Apache releases OpenOffice 3.4 | Hacker News Reader

Apache releases OpenOffice 3.4

openoffice.org

13 pointsjkterhune9 comments

Could someone please summarize which of LibreOffice or OpenOffice is more useful to follow and why?

I'd follow LibreOffice, it's more feature rich, plus LibreOffice is licensed under the Mozilla Public License and LGPL3, which means OpenOffice won't be able to use all the progress LibreOffice has made. I have a feeling OpenOffice has a very short lifespan at this point. I am however in no way an expert on either of the two, this is just what I have read over the months.

Can LibreOffice use the improvements to OpenOffice? If so, it seems like the relationship could become quite one sided with LO able to pull in all the fixes to OO and use that to move further ahead, but with OO unable to re-use any of the LO work.

I believe they can, the Apache license is quite permissive, allowing LO to use features added to OO, not the other way around, however.

OO uses the Apache License, which would allow LO to pull any change it wants. Of course it doesn't work the other way around, because LO's licenses are more copyleft. So you're right, it could get quite one-sided.

For the past year LibreOffice has been the one worth following because OpenOffice was put on hold after the Sun acquisition, then shifted to Apache where it has now been resurrected.

My view would be that it is well worth seeing what Apache do with this, however Libre currently seems to have more active development (although I could be completely wrong as I don't know what sort of resources Apache have been throwing at this).

Given they are both free, it would seem like a good idea to pick one for day to day use, but follow both closely, much like the situation with the browser wars.

I've been a little frustrated with OpenOffice/LibreOffice recently, as it seems like there's something about the way text is rendered when printing (maybe onscreen, too) that is just kind of ugly. The spacing isn't wrong, it's just blah somehow. Am I just imagining things, or is there something going on? (And if so, can I fix/work around it?)

Perhaps off topic but I really wish Apache would update the look and feel of their websites. Most, including this one look like a mailing list reader from 1999. It probably doesn't matter as much for technical projects but for something like OpenOffice with theoretically larger market appeal it could turn a lot of perspective users away.

It seems like they finally dropped the silly ".org" from the product name. It's "Apache OpenOffice" now.

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