New OpenOffice.org Suite: Adequate, but Uninspiring

“The open-source office-productivity suite appears doomed for
mediocrity.

“The OpenOffice.org suite may be in danger of becoming an
also-ran among office-productivity suites, but not for any lack of
capabilities or features. The 3.3 release of the suite debuted at
the end of January, shortly after the release of its fraternal
twin, LibreOffice 3.3, and is as polished as one might expect in a
set of applications that have been under development in one form or
another for roughly 20 years.

“No, if OpenOffice.org 3.3 fails to gain traction, it will be
because its potential users decline to be dependent on the whims of
Oracle, which assumed the leadership of the project with the
acquisition last year of Sun Microsystems. It didn’t have to be
this way: Had Oracle chosen an uncharacteristically conciliatory
path, the LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org projects would not have
forked in the first place. Instead, three of the leading Linux
distributions (Canonical, Novell and Red Hat) have rallied behind
LibreOffice, leaving Oracle as the only significant supporter of
the OpenOffice.org project.”

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