Microsoft claimed 750 million users of Office back in 2010. LibreOffice claims 25 million. OpenOffice claims 100 million. Add in WordPerfect, Symphony, Google Docs, etc., and LibreOffice would struggle to make 1%.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/about-that-1-billion-microsoft-office-figure-/6555

I've been using OpenOffice.org for years. I just want it to work. I don't care so much about the bickering about whose license is better. So it is good to see the code land at Apache, a foundation with a decade of experience running open source projects. I think the move to Apache shows a seriousness of purpose and a focus on producing a solid product and growing a open source community free from corporate domination.

And in the end, the question is not how this compares to LibreOffice. That is a non-question considering that their market share is a round-off error. The real question is how Apache OpenOffice compares to Microsoft Office, and what will they do to make it something that users will prefer. Free is nice, I don't question that. But debating who is free and who is libre and who is more free, etc., misses the point entirely. Users have work to do, and generally don't care about licenses. If they did then 90%+ would not be running MS Office.

So good news. I've upgraded. But the big question is, "What next?" And maybe, "How can we help?"

And of course, that makes your wonder. If LibreOffice truly has 300 developers, and has been working on this code base for 18 months, and started with all the Go-OO code, as well as all the unintegrated Oracle patches and the OOo 3.4 beta, then what the hell have they been doing?

With that starting point, that amount of lead time, and 300 developers, they should be rocking our world with their dazzling features. 300 frickin' developers and the best they have is, "uh, I turned a modal dialog for word counts into a modeless dialog". Really? That is an embarrassment. Either they do not have anywhere close to their claimed 300 developers, or they have the least productive 300 developers known to man.

I'm putting my bet on the 30 developers who do a lot with little, over the 300 that only draw charts about their own superiority to cover up their lack of actual achievement in 18 months.

Actually, I do think the Ohloh numbers are biased. A project that uses distributed version control, like LibreOffice, and accepts patches from contributors that way will show one result, but another, like Apache, that uses Subversion and accepts patches via email, will see something else.

Essentially, depending on your patch policy you may not have any non-core contributors acknowledged in your version control.

Meeks is the architect of the original Novell fork of OpenOffice, whose penchant for rabble rousing led to the LibreOffice fork. His meditations on feature differences between OpenOffice and LibreOffice are cherry picked and biased.

Consider; LibreOffice lags behind Microsoft Office in features as well. So should LO shut down? and Microsoft Office 2007 "lags behind" Office 2010 in features. Does that mean Office 2007 was a mistake? OpenOffice has more features than Abiword. So maybe we should take Abiword out behind the shed and shot it?

Each product adds features at their own pace, improves at its own pace, based on the interests of the project volunteers. Users have a choice of which vision they want to align with. Maybe some users would like some stability rather than a new release every month? Maybe some want to have their documents look the same tomorrow as they did yesterday? Maybe some users less excitement in their life when it comes to launching a word processor. Maybe they just want it to work?

The article is conflating the Team OpenOffice, e.V. non profit with the OpenOffice.org open source project.

Team OpenOffice, e.V, was the fundraising arm of the OpenOffice.org project, set up as a non profit so they could legally raise funds for things like conferences. It was always independent of the open source project.

The OpenOffice.org open source project, the code, the trademarks, the domain name and the website, have moved to Apache, where work continues: http://incubator.apache.org/openofficeorg/

It looks like the Team OpenOffice, e.V. guys are publishing alarmist material in order to raise money. That is a standard fundraising technique. What about the children, the baby seals, the environment? Who will save them now that the big bad oil companies/loggers/tech corporations that are out to get them. Send money now or the kitten dies.

In particular in East Asia, the exchange of business cards is more important. It is not something you just grab and stuff into your pocket. It is part of the formal introduction. You give and receive the card with both hands. You read it over, and comment on it. You store the card carefully. It is a matter of respect. Showing up to a meeting in Korea without business cards is like showing up without pants.

The exchange of formal credentials, whether letters of recommendation, letters of passage, ambassadorial appointments, charters, etc., has a long and distinguished history, in which business cards are one small part. It is understandable that this might disappear in the US at some time. Of course, in the US it apparently is not necessary for businessmen to wear socks either.

This is standard operating procedure for Microsoft. They use BSA or CompTIA to attack any open standards policy that is worthy of the name "open".

One way to point out the absurdity of their logic is to replace the reference to standards with references to any other useful technology that a government might adopt, like electrical standards.

For example:

http://www.robweir.com/blog/2008/04/embrace-reality-and-logic-of-choice.html