
An Open Letter to Apache Foundation and Apache OpenOffice Team - mkesper
https://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2015/08/17/an-open-letter-to-apache-foundation-and-apache-openoffice-team/
======
JohnTHaller
For some context, let's look at the read-only github mirrors of each project
and see how much work has been done in the last 30 days on both projects.

LibreOffice - core: "Excluding merges, 106 authors have pushed 1,064 commits
to master and 4,434 commits to all branches. On master, 4,833 files have
changed and there have been 78,361 additions and 54,441 deletions."

[https://github.com/LibreOffice/core/pulse/monthly](https://github.com/LibreOffice/core/pulse/monthly)

apache - openoffice: "Excluding merges, 4 authors have pushed 6 commits to
trunk and 8 commits to all branches. On trunk, 16 files have changed and there
have been 175 additions and 118 deletions."

[https://github.com/apache/openoffice/pulse/monthly](https://github.com/apache/openoffice/pulse/monthly)

tl;dr: OpenOffice had only 8 commits by 4 authors vs LibreOffice's 4,434
commits by 106 authors in the last month

~~~
osullivj
What are all those LO commits doing? I don't think they're adding new
features. I compared the two calc codebases recently, and I found no new
features in LO. I believe LO has consolidated the number of string classes
internally, which is a nice bit of refactoring, but I can't think of any
significant feature they've added to the spreadsheet app.

~~~
ronjouch
> I don't think they're adding new features.

Wrong, tons of new features land in major releases. Here are the release notes
for the feature-packed 5.0, released a few weeks ago:
[https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/5.0](https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/5.0)

In addition to this, yes, refactoring is going on:
[https://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2015-08-05-under-
the-...](https://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2015-08-05-under-the-
hood-5-0.html)

~~~
osullivj
Thanks - that's interesting. It does look like Calc 5.0 has enhanced FLOOR( )
and CEILING( ) worksheet funcs for better MS Excel compatibility.

------
beilabs
Long time linux user. Tend to stay behind the times in terms of distros, 12.04
is still one of my development machines.

I tend not to keep up on the news lists in terms of the politics around stable
software that gets the job done. I had no idea IBM pulled the plug on
OpenOffice.

For my Mac laptop, I've Open Office installed. Thanks to this open letter I
immediately converted to Libre Office. Thanks Christian...

~~~
beginpanic
I had no idea IBM pulled the plug on OpenOffice either, because I'm sitting
here with my IBM-issued Red Hat laptop and I'm doing project documentation in
OpenOffice, which came pre-installed.

I think what they mean is "IBM stopped developing their own fork of OpenOffice
(called IBM Lotus Symphony) and switched back to regular OpenOffice".

~~~
buovjaga
[http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/Blogs/Off-the-Beat-
Bruc...](http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/Blogs/Off-the-Beat-Bruce-
Byfield-s-Blog/LibreOffice-OpenOffice-and-rumors-of-unification)

"Much of OpenOffice's recent decline may be due to IBM's withdrawal from the
project. An anonymous informant alleges -- and web searches appear to confirm
-- that IBM did nothing to publicize OpenOffice 4.1.1 when it was released on
August 21, and that, since then, IBM developers have disappeared from the
OpenOffice mailing lists."

~~~
beginpanic
Wonder when I will be upgraded to Libre Office then. We've definitely had OS
and software updates since 2014...

~~~
davidgerard
Are you able to ask for software?

------
csense
If you read my comment history, you'll find I'm pretty knowledgeable about
software in general and FOSS in particular. I only lightly use Office
applications, and I had no idea OpenOffice was dead until I saw this thing
called LibreOffice in my distro a few years back and was like "WTF happened to
my OpenOffice?" and started Googling.

So it's not just a problem for non-technical users -- keeping track of when
software you don't use on a daily basis becomes obsolete is a problem faced by
everyone.

~~~
deathhand
I heard of this new thing called 'systemd' Have you heard of it? I don't know
how I am supposed to keep up....

------
dre85
I didn't even know OO still existed. With that said, I don't find LO much
different. It looks and feels the same. The interface is still ugly, like
everyone already mentioned, but that doesn't even matter to me. I find the
performance sucks compared to Excel. Have you ever tried a multi column sort
on a large table in excel vs LO? There's a huge difference. Aside from calc
slowness though, the rest of the suite works just fine.

------
krylon
I am surprised the two projects have not merged by now (if not in the sense of
a code merge, then at least in terms of people involved).

