33 Developers Leave OpenOffice.org

Discussion in 'other software & services' started by fsr, Nov 1, 2010.

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  1. fsr

    fsr Registered Member

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    http://developers.slashdot.org/story/10/11/01/185205/33-Developers-Leave-OpenOfficeorg
     
  2. Cudni

    Cudni Global Moderator

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    Looking at the list and their titles, most of them are not developers (that is not to say those roles are not important). Does anyone know how many devs are on OO ?
     
  3. Eice

    Eice Registered Member

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    From that list, only 2 of the titles said "development". Looks like the majority of the people that left originally held tech support and documentation roles. :blink:
     
  4. Pedro

    Pedro Registered Member

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    It was my understanding that OO was primarily developed at SUN, and because of the copyright assignment, big project with complex code inherited from a proprietary application, and other issues - issues not seen in successful open source/free software projects - it was never fully embraced by that many talented developers.

    It will be interesting to see what exactly will Oracle do, how the new project evolves, and if those two will be squashed by Koffice. :D
     
  5. Sputnik

    Sputnik Registered Member

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    @Pedro
    Indeed development, in terms of actual coding, of OpenOffice.org as we know it was mainly in hands of Sun developers. However here are also commits from Novell and IBM, but I'm not sure if these became an actual part of Sun's OpenOffice.org build. Since LibereOffice is more open, it might appeal more developers and more other companies can submit their commits more easy.
     
  6. Pedro

    Pedro Registered Member

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    Yes that's it too. It only cemented the notion that contributing code to OO was a waste of time. Right or wrong, there is that atmosphere, which led to the Go-oo 'fork'.
    *cough*ice :D
     
  7. Sputnik

    Sputnik Registered Member

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    That's right, that was definitly why the Go-oo fork came up. With quite some succes I might say, all the major Linux distro's were shipping with Go-oo forks :p

    Regarding LibreOffice, don't be surprised what countries like Brazil, China, India and France might contribute now it's easier to commit. Hopefully IBM will switch to LibreOffice as the core of Symphony Office. They have quite an development team in China working on it.
     
  8. guest

    guest Guest

    Going to install LibreOffice and use it instead of OpenOffice for a while.
     
  9. vasa1

    vasa1 Registered Member

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    All the best and looking forward to your comments on LibreOffice. Just to be clear, it's still in beta, right?
     
  10. zfactor

    zfactor Registered Member

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    but with this based on open office will they continue to work on it if open office goes downhill??

    also what is the most current version of oracle office??
     
    Last edited: Nov 1, 2010
  11. guest

    guest Guest

    The current release of LibreOffice is a Beta 2 version, it appears to be based on the OpenOffice v3.3 which is still in development. LibreOffice can be downloaded from its official site located at http://www.documentfoundation.org/download/. On a side note, I uninstalled OpenOffice prior to installing LibreOffice, it seems to be recommended to do that way to avoid issues.

    From what I saw, LibreOffice has pretty much all the main features found in OpenOffice v3.3, the major changes are on the documentation, help files and brand related things (like the About boxes). As for the reasons behind the creation of The Document Foundation and LibreOffice, they can be read here: http://www.documentfoundation.org/faq/

    What is notably lacking in LibreOffice is a proper auto-update component. The one found in OpenOffice appears to have been removed from this version of LibreOffice, which isn't that bad considering that the auto-update component in question hardly worked proper in OpenOffice anyways.

    Currently the only way to be automatically notified of new LibreOffice releases/updates is by email: send an empty mail to announce+subscribe@documentfoundation.org and conclude the confirmation process.

    Yes, their stated focus is to deliver the best free office suite. For more information, read: http://www.documentfoundation.org/faq/

    It is version 9 according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Open_Office
     
  12. zfactor

    zfactor Registered Member

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    so minus the tech support is there really any difference between the paid and free version of oracle open office??
     
  13. Eice

    Eice Registered Member

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    Best free office suite?

    Really begs the question of why not the best office suite period, or have they stopped trying to compete with Office?
     
  14. vasa1

    vasa1 Registered Member

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    Best free office suite is a good enough aim for some. Those who despise it can pay for whatever they like.
     
  15. Eice

    Eice Registered Member

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    Really?

    Well, if that's indeed the case, then it'd be nice if the devs would come out and say so officially. It'd put a lot of doubts to rest and clear the air by letting us all know that OOo is merely aiming for mediocrity, and targeting the market segment of people who settle for second-best.
     
  16. vasa1

    vasa1 Registered Member

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    We can keep saying what we like, can't we :)
     
  17. guest

    guest Guest

    They stated the following in the http://www.documentfoundation.org/faq/:

    "{...)We do not have and will not have a commercial product which receives preferential treatment. We only have one focus - delivering the best free office suite for our users - LibreOffice."
     
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