
Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice - sohkamyung
https://lwn.net/Articles/699047/
======
okket
Parallel universe: [http://www.mail-
archive.com/dev@openoffice.apache.org/msg282...](http://www.mail-
archive.com/dev@openoffice.apache.org/msg28200.html)

    
    
      If we look at LibreOffice and compare:
    
      LibreOffice, that is *good* (not more) software and
      *excellent* public relations.
    
      OpenOffice, that is *excellent* software and *pretty bad*
      public relations.
    

Proof: [http://www.mail-
archive.com/dev@openoffice.apache.org/msg282...](http://www.mail-
archive.com/dev@openoffice.apache.org/msg28203.html)

    
    
      Secondly, as alluded to above, we should prepare ourselves
      for the FUD, the "AOO is dead" victory chants, the numerous
      anti-AOO and anti-Apache spewings, etc... There are some
      who will use this as a self-serving soapboxing opportunity,
      and warp the facts into some Bizarro alternate universe
      history. We should be there to set the facts straight but
      also resign ourselves to the fact that their voices will
      likely be louder than ours.
    
      [...]
    
      But the main reason why, imo, was because we were also
      end-user. End users needed to make a *choice* between
      AOO and SomethingElse.
    

Don't say the word.

    
    
      By no longer being an end-user application, that goes away.
    

End users play no role any more? Good luck with that.

~~~
the_duke
How exactly is OO _excellent_ and LO _good_?

What is that based on? Please back that up.

~~~
antoineMoPa
My experience would be the contrary. I felt Libre Office had better document
compatibility and a better user experience, so I stopped using Open Office.
Maybe it improved since then. I would also like to see something to back up
the claim you are talking about.

~~~
okket
Please ask the author on the OO-dev mailing list, I just quoted him

[http://www.mail-
archive.com/dev@openoffice.apache.org/msg282...](http://www.mail-
archive.com/dev@openoffice.apache.org/msg28200.html)

~~~
the_duke
I misread your comment.

------
Aardwolf
Could they drop openoffice, then rename libreoffice to openoffice? That would
be fantastic

~~~
ptero
This. Name natters. IME 90% of people I know who want to quickly look through
a PowerPoint on Linux will install OpenOffice. Even when they hear that libre
is the better version 80% of them would stay with oo as it is the "real" oo.

~~~
ajdlinux
I agree in the case of the Windows/OS X environment, where brand awareness of
LibreOffice is low, but in the Linux world... my distribution (Debian) doesn't
even package OpenOffice, and I don't know _any_ Linux user who uses OOo.

~~~
chengiz
Here's one. Never thought it necessary to change. OO works just fine.

~~~
keithpeter
And another one to some extent: oOo uses its own font rendering, the LO team
(I gather) moved over to using libraries (harfbuzz) available in host OS for
font rendering. I seem to have better results on former under some
circumstances.

I have not had any round-trip editing problems flitting between the two under
Linuxen of various kinds.

~~~
chengiz
I didnt know this but at a more general level I am reluctant to "upgrade"
what's already working fine due to this very fiddling with new stuff which is
a common failing of the FOSS model in my experience (people wanting to add
shiny things instead of making existing stuff better - Firefox, GNOME etc).
This is one of the main reasons I did not migrate to LO.

~~~
jbicha
Are you using a distro from 2010? Because I believe most of the major Linux
distros include LIbreOffice as part of the default install.

~~~
chengiz
I just checked - the latest I use is centos 7.1 which does have libreoffice
already installed, however my daily machine is older and I had to install OO
manually there.

------
JulianMorrison
Apache should never have accepted this hot potato from Oracle in the first
place.

~~~
rincebrain
Why do you think so?

It's not clear that they could have known this would not be sustainable at the
time, and I don't see how the hot potato staying with Oracle would have been a
better option.

~~~
JulianMorrison
It was immediately obvious at the time, I remember it as such. The devs jumped
ship to LibreOffice. All Oracle was left with was a brand and a moribund
codebase, and for some reason Apache accepted it. Why didn't Oracle give it to
LibreOffice? Because they were sore at being bypassed, it looked like. The
correct thing for Apache to do would have been to say, nope mate, we don't
want to be part of your childish feud, keep it, trash it, or give it to the
people who are actually doing the work.

