LibreOffice Rethinks the Office Suite

[ Thanks to James
Maguire for this link. ]

“LibreOffice only forked from OpenOffice.org six weeks
ago. Already, however, news about its future directions is starting
to trickle out. The details are sometimes sketchy, but they suggest
that LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org could diverge more quickly than
most observers imagined.

“Initially, The Document Foundation (TDF), which oversees
LibreOffice development, announced a general set of principles in
The Next Decade Manifesto, a name that refers to the fact that
OpenOffice.org recently celebrated its tenth anniversary. This
manifesto promises that TDF will support free software and open
standards and work methods, as well as other causes, such as the
preservation of endangered languages. To make matters clearer, the
manifesto also states what TDF rejects, including monopolies and
proprietary formats. The manifesto also promises open,
peer-reviewed development.

“These declarations are promising, so far as they go. They try
to distinguish TDF not only from Microsoft Office, its main
proprietary format, but also from Oracle Corporation, the current
owners of OpenOffice.org, which many people believe lacks
dedication to free software practices. However, the declarations
are too high-level to give much indication of what directions
LibreOffice might be heading.”

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