13 ms·

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

by verbify 10y ago

okket 10y ago
Everybody is using LibreOffice, except a poor few that get misguided by search services to the Apache OpenOffice website. IMHO there is no sane reason why Apache OpenOffice still exists. Edit: Looks like there are a lot more OpenOffice users out there than I thought, sorry. I really thought the world would have moved on, at least since 2013/14, see https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fb/StarOffice_major_derivatives.svg/1949px-StarOffice_major_derivatives.svg.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fb/St...
- nunodonato 10y ago
  pride and ego
- cstross 10y ago
  This is not actually true; I am aware of lots of non-technical users who know nothing about Sun, Oracle, or Apache and who haven't heard of LibreOffice but who continue to quietly use the free office package they were recommended at some time in the previous 15 years. (For example: I'm a member of an online community of working novelists and just last week someone was advocating OpenOffice to another irritated Microsoft Word customer -- the OO.o user had never heard of LibreOffice and was very taken aback when I gave them an update on the history of OO.o post-Sun.) While I agree that Apache OOo is effectively dead in the water as an on-going project, its continued existence has caused huge confusion among millions of users and there's now an equally huge public education campaign required to get them moved onto a modern, secure, maintained codebase. The optimum strategy would be to turn openoffice.org into a redirect to LibreOffice, or to reassign the OpenOffice name rights to the LibreOffice project ... but egos are gonna ego.
  - josteink 10y ago
    > The optimum strategy would be to turn openoffice.org into a redirect to LibreOffice, or to reassign the OpenOffice name rights to the LibreOffice project ... but egos are gonna ego. This is so simple. It would solve everyone's problems. So of course that's never going to happen. Welcome to the real world :(
  - corbet 10y ago
    Apache is actually considering doing that: https://lwn.net/Articles/699110/ https://lwn.net/Articles/699110/
- davidgerard 10y ago
  This is horrifyingly incorrect. AOO still gets a shitload of downloads. It wasn't until last year that LO overtook AOO alone's download total. You would be amazed. Ordinary people know MSO sucks and want a free alternative. "OpenOffice" is the name they've heard as their exit. The project is entirely trading on the goodwill that FLOSS activists built up for the name "OpenOffice" from 2002-2010. That brand is still powerful! So whatever you do, make sure everyone you know uses LO instead of AOO. e.g. I wrote this last year for Tumblr. Target audience was writers and creative people who aren't geeks but just want to do their stuff. Written after I encountered yet another innocent user who'd just got AOO. Please excuse the apocalyptic tone, (1) that's how you write to catch attention on Tumblr, (2) this was during the six months they had a massive hole in the default install and were spending their time defending the product on blogs rather than fixing it: http://reddragdiva.tumblr.com/post/128873352708/urgent-get-the-hell-off-apache-openoffice-its http://reddragdiva.tumblr.com/post/128873352708/urgent-get-t...
  - harry-wood 10y ago
    You might be interested in my impressions as somebody who hardly ever uses office software, but an open source enthusiast and keeps up with some tech news. I was aware of the OpenOffice/LibreOffice split of course. I knew this would mean some confusion until the dust settles. My vague impression was that LibreOffice might be a better choice for supporting openness versus corporate ownership (and so I'd plumbed for that myself) but at the same time I worried that OpenOffice might end up being better managed and maintained than LibreOffice. I was not aware until I read this, that the dust was settling so comprehensively on the side of LibreOffice. More than just OS idealists buying into it, it's actually being maintained a lot better. This is good news. The situation seems a lot clearer than previously, but yes the message needs to get out. Hopefully apache will shut down, redirect and facilitate re-merging the brand names.
  - NetStrikeForce 10y ago
    MSO is closed, proprietary, whatever, but it's actually a fine piece of software especially compared to OO and LO. Word, PowerPoint and Excel are so good that people end up overusing them for stuff they're not intended to. Others like OneNote or Visio are extremely useful, too. They might not be the best on each category, but together it's a very powerful suite. Plus, MSO is multiplatoform on Windows, Mac, iOS and Android. I'm unaware of mobile versions of OO or LO. Everyone I know, including myself, that uses OO or LO is because it's free (as in freedom for some, as in beer for others) and can read/write MSO files to an extent.
