OpenOffice vs LibreOffice - any preferences?

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52midnight · Post by **52midnight** » Tue Jul 07, 2015 10:23 pm

Some may remember the kerfuffle a while back when the OOo project was taken over by commercial interests, resulting in the mass defection of project staff and setting up of the LibreOffice fork. The Evil Swindler responsible eventually gave it away, but we're now left with a duplicate project.

Does Gentoo specifically, or anyone reading this, have any preferences or policies to differentiate the two?

Cyker · Post by **Cyker** » Tue Jul 07, 2015 10:56 pm

LibreOffice will usually be better; They can steal code from OpenOffice but, due to the differences in licensing, OpenOffice can't steal code from LibreOffice.

That said I am currently using OpenOffice because LibreOffice triggers a ridiculous and terrifyingly large dependency cascade on my system.

OpenOffice OTOH just emerged with no stupid dependencies, so it won by default.

52midnight · Post by **52midnight** » Tue Jul 07, 2015 11:06 pm

Very interesting, and many thanks for the dependencies warning. I notice that OO is now Apache OO, that being both the licence and the support site, I suppose. Given OO's disadvantage, it might make them try a bit harder, so the balance may change.

miket · Post by **miket** » Wed Jul 08, 2015 2:53 am

52midnight wrote:Some may remember the kerfuffle a while back when the OOo project was taken over by commercial interests

Ah, when it became OOOo.

Actually, I was pulling for Go-oo when it came out. That's when I switched from OOo. Going over to LibreOffice after that was the natural switch. Yes, it does take a lot to build, but then it does a lot when I might want it.

I started with the code way back when it was StarOffice on OS/2. It was one of the fancy applications bundled with eComStation.

The thing is that it's a big boat to steer. What was true back when I had StarOffice is true today with OpenOffice: I run it when I want its big features. For day to day word processing or other office things, I prefer tools that are much lighter.

52midnight · Post by **52midnight** » Wed Jul 08, 2015 3:06 am

> I started with the code way back when it was StarOffice on OS/2.

Now THAT brings back memories. Thought StarOffice was great back when.

BTW, there are binary packages for both OOo and libreOffice to save compiling them for anyone interested.

Roman_Gruber · Post by **Roman_Gruber** » Wed Jul 08, 2015 6:41 am

for some reason i used libreoffice and I sticked to that.
It seemed that openoffice turned evil or like redhat with their systemd in comparision.

just checked woohoo, gentoo still has openoffice as binary in tree.

I just want an open source software which can create pdf from my text files and spreadsheets.
I do not care much for the underlying piece, but it should be something which lasts longer.

Microsoft had the issues that intentions never were right from office 97 to newer. Regardless using microsoft or other software.

Libreoffice / openoffice / staroffice never failed me in this regard. And yes i used staroffice 5.0 in the old days. Basically all the same junk just renamed and different owners.

I even certified microsoft office user. Libreoffice lacks some mayor functions but who cares. I hardly need those but I saw the differences after I passed my certification a few years back.

The Doctor · Post by **The Doctor** » Wed Jul 08, 2015 6:55 am

After the dust settled it seems most people migrated to LibreOffice, so it seems to be a good place to go if you want the bugs taken care of quickly.

Post by **asturm** » Wed Jul 08, 2015 4:45 pm

Cyker wrote:That said I am currently using OpenOffice because LibreOffice triggers a ridiculous and terrifyingly large dependency cascade on my system.

LibreOffice by now is much more modularised than OpenOffice. The dependencies are there as well, you just won't see them as they come bundled within OpenOffice.

The question of the OP is moot imo; development of OpenOffice has pretty much ceased.

52midnight · Post by **52midnight** » Wed Jul 08, 2015 11:21 pm

> It seemed that openoffice turned evil

It was taken over for a time by one of the American billionaires, barely escaped with its life, and has since been living in fear, or so I'm told.

> development of OpenOffice has pretty much ceased.

Hmm, well that's interesting.

> I just want an open source software which can create pdf from my text files and spreadsheets.

Check out pandoc.org. The design philosophy looks sound, it's commandline and highly modular. It needs TeX to make PDFs, one reason for my (now confirmed) approach of using OOo/LO for editing and export into PDF.

nofortier · Post by **nofortier** » Sun Jul 19, 2015 4:51 pm

I've also heard that OS development has stopped. LibreOffice does everything I need.

Post by **asturm** » Mon Aug 17, 2015 8:44 pm

An Open Letter to Apache Foundation and Apache OpenOffice Team

bandreabis · Post by **bandreabis** » Mon Aug 31, 2015 9:45 pm

Latest Libreoffice update is August 2014, Openoffice's update is October 2014.

jonathan183 · Post by **jonathan183** » Mon Aug 31, 2015 11:26 pm

I switched to Libreoffice quite a while ago ... having options is nice

tbh I had not thought about OpenOffice again until I looked at this thread.
As the PC I got has a bit more grunt I switched to compiling Libreoffice, compiling Openoffice does not look to be an option using the portage tree at the moment.

bandreabis · Post by **bandreabis** » Tue Sep 01, 2015 5:45 am

Libreoffice ebuild is today at 5.0.1.2 version. It's a long long compiling.
But libreoffice-bin is at the 4.4.4.3 version.

Post by **John R. Graham** » Tue Sep 01, 2015 4:37 pm

That's not the whole story. While it's true that libreoffice testing is ahead of libreoffice-bin, that's just because libreoffice-bin tracks stable libreoffice. Both stable libreoffice and (stable) libreoffice-bin are at 4.4.4.3.

