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  1. #1
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    Feb 2003
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    Happy Birthday, OpenOffice.org

    (It has been a while since I posted a software-related post on here.)

    Today, OpenOffice.org turns 10. For those not familiar with it, OpenOffice.org (OOo for short) is a free and open source office suite consisting of a word processor, spreadsheet, presentations, database and graphics design software and is available for Windows, Mac, Linux, and a few other operating systems.

    It was started back in 2000 when Sun Microsystems purchased StarOffice and decided to release most of the code as open source so that developers from around the world could help improve it. The website for the project went live on Oct. 13, 2000. Still, it took a year and a half before the first official release.

    (I heard one person say once that Sun Microsystems had a choice, they could purchase licenses of Microsoft Office for all of their Solaris users, or they could buy their own office program, and determined that it was cheaper to buy their own office program. I'm not sure if that is true, but it sounds good.)

    Happy Birthday, OpenOffice.org!

    I've been using OpenOffice.org since around 2004 (I should add that I switched to OpenOffice.org from Corel WordPerfect Office 2000, at home, I've never been a Microsoft Office user). In fact, it was OpenOffice.org, along with other open source programs like Firefox, Thunderbird, GIMP, Gaim (now Pidgin), FileZilla, and others that convinced me it would be worth trying Linux. (All of those programs are available for Linux, so what did I need Windows for?)

    However, OpenOffice.org is dieing. Long live OpenOffice.org.

    Last month, several community developers took the source code and did what in the open source world is referred to as "forking" the software. They took the code and are branching away from OpenOffice.org (which is now controlled by Oracle) and created a new project called LibreOffice, which is controlled by the newly formed Document Foundation.

    Right now, there are very few differences between OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice, but that will probably change quickly. One of the complaints I have heard from developers is that Sun was very particular about what code they put into the program and when, so it was very hard to even get bug fixes submitted. Many developers left the project because of this. Oracle didn't seem to be much better. The Document Foundation is making it as easy as possible for people to submit code changes, so improvements should happen fairly quickly.

    Oracle has said they will try to maintain OpenOffice.org, but with most of the community developers already working on LibreOffice, I don't expect OpenOffice.org to last much longer, but I could be wrong.

    In the meantime, I'm a happy LibreOffice user, just as I was a happy OpenOffice.org user.
    Corfy
    Laugh at life or life will laugh at you.
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  2. #2
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    Oct 2010
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    I am sorry... I am bit late... You know I am a huge fan of open office. The software came to my rescue when I didnt had any office suite. It was really helpful for me. Now as time come, I wish open office a happy belated birthday.

  3. #3
    Join Date
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    LibreOffice officially had their first release yesterday. Despite the fact it is their first, the version number is 3.3, to coincide with OpenOffice.org's version numbers. This is an attempt to make conversion easier (although there was a lot of discussion about starting with version 1.0).

    The software can be downloaded at http://www.libreoffice.org/download, and is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    May 2005
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    wow, had no clue that openoffice is (almost) dead. thanks for that corfy. I sometimes use it, even tho when I write an invoice, I have to use Excel for the compatibility (openoffice doesnt seem to be capable of working with the format I and most of my suppliers/customers use) ... anyway, most of the time I just use WordPad or even Notepad, so office applications were never really useful for me ...
    Me angry! Where´s my food!

    My DVD Collection, My Blu-ray collection

  5. #5
    Join Date
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    And in the interest of full-disclosure, OpenOffice.org version 3.3 was released this morning. It can be downloaded at http://www.openoffice.org.

    But more than a third of the developers of OpenOffice.org has left over the last few months and joined LibreOffice instead, and they've been joined by many more developers who either left OpenOffice.org a long time ago or never joined because it was so hard to become a developer (OpenOffice.org was controlled by Sun, and now by Oracle, both were very particular on who can submit code changes and what those changes can do). Now there are four times more developers for LibreOffice than there are for OpenOffice.org.

    Granted, OpenOffice.org is now controlled by Oracle, and I doubt they will let it die completely any time soon. But if you want to see real improvements, LibreOffice is the office suite to watch.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Feb 2011
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    even I'm late .. Happy Birthday Open Office thanks for the help, you are so useful

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