- david-given 10y ago
  My father's been a happy Ubuntu user for years (and a fairly resentful one for a few more years --- he still misses the old GNOME user interface and loathes Unity). He mainly uses it for Gimp and LibreOffice. When he had to switch from OpenOffice to LibreOffice he was pretty close to packing it all in and using something else; his argument was: why should he trust a package produced by an organisation that can't keep their own house in order? That is, from the outside the schism between OpenOffice and LibreOffice is basically invisible; they're both considered to be the same thing, because they produce the same software. It's seen as an internal conflict, and it's a big reputational problem.
  - UncleSlacky 10y ago
    Has he tried Ubuntu MATE to get back the "old GNOME" style interface?
  - jnbiche 10y ago
    > and a fairly resentful one for a few more years --- he still misses the old GNOME user interface and loathes Unity Why doesn't he use Mate? Ubuntu Mate is readily available on the Ubuntu website. Is he aware that it's a continuation of the old Gnome (Gnome 2)? And well-maintained to boot.
    - type0 10y ago
      MATE is really a better GNOME2, some ppl don't want to believe it. There is somehow a parallel to OpenOffice and LibreOffice. Many non techy ppl don't know what forking is (for them it sounds as fornication). It adds to the confusion and we end up with a lot of users hesitating to try a better software.
      - int_19h 10y ago
        I'm not sure MATE can be treated as "Gnome2 under a different name" at this point. While it started as a fork, they're doing some pretty massive refactoring, like gradually moving to Gtk3.
    - 10y ago
- imtringued 10y ago
  I'm using OpenOffice because Libreoffice for some inexplicable reason defaults to PDF for printing even though I constantly set it back to postscript. The PDF feature is broken and swallows umlauts forcing me to print everything at least twice.
  - yrro 10y ago
    Oblig: please file a bug about this if you haven't already!
  - khaled 10y ago
    Do you have bug reports about PDF printing issues, I’d like to have a look myself (I have some interest in streamlining LibreOffice text layout code and part of it would be killing PostScript printing support at some point, but if PDF printing is buggy then it has to be fixed first).
- GirlsCanCode 10y ago
  Not me! I use real Microsoft Office. And it works great.
- GirlsCanCode 10y ago
  Not me! I use real Microsoft Office. And it works great.
hannob 10y ago
Actually for many years we have told people "if you want a free alternative to MS Office use OpenOffice". And we told this to people who are not closely following tech news. It's an established brand and it's not easy to undo. Many people will still google for openoffice. It would be helpful if they'd just get a message "OpenOffice is outdated, you can still download old versions, but you really want to get Libreoffice instead".
- theallan 10y ago
  One of my OSS bits of software has an XSLX data export options, so I've been interested in the OpenOffice / LibreOffice split because of a bug in OpenOffice causing the file I was outputting to be read as empty. I've changed the file format now, but even for a tech based audience I got a number of questions about OpenOffice. Just did a Google Trends on the topic [1] and it shows the two surprisingly close, confirming what you say, the openOffice brand still has momentum. 1: https://www.google.co.uk/trends/explore?date=all&q=openoffice,libreoffice https://www.google.co.uk/trends/explore?date=all&q=openoffic...
yoodenvranx 10y ago
> 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.
- hasch 10y ago
  FlossOffice? even stranger, and make sure to use it at least once a day :-)
  - bitwize 10y ago
    Floffice!
  - type0 10y ago
    Sounds good to me! What we really need is school teachers that would nag their students to use it at least once a day, maybe then we as a society hopefully get rid of the pesky MS Office someday.
  - aruggirello 10y ago
    Would be popular among dentists :-)
- luibelgo 10y ago
  Depends on the language, it's very easy to pronounce in Spanish
  - ekianjo 10y ago
    In French too.
    - Doctor_Fegg 10y ago
      But not the same way! I've never known whether the Spanish or French version is the canonical pronunciation for LibreOffice.

