8 ms·
Could they drop openoffice, then rename libreoffice to openoffice? That would be fantastic
by Aardwolf 10y ago
Could they drop openoffice, then rename libreoffice to openoffice? That would be fantastic
- ptero 10y agoThis. 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 10y agoI 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 10y agoHere's one. Never thought it necessary to change. OO works just fine.
- fosco 10y agoditto
- dorfsmay 10y agoWasn't OpenOffice own by Sunacle at some point? I think that's when a lot of users moves to LibreOffice.
- umanwizard 10y agoLibreOffice is original OO, in terms of continuity of development, more so than AOO is.
- keithpeter 10y agoAnd 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 10y agoI 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 10y agoAre you using a distro from 2010? Because I believe most of the major Linux distros include LIbreOffice as part of the default install.
- chengiz 10y agoI 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.
- mindcrime 10y agoand I don't know any Linux user who uses OOo. Pleased to meet you. Now you know at least one.
- criddell 10y ago> IME 90% of people I know who want to quickly look through a PowerPoint on Linux will install OpenOffice. If that's all you need to do, OpenOffice will likely work just fine for you.
- jsight 10y agoAlso, 85% of statistics are made up on the spot based upon anecdotal data.
- silverwind 10y agoSo true. For example, when Node.js forked to io.js, even after a year where io.js was clearly a superior product, 90% of developers were still using Node.js. Old habits die hard, I guess.
- krylon 10y agoI think OpenOffice is a better name than LibreOffice. It rolls of the tongue more smoothly, and it is easier to explain to people. On the other hand LibreOffice has the lion's share of the developers (and probably of the users by now). So a "takeover" of OpenOffice by the LibreOffice project would probably be the best solution at this point (at least as far as I can tell).
- nxzero 10y ago>> "it is easier to explain to people" Which is why "Office for Free" (OfficeFree, oFree, O4F) would be a better non-Linux name. Average user doesn't care if something is "open" they care if it's free.
- curt15 10y agoDoubt it. I would imagine that many lay users associate "free" with low quality. "Open" on the other hand has positive connotations.
- vertex-four 10y agoHell, in a few years' time, Silicon Valley might finally have made "free" an outright bad thing for some significant group of people.
- wlesieutre 10y agoSilicon Valley, where "free" means "don't get used to this because we're selling to google and shutting it down in three months"
- stephenr 10y agoOr it means "we're data mining the fuck out of you, your granny, her cat, and the guy who's banging your wife, so we can deliver you 'relevant' ads"
- 10y ago
- IANAD 10y agoOut of the box thinking but would never fly. Think of all of the releases of LibreOffice that overlap OpenOffice. Support nightmare and users would be confused about the changes.
- marcosdumay 10y agoYou just do what gcc did. The next OO version is the current LO code, and the project is now managed by the LO developers.
- johnhattan 10y agoIf LO gets the trademark, maybe make the name "OpenOffice" refer to "the stable channel of LibreOffice". Corporate IT and training would likely prefer an office suite that only gets feature-updates every 1-2 years. So make OpenOffice a very stable version that just gets bugfix updates, but then a big feature update every couple of years, ala MS Office. And LibreOffice could remain for the rest of us who don't mind getting new features every month or so.
- fluidcruft 10y agoThis is probably the best workable solution if the projects were to merge somehow as it preserves the attempted marketing niche of each "name". I haven't followed this in a long time but I thought Sun/Oracle management of OpenOffice was crux of the problem? I've probably been out of the loop for too long.
- gpvos 10y agoThat was the problem before it became an Apache project. It should not be a problem anymore.
- quantumhobbit 10y agoI love it this idea. Make OpenOffice the LTS release for liver office. (I'm going to leave this autocorrect as is because it shows the proble with libre)
- 10y ago
- sandGorgon 10y ago+10000 Libreoffice is terrible to pronounce in asia ... and especially in India. I dont know if it is better in other countries (like the multilingual United States). Till today, Libreoffice is the only software that I have said aloud (and on the phone) and people could not remember. I have had people search for "libby office", "libra office", "lee office", etc Call it anything but Libreoffice.
- frik 10y agoGood idea. It's like or at least similar to Node.js vs. IO.js. Finally they agreed to use IO.js branch but go with the Node.js name. So it would be great of LibreOffice would be rebranded to OpenOffice. And it needs an web initiative to compete with GoogleDocs and Office365 - I know there is already some kind of prototype, but make it a high priority project.
- Fej 10y agoThe cloud initiative seems a lot more important; bring LO/OO into this decade.
- rch 10y agoI thought LO was some flavor of GPL? I'm not sure that would fly with Apache, as it would make the situation even more confusing.
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago> Could they drop openoffice, then rename libreoffice to openoffice? That would be fantastic Oh, the Document Foundation (which makes LibreOffice) wanted to do that. But Oracle decided to hand OpenOffice.org to the Apache Foundation instead, presumably out of spite.