this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2023
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Is there a reason a few are being developed rather than focussing on one? Are there key differences/use cases for each of them?
LibreOffice vs. OpenOffice vs. OnlyOffice
I remember once reading that one of them (or some other FOSS alternative) was bad for privacy/FOSS, but I can't find that anymore
https://www.pcworld.com/article/423300/why-you-should-ditch-openoffice-and-use-the-free-libreoffice-suite.html
Basically the only commits to OpenOffice now are things a full project lint would catch. There are some security updates here and there. Last I looked it’s basically one dev fixing spacing.
Forkers gonna fork. OnlyOffice seemed like it was going after Google Docs, but with a MSOffice look and feel. The live sharing and editing worked well when I tested it.
Ah I see. So LibreOffice for local stuff, then OnlyOffice for the google docs type of work
Not quite. OnlyOffice has an offline/local suite too. When most people talk about OnlyOffice, they are usually referring to the local suite.
OnlyOffice has better compatibility with MS Office file formats (and a similar UI), so some people prefer it over LO.
The downside is that because the UI is written in HTML5, it's slow and sometimes clunky compared to LO, which is (mostly) a native app. This is especially visible with large spreadsheets - OO takes a long time to render them, whereas in LO they open in a reasonable time.
That makes sense, thank you!
My experience has been that LibreOffice will not correctly render my .csv files when they are above a certain size. Not talking about big data here either like a few thousand rows. For this reason I use OnlyOffice instead.
Strange, I used to deal with very large CSVs and never had an issue with LO. In fact, OO would take ages to load those CSVs and sometimes freeze, if not for that OO would normally be my main office suite.
Not sure if you're thinking of WPS Office (formerly known as Kingsoft Office). It's development is funded by the Chinese government, but although Kingsoft claim that the Linux version is developed by the community, they haven't really published the source code anywhere, so it's considered a high-risk software.
It's bloatware and adware imo.
I see, that might be it!
Why should all the developers suddenly decide to give up their own project and collaborate?
Their goal isn't to take over the entire market, since the software is free and there really isn't a "market" in that sense.
Why did Linus start developing Linux when he could have just contributed to FreeBSD which already existed?
No, it didn't. FreeBSD didn't exist until 1993. 386BSD wasn't until 1992. Linus has said that if a free, unencumbered BSD for PCs existed in 1991, he indeed would not have made Linux.
Well I'm an idiot then.
Lol, https://gondwanaland.com/meta/history/interview.html if you want to read more.
Open Office has been dead for a while now. Libre Office is the only active one. And Only Office for the MS clone with fewer features.