, plus the IBM code, before than can attempt to make any updates to the OpenOffice suite.

My guess is that it will be one to two years before any significant updates are done to OpenOffice. In the meantime, LibreOffice will be two to three years ahead.

Oracle should have spin off OpenOffice much sooner to have prevented the fork of a project that they were not interested in.

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RE: Apache vows to develop, protect OpenOffice

Raid6 21st Oct

@linux for me

Me thinks it was no accident to cause, or pray for, a fork.

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RE: Apache vows to develop, protect OpenOffice

businessandpolitics 17th Oct

@statuskwo5
What success? Your avatar speaks volumes.

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RE: Apache vows to develop, protect OpenOffice

timspublic1@... 14th Oct

But nobody will care. We all know that the real application is now called LibreOffice. OpenOffice will die because Oracle tainted it and now nobody wants it. Nice.

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If Oracle transferred the copyrights...

John L. Ries 14th Oct

@timspublic1@...
...then I think the taint is gone. Hopefully, Apache will quickly mend fences with the Document Foundation, allowing full cooperation between the two projects.

I typically avoid generalizations that use the words "nobody" or "everybody", as they are almost always false.

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RE: Apache vows to develop, protect OpenOffice

Agnostic_OS 16th Oct

@John L. Ries
In general, everybody understands so nobody feels slighted.

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Quite right, no one will care

Cynical99 14th Oct

@timspublic1@...
Of course, I mean about both OO and Libre. The code is hopelessly behind the commercial products. They can't even get the fundamentals right.

Both will go down in history as late, missing basic features, and generally kludgy.

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And yet...

John L. Ries Updated - 14th Oct

@Cynical99
...Hundreds of thousands of people use OOO/LibreOffice every day. My wife (a longtime spreadsheet jockey) swears that OOOCalc is the best spreadsheet on the market.

See my previous post on the use of the words "nobody" and "everybody".

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No one?

Rabid Howler Monkey Updated - 14th Oct

@Cynical99 wrote:
"OO and Libre. The code is hopelessly behind the commercial products.

Here's a link to one of the few surveys on office suite usage:

http://www.webmasterpro.de/portal/news/2010/02/05/international-openoffice-market-shares.html

Microsoft Office is the clear winner (surprise!). Followed, in decreasing order, by OpenOffice (including StarOffice and Ooo derivatives), Apple iWork, Corel WordPerfect and SoftMaker Office. Even if one cuts OpenOffice market share values by a factor of 2 to account for dual installs with Microsoft Office. The survey is pretty recent too, February, 2010. However, it predates the OpenOffice and LibreOffice split in late 2010.

That's right. OpenOffice beat out Apple iWork, Corel WordPerfect and SoftMaker Office, which are commercial products. At least, the last time I checked Apple, Corel and SoftMaker were commercial enterprises.

Might want to reconsider "no one" and "hopelessly behind the commercial products".

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RE: Apache vows to develop, protect OpenOffice

Cynical99 14th Oct

John L Ries
Funny the spreadsheet jockys where I work would kill me if I even suggested OO or Libre - In fact, we could save several million (very large company) a year if we switched form the infamous MS Office to OO or Libre. To that end, some folks did a major study, and by the way, they had an agenda to get OO into the company at any cost.

Even they couldn't prove any financial gain to moving to OO. The accountants hated it and wouldn't give them the time of day.

Considering the accountants work for a rather large global concern (lets say profit in one small business unit was over $1 billion last year), they know their stuff.

Open Office lost hands down because they hated it.

Don't know who your spreadsheet jockys are, but your company might want to look for some new jockeys as yours are unqualified at best.

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Best spread sheet on the market?

Cynical99 15th Oct

John L. Ries:
No, not anywhere near the best. I work with some pretty good, full time spread sheet types, and they wouldn't touch OO with a 10 foot pole (maybe 20). Second rate and just doesn't work as advertised in the hard core usage.

Rabid Howler, remember Germany is the same mentality that lead Munich to choose OO and their disaster encouraged Berlin to drop their proposed migration.

Even though the Germans have an ax to grind to support Open Source, they couldn't even make it work.

Nope, no one cares.

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RE: Apache vows to develop, protect OpenOffice

admiraljkb 14th Oct

If Apache restarts developing OpenOffice after the project has been defacto dead for a year, and LibreOffice is now the defacto standard, then how is Apache preventing fragmentation? Color me confused. Sounds like a mixed message.

