Apache OpenOffice
Summary
Add Apache OpenOffice, the free productivity suite, to Fedora.
Owner
- Name: Andrea Pescetti
- Email: pescetti@apache.org
- Release notes owner:
Current status
Detailed Description
Apache OpenOffice (formerly OpenOffice.org) is an extremely popular free and open-source office software suite.
Donated by Oracle to the Apache Software Foundation in 2011, it is now developed and supported by a thriving community; it graduated from the Apache Incubator in October 2012 and it is now an Apache Top-Level Project.
Apache OpenOffice 4.0 (release date: 2013-07-23) is a major update. The two new versions, 3.4.0 and 3.4.1, released in 2012 under the Apache guidance totalled around 60 million downloads in 16 months, not counting extra mirrors.
To be clear, this proposal is about merely adding Apache OpenOffice: it doesn't affect existing office suites included in Fedora and it doesn't require that Apache OpenOffice is made the default office suite in Fedora.
Benefit to Fedora
Fedora will be able to offer an extremely popular productivity suite, often used to interoperate with Windows users too.
Version 4.0 of OpenOffice brings major and very visible improvements, such as a new and more modern user interface, which are enough to differentiate OpenOffice from other free office suites, like LibreOffice 4.0 and the older OpenOffice versions (known as "OpenOffice.org" at the time).
Fedora could be one of the first distributions to include Apache OpenOffice after the release of version 4.0.
Scope
- Proposal owners:
Packaging is the main issue here. The default OpenOffice build process produces RPM packages, but there are major changes to be done to obtain a set of RPM packages and matching SRPMs suitable for inclusion in Fedora.
Version 4.0 produces packages based on the current product name: this allows to avoid name clashes with older versions of OpenOffice.
The OpenOffice sources have been updated to allow a clean build with the default tools shipped with Fedora 19.
The change is isolated, except some possible packaging overlap with LibreOffice, see below.
- Other developers
This issue was widely discussed for Fedora 19 too (the feature was then postponed to Fedora 20 since OpenOffice 4.0 was rescheduled to be released after Fedora 19).
The /usr/bin/soffice and /usr/bin/unopkg executables/symlinks are still a problem since (in the Fedora packages) they would conflict between LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice: it is recommended to fix it in the LibreOffice packages too. As discussed on the mailing lists, applications that programmatically spawn an OpenOffice/LibreOffice process may benefit of the "soffice" symlink when they need to locate an OpenOffice/LibreOffice installation. On the other hand, the current upstream LibreOffice packages do not rely on a "soffice" symlink.
Anyway, some coordination will be needed, as already envisaged by FESCo for Fedora 19, to ensure a smooth user experience. The impact on the system as a whole is believed to be limited enough for this change not to be considered a "system-wide change".
- Release engineering: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
- Policies and guidelines: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
Upgrade/compatibility impact
N/A (not a System Wide Change)
How To Test
Testing would need to ensure that Apache OpenOffice can be successfully installed together with other office suites (and especially with LibreOffice), and that it can work as expected if it is the only office suite installed in the system.
User Experience
N/A (not a System Wide Change)
Dependencies
N/A (not a System Wide Change)
Contingency Plan
- Contingency mechanism: (What to do? Who will do it?) N/A (not a System Wide Change)
- Contingency deadline: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
- Blocks release? N/A (not a System Wide Change), Yes/No
Documentation
N/A (not a System Wide Change)
Release Notes
Fedora 20 includes Apache OpenOffice (formerly OpenOffice.org), a popular free and open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. Apache OpenOffice is available in many languages and it is now developed by the Apache Software Foundation. LibreOffice, a fork of OpenOffice.org, remains the default office suite in Fedora.