Announcing Apache OpenOffice 4.1.13 | Hacker News Reader

Announcing Apache OpenOffice 4.1.13

blogs.apache.org

26 pointsmikece40 comments

This project is a shame. There is no point in making people believe that this is a serious open source office solutions. I'm saw even recently so many people using it and complaining about it while they could use libreoffice instead and have a better experience.

Half or 3/4 of the Apache org projects seem to exist only to give greybeards something to do in retirement other than stroke their beards.

Is there anyone making money from this project? Like a company is selling support contracts for it, or straight up selling it as is? Besides that, I can't imagine what could compel someone to work on this. If Oracle has a full time engineer on it, that just seems like a waste of money for Oracle, and a miserable time for whoever is stuck with the job. There just has to be some malice, or ulterior motives involved in keeping this project alive, if it's not making money and it's not attracting developers.

Even if you believe this has a redeeming quality or two over Libre Office, it would still be a better investment to send a PR to LO, or just suck it up and live with whatever gripes you have while you use the vastly superior product.

> miserable time for whoever is stuck with the job

OpenOffice install base is 135M users with 1.2M weekly downloads. I definitely wouldn't feel miserable if I had this job, given the impact.

All of those would be better off installing LibreOffice. Which they probably would if OO ceased to exists. And definitely if OO would redirect to LO. The impact of OO is net negative.

Apache, please just merge this project with LibreOffice

Don't even merge - just retire the trademark and shut it down entirely, because there is not a single new feature in OpenOffice that LibreOffice doesn't have already. Just set up a redirect and save us from your stubbornness which is going to get people hacked if it isn't already from all the unpatched vulnerabilities.

Apache should donate OpenOffice trademark to the document foundation.

> Apache OpenOffice, a leading Open Source office document productivity suite

In what world?

Companies do that .. using "a leading" instead of "the leading". I guess it's vague and subjective enough so no one can complain or sue.

It's so absurd that there is such a thing as OpenOffice partisans but... here we are on the Internetz.

There must be an interesting story behind Apache’s dogged insistence on OpenOffice.

Apache owns the trademark. I still wonder why Aoo is still an toplevel project and has not died yet.

Ego?

This project should've been sunset a long time ago. I know plenty of people that try it, without knowing that libreoffice is the, by far (of course, without taking into account the Office suite), superior alternative.

I have no genuine hatred towards OpenOffice like some seem to have, but I definitely think the best for all would be to retire the project and have the developers join the LibreOffice team.

The arrogance of Apache at this point for not shutting this down is mind-melting.

Why should Google control the only desktop alternative to MS Office?

What are you talking about? LibreOffice is a fork of OpenOffice that has developed extremely far while OpenOffice has developed almost nothing since the fork. It's been almost a decade of development that it is behind on. It makes a million times more sense to retire OpenOffice and point users toward LibreOffice.

Edit: Oh you are the same guy who said this downvoted comment:

> LibreOffice with its infantile icons, weird UI changes and borked equation editor looks way less professional than even the ancient StarOffice which was the base of OpenOffice.

So you are aware of LibreOffice. That's an OK opinion to hold (I firmly disagree), but it certainly doesn't make LibreOffice not an option compared to Google. CVEs and exploits in OpenOffice due to lack of development are a bigger issue than "I prefer the icons."

https://www.pcworld.com/article/485535/google_throws_its_wei...

Do I want to have a critical piece of open source financially dependent on Google with their conflict of interests wrt Google Suite or rather have it with Apache that has no other interests?

> Do I want to have a critical piece of open source financially dependent on Google with their conflict of interests wrt Google Suite or rather have it with Apache that has no other interests?

We really have no other choice. The amount of security bugs lurking in OpenOffice is substantial and is widely considered a major risk. OpenOffice no longer has the manpower to find them or keep track of them. There's a reason why almost all Linux distributions have abandoned it for LibreOffice. OpenOffice is quite literally dead. It's like saying I'll stay on Linux 1.0 because that's before IBM started sponsoring it - the battle is completely lost.

