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Bug 359861 - Deprecate app-office/openoffice and move people to app-office/libreoffice
Summary: Deprecate app-office/openoffice and move people to app-office/libreoffice
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: Gentoo Linux
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Current packages (show other bugs)
Hardware: All Linux
: Normal normal (vote)
Assignee: Gentoo Office Team
URL: http://www.openoffice.org/
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2011-03-21 23:27 UTC by Carter Young
Modified: 2011-08-26 20:04 UTC (History)
4 users (show)

See Also:
Package list:
Runtime testing required: ---


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Description Carter Young 2011-03-21 23:27:47 UTC
Went to http://www.openoffice.org/ to download the windows binary, as I'm doing some development work, and noticed the website has 3.3.0 available for download.  I checked the bugs in the list(there are 70), and noticed no one has filed a stabilization request to turn app-office/openoffice into app-office/libreoffice.  Is it possible to tell us why this has not been done yet?  If the OO Gentoo Team has a valid argument, I'll listen, but I contend some of these 70 bugs might can be closed if the user community knew that they had merged.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Went to ttp://www.openoffice.org/ on XP
2. Saw 3.3.0 download button
3. Downloaded
4. Went to http://www.libreoffice.org/
5. Downloaded
Actual Results:  
Checked http://packages.gentoo.org/package/app-office/openoffice and saw only 1 stable version.  BTW, development at http://go-oo.org/ has merged with http://www.documentfoundation.org/.  Checked at http://packages.gentoo.org/package/app-office/libreoffice and saw a package.  Please add a warning to the open-office ebuild encouraging users to migrate.

Expected Results:  
* Please be aware that you can safely unmerge
* this package in favor of app-office/libreoffice
* This package will soon be removed by the treecleaners

I am emailing the tree cleaner team to see what their take is also.  Will let everyone know
Comment 1 Carter Young 2011-03-21 23:58:42 UTC
Sent Email to openoffice@gentoo.org and treecleaner@gentoo.org offering case for removal and CC'd them on this bug.  If possible could both groups comment here?
Comment 2 Markos Chandras (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2011-03-22 00:21:10 UTC
I dont even understand your argument. Are you requesting a version bump of openoffice or the complete removal? What does it bother you so much?
Comment 3 Carter Young 2011-03-22 00:54:57 UTC
(In reply to comment #2)
> I dont even understand your argument. Are you requesting a version bump of
> openoffice or the complete removal? What does it bother you so much?

I'm asking for the complete removal in favor of app-office/libreoffice.

It bothers me because we have two identical packages, one of which will never be updated, as the homepage for our app-office/openoffice states that they have merged.  I dont have an issue keeping both packages(for purists), but at least a new USE flag should do the trick, i.e.:

USE="oracle" emerge openoffice should pull in sources at:
http://download.openoffice.org/other.html#tested-sdk

USE="libre" emerge openoffice should pull in sources at:
http://download.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/src/

My contention is this:
If the original ebuild maintainers for openoffice preferred to use the patches at http://www.go-oo.org/ and go-oo has now merged efforts with libre, then why not drop the USE="oracle" variant??  As support for my argument, see http://packages.gentoo.org/package/app-office/openoffice in which the Homepage link points at the  LibreOffice variant.
Comment 4 Markos Chandras (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2011-03-22 00:58:29 UTC
This has nothing to do with treecleaners. Let openoffice team decide what to do
Comment 5 Carter Young 2011-03-22 01:39:23 UTC
(In reply to comment #4)
> This has nothing to do with treecleaners. Let openoffice team decide what to do

My apologies, i added treecleaners in case it was decided that the oracle based package should be removed.
Comment 6 Andreas Proschofsky (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2011-03-22 07:55:51 UTC
Before I get to the actual details here: Filing a bug is enough, we get notified about that. There's really no need to send extra emails ;-)

Having cleared that up, let's get to the corner stones of the current plan (I've already communicated that in several other bugs, but I guess it makes sense to have this in a central place):

*) We are going to deprecate app-office/openoffice and ask users to move to app-office/libreoffice

*) That's because app-office/libreoffice really is the contender to the current app-office/openoffice in the tree, we didn't have a vanilla OOo build for years.

*) app-office/openoffice-bin is going to stay and deliver a vanilla OOo directly from the Oracle binaries for those who want / need it.

And yes: I'll be adding a warning to app-office/openoffice soon that the package is deprecated and also yes afterwards the plan is to hard mask the package and remove it from the tree.

