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posted by martyb on Friday August 21 2015, @06:53AM   Printer-friendly
from the fighting-over-office-space dept.

El Reg has published an article that suggests, at least according to one person in the LibreOffice community, that OpenOffice development is essentially moribund and Apache should abandon it.

Christian Schaller, a Red Hat Software Engineering Manager and GNOME developer, wrote an open letter to Apache saying that "the OpenOffice project is all but dead upstream since IBM pulled their developers off the project almost a year ago and has significantly fallen behind feature wise... I hope that now that it is clear that this effort has failed that you would be willing to re-direct people who go to the openoffice.org website to the LibreOffice website instead."

A member of the Apache OpenOffice team was quick to respond: "We think Apache OpenOffice as released has been a huge success," he said. "Most of us don't really like the direction LibreOffice is heading to."

That said, the most recent OpenOffice update, version 4.1.1, was published nearly a year ago, and while the source code repository does show recent activity, it is much less than that for LibreOffice, as a quick browse of GitHub stats will confirm.

Other coverage can be found here.

I use LibreOffice when I'm in Linux and OpenOffice when I'm in MacOS X. Personally, I prefer them both to MS Office, although I do have MS Office on the Mac only because the people I work with don't use anything else. Are there any Soylentils here beside myself who use either one of these free products?


Note by Subsentient: Changed title from "Wither OpenOffice?"

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by mendax on Friday August 21 2015, @07:36AM

    by mendax (2840) on Friday August 21 2015, @07:36AM (#225745)

    It is "wither", you fool. Wither as drying out, dying, becoming decrepit.

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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by wonkey_monkey on Friday August 21 2015, @08:20AM

    by wonkey_monkey (279) on Friday August 21 2015, @08:20AM (#225754) Homepage

    Then replacing it with a synonym should make sense:

    "Dry out OpenOffice?"
    "Shrivel OpenOffice?"
    "Die OpenOffice?"
    "Become decrepit OpenOffice?"

    Still looks kind of nonsense-y to me.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @08:58AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @08:58AM (#225760)

      it's probably an obscure reference to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whither_Canada%3F [wikipedia.org]

      you can turn in your geek-card now

      • (Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Friday August 21 2015, @09:24AM

        by wonkey_monkey (279) on Friday August 21 2015, @09:24AM (#225768) Homepage

        Then it would be spelled with a "wh", wouldn't it?

        It sounds like you think the phrase "Whither [X]?" originated with Monty Python. I think it might predate that by a bit.

        --
        systemd is Roko's Basilisk
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @02:17PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @02:17PM (#225849)

          When I read this, I presumed it was whither -- as for "what is next, what shall replace it -- whatever will happen to Open Office"

          It also can be read as "O Open office, you have withered on the vine, long before your time"

          Or "Die die die open office, I imperatively state that thou shalt wither!"

          Or Orson Wells -- I'll sell no wine before its time!

          (but now I might need to contend with withering criticism for my comments.)

    • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday August 21 2015, @02:16PM

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Friday August 21 2015, @02:16PM (#225848) Journal

      "Wohin OpenOffice?"

      It's much clearer in the original German.

      --
      Washington DC delenda est.
  • (Score: 2) by RedBear on Friday August 21 2015, @09:08AM

    by RedBear (1734) on Friday August 21 2015, @09:08AM (#225763)

    It is "wither", you fool. Wither as drying out, dying, becoming decrepit.

    "Wither OpenOffice?" is a sentence fragment. At best it could mean, "Should I dry out OpenOffice?" But it doesn't clearly mean anything.

    It should be either "Whither OpenOffice?" (if the intent was to ask where is or what has happened to OO) or "OpenOffice Withering?" (if the intent was to say, in newspaper-style shorthand, "Is OpenOffice dying?").

