I have heard just lately that LibreOffice will halt any further development. I don’t believe that, but could somebody please confirm that LO is “lively and kicking”. I have been using LO for decades (OO before that) and would miss it terribly…
Thanks
H. Stoellinger
From Radio Eriwan?
The LibreOffice is not a person, is not a company. It can not DO anything. The LO is an office suite, it is a free PRODUCT.
The Document Fundation, or the developer teams of the LO (there are many of such teams) can DO some similar things.
The LO is a community project. If one person or team ends own job, an another will/can continue it.
No, from somebody who uses M$ and its office suite. I have been happy with LO ever since it forked, and before…
Let’s guess he/she never learned the difference between OpenOffice and LibreOffice. Even OpenOffice is maintained, but progress is really slow…
I suppose so. I have been using OO/LO more or less since IBM decided to go for Lotus instead of StarOffice. One has to be careful with rumors these days, however
Where did you hear this?
During visit to a photographer who makes passport photos, using M$ Windows, special photo editing sw. and - of course - M$-Office. I have been using OO/LO/StarOffice for decades and simply want to be confident about putting "all my eggs in the Open g-basket.
Well, then consider that the “basket” is the extent of support for the storage format (aka file type) you choose for your documents. If you continue using LibreOffice/OpenOffice, you will (by default) be saving to an open format, odf, which any Office suite can freely and reliably provide support for. These suites will always use the conventions of the published specification. Microsoft Office also supports the odf format.
It may seem that Microsoft Office also does this with the ooxml format, and LibreOffice supports that format. However, ooxml comes in two flavors, “Strict” and “Transitional”. AFAIK, Microsoft Office still uses transitional by default, and extends this format without any warning published. The support in LibreOffice is largely towards strict ooxml.
If that is so, then using default Microsoft Office setup corresponds to “all eggs in one basket”, so if Microsoft fails (not likely) you risk losing some. Changing MS to use “strict ooxml” or odf means that the risk is mitigated, as is also the case if you continue using LO/OO.
I may be wrong about the current state of affairs. It has been a while since I last ventured to the “deep end” of office file formats.
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Well, thanks for your elaborate answer. I am an old, retired IBM systems engineer. For this reason I know from intensive experience how firms like M$, Apple, Google and (formerly) IBM try to lock everybody into their own, private architectures, or extensions to open architectures. When I retired years ago I went all the way with regard to OpenSource.
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According to OpenDocument - Wikipedia, Microsoft 2021 now supports ISO/IEC 26300 – Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) version 1.3 although I don’t know if this is verified outside Microsoft documentation.
Regardless, your documents are safe, having many baskets to carry your eggs.
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