I'm waiting with trepidation for the moment when the LibreOffice and Openoffice document formats become mutually incompatible. When that happens, Microsoft will win again -- not by being better, just by being bigger and by not splitting into competing fragments.
> I know this may fall on deaf ears, but couldn't you
> people join forces and create ONE open-source office
> suite
OpenOffice is a brand that survives on the fumes in its fuel tank. I still occasionally catch semi-technical people (tech management types etc) recommending OpenOffice, but invariably it's because they haven't heard of LibreOffice and were unaware that it's the default in most distros these days.
[1] imho
But now that OpenOffice intellectual property including trademark is controlled by the Apache Foundation, not Oracle, I don't see any reason why they shouldn't reunite and collaborate.
a. The LibreOffice guys have, for the past several years, built up their own infrastructure and community,
b. The LibreOffice devs have done significant work on improving OpenOffice,
c. Because the cultures seem very different, and there are AFAIK, a number of people in the Apache OpenOffice project who don't get along with the members of the LibreOffice project.
I'm contributing to the LO project now, and I have to say it's an awesome community to be working with.
Yes, of course -- as with most fragmented projects that were once a single project.
My understanding was that, for a time, Oracle appeared to be a threat to the free goals of OpenOffice, so the split made sense. But no more.