- John

Roman_Gruber · Post by **Roman_Gruber** » Tue Sep 01, 2015 4:40 pm

there was recently an article about openoffice and they just should give up.

they lack developers and manpower in short, and have had hardly any updates in a year. i am sure you will find the correlated article on slashdot or wherever i have read it ...

bandreabis · Post by **bandreabis** » Tue Sep 01, 2015 4:42 pm

Substitute stable with still and I agree.

WWWW · Post by **WWWW** » Tue Sep 08, 2015 10:00 am

Main development switched to LibreOffice for a while now.

LibreOffice is backed and funded by important nation states, things like GPU acceleration in Calc, and many other innovations are developed in LibreOffice.

I would be surprise if Larry Ellison's OracleOffice isn't surviving only by name now and keeping up by rsync'n off LibreOffice repos.

On the comment above which has the most recent update, is could be normal that OracleOffice could have the most up to date changes since Larry Ellison might be waiting for LibreOffice release, then he waits a couple of months and does a sneaky rsync to claim his suite is more up to date. Classic tactic from marketing 101.

cheers!

MerlinYoda · Post by **MerlinYoda** » Thu Sep 10, 2015 12:20 am

I'm going to give Adobe OpenOffice a chance despite LibreOffice being the more active project in part because of my preference for more permissively licensed projects. However, if LibreOffice adds enough functionality and document compatibility such that the contrast between it and Adobe OpenOffice is stark enough, I'll switch to it.

Now, I had a nice long post about how the it'd be nice to have the AOO and LO communities play nice together so that they could collaborate on a common "base" while still being able to go their own directions as far as development. I also noted how and why it likely wasn't going to happen any time soon and how regrettable it was as the open source community would be better off to have both projects to be thriving and vibrant if only to have the option of two different development and release philosophies. Unfortunately, once I hit "submit" I got prompted for a login and, after logging in, saw my nice long post (that I'd spent some time on writing) had disappeared entirely. Unfortunately I had not copied my work to the clipboard like I so often do with long posts (as I have been burned like this in the past before on forums and comment sections) and I'm not about to spend my time retyping my post that took so long to type in the first place (especially considering some of it was more stream-of-consciousness and I can't really reproduce that) so those words of mine will have to remain relegated to /dev/null where they apparently got sent.

I really hope the AOO and the LO teams can get eventually together and resolve whatever petty differences are keeping them from collaborating, but unfortunately, for now, it seems like things have devolved into an "us vs. them" mentality to the point that they both figuratively cannot see beyond their own noses.

WWWW · Post by **WWWW** » Fri Sep 11, 2015 10:45 am

MerlinYoda wrote:II really hope the AOO and the LO teams can get eventually together and resolve whatever petty differences are keeping them from collaborating, but unfortunately, for now, it seems like things have devolved into an "us vs. them" mentality to the point that they both figuratively cannot see beyond their own noses.

I don't think Larry Ellison's OracleOffice as any community left, it's close to the point of no return.

MerlinYoda · Post by **MerlinYoda** » Fri Sep 11, 2015 3:32 pm

WWWW wrote:
MerlinYoda wrote:II really hope the AOO and the LO teams can get eventually together and resolve whatever petty differences are keeping them from collaborating, but unfortunately, for now, it seems like things have devolved into an "us vs. them" mentality to the point that they both figuratively cannot see beyond their own noses.
I don't think Larry Ellison's OracleOffice as any community left, it's close to the point of no return.

But it's not in Oracle's hand's anymore, it's under Apache's stewardship (and, from what I've read so far, Apache's first order of business was to do a fair bit of cleanup on the codebase provided to them so it's not quite the same animal as what it was under Oracle). What apparently had mainly slowed development for Apache was IBM pulling the developers they had provided for OpenOffice. Still, you'd expect any "bad blood" that the LibreOffice crew had towards OpenOffice because Oracle had basically taken pushed away anyone from their group that had wanted to work on it would be gone once the OO project was handed off to Apache such that the LibreOffice crew could come back into the fold and everyone could work on OpenOffice again (which, let's face it, still has name recognition due to it's long history) ... but apparently not.

Of course, then again, maybe many of which went on to develop LibreOffice were really just wanting to fork the project all along to do what they saw fit with the code (because they didn't like the process under OpenOffice even when it was under Sun) and, now that they actually have, they don't want really want to go back to collaborating with anyone else in the way they had been before (although, they don't seem to mind continuing to take advantage of a sort of one-way collaboration due to AOO's much more permissive licensing to include fixes and features from it into LO but not allowing those fixes to be shared back because of their licensing choices for LibreOffice).

In the longer piece I was going to write before it got shunted off to /dev/null, I wondered if at least part of the reason for them not combining forces again was a bit ideological with respect to licensing and that people that work on the LibreOffice (or at least the people involved in project's governance), don't want to have any of their work released under as permissive a license as the Apache Public License 2.0 is and are insistent on releasing under a "copyleft" license of some sort. Granted, the LGPL and/or the Mozilla public license are certainly certain "weaker" copyleft licenses than the GPL is, but neither could be classified as the sort of permissive license that the APL 2.0 is. Now, there could be something set up between The Document Foundation and Apache to distribute software source between themselves under a more permissive license like the APL 2.0 while continuing to distribute LibreOffice under the LGPL/MPL but, as things are, I don't see that happening in the short term.

Ant P. · Post by **Ant P.** » Mon Sep 14, 2015 8:31 pm

The reason they've diverged as far apart as they are now is because Apache's fork is under the stewardship of someone who makes OTW here look civil and polite in comparison.

No names mentioned, but if you want to see how hostile/deranged AOO is toward the majority of former OO.o devs, just go skimming through the comments section on anything LibreOffice-related on LWN more than a few months old.

OpenOffice vs LibreOffice - any preferences?

OpenOffice vs LibreOffice - any preferences?

Re: OpenOffice vs LibreOffice - any preferences?