I think Chris nailed it and said what I wanted to say. That not only it's better code ( I've run it now on Linux, Windows and OS/X and can see the slight improvements also ) but better licensing.
On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 1:36 PM, Chris Knadle <[email protected]>wrote: > On Tuesday 25 January 2011 11:34, Joseph Apuzzo wrote: > > LibraOffice is free as in beer (aka Libra) and Open as it allows the > > contributions of the community to be accepted without corporate oversight > > of Oracle. > > The reason why OpenOffice is not progressing is mainly do to the fact > that > > Oracle is gate-keeping every new feature. > > There were also several problems concerning submissions to Sun before that > -- > submissions had to be dual-licensed to include CDDL (IIRC), copyrights had > to > be attributed to Sun, and from what I've read there were some problems > concerning the forums too. Forking OpenOffice had been desired long before > the Oracle takeover, so I consider the fork mostly a good thing. > > I've been running LibreOffice for a while now (it's been in the Debian > Unstable tree almost since it was first available), and even with the first > Betas I found bug fixes and other improvements over OpenOffice. They've > incorporated the OGo patches into LibreOffice, for instance. There are no > downsides to the switch from the user point of view. > > From my point of view there are realistically these reasons to use > LibreOffice > rather than OpenOffice -- in order of importance: > > 1. New features that OpenOffice doesn't and won't have > 2. Code licensing improvement (GPLv3) > 3. Freedom from the umbrella of a for-profit corporation that previously > controlled submissions -- i.e. peace of mind > 4. You don't have to see the Oracle logo > > All that said, I still take my hat off to Sun for buying StarOffice and > creating OpenOffice from it in the first place, as well as all of the > authors > and contributors since. It was both a good business strategy as well as a > huge win in the long term in the free open source software space, and > solved > a problem of missing a decent office suite for Gnu/Linux. There were > several > attempts prior to OpenOffice mind you, most of which were/are proprietary > and > usually sub-par as well. > > -- > -- Chris > > Chris Knadle > [email protected] > _______________________________________________ > Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org > http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug > > Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium > Feb 2 - Zimbra > Mar 2 - MHVLUG 8th Anniversary - Show and Tell > Apr 6 - Introduction to IPv6 >
_______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium Feb 2 - Zimbra Mar 2 - MHVLUG 8th Anniversary - Show and Tell Apr 6 - Introduction to IPv6
