Let's talk about OpenOffice. More than likely you've already read, countless times, that Apache OpenOffice is near the end. The last stable iteration was 4.1.2 (released October, 2015) and a recent major security flaw took a month to patch. A lack of coders has brought development to a creeping crawl. And then, the worst possible news hit the ether; the project suggested users switch to MS Office (or LibreOffice).

For whom the bells tolls? The bell tolls for thee, OpenOffice.

I'm going to say something that might ruffle a few feathers. Are you ready for it?

The end of OpenOffice will be a good thing for open source and for users.

• LibreOffice Suite Now Competes Directly with Google Docs

  On the heels of announcing new versions 5.2 and 5.1.5 of the free, LibreOffice suite of productivity applications, The Document Foundation has provided statistics indicating that LibreOffice is gaining traction with Linux users, developers, administrators, and enterprises. In fact, the new version 5.1.5 of the suite is specifically tuned for enterprise users.

  The Document Foundation’s Annual Report notes that the LibreOffice project now has more than 1,000 contributors with 300 making commits in 2015. Moreover, new releases of the suite include enhanced focus on compatibility and standards. The suite’s import/export filters have improved exponentially, and — in a move that will appeal to many admins and cloud-minded users — the suite has been steadily adding direct integration with platforms and services including Google Drive, SharePoint, and Alfresco. You can now open files directly from — and save files to — these services via menu choices under the File menu in LibreOffice applications.

  Integration with these platforms and services, of course, means that LibreOffice is now much more competitive with Google Docs. Additionally, as security concerns remain on everyone’s radar, The Document Foundation is working closely with the Transglobal Secure Collaboration Program (TSCP), a public-private partnership formed to secure electronic communication for organizations including defense contractors and government entities. The TSCP has specifications and frameworks that preserve more secure shared documents online. LibreOffice 5.2 complies with these document classification specifications.

• Italian Military Gets FLOSS

  Anyway, the Italians have figured out that they don’t have to stick with a single source of supply from USA for all their IT. Good for them. They wouldn’t do that for anything else. Why IT? So, they are gaining freedom from M$, saving money and getting better IT. It’s the right way to do IT. I hope they get around to using a FLOSS OS too someday. That will compound their savings and increase security.

• LibOCon 2016 Kicks off with LibreOffice 5.2.1

  The Document Foundation today announced the release of LibreOffice 5.2.1, the first update to the 5.2 branch, to kick off LibOCon in Brno, Czech Republic. LibOCon will run from today, September 7, to September 9, 2016. The conference "is a showcase of the project activity, and will feature over 60 talks in three days, covering development, QA, localization, ODF, marketing, community and documentation."

• LibreOffice 5.2.1 Office Suite Released with Over 100 Improvements, Download Now

  Today, September 7, 2016, Italo Vignoli from The Document Foundation was happy to inform Softpedia via an email announcement about the general availability of the first point release of the LibreOffice 5.2 open-source and cross-platform office suite.

  LibreOffice 5.2.1 is here one month after the launch of the most advanced LibreOffice release ever, version 5.2, which brought countless improvements to all of the office suite's components, including Writer, Draw, Math, Calc, etc., along with a bunch of user interface refinements that users will love, especially on GNU/Linux platforms.

• ownCloud-Forked Nextcloud 10 Now Available

• Secure, Monitor and Control your data with Nextcloud 10 – get it now!

  Nextcloud 10 is now available with many new features for system administrators to control and direct the flow of data between users on a Nextcloud server. Rule based file tagging and responding to these tags as well as other triggers like physical location, user group, file properties and request type enables administrators to specifically deny access to, convert, delete or retain data following business or legal requirements. Monitoring, security, performance and usability improvements complement this release, enabling larger and more efficient Nextcloud installations. You can get it on our install page or read on for details.

• What makes a great Open Source project?

  Recently the Document Foundation has published its annual report for the year 2015. You can download it as a pdf by following this link, and you can now even purchase a paper copy of the report. This publication gives me the opportunity to talk a bit about what I think makes a great FOSS project and what I understand may be a great community.

  If it is possible to see this topic as something many people already went over and over again, think again: Free & Open Source Software is seen as having kept and even increased its momentum these past few years, with many innovative companies developing and distributing software licensed under a Free & Open Source license from the very beginning. This trend indicates two important points: FOSS is no longer something you can automagically use as a nice tag slapped on a commodity software; and FOSS projects cannot really be treated as afterthoughts or “nice-to-haves”. Gone are the days where many vendors could claim to be sympathetic and even supportive to FOSS but only insofar as their double-digits forecasted new software solution would not be affected by a cumbersome “community of developers”. Innovation relies on, starts with, runs thanks to FOSS technologies and practices. One question is to wonder what comes next. Another one is to wonder why Open Source is still seen as a complex maze of concepts and practices by so many in the IT industry. This post will try to address one major difficulty of FOSS: why do some projects fail while others succeed.