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It's time to let go, Apache Software Foundation

https://rocket9labs.com/post/its-time-to-let-go-apache-software-foundation/

The Apache Software Foundation offers a suite of office productivity software named Apache Open Office. Based on the download page, you would never guess the last major release of the software was made available in 2014. With that bit of release history in mind, would it be fair to consider Apache Open Office as an un-maintained project? In this blog post, I share a quick recap of the history behind Apache Open Office, and my opinion on why The Apache Software Foundation’s actions may be masking the answer to this question.

27 comments

Illecors

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Fully expected a clickbait article, was pleasantly proven wrong.

e0qdk

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Adding a summary to this: the article has some history about OpenOffice (which is a zombie project that was essentially replaced by LibreOffice after Oracle bought Sun) followed by a description of patterns of weird commit history recently (e.g. regular changes that are entirely or almost entirely just fiddling with whitespace), and a request to email the Apache foundation to ask them to make it clear that the project is dead.

DogMuffins

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The article doesn't really frame the problem apache is causing... I think it's really just that someone might install OpenOffice thinking that it's LibreOffice.

It's definitely a dick move by Apache but... the reality is that they're entitled to cling to the OpenOffice trademark if they wish, and it's really LibreOffice's branding problem.

Also the article doesn't mention the 14 bug fix releases since 4.1, which seems kinda disingenuous.

lysdexic

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I get it that the project isn't getting work done on features, but it bothers me how the author tried to criticize basic code quality improvements such as fixing typos. I don't know if the author is an active contributor to the project, but I think he shouldn't really be criticizing the ones that actually contribute, wether their contributions are big or small.

thesmokingman

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The commit history I looked through has multiple commits for something that should realistically be a single “linted the project” commit. It’s valid criticism in this case.

lysdexic

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The commit history I looked through has multiple commits for something that should realistically be a single “linted the project” commit. It’s valid criticism in this case.

I don't agree. The trunk features multiple typo fixes and whatnot, but they are days apart and spread over weeks on end.

If anything, this shows that no one is contributing to the project, and people like the blogger wasted more effort writing posts on how no one is doing anything while they themselves do nothing at all, and to make matters worse they criticise the ones actually contributing something.

If the blogger really feels strongly about this, he should put their money where their mouth is and lead by example.

thesmokingman

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I’m sorry, which of those recent commits aren’t things a single linter run would catch? You had me second-guessing myself until I went through, again, a ton of diffs that just fix spacing, remove trailing whitespace, and basic typos things like CSpell can catch.

For example, the most recent commit as of writing has this: https://github.com/apache/openoffice/commit/0c72d66f1a33589bfa5729d3fc3bdd5e807826ac#diff-1ce22feeb294b6917e38bda4906aed35e50ac4828688ffc5ad370256524731bf

A commit from months ago has this: https://github.com/apache/openoffice/commit/5b179f6267cea1575fe6248ab8507bf7144666a0#diff-91750778c26e06764cafa81d4adfbf264acfa159addece80f61d4782dcb7f73c

These are the same fix on different files in different commits. That’s a linting problem that should be handled in a single commit (possibly a massive squashed PR), not something that should be drip-fed for months.

lysdexic

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I’m sorry, which of those recent commits aren’t things a single linter run would catch?

Ask yourself why the code still had those typos, and why nobody did anything about it except the guy contributing code cleanup commits.

thesmokingman

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So you want me to invest my time adding basic contributor functionality to a project that’s been around for than a decade? A project that’s been on life support for some time and doesn’t compete with its successor (who does use basic CI tools, I might add)? A project with, if GitHub is to be believed, has one active contributor and has struggled to keep contributors since 2013?

Both the original author and I are claiming it’s time for Apache to move on. In 2023 this major project still hasn’t implemented basic toolchain fundamentals. I have yet to see you offer anything more than “open source is hard” which I don’t think the original author disagrees with. I certainly don’t. I also don’t think it’s wise to hop on a project of this scale with this complete lack of contribution flow. Unless you’ve got a good reason why all of these good folks here should, you still haven’t addressed the core problem brought up by the original author or answered my concerns about drip feeding things that tooling should be taking care of.

lysdexic

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So you want me to invest my time (...)

I don't want you to do anything, but I'm not the one wasting my time complaining over how others contribute to FLOSS projects. If you feel entitled to complain about other people's contributions, in the very least you need to put your money where your mouth is.

thesmokingman

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I do. I put my time where it is best served and makes a difference. That’s not this project. Not every open source project survives. That’s how it works. You make value judgements like the one the original author made that you still have nothing to say about. Your only point continues to be “you don’t get to complain unless you commit” which has been addressed multiple times by “this is not a good project to commit on.” This is a one-sided conversation.

JackbyDev

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But why care? Open source work is volunteer work. I'm not saying it is above criticism, but if truly the only people willing and wanting to work on the project want to make the commits like that as opposed to a single one, who cares? If you strongly believe in topics like this and want to work on the project then go help them out. But like I said, if the only people who actually want to work on the project want to work on it like that, then who cares?

Does Apache have incentive for the project to seem alive when it isn't? Maybe? I don't know. Do I think they're trying to make it look alive? I feel pretty strongly they aren't.

thesmokingman

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It’s one thing to have a bunch of repos up that a couple of people are pushing around here and there. It’s a totally different thing for a major open source presence to prop up a project instead of retiring it. This isn’t some random project; it’s run by a major org, doesn’t have good contribution flows, and has been struggling since 2013.

JackbyDev

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There was a security fix in February of 2023. I don't think no releases for six months warrants going there.

Kissaki

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Going where?

I think you completely missed their point. They were talking about project development and maintenance, not releases.

JackbyDev

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Going to the Apache Attic as mentioned by the comment I was replying to.

peter

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At this point, who cares when LibreOffice exists? Though I do get the potential confusion for newbies but there is so much written out there on this topic I feel like it's harder and harder to get confused on the two.

JackbyDev

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I don't see why the last major release being in 2014 is relevant. It's just document editing software. If it still works for that then I don't see the problem. This isn't some sort of video game client where all of the game servers are shut down and you can't play it.

Edit: Also, this article really buries the lede. The latest update is a security update from February of 2023. Just because it wasn't a "major" update doesn't mean it's been untouched.

zipfelwurster

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I find this a weird take.

What about security patches? What about updates to document standards? What about technological advancements such as IPv6, 10bit colors, high res displays? What about bugfixes?

Software is complex and office suites are complex by software standards.

JackbyDev

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The last major update is from 2014 but the latest update is from February of 2023 and indeed it contains security fixes.

zipfelwurster

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You picked a single sentence in my reply and ignored the rest.

I'd suggest you go use OpenOffice then. Using an essentially 10yr old version of an inherently collaborative software will be a nightmare.

JackbyDev

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Because that's the only thing relevant to the article in my opinion. This all feels like making mountains out of mole hills. There's a project that is mostly dead but still receiving some work every now and then by a very small group of people and we want to what, get Apache to shelf it?

pastermil

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How about if you go try editing a docx on OpenOffice, then compare it with LibreOffice.

Tho with the fact you're saying this, you probably wouldn't tell the difference.

JackbyDev

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I don't think the primary use case of document editing software is editing a different piece of software's documents.

pastermil

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Boy, you'd be surprised....

lowleveldata

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They should open source their bot for making those white space commits. It might be handy.