[Solved] Version 3.4 progress

[kingfisher]

This seemed to warrant a separate topic. Quite a few people have been asking about it in various contexts.

I just spotted this email on the dev list: [RELEASE]: status update for our first RC

Hi,

I would like to inform you about the current status for our RC.

Andrew has updated the NOTICE file and we will rebuild the office now. I have also updated the version number string for the src package. Building, signing and update will take some time. And once the bits are available I will start the voting immediately.

The new revision for building the RC is *1327774*

I will keep you informed.

I hope this posting is not premature. There is a guide here on Apache releases.

[Hagar Delest]

There is a lot of discussion on the mailing list about what is a RC and what it is not...

Personally, I've tried on Ubuntu the version before the build number you give an I got an error message (related to libuno_sal.so.3). There is a topic about that here but since I had never had any problem before, I gave up...

[orangeli]

There is a lot of discussion on the mailing list about what is a RC and what it is not...

That's not a good sign. If they think they can release a sloppy code and keep rolling in beta they are wrong!
As LO is a crappy alternative, I'll switch to WordPerfect Office.

[johnoo]

There is a lot of discussion on the mailing list about what is a RC and what it is not...

That's not a good sign. If they think they can release a sloppy code and keep rolling in beta they are wrong!
As LO is a crappy alternative, I'll switch to WordPerfect Office.

I have been advised to change over to Libre Office, but why is it a "crappy alternative" I now have doubts

[Hagar Delest]

Some will find LibO "crappy", some use it, including in this forum so it's all about personal opinion.
They make quite a lot of versions and they may introduced more bugs as a consequence.
They also tend to make things more MS Office similar, so it may please some and irk others.

So just try it and make your opinion by yourself.
Personally, there are "new features" that are show stoppers for me. And I find that there is too much ideology in that project. So I stick to OOo/AOO.

[acknak]

OOo's release philosophy was that the latest release should be stable: no bugs. This delayed release of many simple changes, waiting for more complex issues to be ironed out before release.

LibO was started to get a faster release schedule, where changes could be released without so much planning and testing--the users would do the testing.

As a result, the latest release of LibO always includes rough, not-well-planned or tested changes. Sometimes these cause confusion--or worse. LibO designates an older release as "stable" where the changes have had more testing and ironing out. So the latest release is not the recommended one for people to actually use. You should only use the most recent release of LibO if you know enough to spot and deal with some problems--i.e. if you are willing to be a beta tester.

[PGAGA]

April 20, 2012

Since 2007 there have been two distinct branches: OpenOffice.org and Go-oo.org, a fork from OOo. Apache OpenOffice and LibreOffice are the direct descendants of these two. LO is primarily built on Go-oo while AOO is a licensing rework of OOo (which in some sense means it is a fork of OOo Prime). What makes these two different is the code base and the corporate sponsors.

LO is restricted to three platforms, Linux, Windows and OS X. The code has been cleaned to remove that of other operating systems and to remove redundancies. This has had the effect of creating both stability with speed and initially instability. True to its Go-oo roots cutting edge additions are included. The significant commercial version is by Novell.

AOO, while supporting the "big three", has retained code support for other platforms. For example, Apache asked Serenity, the commit-er of the OS/2 code, about removing it and it was left. As a result OS/2 snapshots for 3.4 have been released for OS/2. AOO code has been revised to comply with Apache licensing (thus bringing to the AOO/LO divide the debate over Copyleft licensing). As a result the AOO feature set is more conservative - for example, the removal of WordPerfect filters. The main commercial sponsor of AOO is IBM who will replace Lotus Symphony with a branded version of AOO (which unlike Novell's LO, will be free, at least initially).

What the divide means is that there are now two code forks from the early 2007 OOo. While the differences are minor currently, I suspect the release of AOO 4.0 (which I expect within the next twelve months) will create real code divergence.

Phil