Once upon a time OpenOffice, or Ooo (OpenOffice.Org) as it became known was the leader in open source office productivity software.\u00a0 I loved it.\u00a0 It was loved.<\/p>\n
Then one day a cunning suitor, Oracle, offered to give gold to the very attractive, but not rich, Ooo.\u00a0 Ooo agreed to become part of Oracle.\u00a0 But Oracle did not look after Ooo.<\/p>\n
At first I was upset because when I opened Ooo, a message came up saying that it was an Oracle product.\u00a0 As far as I was concerned it wasn’t.\u00a0 Oracke did not have the spirit of Ooo.\u00a0 I looked to see if I could find a part of Ooo which didn’t have Oracle.\u00a0 I couldn’t.\u00a0 I was stuck.\u00a0 So, as usual, I persevered and waited.<\/p>\n
Then one day, I saw that something called LibreOffice was available and it was supposed to be like Ooo.\u00a0 So I started using LibreOffice instead.\u00a0 Ahhhhh!\u00a0 Much better.<\/p>\n
Ooo is dying because Oracle didn’t look after it.\u00a0 Fortunately for us all, the developers of Ooo recreated LibreOffice for us.<\/p>\n
I suppose Oracle made some bad decisions. Not about money. but about people and values.<\/p>\n
The open tech revolution is a natural, inevitable evolution.\u00a0 Behemoths are incompatible with it.\u00a0 They can not adapt fast enough.\u00a0 They are bloated.<\/p>\n
The story was revealed to me by by Sam Glover on April 27, 2011 under the heading OpenOffice.org is Dead; Long Live LibreOffice!<\/a> at Lawyerist.com<\/a>. Copied below.<\/p>\n Enjoy LibreOffice<\/a>!<\/p>\n OpenOffice.org is Dead; Long Live LibreOffice!<\/strong><\/p>\n Oracle acquired the free, open-source office suite OpenOffice.org when it bought Sun. After that, it apparently completely failed to engage the community of OOo developers, who \u201cforked\u201d the project and started LibreOffice<\/a>. For a while, the two existed side-by-side, but a parade of major companies, including Red Hat, Novell, Google, and Canonical, lined up to support LibreOffice. So Oracle\u2019s announcement just the other day was, perhaps, inevitable. OpenOffice.org is dead.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n OOo users can breathe a collective sigh of meh, though, since LibreOffice is a perfectly acceptable alternative with big commercial supporters. I\u2019ve already removed OOo from my system and switched to LibreOffice without a hitch.<\/em><\/p>\n This is not an example of why you should not use open source software. It is just the opposite. It is an example of why I use open source software whenever I can.<\/em><\/p>\n If Microsoft were to discontinue Word tomorrow, there would be no non-profit foundation that would keep the software alive. More likely, Microsoft would sue into oblivion anyone who tried to restore usefulness to your hard drive full of Word files. But when an enormous open source project like OpenOffice.org starts to flail, it nearly always gets picked up, preserved, and moved on.<\/em><\/p>\n (Sure, Microsoft is unlikely to discontinue Office in the near future, but in ten years, when cloud alternatives are stronger? Maybe.)<\/em><\/p>\n Whether you are using OpenOffice.org or Microsoft Office, consider switching to LibreOffice. Cost savings are part of the reason, but so is document longevity. I have also been been impressed with how quickly the LibreOffice developers are moving it forward. While OpenOffice.org was starting to feel a bit long in the tooth compared to Microsoft Office, it won\u2019t be long before LibreOffice is innovating out ahead of Microsoft.<\/em><\/p>\n LibreOffice is perfectly usable for a law practice. I used OpenOffice.org in a litigation-intensive practice for over six years, with no problems of compatibility (whether proposed orders to the court or shared 26(f) report drafts with opposing counsel). I see no reason why moving to LibreOffice will cause any problems. It\u2019s also just as easy to create beautiful documents with LibreOffice as with Microsoft Office.<\/em><\/p>\n However, if you have a good reason to stick with Microsoft Office, don\u2019t feel compelled to switch. PowerPoint is far better than Impress, for example. And any macros you have built for Office will need to be re-created in LibreOffice. There is a cost to switching, even if the software is free. It just may be worth it, anyway.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Once upon a time OpenOffice, or Ooo (OpenOffice.Org) as it became known was the leader in open source office productivity software.\u00a0 I loved it.\u00a0 It was loved. Then one day a cunning suitor, Oracle, offered to give gold to the very attractive, but not rich, Ooo.\u00a0 Ooo agreed to become part of Oracle.\u00a0 But Oracle …One more reason to love open source software<\/em><\/h3>\n
Make the switch to LibreOffice<\/em><\/h3>\n
Continue reading LibreOffice, OpenOffice and Oracle<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ict","category-business-entrepreneurship-venturecapital"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4hwcd-od","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1501"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1502,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1501\/revisions\/1502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}