Hagar Delest wrote:...
Just remember that if you contribute to AOO, your code can be used in LibO. The opposite is not possible.
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This may be the most important reason to choose the Apache development camp over Libre.
As I gathered, the main reason why developers moved away when OOo became AOO was the procedures Apache has established for their developer community. The devs were bothered by the red tape, and wanted freedom for their creativity. This is also reflected in the "Libre" part of the name, and the more "aggressive" development strategy of LO.
There is also a choice made for storage format, which may be important to you. In brief:
ODF is an ISO standard for storing office-type documents as files in a computer system. MS Office supports this format, but will warn you when opening ODF files created by non-MS software.
ODF extended is a "standard" which reflects the proposed and published developments of the ODF standard. AOO and LO both use "extended" as the default. (It is not clear to me whether "LO extended" is the same as "AOO extended", but I have lived well under the assumptions that they are the same.)
Microsoft went from their proprietary doc/xls/ppt/etc. file formats to the published OOXML format around the same time when ODF was approved by ISO.
OOXML (strict) is currently an ISO standard for storing office-type documents as files in a computer system, approved by ISO's "fast-track process" (rephrased "sidetrack process" by some people, for good reason) some months after ODF was approved.
OOXML (transitional) is a proposed ISO standard for storing office-type documents as files in a computer system. It is approved by ISO as a transitional solution for Microsoft, to allow support for existing functionality in Office software, but not as a general format for Office documents.
AOO can open some OOXML files, but will not save to this format. LO will open and save OOXML files. I do not know, for either title, whether this support is limited to the "strict" spec or also extends into "transitional" territory.
By default, MS Office will use the transitional "standard", and there have been cases (and I am sure that more will follow) of Microsoft adding new features to their software before the spec for those features are published. (Hence the quote marks around "standard" in this sentence.) The politics inherent in the distinction between "Strict" and "Transitional" will elude the typical user, and as it seems, also the typical developer (who will of course understand the technical distinction). So, people in general will want to use the OOXML transitional, because "everyone does". This opens LibreOffice to the EEE strategy (Embrace, Extend, Exterminate). You expect to work with the same formats as in MS Office, and are often met with situations where you can't. LibreOffice may grow a reputation as a "poor man's Office suite" from this, even though it has a complete toolset, because it can't handle the MS elements created with unpublished extensions.
With AOO you make a more restrictive choice, but also one which is less vulnerable to EEE. You are more conscious about the MS formats being "foreign", and (more or less) force yourself to work mainly in the ODF realm.