Whats up with OpenOffice?

[aimeeandbeatles]

I read somewhere that it turned into LibreOffice because something with Oracle happened and I read some articles and I don't quite get it. I know it forked but I can't figure out who forked, the Oracle people or the non-Oracle people. Can somebody clear this up for me?

 

[taper]

Oracle bought Sun Microsystems awhile ago, which included Open Office. Oracle doesn't have a good history with open source software so the (non-Oracle)community decided to fork it. Major companies like Google, Novell, Canonical, and RedHat have backed LibreOffice so it should stick around.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

That makes sense. Will OpenOffice die, do you think?

 

[Samez]

I don't think so.. AFAIK there are similar "problems" with JAVA (owned by Sun bought by Oracle) but the GNU License makes it really hard for Oracle to mess around too much. IIRC all contributers (which can be quite a lot for open source software) must agree to make copyright changes.
Also Open Office is a kind of valuable trade name, at least compared to LibreOffice.
In the long term I would say it's a matter of marketing and quality (who has the better features/higher compatibility aso.)

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I hope Open Office stays around; I don't use any other word processing program (can't stand Microsoft Word).

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I hope Open Office stays around; I don't use any other word processing program (can't stand Microsoft Word).

Maybe LibreOffice will have some features you'll like.. Personally, I like to use AbiWord. Its a pain getting an entire office suit for one program.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

It depends on whether fanfiction.net will support it (huge fanfic archiving site) and how it does with different kinds of fonts that aren't among the 'standard' ones.

As long as it doesn't have an obnoxious googly-eyed paperclip, I suppose I could live with it, though.

 

[Mise]

I really want OpenOffice / LibreOffice to succeed, but MS Office just has a much stronger piece of software. I couldn't recommend Open/LibreOffice to anyone right now, unless they were really skint.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Well I do have some older version of MS Office (I posted about it in another thread because I cant get it onto a CD) and from what I remember of it its pretty lean on modern computers. But Im kinda on a strict budget and I only have a few bits of paid software on my computer ... Mostly games. Ive been known to use three-four different pieces of free software to do what a single piece of paid software could do..... for repetitive things.

 

[Zelig]

I hope Open Office stays around; I don't use any other word processing program (can't stand Microsoft Word).

FWIW, Office 2007/2010 are much improved over older versions, and like Mise mentioned, if you're using anything beyond basic features also tend to be plain better.

 

[DragonHerder]

FWIW, Office 2007/2010 are much improved over older versions, and like Mise mentioned, if you're using anything beyond basic features also tend to be plain better.

When I bought a new laptop with Office 2007 on it I was so unimpressed I uninstalled it and downloaded OpenOffice. Now I wouldn't go back to m$office for any reason.

 

[Zelig]

When I bought a new laptop with Office 2007 on it I was so unimpressed I uninstalled it and downloaded OpenOffice. Now I wouldn't go back to m$office for any reason.

Well, I wouldn't expect otherwise from someone who calls it "m$office".

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I dont really like the new layout they did in Microsoft Office 2007 I saw it at high school. It was clumsy to use and I dont understand why they did it because it was working just fine before .... I dont know about 2010.

Anyways I notice for about 95% of my word processing I dont need a big fancy one. A lot of it, like typing my articles, is something I can just do in WordPad. One word processor I like is called RoughDraft, its intended for writers but I found it useful for everyday things.

 

[Turner]

It's clumsy to use because you're not used to it. It's a new mindset. I've yet to use word enough to see this in action, but my understanding of the ribbon bar is that the more you use it, the more common tasks you perform get put on the bar. But I'm getting used to it, and prefer it over the older office suites.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

AFAIK the WIMP (Window, Icon, Menu, Pointing Device ... Im focusing mostly on the menu) interface has been around since the 70s.

 

[Mise]

It's clumsy to use because you're not used to it. It's a new mindset. I've yet to use word enough to see this in action, but my understanding of the ribbon bar is that the more you use it, the more common tasks you perform get put on the bar. But I'm getting used to it, and prefer it over the older office suites.

Exactly, you just get used to it. Eventually it becomes as natural as Office 2003. Same thing with moving from IE to FF or Opera, or from Windows to Mac OSX for that matter - people start out with an unfamiliar interface and instantly say they hate it because they don't know how to do simple things like copy and paste or open "Notepad", but then after a while they get used to it and they end up liking it better.

Henry Ford once said something like, "If I had listened to my customers, I'd have made faster horses."

 

[warpus]

FWIW, Office 2007/2010 are much improved over older versions, and like Mise mentioned, if you're using anything beyond basic features also tend to be plain better.

Yeah but they totally changed the menu layouts in 2007. They suck and are very obnoxious.. Have I mentioned that they suck?

 

[Zelig]

Yeah but they totally changed the menu layouts in 2007. They suck and are very obnoxious.. Have I mentioned that they suck?

See Mise's post.

They're much better than the old versions.

 

[GoodGame]

FWIW, Office 2007/2010 are much improved over older versions, and like Mise mentioned, if you're using anything beyond basic features also tend to be plain better.

Funny thing is I hate 2010 so much I save in 2003 doc format.

I'm not much of a fan of the 2010 upgrade from 2007.

 

[deanej]

The reason the interface was changed in 2007 was because the vast majority of new feature requests Microsoft was recieving for officer were for features already in the program. People just couldn't find them because there were way too many features for the menus and toolbars to handle.