Luis Villa
It’s really really embarrassing that @TheASF still distributes OpenOffice, leaving people like this schoolteacher (name omitted to spare them spam) to think it’s a maintained or viable alternative.
My casual count suggests LibreOffice has done 40+ releases since OOo last did a release.
Luis Villa
@bignose @libreoffice @TheASF No, ASF has the domain and the Google/SEO juice, so they have the primary responsibility.
And to be clear they’re not actually maintaining it, since it regularly has security vulnerabilities that go unpatched for months at a time.
bignose
It seems clear to me that the embarrassment lands squarely on the tech media, who should be far better at communicating "#OpenOffice is not what you're looking for, use #LibreOffice @libreoffice instead". That's firmly within the tech media's job.
The job of @TheASF lies primarily in maintaining software. Let them maintain whatever software, for as long as people want it maintained.
Luis Villa
@bignose @libreoffice @TheASF Eg, the OpenOffice website could say “please don’t download this, we just do it for fun and as a result this often has security vulnerabilities. If you want an free office suite that is maintained to a high level of professionalism and security, please go to libreoffice.org”. But instead it not only encourages downloads, it misleads a banner stating “380M downloads”, giving the impression that it is an active (and presumably secure) project.
LibreOffice
@bluetea Please contact press@apache.org and ask them why they're still distributing OpenOffice despite multiple unfixed security issues over a year old. The more people that do this, the more chance there is of finally putting it in the Attic...
Helga Secures All the Things
@luis_in_brief @bignose @libreoffice @TheASF something needs to be done about this. It's unethical to distribute insecure software. If there's corporate association here they could find themselves in a law suit, too, though most likely victims wouldn't have the wherewithal to initiate one. Where is sense of responsibility to one's community?
LibreOffice
@luis_in_brief Please contact them (apache@apache.org) and ask why they're still distributing OpenOffice despite multiple unfixed security issues over a year old, and no updates. Let us know what they say. Thanks!
Luis Villa
@somereatardedwood @bignose @libreoffice @TheASF it’s unfortunate but this is the case. Elsewhere in this thread I’ve posted at least three situations where a security researcher did proper bug filing against OOo, and then no release was done until after the security researcher had done the correct thing (waited, waited, and only then with reluctance published the vulnerability). And given that Libreoffice is doing regular security releases from a similar codebase, there’s almost certainly more.
some reatarded wood
@luis_in_brief @bignose @libreoffice @TheASF tbh I didn't know that OO is not well-maintained until your post...
I was thinking that way because of Manjaro calamares installer (which I used like 5 years ago) that had two options of office suite.
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