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> I really wish people would let this whole supposed "AOO vs LO rivalry" thing go. At this point, I'm pretty sure the bulk of the AOO contributors don't see LO

by cwyers 9y ago

> I really wish people would let this whole supposed "AOO vs LO rivalry" thing go. At this point, I'm pretty sure the bulk of the AOO contributors don't see LO as a rival, and mostly don't care what LO does, so long as people affiliated with LO aren't running us down in public. The two projects will probably never re-merge, so it is what it is. They do their thing, AOO does its thing. Such is the way of things. Given that most of the energy is with one project and not the other, and codebases have diverged so much that one can't accept patches from the other, why is it beneficial to have both? Who does OOo serve that LO doesn't? And why would a volunteer choose to work on OOo and not LO if they weren't on the OOo side of the fork to begin with?

mindcrime 9y ago
why is it beneficial to have both? Who does OOo serve that LO doesn't? And why would a volunteer choose to work on OOo and not LO if they weren't on the OOo side of the fork to begin with? It sounds like you expect some sort of objective, definitive answer to those questions. I don't think there are any such answers. A lot of people use AOO, a bit fewer contribute to development. I can't explain the motivations of any of those people, outside of myself. I can't even explain why so many of the "old school" OO developers "sided" - so to speak - with LO, other than just the timing of the thing. But I came into AOO after a lot of the weird stuff had already happened, that created all this bitterness and resentment between the two projects. I'm a bit of an outsider as it were. So I have a hard time understanding why there even is all this acrimony and tension at all. So I don't have a lot of good answers for you. All I can say is that, for myself, I gravitated to AOO for a few reasons: 1. I prefer the Apache License 2. I was familiar with, and liked, the ASF way of doing things. 3. I started out with high hopes to leverage what seemed like a natural synergy between AOO and other ASF projects. In particular, some of the Semantic Web tech (Jena, Fuseki), and all the "big data" projects. It just felt natural to me to want to work on AOO since there was a certain amount of overlap in membership between these various projects, etc. Sadly, I got so bogged down with other activities, that I have never found time to really contribute to AOO and work on a lot of the things I had hoped to work on. I still cling to some of those ambitions, but other priorities keep getting in the way. Sorry for the long, rambling semi-answer. I'm tired and just kind of going "stream of consciousness" here.
- jancsika 9y ago
  If OpenOffice cannot get security fixes in a timely manner and the site is still getting a substantial number of monthly downloads, wouldn't you agree that the ethical move would be to display a prominent link to an actively maintained open source alternative to the software on the Apache OpenOffice frontpage?

by cwyers 9y ago

mindcrime 9y ago

why is it beneficial to have both? Who does OOo serve that LO doesn't? And why would a volunteer choose to work on OOo and not LO if they weren't on the OOo side of the fork to begin with? It sounds like you expect some sort of objective, definitive answer to those questions. I don't think there are any such answers. A lot of people use AOO, a bit fewer contribute to development. I can't explain the motivations of any of those people, outside of myself. I can't even explain why so many of the "old school" OO developers "sided" - so to speak - with LO, other than just the timing of the thing. But I came into AOO after a lot of the weird stuff had already happened, that created all this bitterness and resentment between the two projects. I'm a bit of an outsider as it were. So I have a hard time understanding why there even is all this acrimony and tension at all. So I don't have a lot of good answers for you. All I can say is that, for myself, I gravitated to AOO for a few reasons: 1. I prefer the Apache License 2. I was familiar with, and liked, the ASF way of doing things. 3. I started out with high hopes to leverage what seemed like a natural synergy between AOO and other ASF projects. In particular, some of the Semantic Web tech (Jena, Fuseki), and all the "big data" projects. It just felt natural to me to want to work on AOO since there was a certain amount of overlap in membership between these various projects, etc. Sadly, I got so bogged down with other activities, that I have never found time to really contribute to AOO and work on a lot of the things I had hoped to work on. I still cling to some of those ambitions, but other priorities keep getting in the way. Sorry for the long, rambling semi-answer. I'm tired and just kind of going "stream of consciousness" here.

jancsika 9y ago
If OpenOffice cannot get security fixes in a timely manner and the site is still getting a substantial number of monthly downloads, wouldn't you agree that the ethical move would be to display a prominent link to an actively maintained open source alternative to the software on the Apache OpenOffice frontpage?