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RE: Apache vows to develop, protect OpenOffice

JustCallMeBC 14th Oct

I don't know -- every once in a while I try out the latest OpenOffice (or more recently, LibreOffice) and always just find it too friggin sluggish. Period. I can't stand MS Office 2010, but if I had a gun to my head and have to choose between that and Open/LibreOffice, I would choose....LibreOffice, but just barely. Fortunately there is Atlantis for my word processing needs and/or SoftMaker Office for everything else. But with things like Gmail and Prezi, the days of bloated desktop officeware are numbered. If Apache wants to do something with OpenOffice, come up with a streamlined version of it.

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why wait...MS Office is a great tool thats ready to go now

otaddy 16th Oct

@JustCallMeBC And it isnt tainted with all this open source bickering...it simply works well.

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Free Software Is Not Kind To Rivalry For Its Own Sake

ldo17 14th Oct

Successful Free Software rivalries, where there is room for a genuine difference of approach (and where rivals can still cooperate on common things): KDE vs GNOME, GCC vs LLVM, Linux vs *BSD.

Pointless rivalries, where as far as most people are concerned, one of the alternatives is pretty much dead: XFree86 vs Xorg, cdrecord vs wodim.

I think OpenOffice vs LibreOffice belongs in the latter category.

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Where is IBM in all this?

Rabid Howler Monkey 14th Oct

The answer, or at least, an answer, is in a comment from an IBM employee, here:

http://www.itworld.com/it-managementstrategy/212949/has-ibm-kicked-openofficeorg-curb#comment-14222544

It appears that IBM has hired the OpenOffice devs in Germany to continue to work full-time on the Apache OpenOffice.org podling. Along with senior IBM Symphony devs in China. This includes Symphony source code, over 3 million lines, to be donated to the podling. IBM appears to be in this for the long haul.

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beats solo

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Prevent fragmentation? This IS fragmentation!

peter_erskine@... 15th Oct

They should have let it go. Wise people are on LibreOffice now.

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RE: Prevent fragmentation? This IS fragmentation!

Rabid Howler Monkey 15th Oct

@peter_erskine@... wrote:
"They should have let it go. Wise people are on LibreOffice now.

Many OpenOffice devs were frustrated with Sun Microsystems and their frustration continued after Oracle acquired Sun. In their impatience, the LibreOffice folks forked OpenOffice.

Sun Microsystems was a big chunk for Oracle to swallow. And, as one would expect, they turned their attention to SPARC, Solaris, Java and MySQL first. Why on God's green earth would Oracle give OpenOffice top priority over the reasons for which they acquired Sun?

OpenOffice, soon to be infused with IBM Symphony source code, is now in the very capable hands of The Apache Software Foundation. With what appears to be substantial support from IBM OpenOffice and Symphony devs. It's time for LibreOffice to rejoin OpenOffice under the Apache umbrella.

After all, the Apache 2 license is good enough for Google's Android (minus the Linux kernel) isn't it?

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"It's time for LibreOffice to rejoin OpenOffice under the Apache umbrella"

ldo17 15th Oct

@Rabid Howler Monkey HAHAHAHAHA!!! That's funny. It's like you think OpenOffice still has some relevance to something. Like it or not, Oracle has killed it, by driving the community elsewhere. And an open-source project is nothing without its community. End of story.

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"It's time for LibreOffice to rejoin OpenOffice under the Apache umbrella"

Rabid Howler Monkey Updated - 15th Oct

@ldo17 wrote:
"an open-source project is nothing without its community. End of story.

I used Google Android as an example for a reason:

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/mobile-working/2011/05/12/google-explains-quasi-open-android-approach-40092750/
"Open source is different than a community-driven project," Rubin said, referring to a situation in which a broad collection of people collectively determines the software's future. "Android is light on the community-driven side and heavy on open source."

However, I'm sure that IBM and The Apache Software Foundation would welcome the LibreOffice miscreants back into the fold.

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"It's time for LibreOffice to rejoin OpenOffice under the Apache umbrella"

ldo17 15th Oct

@Rabid Howler Monkey Android, too, is an example of how an open-source project is nothing without its community. The community can include profit-making companies, too. Look at the Nook Color and the Kindle Fire for examples of innovative Android-based products done without Google's official blessing. Or all the el-cheapo tablets running Android 2.x, which seem to have grabbed 20% of the tablet market without anyone noticing. Or of course the CyanogenMod folks for a spin of Android not endorsed by any company, yet Samsung considered it worthy enough to give them its latest Galaxy S II phones so they could hack them to run it.

Back to LibreOffice. LibreOffice has the community, OpenOffice doesn't. End of story.

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Distros (the users) ultimately will have to decide.

peter_erskine@... 15th Oct

@Rabid Howler Monkey : Hi Rabid, Well, I'll keep an open mind, I don't think anyone will object to the Apache-style license. I dare say OpenOffice will be v.good in its new hands. However, we really need the LibreOffice folk to tell us whether they'd be prepared to join forces - i.e. does the IBM connection still hold them away? Then, the codebases have certainly diverged and some serious work would be required to recombine them. Finally, if that doesn't happen soon, it will be distros and in particular Red Hat, opensuse, and Ubuntu who must decide what to offer. I suspect the split has gone too far and it will be LibreOffice that becomes the default.