As for funding, Google is almost irrelevant considering all the other people on the Advisory board, including GNOME, Red Hat, KDE, Collabora, and so forth. Even more funding is being provided by the new business partners who take LibreOffice and offer long-term enterprise support versions and contribute back, and there are four companies doing that (Collabora, allotropia, Adfinis, and CIB). Calling LibreOffice financially dependent on Google is completely unfounded at this time.

Heck, when your article about Google supporting LibreOffice was written, Google Docs was much younger with far less chance of success. It could have easily ended up in the Google Graveyard and I don't blame Google for hedging their bet on it.

https://www.documentfoundation.org/governance/advisory-board...

Who cares? If Google is malfeasant in its relationship with LO, then fork it. That’s how LO was founded, a fork born out of concerns of Oracle’s malfeasance in its relationship with OO.

So… one 2011 article is enough to condemn The Document Foundation and Libre Office forever? That’s basically a century in Internet Years ago!

As evil as Google is, Oracle is more evil.

Ah yes, the arrogance. How dare competition or alternatives exist. Free apps and OSs are only permitted if I approve of them.

Are there reasons I'd use this over LibreOffice?

none whatsoever

you really love Oracle?

Oracle employees seem to be those left working on this project

Oracle or ex-Sun employees? There is still some Sun culture left in that particular silo.

It seems that they are starting to make new releases again, only bugfixes...

There have been periodic bug fix releases all along, this is the 13th of them hence 4.1.13. If this project said "We're not really doing any new work in OpenOffice, try [link to] LibreOffice for that, but here's our latest bug fixes" nobody would have a problem with that at this point. The name was valuable years ago, it's less valuable today, and at least there'd be a link.

But the claim, all along has been that this is still an active project, it's earnestly shipping new features just... never quite yet.

Here's what they told Apache's board earlier this year:

4.2.0 is the next minor release, planned to be released into a beta phase. We have missed our goal on going into the beta in 2019. [...] An alpha and/or beta release is planned for the next quarter.

And here's what they wrote to that same board, two years earlier:

4.2.0 is the next minor release, planned to be released into a beta phase. We have missed our goal on going into the beta in 2019. [...] An alpha and/or beta release is planned for the next quarter.

They last made a feature release in 2014. Windows 10 didn't exist. It was still controversial that Ben Affleck was going to play Batman. Barack Obama was President of the United States of America.

I don't get the hate against OpenOffice. Sure, LibreOffice is clearly superior right now, but does it really hurt to have a second option, bad as it may be? There's no reason the two of them can't co-exist.

Also, the current office market is all about momentum and basically nothing about feature set anyway, so it's not like a bit more dev time is sufficient to get LibreOffice anywhere near the Microsoft monopoly.

It's been repeated ad nauseam in every discussion about OO: it draws attention away from an alternative that is man-decades ahead in terms of features, compatibility with non-free formats, etc., all the while containing numerous unpatched CVEs that have been known for years. I still see people using OpenOffice because that's what they know, and I have to waste time explaining that it should be dropped and forgotten about. This could easily have been avoided.

Many features in LibreOffice suffered a major regression - see e.g. math equation editor that is just unusable as the discoverability of math operators and symbols was thrown out of the window. The most annoying problem of OO being very slow in comparison to MS Office stayed with LibreOffice as well.

Yeah, but the information percolates, eventually

And I mean, the biggest competitor of MS Office is now Google Docs.

The problem is that the trade mark OpenOffice became relatively popular for some time. So, a lot of people still download and use it without knowing about LibreOffice which is superior in AFAIK every possible way. AOO just steal users from LO without bringing any benefit. You don't se the same hate against OnlyOffice, for example.

OpenOffice is just such a much more obvious name.

LibreOffice might as well be named "OpenOffice, err, well technically LibreOffice but it is basically just an updated version"

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