~~~
jimjag
If Apache had not accepted it, Oracle was NOT going to donate it to TDF.
Instead, Oracle would simply have shuttered it, or sold it to IBM. There was
no workable plan ever that would have resulted in the OO code going to TDF.

Even if AOO had never done a single release, LO still benefited enormously
from OO going to Apache, since once at Apache, there was known and public IP
provenance, AND the code was relicensed to ALv2. This allowed LO to inherit
that provenance, relicense their stuff on AOO as needed, and close what had
been a possible nasty IP hole.

~~~
sveredov
The Apache Foundation could simply have accepted the OpenOffice.org
codebase+trademarks from Oracle, then donate to LibreOffice.

But they did not do so. The Apache Foundation does not have experience with
software that end-users use. They have experience with server software. That
was their undoing.

~~~
rectang
At the time of the donation, The Document Foundation had an (understandably)
antagonistic relationship with Oracle and legal foundations which were firming
up but not yet solid. The assets were not going to TDF from Oracle directly.

In accepting the proposal for a new Apache OpenOffice project, the ASF
accepted not only the assets from Oracle but also a community, distinct from
the LibreOffice community, that wanted to work with those assets. That
community had to be given a chance. Without all those things, the deal could
not have been completed.

~~~
ISV_Damocles
What community? The only community around OpenOffice.org were the Sun/Oracle
devs + the Go-OO devs getting it to work on Linux.

The Go-OO devs forked it into LibreOffice and then Oracle shuttered their own
work and reassigned their devs to other projects. Only a tiny handful of devs
not part of Go-OO remained, and they had not been instrumental in actually
maintaining the codebase as these other two groups had.

There was no community around Apache OpenOffice.

~~~
rectang
There were enough people on the "Initial Committers" list here to persuade the
Apache Incubator PMC to adopt the project:
[http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/OpenOfficeProposal](http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/OpenOfficeProposal)

Subsequently, there were enough people to vet and prepare multiple releases
over the next couple years after that.

------
1ris
I think the document foundation should get the brand, instant of Apache
squatting. It's still far better known that libreoffice.

~~~
tener
It made a sense few years ago, now Libre Office has a brand of its own. I
don't think having the ownership would be useful now.

~~~
dagw
OpenOffice still a much stronger brand outside of the Linux community.
Basically all the non-technical people I know (including some very non-
technical people like my father-in-law) know that OpenOffice is the free
alternative for MS Office. I'll bet not one of them have heard of Libre
Office.

~~~
pmontra
I know some people using LibreOffice, because some technical friend or I
installed it for them, and keep calling it OpenOffice even if they see the
LibreOffice dialog every time it starts. I think it's a brand who's become the
name of a product class, like Xerox in its heydays.

~~~
brewdad
This is me. My mind still thinks OpenOffice, then I remember it's really
LibreOffice now.

------
kasabali
It is really depressing reading the thread to see that how some members just
can't let it go. I'm totally pro-diversity and support different projects and
forks with different priorities but AOO's track record and sitting on top of a
valuable brand has been a net loss for the open source in office area. I
wouldn't mind it at all had they continue to develop their own thing named
SolidOffice or whatnot, but I know companies which still use Openoffice on
Windows, because that is what they have had always used, nevermind it doesn't
even get prompt security updates.

------
cs702
OpenOffice's website design, marketing efforts, and documentation are less
friendly to non-technical people that those of LibreOffice, the most prominent
fork of OpenOffice. Subtle "superficial" details matter a lot to non-technical
people -- for example, LibreOffice's web page has a "Get Help" link, instead
of a "Support" page.

In addition, LibreOffice has been the default office suite in key GNU/Linux
distributions like Ubuntu for many years.

As a result, the LibreOffice fork has been more widely adopted than
OpenOffice, leading to the present situation.

One possible path for the OpenOffice folks would be to copy the Linux kernel
and become an "upstream project" that others use to create a range of office-
suite distributions like LibreOffice. In other words, _stop packaging and
marketing OpenOffice to end-users. Stop competing for end-users with
downstream projects._

~~~
jimjag
"One possible solution would be for the OpenOffice folks to copy the Linux
kernel and become an "upstream project" that others use to create a range of
office-suite distributions like LibreOffice."

... which were _exactly_ the thoughts and reasons behind Apache accepting OO
in the 1st place. For various reasons this obviously never happened. But it
WAS the idea from the start.

