LinuxQuestions.org - Development activity in LibreOffice and OpenOffice

Quote:

Last October, some concerns were raised on the OpenOffice list about the health of that project's community. At the time, Rob Weir shrugged them off as the result of a marketing effort by the LibreOffice crowd. There can be no doubt that the war of words between these two projects has gotten tiresome at times, but, looking at the above numbers, it is hard not to conclude that there is an issue that goes beyond marketing hype here.

In the 4½ years since its founding, the LibreOffice project has put together a community with over 250 active developers. There is support from multiple companies and an impressive rate of patches going into the project's repository. The project's ability to sustain nearly monthly releases on two branches is a direct result of that community's work. Swearing at LibreOffice is one of your editor's favorite pastimes, but it seems clear that the project is on a solid footing with a healthy community.

OpenOffice, instead, is driven by four developers from a single company — a company that appears to have been deemphasizing OpenOffice work for some time. As a result, the project's commit rate is a fraction of what LibreOffice is able to sustain and releases are relatively rare. As of this writing, the OpenOffice blog shows no posts in 2015. In the October discussion, Rob said that "the dogs may bark but the caravan moves on." That may be true, but, in this case, the caravan does not appear to be moving with any great speed.

Anything can happen in the free-software development world; it is entirely possible that a reinvigorated OpenOffice.org may yet give LibreOffice a run for its money. But something will clearly have to change to bring that future around. As things stand now, it is hard not to conclude that LibreOffice has won the battle for developer participation.

More at LWN...

Some interesting numbers in the article. What do LQ members think of the current pace of OpenOffice vs LibeOffice development?

--jeremy