Why hasn't this been done earlier? Simple: Before we can tell anyone to move over to app-office/libreoffice we actually had to stabilize it, otherwise users would be getting a bogus advice ;-)

Stabilization has just finished now (on x86 and amd64), so we are now good in this respect, what is still missing is keywording libreoffice for ppc and sparc.
Comment 7 Martin Rapavý 2011-04-19 01:52:25 UTC
Please, dear comrades, let us not rush it, it may as well be that libreoffice may soon die and openoffice will take over, as I wholeheartedly wish:
http://cor4office.blogspot.com/2011/04/oracle-handing-openofficeorg-over-to.html
Comment 8 Carter Young 2011-04-19 05:25:43 UTC
(In reply to comment #7)
> Please, dear comrades, let us not rush it, it may as well be that libreoffice
> may soon die and openoffice will take over, as I wholeheartedly wish:
> http://cor4office.blogspot.com/2011/04/oracle-handing-openofficeorg-over-to.html

Whilst I'm happy Oracle may be giving the project back, the fact remains that we have been unable to build vanilla openoffice from scratch.  See Comment 6.  The issue is not whether LibreOffice will die.  It's that we should use LibreOffice until Oracle releases their proprietary build tools and source code.
Comment 9 Andreas Proschofsky (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2011-04-19 07:29:56 UTC
(In reply to comment #7)
> Please, dear comrades, let us not rush it, it may as well be that libreoffice
> may soon die and openoffice will take over, as I wholeheartedly wish:
> http://cor4office.blogspot.com/2011/04/oracle-handing-openofficeorg-over-to.html

1) You can be pretty sure that we are well informed about the ongoings around Oracle

2) In reality it would be the other way around, OpenOffice.org dies and LibreOffice (as a project) prevails. As it looks now OOo is basically dead in the water. (if you read the Oracle announcement carefully, it informs you that they are dropping out of any active OOo development, and as they are the only ones working on it...)

3) The only uncertainty atm is if LibreOffice will change its name back to OOo (which would be relevant for us), but as long as Oracle is not donating the name to the Document Foundation this won't happen.
Comment 10 Martin Rapavý 2011-04-19 07:34:20 UTC
Well, I was under the impression that the question was whether to remove app-office/openoffice from the main portage tree now, or not; even particular methods had been discussed (and the "gory details" suggested that someone was seriously preparing for that), so I thought that this would most likely be needless with respect to the latest unfolding of events.
Of course, I did not mean the building of vanilla OpenOffice at all; rather, I meant the simple rebranding of the fork that the Document Foundation is working on, but, obviously, that rebranding would also affect the package name, so we would have to go through the renaming yet again. And so I thought that rushing it would therefore be silly.
Comment 11 Andreas Proschofsky (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2011-04-19 07:41:28 UTC
(In reply to comment #10)
> Well, I was under the impression that the question was whether to remove
> app-office/openoffice from the main portage tree now, or not; even particular
> methods had been discussed (and the "gory details" suggested that someone was
> seriously preparing for that), so I thought that this would most likely be
> needless with respect to the latest unfolding of events.
> Of course, I did not mean the building of vanilla OpenOffice at all; rather, I
> meant the simple rebranding of the fork that the Document Foundation is working
> on, but, obviously, that rebranding would also affect the package name, so we
> would have to go through the renaming yet again. And so I thought that rushing
> it would therefore be silly.

You are totally right about this one, and until the dust settles I plan to hold back on masking OOo. We definitely don't want to burden such a move twice on our users...

Besides that, let me just point out again: A rebranding of LibreOffice to OOo depends on Oracle donating the name (which they currently haven't signaled to be willing to do)
Comment 12 Martin Rapavý 2011-04-19 07:47:30 UTC
(In reply to comment #9)
> 3) The only uncertainty atm is if LibreOffice will change its name back to OOo
> 
> (which would be relevant for us), but as long as Oracle is not donating the
> 
> name to the Document Foundation this won't happen.

Yes, this is all that I meant. After all, this means the merging of the forks. And I strongly believe that the project will change its name back, as the OpenOffice brand has a much stronger recognition, at least the tech journalists opine thusly...
The Document Foundation had wanted it all along, before resorting to an alternative name.

So, Oracle is donating the brand; indeed, the question is whether to the Document Foundation, but nothing else would make sense, simply because Oracle is doing to rescue OpenOffice from the quagmire into which it plunged its own project; doing it otherwise would not only definitely finish it off, but also hurt Oracle, IBM, Novell, and posiibly others with vested interests in OpenOffice...
And remember that Oracle is doing this to save OpenOffice, not to bury it...
Comment 13 Nuno Silva 2011-04-19 08:38:36 UTC
So far, the issue is really the project name. Maybe, if it looks like Oracle is willing to donate the brand to LibO (I don't think so, it's Oracle), we could keep both packages.

I mean, having the same ebuilds for both openoffice and libreoffice, until the outcome of this all is clear.
Comment 14 Tomáš Chvátal (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2011-07-27 11:04:43 UTC
openoffice{-bin} masked for removal in order we move people to libreoffice.

At the point appache foundation has something working under the brand name openoffice we might consider adding it back, but first it needs to compile :)

Also given the build changes it will be completely different ebuild as libreoffice finally switched to gmake.
Comment 15 Tomáš Chvátal (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2011-08-26 20:04:41 UTC
Openoffice gone, only libreoffice left -> this one is fixed :)