~~~
cesarb
Interestingly, that could have happened. Not only did LO make the effort of
rebasing all their changes on top of a particular AOO release, they also were
set up to incorporate all the new work from AOO into their branch. For
instance, they quickly incorporated the sidebar code. Even today, one of the
LO developers still goes over each AOO change, merging any worthwhile ones.

What actually happened? For some reason, development on AOO stalled. What
little work still happens on it, is almost always replicating work LO already
did two, three, sometimes five years ago. See it for yourself at
[https://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/log/?h=aoo/tru...](https://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/log/?h=aoo/trunk)
: pick a commit, and look for the "Notes" field. For instance, picking "Port
main/fileaccess to gbuild" I see the note "prefer:
1f9bc2b2aa8168f9c164044058b117d2a17d83ad"; that git hash is for a LO commit
from 2011
([https://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/commit/?h=aoo/...](https://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/commit/?h=aoo/trunk&id=1f9bc2b2aa8168f9c164044058b117d2a17d83ad)).

In the meantime, LO did a _lot_ of cleanup work. Finishing the build system
move to gbuild, cleaning warnings across all the code base, removing plenty of
obsolete or unused code, running several static checkers, and more. As I noted
at [https://lwn.net/Articles/699108/](https://lwn.net/Articles/699108/), the
recent AOO CVE was probably found and fixed on LO two years ago, as a result
of running a fuzzer together with valgrind. If you wanted to pick an "upstream
project" to base an office suite on today, it makes more sense to pick LO
instead of AOO.

~~~
jimjag
I think you are proving my point... AOO was "plundered" by LO but LO never
gave anything back. So any "co-opporation" was extremely one-sided and one-
direction. It was hoped that LO, as good FOSS neighbors, would donate back,
even though they didn't _have_ to, just as we hope that our corporate
neighbors also donate back. We trust in altruism rather than in forcing it. It
just so happens in this case that our trust was somewhat misguided.

~~~
davidgerard
Elsewhere in this thread, grandinj of LO notes that he _tried_ to donate back
and there weren't enough people at Apache to do anything with the patches.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12414681](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12414681)

So you did get your wish, but it's not the LO people at fault.

~~~
jimjag
I'd like to see some of those patches...

------
jimjag
Follow the actual (open and public) discussion:

[https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/6d3bb86f8abc1ae88f3aa3a...](https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/6d3bb86f8abc1ae88f3aa3aa08c65721f71a951c07a967b8d288ee3a@%3Cdev.openoffice.apache.org%3E)

------
verbify
I thought everyone interested in a FOSS office suite was using libreoffice.

~~~
yoodenvranx
> libreoffice

I hate that name. As a German I have no idea how to pronounce it and it's even
harder for my non-techy friends. The name "Open office" has a very nice flow
and everybody knows how to pronounce it, but "libre office"?

They should have selected an easier name for that project.

~~~
okket
It is just a name.

Really problematic was that after Oracle did not wanted to continue the
OpenOffice(.org) project, Apache accepted to take it over. That kept the
website people knew up and help spread the false image that OpenOffice is an
active project with serious people and development effort behind it.

~~~
oliyoung
“There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and… ”

~~~
hnal943
Naming things and off by one errors

------
jacquesm
Simplest instant solution: 301 every page about openoffice to a page about
libreoffice.

~~~
LoSboccacc
aaaaauuuurrrrgh that's sound in principle but placing 301 on a domain like
that is really, really bad.

~~~
ohthehugemanate
301 redirects are the herpes of the Internet.

You make one mistake, and it's with you for the rest of eternity.

~~~
greenshackle
Oh shit, thanks, I had just set up a 301 redirect on my personal page this
morning when I meant to use a 302, your post made me realize the mistake.

I was sure it was the other way around 301->temporary, 302->permanent.

------
mindcrime
Well, my prediction[1] came true even faster than I anticipated. I don't
understand why so many people seem so desperate to see AOO fail and go away.
Hey look, if you prefer LO, fine. Some of us prefer AOO for our own reasons.
There's no reason to take glee in seeing a project struggle.

Anyway, none of this means the project is actually going to be retired. It's
just a discussion around something that might happen.