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

by verbify 10y ago

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

okket 10y ago

Everybody is using LibreOffice, except a poor few that get misguided by search services to the Apache OpenOffice website. IMHO there is no sane reason why Apache OpenOffice still exists. Edit: Looks like there are a lot more OpenOffice users out there than I thought, sorry. I really thought the world would have moved on, at least since 2013/14, see https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fb/StarOffice_major_derivatives.svg/1949px-StarOffice_major_derivatives.svg.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fb/St...

nunodonato 10y ago
pride and ego
cstross 10y ago
This is not actually true; I am aware of lots of non-technical users who know nothing about Sun, Oracle, or Apache and who haven't heard of LibreOffice but who continue to quietly use the free office package they were recommended at some time in the previous 15 years. (For example: I'm a member of an online community of working novelists and just last week someone was advocating OpenOffice to another irritated Microsoft Word customer -- the OO.o user had never heard of LibreOffice and was very taken aback when I gave them an update on the history of OO.o post-Sun.) While I agree that Apache OOo is effectively dead in the water as an on-going project, its continued existence has caused huge confusion among millions of users and there's now an equally huge public education campaign required to get them moved onto a modern, secure, maintained codebase. The optimum strategy would be to turn openoffice.org into a redirect to LibreOffice, or to reassign the OpenOffice name rights to the LibreOffice project ... but egos are gonna ego.
- josteink 10y ago
  > The optimum strategy would be to turn openoffice.org into a redirect to LibreOffice, or to reassign the OpenOffice name rights to the LibreOffice project ... but egos are gonna ego. This is so simple. It would solve everyone's problems. So of course that's never going to happen. Welcome to the real world :(
- corbet 10y ago
  Apache is actually considering doing that: https://lwn.net/Articles/699110/ https://lwn.net/Articles/699110/
davidgerard 10y ago
This is horrifyingly incorrect. AOO still gets a shitload of downloads. It wasn't until last year that LO overtook AOO alone's download total. You would be amazed. Ordinary people know MSO sucks and want a free alternative. "OpenOffice" is the name they've heard as their exit. The project is entirely trading on the goodwill that FLOSS activists built up for the name "OpenOffice" from 2002-2010. That brand is still powerful! So whatever you do, make sure everyone you know uses LO instead of AOO. e.g. I wrote this last year for Tumblr. Target audience was writers and creative people who aren't geeks but just want to do their stuff. Written after I encountered yet another innocent user who'd just got AOO. Please excuse the apocalyptic tone, (1) that's how you write to catch attention on Tumblr, (2) this was during the six months they had a massive hole in the default install and were spending their time defending the product on blogs rather than fixing it: http://reddragdiva.tumblr.com/post/128873352708/urgent-get-the-hell-off-apache-openoffice-its http://reddragdiva.tumblr.com/post/128873352708/urgent-get-t...
- harry-wood 10y ago
  You might be interested in my impressions as somebody who hardly ever uses office software, but an open source enthusiast and keeps up with some tech news. I was aware of the OpenOffice/LibreOffice split of course. I knew this would mean some confusion until the dust settles. My vague impression was that LibreOffice might be a better choice for supporting openness versus corporate ownership (and so I'd plumbed for that myself) but at the same time I worried that OpenOffice might end up being better managed and maintained than LibreOffice. I was not aware until I read this, that the dust was settling so comprehensively on the side of LibreOffice. More than just OS idealists buying into it, it's actually being maintained a lot better. This is good news. The situation seems a lot clearer than previously, but yes the message needs to get out. Hopefully apache will shut down, redirect and facilitate re-merging the brand names.
- NetStrikeForce 10y ago
  MSO is closed, proprietary, whatever, but it's actually a fine piece of software especially compared to OO and LO. Word, PowerPoint and Excel are so good that people end up overusing them for stuff they're not intended to. Others like OneNote or Visio are extremely useful, too. They might not be the best on each category, but together it's a very powerful suite. Plus, MSO is multiplatoform on Windows, Mac, iOS and Android. I'm unaware of mobile versions of OO or LO. Everyone I know, including myself, that uses OO or LO is because it's free (as in freedom for some, as in beer for others) and can read/write MSO files to an extent.
david-given 10y ago
My father's been a happy Ubuntu user for years (and a fairly resentful one for a few more years --- he still misses the old GNOME user interface and loathes Unity). He mainly uses it for Gimp and LibreOffice. When he had to switch from OpenOffice to LibreOffice he was pretty close to packing it all in and using something else; his argument was: why should he trust a package produced by an organisation that can't keep their own house in order? That is, from the outside the schism between OpenOffice and LibreOffice is basically invisible; they're both considered to be the same thing, because they produce the same software. It's seen as an internal conflict, and it's a big reputational problem.
- UncleSlacky 10y ago
  Has he tried Ubuntu MATE to get back the "old GNOME" style interface?
- jnbiche 10y ago
  > and a fairly resentful one for a few more years --- he still misses the old GNOME user interface and loathes Unity Why doesn't he use Mate? Ubuntu Mate is readily available on the Ubuntu website. Is he aware that it's a continuation of the old Gnome (Gnome 2)? And well-maintained to boot.
  - type0 10y ago
    MATE is really a better GNOME2, some ppl don't want to believe it. There is somehow a parallel to OpenOffice and LibreOffice. Many non techy ppl don't know what forking is (for them it sounds as fornication). It adds to the confusion and we end up with a lot of users hesitating to try a better software.
    - int_19h 10y ago
      I'm not sure MATE can be treated as "Gnome2 under a different name" at this point. While it started as a fork, they're doing some pretty massive refactoring, like gradually moving to Gtk3.
  - 10y ago
imtringued 10y ago
I'm using OpenOffice because Libreoffice for some inexplicable reason defaults to PDF for printing even though I constantly set it back to postscript. The PDF feature is broken and swallows umlauts forcing me to print everything at least twice.
- yrro 10y ago
  Oblig: please file a bug about this if you haven't already!
- khaled 10y ago
  Do you have bug reports about PDF printing issues, I’d like to have a look myself (I have some interest in streamlining LibreOffice text layout code and part of it would be killing PostScript printing support at some point, but if PDF printing is buggy then it has to be fixed first).
GirlsCanCode 10y ago
Not me! I use real Microsoft Office. And it works great.
GirlsCanCode 10y ago
Not me! I use real Microsoft Office. And it works great.

