OpenOffice, after years of neglect, could shut down

[Logethica]

OpenOffice, after years of neglect, could shut down:
SOURCE: arstechnica.com (ARTICLE DATE: 2 Sep 2016)

OpenOffice, once the premier open source alternative to Microsoft Office, could be shut down because there aren't enough developers to update the office suite. Project leaders are particularly worried about their ability to fix security problems.

An e-mail thread titled, "What would OpenOffice retirement involve?" was started yesterday by Dennis Hamilton, vice president of Apache OpenOffice, a volunteer position that reports to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) board.
"It is my considered opinion that there is no ready supply of developers who have the capacity, capability, and will to supplement the roughly half-dozen volunteers holding the project together," Hamilton wrote.
No decisions have been made yet, but Hamilton noted that "retirement of the project is a serious possibility," as the Apache board "wants to know what the project's considerations are with respect to retirement."..

Few updates and a lingering security hole
Many developers have abandoned OpenOffice to work on LibreOffice, a fork that got its first release in January 2011. While LibreOffice issues frequent updates, OpenOffice's most recent version update was 4.1.2 in October 2015. That was the only OpenOffice release in 2015, and there were only two updates in all of 2014. LibreOffice got 14 version updates in 2015 alone.

In July, OpenOffice issued an advisory about a security vulnerability that had no fix. The problem could let attackers craft denial-of-service attacks and execute arbitrary code. One of the workarounds suggested by the OpenOffice project was to use LibreOffice or Microsoft Office instead. A patch for that problem that can be applied to existing versions of OpenOffice was released in late August, but concerns about fixing future security problems remain.

How a shutdown would proceed
While the board hasn't ordered any specific solution, Hamilton noted that ending the project is one option and described a possible process for retiring OpenOffice. Source code would remain available for anyone interested in using it, but the project would provide no means of committing changes. Installable binaries would be retained in an archive system, but there would be "no further additions." The mechanism for announcing updates to the latest version of OpenOffice would be adjusted to provide "advice to users about investigating still-supported alternatives."..

[To read the full article please visit arstechnica.com]​

 

[SHvFl]

Good. Anything not getting updates for months and has no devs supporting the project should die officially and let other products shine.

 

[antreas]

I just finish downloading LibreOffice to use it for school, i was thinking of downloading OpenOffice but I saw this post.

 

[conceptualclarity]

I guess there's a kind of sad survival of the fittest with software. I set aside OpenOffice a long time ago, too long to remember why, but there was something I just didn't like about it. I ended up doing documents mostly in RTF with Jarte. I've avoided using LibreOffice because it's so heavy it took 5 minutes just to bring it up on my system. Somebody told me portable LibreOffice is lighter. I've been intending to try it.

 

[Sundaram999]

it's a pity(((

 

[jamescv7]

The problem nowadays that a program should link like the UI concept of Microsoft Office.

Look for WPS Office as an example, even though not an open source; people prefer to use that alternative rather engage in piracy, because controls are already easy to visualize because of interface.

 

[Ink]

it's a pity(((

LibreOffice (fork of OO) is actively developed and supported, since 2010.

 

[NekoHr]

The problem nowadays that a program should link like the UI concept of Microsoft Office.

Look for WPS Office as an example, even though not an open source; people prefer to use that alternative rather engage in piracy, because controls are already easy to visualize because of interface.

They don't need to look like MS Office, some of us like different non MS Office UI. Option to choose between standard and ribbon UI would be nice, thou I would still used standard.