[1]: [http://www.mail-
archive.com/dev%40openoffice.apache.org/msg2...](http://www.mail-
archive.com/dev%40openoffice.apache.org/msg28192.html)

~~~
sangnoir
> I don't understand why so many people seem so desperate to see AOO fail and
> go away.

In my case, the reason is splash-damage from the inverse-goodwill I have for
Oracle and how their stewardship of OO (or lack thereof). To start off Sun
handled the OOO-patchset (proto-LibreOffice) poorly, they should have merged
it to mainline. Then Oracle came along and shat on the community leading to an
outright fork. This I guess is par for the course for Oracle (see
Hudson/Jenkins for another Oracle-instigated implosion).

I think the Apache Software Foundation allowed themselves to be 'used' by
allowing Oracle to dump a dying AOO into their hands. At the time, it was
clear that LibreOffice had won the the war that started in the OOO-patchset
days, I don't know what the ASF thought would happen, but I hope they learn
something from it.

~~~
mindcrime
_I think the Apache Software Foundation allowed themselves to be 'used' by
allowing Oracle to dump a dying AOO into their hands._

"Used" how? Apache taking on AOO has been a win for Open Source in the general
sense regardless of what happens to the project going forward. A large base of
code which was previously locked up under Oracle's copyright is now licensed
under the ALv2 for perpetuity.

 _At the time, it was clear that LibreOffice had won the the war that started
in the OOO-patchset days,_

There's no "war". Maybe the LO people see it that way, but we don't. AOO is
for people who want AOO. The people who prefer LO (or something else) are not
our enemies. They're just people with different preferences.

 _I don 't know what the ASF thought would happen, but I hope they learn
something from it._

What did happen? IBM donated a bunch of code, volunteers have contributed
more, and AOO is a better product today than what it was when Oracle handed
over the code. That's a Good Thing. None of which is to try and compare AOO to
LO, and none of which is to say that AOO doesn't have flaws. But it's a
product that has been used by a ton of people for productive ends over the
past few years.

~~~
sangnoir
I will reitatate that I was explaining why _I_ have ill-will towards Oracles
handling of the situation. I am not affiliated with LO beyond being a happy
user, I have never been a maintainer or a regular contributor (to any project
for that matter).

> "Used" how? Apache taking on AOO has been a win for Open Source in the
> general sense regardless of what happens to the project going forward.

A better win for Open Source in general (IMO) would have been Oracle handing
over the IP to the Document Foundation- that's were the OO developers and
community _were_. I have nothing againts the ASF, and nothing but contempt for
Oracle's behavior.

From where I stand, Oracle 'used' the ASF donation to spite the DF - you may
agree or disagree on that point.

> There's no "war

It was a figure of speech.

> What did happen?

Let's recap: the ASF accepted the donation of a project that had lost
developers to a competing fork, and was showing glaring signs of having lost
steam. More importantly, _the volunteers /'community' had moved on to LO_[1].
Now the ASF is finally contemplating the idea of putting down the project. I
would be sad if the ASF concludes that there is nothing to be learnt from this
episode.

1\. A single datapoint: Virtually all Linux distros shipped LO

------
SyneRyder
Anyone know if this would impact on NeoOffice, the Mac native port? They seem
to draw code from both LibreOffice and OpenOffice.

[Side note: the way NeoOffice asks for yearly donations in order to access
binary updates is very smart. Synergy also uses this method, and NeoOffice &
Synergy are the first GPL projects I've regularly contributed to as a result.]

~~~
bsharitt
I used NeoOffice a long time ago when OpenOffice required X11 on OS X. Now
that LibreOffice works natively on OS X, what does NeoOffice offer now? Is it
like Camino was to Firefox?

~~~
SyneRyder
While I've not tried LibreOffice (downloading now!), I think the Camino /
Firefox comparison is a good one. My reason for choosing NeoOffice was because
I wanted the most Mac-like experience and without a dependency on Java.

It looks like the main difference/advantage right now is integration with the
native Mac font rendering & grammar/spellcheck engines, according to the front
page of the NeoOffice website.

------
thrillgore
This was all but expected once Oracle sent OOo to the open source retirement
home. LibreOffice continues to thrive and has replaced all the OOo installs at
my workplace.

------
the_duke
See also this discussion on the mailing list, where I asked (recently, August
3rd) if it is a viable idea to somehow combine efforts with LibreOffice again:

[http://www.mail-
archive.com/dev@openoffice.apache.org/msg277...](http://www.mail-
archive.com/dev@openoffice.apache.org/msg27754.html)

~~~
mindcrime
There's effectively a one-way merge already. LO can - and do - consume patches
contributed to AOO. But, for a variety of reasons, that are mostly historical
as far as I can tell, the LO developers have generally been unwilling to
contribute code in the other direction.

