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News OpenOffice.org splits from Oracl

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by julieb, 29 Sep 2010.

  1. julieb

    julieb What's a Dremel?

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  2. Grape Flavor

    Grape Flavor What's a Dremel?

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    Great, now we have two competing versions of OO and development resources split between the two. How is this a good thing again? If Oracle was actually harming or constraining them in any meaningful way, I could see this being necessary, but it sounds like they're forking the project just to make some kind of stupid point. Sounds dumb to me.
     
  3. mi1ez

    mi1ez Modder

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    Sounds like they have the right idea, but potentially haven't gone about it in the right way. There should have been more discussion before the fork to sort out all the legal side of things.
     
  4. impar

    impar Minimodder

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    Greetings!
    Competition improves products.
     
  5. scawp

    scawp What's a Dremel?

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    OpenOffice is ****, just saying.

    You get what you pay for!
     
  6. docodine

    docodine killed a guy once

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    It does everything I need from MS Office, but it doesn't cost anything. What's wrong with it?
     
  7. Grape Flavor

    Grape Flavor What's a Dremel?

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    But does that apply even if those products are free and open source? Hmm.
     
  8. Er-El

    Er-El Minimodder

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    Except it still uses shi*** Java... lame.
     
  9. tristanperry

    tristanperry Minimodder

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    There things happen I guess. Will be interesting to see whether LibreOffice builds its brand name quickly and becomes the most popular of the two (like Football Manager and Championship Manager I guess)

    I guess it does. Even in such environments, knowing that someone else has a better product would probably still drive you.

    Java FT-W. :thumb:
     
  10. impar

    impar Minimodder

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    Greetings!
    Current Browser War, how much costs your browser of choice?
     
  11. aussiebear

    aussiebear What's a Dremel?

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    It sounds dumb to you because you're ignorant of what's going on.

    The current way with OO being managed already results in multiple versions of OO!

    (a) Official one;
    (b) Another is by a guy from Novell called Go-OO;
    (c) A third version for Apple Macs called NeoOffice.
    (d) Another is called OxygenOffice Professional.
    ...and so on.

    This fork is necessary for two reasons.

    (1) Current management of the project automatically rejects community contributions. Hence the reason for Go-OO, NeoOffice for Mac, etc. (This is because Sun...Now Oracle, wants to preserve the code for their commercial variant: Oracle Open Office...Formerly StarOffice.)

    With this community fork, we can now unify code contributions from projects like Go-OO and NeoOffice under one major project. (Notice the irony in your whiny post? You complain about another version, yet this project will unify/consolidate.)

    (2) Oracle has clearly demonstrated it isn't all that open source friendly by taking legal action with Google and killing the OpenSolaris project. This fork is a pre-emptive move, so the community can continue to progress with the code regardless of what Oracle does. I thought independence and freedom were valued in Western society? But the way some people behave in this day and age; its like they want to be tied up and bent over regularly, so they have something to complain about!

    I hear this phrase all the time from people who continue to pay for Microsoft products. Its like they need to belittle any alternative to justify to themselves in forking out cash for every new release of MS Office.

    OpenOffice does what I need.

    (1) It is legal and free. (Saved me lots of money!)
    (2) It supports more platforms than MS Office.
    (3) It does NOT have "Genuine Advantage" nonsense.
    (4) I can install as many copies as I want.

    Interestingly, it also satisfies the following organisations:
    * Singapore’s Ministry of Defence
    * Bristol City Council (UK)
    * Banco do Brasil
    * French Gendarmerie
    * Various Indian Govt branches like the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development, and the Supreme Court of India.
    * Grafton-Fraser (Canadian mens wear company)

    It must be doing something right.

    In FOSS, multiple solutions promote natural competition such that one can explore the variety of options, while at the same time working like Nature. (Survival of the fittest...Crappy implementations aren't adopted, and thus, are archived and never used again.)

    Or would you prefer bumbling around with one solution that attempts to explore one option at a time in a linear manner with each new release?

    Firefox motivated Microsoft to get off their butts and work on IE. (Did you conveniently forget IE6 was left stagnant for so long? It has now resulted in a problem where businesses are stuck with it because their in-house developed software was developed in that era! This means businesses are sticking to Windows XP until they can re-do their in-house software!).

    Google's Chromium, which is the basis for their Chrome browser; motivates Mozilla to do better.(Firefox 4 has improved JavaScript performance.)
     
    Yoy0YO likes this.
  12. Fabou

    Fabou What's a Dremel?

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    At least OpenOffice doesn't get f***** by MS changing from .doc to .docx
     
  13. Booga

    Booga Cuppa tea anyone?

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    Isn't OO better at opening old word docs than M$ Word?

    I like it and it is free, I hated the new office 2007 version of word, that really was s***.
     
  14. Redbeaver

    Redbeaver The Other Red Meat

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    wait till u try 2010 lol.... took a while for me to migrate peeps in the office from 03 to 07... now im tryin 2010 and... well.....



    those *******s.

    lol
     
  15. GregTheRotter

    GregTheRotter Minimodder

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    OO Cheesecake. If it keeps coming out I'll keep using it.
     
  16. War-Rasta

    War-Rasta What's a Dremel?

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    I love OO but i do have to admit that it hasn't been keeping up with MS Office in the last few releases. I don't like Office 2007 but I like 2010 for some of the new features. OO needs to step up it's game just a notch if it wants to become more widely used and i think this move will help with that.

    From the first time I tried it i thought it was awesome to have a free office suite that could deliver such quality and I never went to MS Office again. That was way back when I was still running windows so by the time I made the jump to Ubuntu there was no change for me in that aspect.
     
  17. impar

    impar Minimodder

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    Greetings!
    I migrated them to OpenOffice. :D
     
  18. eddtox

    eddtox Homo Interneticus

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    OpenOffice rules. I was talking about this yesterday, and I just cannot believe how full-featured it is. Yes, it's not as shiny as MSO 2010, but that's not necessarily a bad point. And OMFG, MSO costs HOW MUCH?

    I wonder how much of the code the new branch is going to be able to use? Will Oracle want to hold on the the entire OOo code base and make them start from scratch? Can they even do that?
     
  19. javaman

    javaman May irritate Eyes

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    Do you have a problem with java?? =p

    Personally the problem I have with it was slower than office. I used it from back when it was staroffice and microsofts offering couldn't hold a candle to it in terms of features. Now I use it just because can't be afford/ be annoyed forking out on a "student pack" for every pc I own especially when there's an offering that is just as good for free. After all I typing reports not producing a magazine on it! Not to mention it also has a pdf creator built in which is handy.
     
  20. Er-El

    Er-El Minimodder

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    Yes, it's a terrible programming language. I would rather people supported Mono or something, because it supports many different languages and C# is much better.
     
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