5 ms·

My understanding of LibreOffice was that it existed as a fork purely as a response to Oracle exerting excessive control over the project. Now that Oracle has re

My understanding of LibreOffice was that it existed as a fork purely as a response to Oracle exerting excessive control over the project. Now that Oracle has relinquished OpenOffice.org, can anyone shed some light on what the stated goals of LibreOffice actually are? How are they distinct from OpenOffice.org?

streptomycin 14y ago
This isn't an answer, but you could equally ask the opposite question about what makes OpenOffice.org distinct from LibreOffice, given that LibreOffice was a community-led project before OpenOffice.org was.
dfc 14y ago
I guess you stopped after the first four paragraphs. The fifth reads: "In other words, LibreOffice is becoming more than just an OpenOffice fork, but an independent office suite in its own right. At the same time, OpenOffice has been struggling. OpenOffice makes no bones that "Volunteers [are] needed in all areas"."
- bazzargh 14y ago
  Veering off the question of LibreOffice's motivation, that paragraph struck me as bizarre. I've yet to see an open source project that didn't want volunteers in all areas. So I clicked through to check the citation for "OpenOffice has been struggling" is even more bizarre, as it's a link back to Zdnet with info supposedly about IBM withdrawing support...whose only support is another link back into Zdnet, and it's rebutted below by OpenOffice's Rob Weir, whose comments were then incorporated into the article. It does seem like Zdnet are trying really hard to manufacture controversy here.
  - dfc 14y ago
    The giant red plea for volunteers on openoffioce.org is a little odd.
lambda 14y ago
Well, basically, LibreOffice forked while OpenOffice was languishing under Oracle and no one knew what would happen. Since then, it has actually generally had more development than OpenOffice; there was a long period of time in which OpenOffice development halted while it was being moved over to Apache, and relicensed under the Apache license. In the meantime, LibreOffice was receiving active development and new features, and many distros started shipping it because it was actually shipping and ready while Apache OpenOffice was still being held up in bureaucracy. Now that Apache OpenOffice is starting to ship and receive development (much in the form of porting features from Lotus Symphony, which has also been donated to the Apache project), they are being developed pretty much independently. There's a certain amount of acrimony between the projects, which is unfortunate. But there's also the unfortunate case that due to licens issues, it would be hard to merge the projects. LibreOffice is licensed under the LGPLv3, while OpenOffice has been relicensed under the Apache License (Oracle allowed their portions to be relicensed, and some of what remained from third-parties was thrown out or rewritten). This means that LibreOffice can incorporate code from OpenOffice, while OpenOffice cannot incorporate code from LibreOffice (at least, without work to turn it into separate libraries or changing the license back to LGPL). So, due to the acrimony between the projects, and licensing issues, they are pretty much developing independently now, with some code moving between them when possible.

streptomycin 14y ago

This isn't an answer, but you could equally ask the opposite question about what makes OpenOffice.org distinct from LibreOffice, given that LibreOffice was a community-led project before OpenOffice.org was.

dfc 14y ago

I guess you stopped after the first four paragraphs. The fifth reads: "In other words, LibreOffice is becoming more than just an OpenOffice fork, but an independent office suite in its own right. At the same time, OpenOffice has been struggling. OpenOffice makes no bones that "Volunteers [are] needed in all areas"."

bazzargh 14y ago
Veering off the question of LibreOffice's motivation, that paragraph struck me as bizarre. I've yet to see an open source project that didn't want volunteers in all areas. So I clicked through to check the citation for "OpenOffice has been struggling" is even more bizarre, as it's a link back to Zdnet with info supposedly about IBM withdrawing support...whose only support is another link back into Zdnet, and it's rebutted below by OpenOffice's Rob Weir, whose comments were then incorporated into the article. It does seem like Zdnet are trying really hard to manufacture controversy here.
- dfc 14y ago
  The giant red plea for volunteers on openoffioce.org is a little odd.

lambda 14y ago

Well, basically, LibreOffice forked while OpenOffice was languishing under Oracle and no one knew what would happen. Since then, it has actually generally had more development than OpenOffice; there was a long period of time in which OpenOffice development halted while it was being moved over to Apache, and relicensed under the Apache license. In the meantime, LibreOffice was receiving active development and new features, and many distros started shipping it because it was actually shipping and ready while Apache OpenOffice was still being held up in bureaucracy. Now that Apache OpenOffice is starting to ship and receive development (much in the form of porting features from Lotus Symphony, which has also been donated to the Apache project), they are being developed pretty much independently. There's a certain amount of acrimony between the projects, which is unfortunate. But there's also the unfortunate case that due to licens issues, it would be hard to merge the projects. LibreOffice is licensed under the LGPLv3, while OpenOffice has been relicensed under the Apache License (Oracle allowed their portions to be relicensed, and some of what remained from third-parties was thrown out or rewritten). This means that LibreOffice can incorporate code from OpenOffice, while OpenOffice cannot incorporate code from LibreOffice (at least, without work to turn it into separate libraries or changing the license back to LGPL). So, due to the acrimony between the projects, and licensing issues, they are pretty much developing independently now, with some code moving between them when possible.