An outright "merger" of the two projects seems unlikely due to the licensing
differences and the associated thinking. Some people prefer permissive
licenses like the ALv2, others prefer the GPL/LGPL world. So getting everybody
to agree on that is probably a non-starter.

~~~
grandinj
That's not true. Seversl of us are quite happy to contribute our LO patches to
OO. But they just don't have any manpower to merge them.

~~~
mindcrime
Sure, I didn't say _all_ LO developers. But from what I've seen (and to be
fair, this recollection is a bit old) a lot of the LO people showed a lot of
resistance to having code flow back the other way.

OTOH, maybe things have changed since I formed that impression. At any rate,
your willingness to do so is appreciated. As far-fetched as it sounds, I still
hold out hope that one day the two projects can have an amicable co-existence
and collaborate to a greater extent (than today).

~~~
jimjag
_Sure, I didn 't say all LO developers. But from what I've seen (and to be
fair, this recollection is a bit old) a lot of the LO people showed a lot of
resistance to having code flow back the other way_

I will share a story.

Awhile ago I was employed by Red Hat and, as we know, Red Hat has a number of
developers working on LO. I was talking w/ our CTO at the time and suggested
that it would be a Good Thing if Red Hat allowed all our code donated to LO be
triple-licensed (MPL/GPL/ALv2) so that AOO could benefit from these
contributions. He thought it was a great idea since it showed that Red Hat was
all about open source and true universal sharing.

But when we asked the developers they refused to do so. The explanations were
either (1) We refuse to contribute to permissive projects or (2) We have been
told by TDF that they will not accept any of our contributions so licensed.

So the "resistance" in code flowing to AOO is, in fact, reality. My hope is
that we can change that for the benefit of the entire OO eco-system.

The "enemy", lest we forget, is MSO, not any of the OO implementations.

~~~
dtardon
I got intrigued by your claims, so I dug up that old e-mail exchange. And I
failed to find anything that would substatiate (2). So you misremember at
best; at worst you're outright lying to make TDF the bad guys.

Btw, the claim that Red Hat's CTO (or anyone else at RH) "thought it was a
great idea" seems to be a bit exaggerated as well. The words you yourself used
at that time were "... saw the logic of it".

------
okket
Ars Technica: "OpenOffice, after years of neglect, could shut down"

[http://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2016/09/openof...](http://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2016/09/openoffice-after-years-of-neglect-could-shut-down/)

------
k__
How did the whole Oracle buys Sun thing work out for the OSS projets in
general?

Did LibreOffice and MariaDB get all the core devs?

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Oracle _killed_ OpenSolaris. They literally moved Solaris back to being
closed-source. With no justification, even, beyond Oracle not liking open-
source. Undoing the massive amount of work the Solaris team made in order to
open-source it in the first place. There's no more source code releases for
Solaris now.

Unsurprisingly, almost all the core Solaris team walked.

This talk is informative:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=33m](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=33m)

------
ryanmarsh
Why does Open/LibreOffice matter anymore?

This is a sincere question. I'm well aware of why OO was a big deal circa 2000
when I was using it (if I'm getting the dates right). I cannot figure out why
it matters anymore, or why it will matter in 10 years.

Back when every year was going to be the year of "Linux on the desktop" the
linchpin was MS Office. That's because we didn't have the million different
SaaS products we have today, products tailor made for jobs only Office would
be considered for.

Basically MS Office was a hammer and everything was a nail. This is not the
world today.

Today there are a number of viable alternatives and there continues to be
innovation around the jobs MS Office was traditionally used for.