The OpenOffice/LibreOffice split made sense at the time, IIRC Oracle was being
very uncooperative on the matter. But that particular problem has disappeared,
and having two projects no longer makes a lot sense.

~~~
davidgerard
> then at least in terms of people involved

AOO has so few commits that this has basically happened.

------
cryptos
The libre office team should really start a campaign to make everyone know
that OpenOffice is dead and Libre Office is the future. The standard user
still thinks that OpenOffice is _the_ free office and most of the standard
users would never have heard of Libre Office.

Of course it would be helpful to redirect visitors of the OOo website, but I
fear this would not happen. So the best thing would be to start a "switch to
Libre Office" campaign.

~~~
mindcrime
_The libre office team should really start a campaign to make everyone know
that OpenOffice is dead and Libre Office is the future._

WTF? No they shouldn't. How about both projects just keep moving forward in
their own way, and deliver the best results they can, and let people decide
what they want to us? There's no need for this kind of public smear campaign
conducted between OSS projects.

Better yet, would be more cooperation between the two projects, and a dropping
of whatever enmity / bad-blood exists between the two "camps".

~~~
cryptos
I don't want a "smear campaign" but more an "education campaign", it's a
matter of the tone. I wouldn't suggest such a campaign if OpenOffice would be
alive, but is dead. Dead as a doornail.

------
mindcrime
There's a lot of FUD in this article. There's no question that AOO development
took a hit by the IBM decision, but it takes time to overcome setbacks like
that. But I, and a lot of others, believe the world need a nice, full-featured
office suite, licensed under a permissive license. People will keep working on
AOO, even if not so many as when IBM was contributing.

~~~
davidgerard
> People will keep working on AOO, even if not so many as when IBM was
> contributing.

As noted in the post, this is observably not the case.

See also this article giving the objective numbers:
[https://lwn.net/Articles/637735/](https://lwn.net/Articles/637735/)

AOO is a dead project squatting a well-known name, to the detriment of the
actual end users.

~~~
mindcrime
_As noted in the post, this is observably not the case._

No, actually it isn't. If 0 people were contributing to AOO, that would be the
case. If 2 or 3 are contributing, then what I said is accurate. As it is,
there are still somewhere around a dozen active contributors as best as I can
tell. That means the project is substantially diminished, but it's a long way
from "dead".

 _AOO is a dead project squatting a well-known name, to the detriment of the
actual end users._

Quit spreading FUD.

~~~
JohnTHaller
OpenOffice had only 8 commits by 4 authors vs LibreOffice's 4,434 commits by
106 authors in the last month

See my above comment:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10078640](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10078640)

~~~
mindcrime
How many commits AOO had, versus how many LO had, is irrelevant vis-a-vis the
statement "OpenOffice is dead". Nobody is contending that LO isn't the more
active project.

~~~
JohnTHaller
With IBM's developers no longer working on OpenOffice, the contention by many
is that AOO development is all but dead due to the fact that there aren't
enough active development hours going into the project to even maintain the
existing codebase (fix high-level crash bugs and critical security issues) let
alone make progress on any new features or standard bug fixes. The extremely
low volume of commits in AOO seems to match up with that contention. The
comparison to LibreOffice is relevant as it is a comparison of a healthy open
source project with multiple contributors to one which is said to be dying.
LibreOffice has more commits on an average weekday than AOO has had in all of
2015.

------
dcminter
First project to add the missing "Outline View" functionality gets my eternal
loyalty :)
[https://bz.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=3959](https://bz.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=3959)
[https://bugs.documentfoundation.org//show_bug.cgi?id=38093](https://bugs.documentfoundation.org//show_bug.cgi?id=38093)

This RFE is a healthy young teenager now and I fully expect it to outlive me.
Happily I don't have so much of a need for word processing these days.

~~~
davidgerard
It's basically waiting for someone to bother writing it.

~~~
nice__two
Why not create a bounty then?

[https://freedomsponsors.org/project/149/LibreOffice#/LibreOf...](https://freedomsponsors.org/project/149/LibreOffice#/LibreOffice)

Or pay one of the certified LO developers to implement
it:[https://www.documentfoundation.org/certification/developers/](https://www.documentfoundation.org/certification/developers/)

I sponsored, loading Adobe colour palettes in 5.0 myself.

~~~
davidgerard
I thought there was a bounty for it on FreedomSponsors already, though it
appears there isn't one yet ...

------
bpyne
Glad this letter was linked here. Despite being technical I had no idea that
OpenOffice was in death throws. I'll switch to LibreOffice immediately on my
MBP.

I think part of the reason I'm out of date on office suites is that I don't
use them often. At work, I'm mandated to use MS Office. When I have a choice I
switch between Google Docs and iCloud's office suite. Still, it's helpful to
have an office suite on my laptop when I can't access a WiFi connection.

The author's point about letting OpenOffice be an important part of history is
a salient one. After MS won the "Wordperfect v. Word" and "Lotus 1-2-3 v.
Excel" wars, we didn't have a choice other than purchasing MS Office for a
long time. For light users like me, it's not worth it to purchase an office
suite I use once every few weeks. OpenOffice and their ilk has been important
for people like me. (EDIT: grammar)

~~~
scholia
Star Office, Corel Office, Lotus Smart Suite, Appleworks....

