3 ms·
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.
by bpyne 11y ago
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I think part of the reason I'm out of date on office suites is that I don't use them often.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 11y agoStar 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/dp/B000TNJYNW/ http://www.amazon.co.uk/Corel-Wordperfect-Office-X3-Student/... (2) http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lotus-Smartsuite-Millennium-9-0-x/dp/B00004VU8R/ref=sr_1_3 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lotus-Smartsuite-Millennium-9-0-x/dp...
- cmiles74 11y agoOpenOffice 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 11y agoTrue, 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.