Someone is going to bring up: vendor lock in, Freedom, etc... I don't get
those arguments any more.

~~~
chipotle_coyote
The simplest argument is that if your job requires you to share documents with
other people who are used to using Office document formats as their standard
exchange medium, then unless you convince those people to move away from that
format -- which may require either moving everyone _else_ they exchange
documents away from that format, or treating you as a special snowflake --
you're stuck.

If you're in a tech space full of plain text document formats, dealing with
folks who love Markdown and use programmer-centric diff tools, all of this can
certainly be irrelevant. (I'm in that space in my day job and with personal
projects that don't involve other people.) But for a lot of, well, _office
jobs,_ that's a non-starter. And Google Docs, while it has some great things
to recommend it, doesn't have the feature set Office does. (There's a long-
standing observation that while most users only use 20% of Microsoft Word's
features, for any two given users that 20% may not be identical.)

I work with fiction editors, and I _need_ to be able round-trip manuscripts
with embedded comments and revision tracking. Google Docs doesn't cut it for
me. Actually, none of the OO-based suites (LO, AOO or NeoOffice) were able to
round-trip transparently with Microsoft Word in my admittedly limited testing
back in 2014, although that may no longer be the case. (They all have the
required functionality, but bits and bobs of formatting and metadata would go
away when the document moved from LO to Word back to LO.)

tl;dr: LibreOffice will matter as long as Microsoft Office matters, and
whether we like it or not, in an awful lot of the business world, Microsoft
Office still matters a whole lot.

~~~
accordionclown
i think a fairly good benchmark is that those entities which _require_ ms-word
will be the ones that tend to disappear over the course of the next 5-10
years.

------
tombert
I honestly didn't know that AOO was still updated, as I've really not seen
_anyone_ use it in the last three years.

Upon re-trying it out right now, it actually seems perfectly fine...I kind of
wonder why no one uses it.

------
slajax
I literally downloaded this for the first time in years the yesterday. This is
really sad news.

------
EdSharkey
Here's an idea. If OpenOffice has no contributors. How about all the
libreoffice folks start committing to both code bases or mirror them,
whatever? Maybe the only thing that differs between the code bases is some
splash screen and text resource bundles, ultimately.

Why not bury the hatchet, devs?

~~~
PeterisP
What's the point of that wasted effort? What you're asking is "if X has no
contributors, why don't Y people become contributors and start contributing?"

Currently there _are_ differences between code bases. If the OpenOffice team
wants to abandon OO codebase and distribute a version of LibreOffice with some
splash screen and text resource changes, then they're free to do so, it's open
source.

~~~
EdSharkey
I was thinking more like a takeover of the Open Office codebase since its
organization has collapsed. Take over the administration, steering committee,
etc.

I can see that the codebases have diverged, but will a lot be lost if Open
Office's codebase was clobbered with the LibreOffice sources?

~~~
JohnTHaller
Apache wouldn't permit that due to their distaste for LibreOffice's licensing
(read: copyleft).

~~~
rectang
LibreOffice doesn't like Apache's licensing, but AOO is happy to share the
code with them and they are happy to consume it.

Both sides have strong beliefs, but the licensing situation benefits the
copyleft faction.

------
puppetmaster3
i think what is growing is markdown types and such. i like.

------
creshal
About damn time.

------
chris_wot
Have OpenOffice actually done anything.

~~~
the_mitsuhiko
This image would suggest it got some code from StarOffice and alter some
releases:
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fb/St...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fb/StarOffice_major_derivatives.svg/1949px-
StarOffice_major_derivatives.svg.png)

~~~
xigency
Well, here it looks like Apache OpenOffice made a couple of releases.

~~~
chris_wot
Barely.

~~~
rectang
There was substantial development energy for a while. Notably, there was a
large donation from IBM of code that had been in Symfony.

~~~
chris_wot
And yet their build system is still the same as it pretty much has always
been. There is no easy way to sustain any sort of development energy with a
developer unfriendly system like that one.

LibreOffice realised this early on and did the hard yards to fix fundamental
issues like the crappy build system, and to put into place developer friendly
infrastructure like gerrit. The OpenOffice team didn't see this as important
or even necessary, and now they are withering on the vine, but complaining
about it quite a lot.

That Symphony code can only take you so far. That was integrated several years
ago. What have they done since then?

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akerro
Thanks Oracle!

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blockednbcads
LibreOffice should go back to its Java roots. It was a dumb decision to move
away from an excellent language and platform.

~~~
stuaxo
This doesn't make much sense, since Staroffice predates Java by quite a number
of years.