Corel Office included Borland's Quattro Pro, and WordPect, which Borland
bought then sold Novell, which sold it to Corel. It seems Corel Wordperfect
Office X3 - Home & Student Edition (PC) was launched in 2007. (1)

Lotus Smartsuite Millennium 9.0 was launched in 2008, including 1-2-3 and a
bunch of bought-in programs. IBM dumped lots of copies on the market by
bundling them with PCs, as part of its attempt to kill Microsoft. (2)

They probably got killed off by OpenOffice....

(1) [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Corel-Wordperfect-
Office-X3-Student/...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Corel-Wordperfect-
Office-X3-Student/dp/B000TNJYNW/)

(2) [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lotus-Smartsuite-
Millennium-9-0-x/dp...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lotus-Smartsuite-
Millennium-9-0-x/dp/B00004VU8R/ref=sr_1_3)

~~~
cmiles74
OpenOffice was (long ago) based on the Star Office code base... Which was then
forked to Libre Office after Oracle purchased Sun.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarOffice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarOffice)

~~~
scholia
True, but Sun continued to sell Star Office with its own additions. I believe
it sold it directly _with commercial backing_ as an alternative to Microsoft
Office.

Oracle even released a version of Oracle Open Office before giving its code
and trademarks to the Apache Software Foundation.

------
x5n1
It's interesting to think about this in the long run rather than the short
term. Perhaps given enough time the projects will diverge to something
significant? Sort of like all the variants of Unix.

~~~
zz1
You are right, but for that to happen, AOO should ship code, which is not
doing at the moment, AFAIK.

------
Rudism
Does LibreOffice have better MS Word compatibility? It only happens once in a
blue moon, but my wife will receive a word document from someone (most
recently a resume that she had professionally written) in Word format, but
OpenOffice breaks it completely when she just wants to go in and change one
sentence. Having to deal with word documents only once or twice a year
obviously isn't enough justification to pay a subscription for Office 365, but
are there any other alternatives with maximum compatibility as a strong
priority?

~~~
frostmatthew
If your primary concern is "maximum compatibility" and you only need to use it
"once or twice a year" wouldn't Office Online[1] be sufficient to your needs?

[N.B. - I've never used it, just seems it would suit your use case]

[1] [https://products.office.com/en-us/office-online/documents-
sp...](https://products.office.com/en-us/office-online/documents-spreadsheets-
presentations-office-online)

------
mkesper
LWN.net discussion:
[https://lwn.net/Articles/654776/#Comments](https://lwn.net/Articles/654776/#Comments)

~~~
ikt
Unfortunately it's very depressing reading, largely 'my 0.0001% problem shows
that the new stuff is bad', and 'I subjective opinion therefore x interface is
bad'.

~~~
cwyers
Someone in there mentioned trying to make a "WordPerfect killer," completely
oblivious to the fact that WordPerfect is dead and Word is what killed it.

~~~
pjmlp
No need for Microsoft help, they were quite good killing themselves.

There is even a book from one of the founders about it.

~~~
mjcohen
Where is that book? I would like to read it.

~~~
kryptiskt
[http://www.wordplace.com/ap/index.shtml](http://www.wordplace.com/ap/index.shtml)

------
iamthebest
I am a software developer and "technical user". I don't care about new
features. I tried switching from OO to LO and my experience was that it is
full of bugs and not 100% compatible with my existing corpus of OO diles. I'll
be sticking with OO thank you.

------
criddell
Why is it that anytime LibreOffice or OpenOffice is discussed, it takes about
3 comments before somebody starts talking about Microsoft's ribbon interface?
How is it still a contentious subject?

I think I probably read those comment threads because it makes me feel like
some kind of genius. I have the seemingly rare ability to use either the
LibreOffice menu+toolbar interface or the Office ribbon interface.

That said, I don't like using LibreOffice because it's ugly (IMHO of course)
and beautiful things work better.

~~~
cwyers
LibreOffice is ugly, but a fair amount of the ugliness comes from the effort
to shoehorn more and more features into the same style of UI design that
inspired Microsoft to develop the Ribbon UI to begin with. Yes, I suppose it's
possible that LibreOffice could come up with their own, more modern UI. But I
doubt it. UI design has never been a strength of theirs, and the Ribbon UI
comes from an incredible amount of research at Microsoft that costs rather a
lot of money to do. So the question of which style of Office UI to use is
eternally a question - people who hate the Ribbon will insist on holding out,
but it makes LibreOffice look more and more dated the longer they do.

~~~
krylon
It would have been nice if Microsoft had at least made the ribbon bar optional
and allowed people to revert to the old interface. The whole debate would
disappear if you could choose the UI you prefer and be done with it.

That being said, I was mildly surprised that most people I have spoken to
about this seemed to like the ribbon bar, especially non-techies (who are,
after all, the main audience for MS Office).

