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> 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
by 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 agoFlossOffice? even stranger, and make sure to use it at least once a day :-)
- bitwize 10y agoFloffice!
- type0 10y agoSounds 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 agoWould be popular among dentists :-)
- luibelgo 10y agoDepends on the language, it's very easy to pronounce in Spanish
- ekianjo 10y agoIn French too.
- Doctor_Fegg 10y agoBut not the same way! I've never known whether the Spanish or French version is the canonical pronunciation for LibreOffice.
- davidgerard 10y agoIn English I just say Lieber-Office, as in Beiber-Office. I have had zero people confused at this pronunciation in the last six years. (edited to clarify)
- evacchi 10y agoso, neither? Edit to reflect parent: I do think that's probably easier to pronounce for English-speaking people than both French and Spanish
- okket 10y agoIt 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.
- Swizec 10y agoAs a technologist who follows tech news, I was never sure which one was the more active/appropriate prohect. Switching to Google Docs and various plain markdown editors has been a huge relief. A few years ago I said fuck it and bought MS Office. I may only need it once a year when markdown or gDocs doesn't suffice, but the price is worth avoiding the OpenOffice vs LibreOffice fuckery. It also works better.
- espadrine 10y agoWikipedia is usually pretty good at giving an overview of the situation. > In September 2010, the majority of outside OpenOffice.org developers left the project, due to concerns over Sun and then Oracle's management of the project > […] > In April 2011, Oracle stopped development of OpenOffice.org — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org#History But the OpenOffice brand was already built, so obviously a lot of people still think it is the most active project. Presumably, Oracle did not know what to do with this asset they bought, but they thought they might be able to squeeze value out of it. They believed the only way to do so was to have total control over it, which removed all value from it (except for the brand). Then they put it in an Apache-shaped trash, along with the brand.
- davidgerard 10y agoIt's important to note, by the way, that Oracle had taken the Star Division developers off OOo and put them on their abortive CloudOffice endeavour. So the outside developers leaving was actually most of the active development resources at the time.
- 10y ago
- userbinator 10y agoAt first I thought it was a pun on library names: lib-reoffice.
- TillE 10y agoGerman has lots of common French words pronounced (roughly) the French way, plus some more modern English loanwords of course. So you just combine them and speak three languages in one sentence :)
- justin66 10y agoEven in an American business context, "Libre" sounds stupid. Having it in the name hurts their popularity more than they know.
- erelde 10y agoWhat connotation does "Libre" have in American English? (I'm French, to my ears it sounds perfectly reasonnable, if a bit "legalese")
- esrauch 10y agoI think it would register no recognition to the majority of American English speakers. It is a French loan word used essentially only in open source contexts because we don't have an equivilent ("free" is way more ambiguous is meaning). The only negative connotation I know of is the association with some overzealous nerdy kids who find out the difference between libre and gratis and loudly bring it up all the time.
- pmontra 10y agoItaly here. "Libre" sounds spanish to me. I realized only now that french has the same word (and I read it many times), but probably the final e is silent. I pronounce it, so it's spanish. Apparently it's the correct way: https://lwn.net/Articles/408141/ https://lwn.net/Articles/408141/
- mitchty 10y agoAs an American I agree with your assessment. When I first saw LibreOffice I first thought it was a take on the comedy movie Nacho Libre. And I studied French, so you'd think that would help but not really. Though the French pronunciation differs as the IPA shows /libʀ/ which is rather different than spanish /ˈliβɾe/. So its one of those "final e is silent, with a french twist" words that were maddening to learn after German where that almost never happens.
- weinzierl 10y ago
- ZenoArrow 10y agoRegarding pronounciation, libre = lee bruh (it might be said differently in different contexts, but I've only heard that pronunciation for LO).
- GunboatDiplomat 10y agoLee-Bray Like Robert E. Lee and a donkey.
- ergl 10y agoIt's spanish, so 'lee-breh'
- weinzierl 10y agoAs a fellow German I'm surprised at that. Given the amount of negative comments about the name I recognize that English speakers have a problem with the name, even if I don't understand exactly why (no one complains about Cuba Libre). For us Germans: pronounce it French, Spanish or even German if you like and it will roughly sound right.
- davidgerard 10y agoNaming turned out to be very difficult indeed. http://luxate.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/agreeing-on-childs-name-simple-task.html http://luxate.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/agreeing-on-childs-name... tl;dr trademarks in lots of countries, URL availability in lots of countries. This stuff is hard.