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"It's time for LibreOffice to rejoin OpenOffice under the Apache umbrella"

Rabid Howler Monkey Updated - 16th Oct

@ldo17
1. The Android community is comprised of Google and other members of the Open Handset Alliance. But you are partly right as they are all for profit enterprises. And even though Google uses the Apache 2 license for the majority of Android's source code (minus the Linux kernel and other bits), it is not managed in the open manner that The Apache Software Foundation uses for its own projects (e.g., HTTP server, cassandra).

2. Amazon and Barnes & Noble release only the source code necessary to comply with the GPL and no more. The majority of the source code is closed. Ryan Paul at Arstechnica debunked this myth in 2009 (look it up).

3. CyanogenMod and other similar groups have more in common with the CentOS and Scientific Linux communities based on RHEL source code. To wit: Community ENTerprise Operating System is long-hand for CentOS.

What you refer to as the Android community is a farce. The greater Linux community, at least, is tied together via the GPL.

Back on topic, the only winner of the LibreOffice fork of OpenOffice is Microsoft.

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"Distros (the users) ultimately will have to decide.

Rabid Howler Monkey 16th Oct

@peter_erskine@... wrote:
"it will be distros and in particular Red Hat, opensuse, and Ubuntu who must decide what to offer. I suspect the split has gone too far and it will be LibreOffice that becomes the default.

If the split has gone too far, then you are probably correct as Red Hat, SUSE and Canonical are currently in the LibreOffice camp. There is also the difference in licensing, GPL vs. Apache 2. Debian and Debian-based distros such as Ubuntu and Mint will go with the GPL'd version, LibreOffice. The OpenOffice version will likely be placed in the non-free repository. I suspect that the other distros will do similarly.

One potential concern for LibreOffice is patents. Jonathan Schwartz, the former and last CEO of Sun Microsystems, described a meeting with Microsoft on his blog (that occurred prior to his being CEO):

http://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/good-artists-copy-great-artists-steal/

At this meeting, Microsoft allegedly accused Sun of violating Microsoft Office patents with their OpenOffice product and demanded royalty payments. Sun fended this off with their strong patent portfolio and, in particular, their Java patents as related to Microsoft's .NET. My question is who will be the protector of LibreOffice and/or its customers should Microsoft decide to try this again?

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More on patents ...

Rabid Howler Monkey Updated - 17th Oct

It's well known that SUSE (and their parent, Attachmate) has sided with the LibreOffice folks. This includes the donation of code associated with improvements that Novell made to their own version of OpenOffice prior to the LibreOffice fork. Was any of the code provided to LibreOffice related to Novell's agreement with Microsoft? (Note: this agreement was extended for 5 years by Attachmate.) Is it true that OpenOffice rejected these patches for legal reasons? Or is it all just FUD? I have no idea, but the questions are worth asking IMO since LibreOffice will likely be the default office suite for most Linux distros.

For details, see this comment at SlashDot:

"OpenOffice Is Dying (And IBM Won't Help)
http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2476690&cid=37715308

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RE: Apache vows to develop, protect OpenOffice

ampers@... 17th Oct

There seems to be a lot of "religion" here in the comment pages. I'll focus on LibraOffice, mainly because that comes with my Linux distro - but I'll keep an eye on each for the time being, and use the best when we can see which that will be.

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RE: Apache vows to develop, protect OpenOffice

Daddy Tadpole 17th Oct

I like the idea of organised rivalry for a product with so many current and potential users.

OOo and LibreOffice have all the main required features though they do lack originality in the sense that they look much too much like clones of M*.

However, there are many bits that don't work quite as one would expect. I repeat a previous proposal, which was to devise a way of packaging development & debugging items in such a way that they could serve as practical training exercises for those numerous IT students who will end up using the software at work or home.

Finally, those of us who had to use/suffer M* at work (I'm now retired...!) understand the need for a stable and reliable macro programming language. I understand that object oriented programming is here to stay, but since relative amateurs are frequently required to make macros that might crash the company, we need something that has a gentle learning curve, that doesn't consist of a fruitless hunt for nonexistent intrinsic objects and methods (that work as advertised!), and that has a life expectancy slightly longer than the interval between software versions.

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RE: Apache vows to develop, protect OpenOffice

bitrate 19th Oct

LibreOffice is still buggy but sure as heck works better than that bloated garbage OpenOffice. In any case, all this fragmentation in the FOSS community is turning people away instead of luring them in.