~~~
scholia
There's a cost to maintaining old interfaces, and the old UI had only one
advantage: some people already knew it well and weren't prepared to change.
However, they could still use their old version of Office, simply by not
upgrading.

 _> most people I have spoken to about this seemed to like the ribbon bar,
especially non-techies_

I'm a techie and I love it. The old UI now looks incredibly clunky. What
really surprises me is that some people are still thinking about a change that
occurred in 2007 ;-)

~~~
xixi77
admittedly, the new ribbon interface (well I guess it's no longer new, it's
just that I went from using excel for about 6hrs/day to maybe 12hrs/year circa
2005) does look prettier -- but how do people actually go about finding
anything in it? does everyone just use google & try to find some blog post
with screenshots?

~~~
dragonwriter
> but how do people actually go about finding anything in it?

The discoverability is pretty much the same as the old pull-downs and toolbar
approach (and how you find things is pretty much the same -- click on the
category whose label seems like what you might, and then look through whats
revealed by that), but consolidated into what amounts to a set of toolbars
organized into tabs, rather than a combination of toolbars and menus.

(And what often gets ignores is that a lot of the improvements have been in
the contextual right-click pop-up, which means what you usually need often
doesn't require using the ribbon at all.)

> does everyone just use google & try to find some blog post with screenshots?

No more so than with the old interface.

~~~
scholia
_> The discoverability is pretty much the same as the old pull-downs and
toolbar approach_

One of the main points -- possibly the main point -- of the move to the ribbon
was to increase discoverability, and it worked. Gates said Microsoft had lots
of compliments about new features in office 2007 that had actually been in the
old version, but people hadn't found them.

Microsoft did an enormous amount of work (and research) when developing the
ribbon. Jensen Harris covered this in great depth in an 8-part series at
[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jensenh/archive/tags/why+the+new+ui_...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jensenh/archive/tags/why+the+new+ui_3f00_/default.aspx)

I'm pretty sure you can find videos of him giving presentations about it as
well. (I saw him present.)

------
oneJob
how is it Apache's responsibility? how about an open letter to the LibreOffice
team to do what every single commercial company does, go out there and sell
itself. OSS work is often noted and praised for having evolutionary and
organic growth characteristics, as opposed to the coordinated and centralized
growth exhibited by MS Office. without exhausting that vein of thought, this
open letter seems to want to have it both ways.

~~~
scholia
If you had a straight battle for name recognition between LibreOffice and
Apache Open Office, which would win?

AOO is just benefiting from years of hype behind OO.org, which would be fine
if it had community support and was making the same sort of improvements to
the code....

LO forked before AOO existed, so you could argue that
[https://www.openoffice.org/](https://www.openoffice.org/) should offer to
link to both versions. (I'm not wholly convinced by this myself, but it would
level the playing field, and more people might download the better version.)

~~~
oneJob
and,,, you seem to have completely have missed the point.

if OSS is organic and evolutionary, we shouldn't be discussing market-share
strategies. LO, keep on doin'. AOO, you keep on doin' too.

i wouldn't argue anything particular here, just would like to point out that
the sentiment of the open-letter is one of coordinated community action, which
emphasis on the coordinated.

if i wanted coordination, i'd join an organization, like, maybe, a company,
like, maybe, microsoft. naw, i'll just keep on doin'.

~~~
scholia
Not really. The whole point of Schaller's Open Letter is that he thinks people
are being led to use an inferior version of open source code. In fact, he
says: “Letting users believe that OpenOffice is still alive and evolving is
only damaging the general reputation of open source Office software among non-
technical users.”

This really doesn't have anything to do with market share _per se_.

He just thinks that marketing an inferior product with almost no community
support is bad for users and bad for open source.

------
Maro
In my world this is mostly irrelevant. I use GDocs for word processing and
spreadsheets. For presentations it's Prezi. (Disclaimer: I work for Prezi.)

~~~
saint_fiasco
Interesting. I too use GDocs and Prezi sometimes, even though I usually try to
use Free Software.

After googling a bit, I found some open source projects that let you host your
own web office solution. It would be hard to get friends and coworkers to
switch, though.

------
amatheus
I wish someone would do for libreoffice something like firefox was for
mozilla, creating a new product out of the codebase with better UX.

------
sctb
We updated the link from
[https://lwn.net/Articles/654776/](https://lwn.net/Articles/654776/), which
points to this.

