The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #142281   Message #3278616
Posted By: JohnInKansas
22-Dec-11 - 06:21 PM
Thread Name: Tech: OpenOffice
Subject: Tech: OpenOffice
A recent e-newsletter gave a link to a survey by eWeek of "Stupid things that happened in 2012."

While the link is to a "slide show" – PowerPoint style, and I usually refuse to look at anything in that format since Power Point is only intended for the mentally impaired and/or by hopelessly downtrodden office serfs, my resolve was softened perhaps by the thought that perhaps a presentation on STUPIDITY requires a STUPID MEDIUM **.

The third slide in the pitch does make a comment that might be of interest to Open Office users:

Oracle's stewardship of the OpenOffice.org project turned into a clustered mess this year, as defectors released a competing, and arguably better, version of the productivity suite. The Document Foundation had set itself up in late 2010 as an organization truly committed to an open-source suite, in contrast to Oracle's treatment of products it had acquired as a result of its purchase of Sun Microsystems earlier that year. The foundation released the LibreOffice suite in January to relatively positive reviews. By mid-year, Oracle's lack of interest in OpenOffice.org was painfully evident and the company donated the suite to the Apache Software Foundation, where it seems to be going nowhere, having stalled at the 3.3 release while LibreOffice continues to evolve and grow.

The next slide (#4) has some cute comments on Mac progress, that might be of interest to some, and you're welcome to flip through the rest of them if you have nothing better to do. Most of the rest relate more to "networking" or industrial strength developments than to individual user concerns.

The thought here is that we do have a number of people using OpenOffice, and some might be interested in comparing LibreOffice. At the least, if OpenOffice support is degenerating, the need for an option might become more important in the (near?) future.

** Slide shows were invented by managers who can't direct their staff to do useful work. Preparation keeps the staff busy making "something pretty," without the necessity of having a staff with any real skills; and the focus of attention during presentation prevents the other participants from noticing that the boss is taking a nap while (pretending to be) giving the impression that he's interested in what the staff is doing. No useful information is ever conveyed by such presentations. Power Point IS BANNED in most productive companies.

John