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    • (Score: 2) by sudo rm -rf on Friday August 21 2015, @10:30AM

      by sudo rm -rf (2357) on Friday August 21 2015, @10:30AM (#225777) Journal

      Another option comes to my mind: "Wither OpenOffice!" (imperative). That headline would summarize the intention of the open letter.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by CoolHand on Friday August 21 2015, @12:41PM

        by CoolHand (438) on Friday August 21 2015, @12:41PM (#225807) Journal
        That is my take... they are summarizing the intent of the letter, while, at the same time making a clever play on words of "Whither [x]?".. I think it's brilliant personally..
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    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @10:48AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @10:48AM (#225779)

      It should be either "Whither OpenOffice?" (if the intent was to ask where is or what has happened to OO)

      No. It would be the right word to ask to where (i.e. whither) OpenOffice will be going.

    • (Score: 2) by DECbot on Friday August 21 2015, @02:24PM

      by DECbot (832) on Friday August 21 2015, @02:24PM (#225856) Journal

      [I]f the intent was to say, in newspaper-style shorthand, "Is OpenOffice dying?".

      Nothing is dying until NetCraft confirms it. And then it will flurish

      --
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    • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday August 21 2015, @04:47PM

      by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Friday August 21 2015, @04:47PM (#225925) Homepage Journal

      "Wither OpenOffice?" is a sentence fragment

      No, it isn't. "Wither"=="where is", a verb. Open Office is a noun. Noun+verb=full sentence. "Where is Open Office?" is not a fragment, either.

      whither [thesaurus.com]
      adv. in what direction

      It's one of those words like "whom" and "shall" that one never hears spoken.

      --
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      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @08:53PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @08:53PM (#226021)

        You're mixing up "wither" and "whither".

        Wither != Whither

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @09:37AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @09:37AM (#225770)
  • (Score: 2) by ledow on Friday August 21 2015, @10:49AM

    by ledow (5567) on Friday August 21 2015, @10:49AM (#225780) Homepage

    I hope you're trying to be facetious.

    No, it's whither. "Where is". Like wherefore, and whence, and lots of other "wh-" words that come from old English.

    Whither OpenOffice? Where is it? Where is it up to, and what state is it in?

    If you have never studied Shakespeare, you might be forgiven. But then you also will be quite behind even some of the youngest of schoolchildren, too.

    • (Score: 1) by meustrus on Friday August 21 2015, @01:15PM

      by meustrus (4961) on Friday August 21 2015, @01:15PM (#225821)

      Considering that the final article title is "Die, OpenOffice!", I'd say that it was probably "wither".

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      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @02:45PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @02:45PM (#225872)

        Considering that, as far as I can see, the submitter nowhere took part in this discussion, all we know is that Subsentient interpreted it that way.

      • (Score: 2) by sudo rm -rf on Friday August 21 2015, @04:54PM

        by sudo rm -rf (2357) on Friday August 21 2015, @04:54PM (#225930) Journal

        It's a shame that the original headline was edited, now this discussion thread will wither :)

        • (Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Friday August 21 2015, @05:59PM

          by wonkey_monkey (279) on Friday August 21 2015, @05:59PM (#225959) Homepage

          But whither will it wither too? Oh well. Whether it withers or whether it weathers the withering, we will, uh... nah, I'm done.

          Now they've put the headline in German, and it makes even less sense!

          --
          systemd is Roko's Basilisk
          • (Score: 3, Insightful) by wonkey_monkey on Friday August 21 2015, @06:02PM

            by wonkey_monkey (279) on Friday August 21 2015, @06:02PM (#225960) Homepage

            But whither will it wither too?

            Fuck.

            --
            systemd is Roko's Basilisk
          • (Score: 2) by sudo rm -rf on Friday August 21 2015, @10:27PM

            by sudo rm -rf (2357) on Friday August 21 2015, @10:27PM (#226068) Journal

            I totally agree, in German it should be "Das" OpenOffice or even "Das offene Büro". Quo vadis, librum officium?

    • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday August 22 2015, @01:50AM

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Saturday August 22 2015, @01:50AM (#226117) Journal

      I didn't have any problem with the original title. "Whither, my good man?" = "Whereto, my good man?" As in, "Where do you want to go?" To me it fits well with German constructions that start with "Wohin?" No verb required, because it's understood there's a sense of motion. There are strong Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon influences on Old English, so it doesn't seem strange that the archaic term "whither" could have inherited that similarity with those other Germanic languages. But we'd need a scholar of Old English to weigh in on that.

      --
      Washington DC delenda est.