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Why should Google control the only desktop alternative to MS Office?

• gjsman-1000 4y ago
  What are you talking about? LibreOffice is a fork of OpenOffice that has developed extremely far while OpenOffice has developed almost nothing since the fork. It's been almost a decade of development that it is behind on. It makes a million times more sense to retire OpenOffice and point users toward LibreOffice. Edit: Oh you are the same guy who said this downvoted comment: > LibreOffice with its infantile icons, weird UI changes and borked equation editor looks way less professional than even the ancient StarOffice which was the base of OpenOffice. So you are aware of LibreOffice. That's an OK opinion to hold (I firmly disagree), but it certainly doesn't make LibreOffice not an option compared to Google. CVEs and exploits in OpenOffice due to lack of development are a bigger issue than "I prefer the icons."
  • bitL 4y ago
    https://www.pcworld.com/article/485535/google_throws_its_weight_behind_libreoffice.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/485535/google_throws_its_wei... Do I want to have a critical piece of open source financially dependent on Google with their conflict of interests wrt Google Suite or rather have it with Apache that has no other interests?
    • gjsman-1000 4y ago
      > Do I want to have a critical piece of open source financially dependent on Google with their conflict of interests wrt Google Suite or rather have it with Apache that has no other interests? We really have no other choice. The amount of security bugs lurking in OpenOffice is substantial and is widely considered a major risk. OpenOffice no longer has the manpower to find them or keep track of them. There's a reason why almost all Linux distributions have abandoned it for LibreOffice. OpenOffice is quite literally dead. It's like saying I'll stay on Linux 1.0 because that's before IBM started sponsoring it - the battle is completely lost. As for funding, Google is almost irrelevant considering all the other people on the Advisory board, including GNOME, Red Hat, KDE, Collabora, and so forth. Even more funding is being provided by the new business partners who take LibreOffice and offer long-term enterprise support versions and contribute back, and there are four companies doing that (Collabora, allotropia, Adfinis, and CIB). Calling LibreOffice financially dependent on Google is completely unfounded at this time. Heck, when your article about Google supporting LibreOffice was written, Google Docs was much younger with far less chance of success. It could have easily ended up in the Google Graveyard and I don't blame Google for hedging their bet on it. https://www.documentfoundation.org/governance/advisory-board/ https://www.documentfoundation.org/governance/advisory-board...
    • AuthorizedCust 4y ago
      Who cares? If Google is malfeasant in its relationship with LO, then fork it. That’s how LO was founded, a fork born out of concerns of Oracle’s malfeasance in its relationship with OO.
    • linmob 4y ago
      So… one 2011 article is enough to condemn The Document Foundation and Libre Office forever? That’s basically a century in Internet Years ago!
    • timbit42 4y ago
      As evil as Google is, Oracle is more evil.