Re: OpenOffice vs LibreOffice Questions
2011/6/29 John W Foster <jfoster81747@verizon.net>:
> 1. Why is Debian switching to LibreOffice, per the posting I saw a few
> days ago?
Because the community has switched to LibreOffice.
> 2. Is OpenOffice still going to be supported?
Perhaps by Oracle, the Apache foundation, IBM or whomever may be
interestested, not by Debian, unless some maintainer decides it is worth his
while.
> 3. What makes LibreOffice better than OpenOffice?
Community, which translates into development, support and bug fixing critical
mass.
For now, this holds true, with LibreOffice developing faster, deeper
and better than OpenOffice.org since Oracle, after Sun, declined to fulfill
their promise of involving the community in the development of OpenOffice.org,
and furthermore declined to get involved in the community aroung the Document
foundation and LibreOffice.
In other words, the .org in OpenOffice is a sham, and has been exposed
as such by the Document foundation and LibreOffice.
I would add that copyleft also makes LibreOffice better, but that is
at least slightly more controversial.
> Now I'm concerned that a
> large body of work covering several years will have to be 'ported' to a
> new format & that I will have to learn a lot of new stuff.
No, indeed LibreOffice inherits the same compatibility and data formats as
OpenOffice.org does, and the community which defined the ODF is behind
LibreOffice today, not OpenOffice.org. Furthermore, the licensing model
behind both projects ensure it is easier for LibreOffice to follow
developments from OpenOffice.org than the reverse.
> Any rational comments are appreciated.
I hope I was rational, and clear, enough.
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