hannob 10y ago

Actually for many years we have told people "if you want a free alternative to MS Office use OpenOffice". And we told this to people who are not closely following tech news. It's an established brand and it's not easy to undo. Many people will still google for openoffice. It would be helpful if they'd just get a message "OpenOffice is outdated, you can still download old versions, but you really want to get Libreoffice instead".

theallan 10y ago
One of my OSS bits of software has an XSLX data export options, so I've been interested in the OpenOffice / LibreOffice split because of a bug in OpenOffice causing the file I was outputting to be read as empty. I've changed the file format now, but even for a tech based audience I got a number of questions about OpenOffice. Just did a Google Trends on the topic [1] and it shows the two surprisingly close, confirming what you say, the openOffice brand still has momentum. 1: https://www.google.co.uk/trends/explore?date=all&q=openoffice,libreoffice https://www.google.co.uk/trends/explore?date=all&q=openoffic...

yoodenvranx 10y ago

> 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.

hasch 10y ago
FlossOffice? even stranger, and make sure to use it at least once a day :-)
- bitwize 10y ago
  Floffice!
- type0 10y ago
  Sounds good to me! What we really need is school teachers that would nag their students to use it at least once a day, maybe then we as a society hopefully get rid of the pesky MS Office someday.
- aruggirello 10y ago
  Would be popular among dentists :-)
luibelgo 10y ago
Depends on the language, it's very easy to pronounce in Spanish
- ekianjo 10y ago
  In French too.
  - Doctor_Fegg 10y ago
    But not the same way! I've never known whether the Spanish or French version is the canonical pronunciation for LibreOffice.