Time Running Out For OpenOffice

[SuperTaz]

http://in.pcmag.com/office-suites/107412/news/is-time-running-out-for-openoffice

 

 

For the longest time, those not wishing to pay money for the "standard" office application suite—Microsoft Office—had a few open-source alternatives: OpenOffice or LibreOffice. That list might soon get sliced in half, however, as recent reports indicate that OpenOffice might be shut down due to lack of resources.

 

At least, that's what Apache OpenOffice volunteer vice president Dennis Hamilton suggested in a recent email to the openoffice-dev mailing list.

 

"I have regularly observed that the Apache OpenOffice project has limited capacity for sustaining the project in an energetic manner. It is also my considered opinion that there is no ready supply of developers who have the capacity, capability, and will to supplement the roughly half-dozen volunteers holding the project together. It doesn't matter what the reasons for that might be," he wrote.

 

The chief issue seems to center around OpenOffice's inability to address identified security vulnerabilities, as there simply aren't enough developers or volunteers involved in the updating process to release timely patches for the open-source software. As Ars Technica notes, the last major OpenOffice update was for version 4.1.2 back in October 2015. In contrast, competing open-source office suite LibreOffice—where a number of OpenOffice developers have moved to—is well-maintained and frequently updated.