I certainly do not drink all the time. I have to sleep you know - WC Fields
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Open Office ditches Oracle
THE COMMUNITY around the alternative productivity suite Openoffice.org has struck out on its own and set up The Document Foundation.
Originally supported by Sun Microsystems, Openoffice.org has over the past decade grown to become a credible alternative to Microsoft's Office suite of productivity applications. However since Oracle's takeover of Sun, open source projects that had been part of or swallowed up by the firm have been in question. Now the Openoffice community is distancing itself from Oracle by forming The Document Foundation.
In a lengthy statement, the newly formed Foundation outlined the future the Openoffice community. The most notable change might be in naming. The community will be known as The Document Foundation and has offered Oracle an invitation to become a member. In case Oracle doesn't hand over the Openoffice brand, the foundation is proposing to use the name 'Libreoffice'.
The Foundation will initially be led by a steering committee comprised of developers and natural language projects managers. It will coordinate and oversee the development of Libreoffice and invites developers to join and contribute to the project.
A number of firms that support open source projects have voiced support including Novell, Red Hat, Canonical and Google, which have all praised the formation of the foundation. Such support is not surprising, since many Linux distributions include Openoffice by default.
The open source community has been trying to second guess what Oracle will do with projects such as Openoffice and MySQL since its takeover of Sun Microsystems. With Opensolaris biting the dust, worries have grown after Oracle filed a lawsuit against Google for alleged Java patent and copyright infringement in its Android operating system.
It seems that the Openoffice community has pre-empted any move by Oracle by deciding to go it alone. For now the only real cost will be that of building up the brand name of Libreoffice should Oracle decide to hold onto Openoffice. µ
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"Leebroffice"? "Lee-br-uh-office"?
Can they possibly reach an amicable accord on Thunderword?
I am calling on opensource community to start a petition to request the release of OpenOffice.org brand.
I do not think that LibreOffice is a cool name. I think "FreeOffice" is a better. What do you think?
universaloffice.org: "it is no longer "fashionable" to use products from cruel corporations that exist only to oppress other companies and their [own] customers."
tell that to all those apple junkies
How about the:
Suite Spot
Office Suite Spot would sound like the supplies closet.
Am I the only one who think wrestling? Libre sounds like it should belong in a wrestling name like El Loco Libre! or something, I'm sure I've offended a lot of people already :P.
People crying about this, calm down, this isn't a disaster, sure openoffice sounds nice, but whatever you call it doesn't change the fact it's probably the best alternative to Microsoft Office, and it's free, That's what matters, not if you call it Open or El Loco Libre!...
This move by the Document Foundation -- after their greedy blunder of weaponizing Java to extort money from Google and the open source community -- is one of the worst PR disasters that Oracle could bring upon itself. Killing OpenSolaris didn't help, either.
OpenOffice was used and loved the world over; a wonderful and complete office suite, given freely to the world by a benevolent corporation (Sun). It was the hallmark of a "community" of people all over the world working hand-in-hand with an organization to enhance all of their interests (and to stay free of corporate domination by Microsoft and other corporate bullies).
Oracle's corporate greed has cut off any hope of them working with and benefiting from contributions from the open source community. How a business operates, the ethics they demonstrate, all of this matters to "people". Similar to what happened to another product of cruelty -- fur -- in the fashion industry, it is no longer "fashionable" to use products from cruel corporations that exist only to oppress other companies and their customers.
Keep on chugggin', Document Foundation!
A good name as any.
To those who dislike it seeing it as franglais: there are more than 5 bn. people who aren't native English nor French speakers. And we usually don't give a toss.
There are many words that combine multiple languages and nobody notices. Television anyone? [Hint:Greek and Latin], Gigabyte [Greek & English]...
Seriously. You open source people better brace yourselves for the inmminent transformation java and Mysql are going to get through, more now that oracle decided to sue one of the biggest java backers in what I see as a very lousy move.
Not that I'll miss java very much since .net and C# are more of my coup of tea, but i'll miss it a lot.
Too bad oracle is going to break it.
Have to agree with those saying the new name isn't the best choice so hopefully Oracle will play nice and let them keep the original. That said this change could be a good thing or a bad thing and only time will tell. It honestly reminds me of when many of the computer and electronics manufacturers formed the Khronos group back in 2000 for the development and support of open standard media API's.
They should ditch Java too. They won't have to worry about lawsuits and besides, Java sucks! Just about every other update breaks it.
Oracle should play nice and avoid bad karma.
It's better to work with the OO team than piss off everyone that uses it. How you work with others will keep you in business better than greed.
"LiberOffice" roll off the tongue a little easier for English and German speakers, while still being tolerable to romance speakers?
[Read: Does anyone else think using 'libre' in a meeting in any context makes you sound like a douche?]
I am glad their product is better than their proposed name. Really folks, if you can't use OpenOffice find something else.
Libreoffice makes this sound like a bad April Fools joke, conjuring up images of Nacho Libre. I'd suggest Free Office or Freedom Office, but the US Government has kinda ruined that too. Couldn't they find an East Asian word to use? It seems that would work well to avoid a MS stranglehold there.
I am in complete agreement with the previous commenter ben vost, it's a pretty bad name and does indeed sound like franglais in its worse incarnation.
And if they MUST use it, then make it OfficeLibre at least
I really hope that Oracle are willing to concede the name to the Open Document Foundation. LibreOffice sounds like the worst sort of franglais going.