FAQ OpenOffice.org and NeoOffice
What is OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org is the name of productivity application suite, the project and the website. Please note the .org part of the project name, which is needed for legal reasons.
Users and many organizations benefit from the power and the generous license of the project. The original license even allowed taking all the code, documentation, templates, etc. and not contributing anything back into the project. This resulted in many forks:
- OpenOffice.org
- Lotus Symphony
- RedOffice
- Go-OOo
- OxygenOffice
- NeoOffice
- Luxuriosity Office
- MagyarOffice
- etc.
There are different kinds of collaboration between the projects. They all have in common that they take the new features, improvements, and the many bugfixes from the core project and extend it to their needs. Some of the projects contribute all their changes back. Some projects contribute developer power for isolating problems. Some projects contribute by writing good bug reports to get the upstream developers involved. Some projects just replace the branding and sell it as their product. Some just take and never give back and instead threaten with lawsuits if the core project threatens their niche.
Since specialized needs of these forks are sometimes not directly applicable to the core project and the effort needed to integrate their changes into such a complex multi-platform, multi-language office suite require valuable development and testing resources there will always be the temporary need for specialized branches of the core project. We always work on making the core project as generally useful as possible, so the goal is to reduce the need for non-core forks.
What is NeoOffice?
NeoOffice is one of these forks, which specialized in making the power of OpenOffice.org available for Mac OS X.
Fork Means NeoOffice is another project, and is not OpenOffice.org. Due to license incompatibilities NeoOffice code does not contribute back to OpenOffice.org, and usually does not help to fix OpenOffice.org bugs.
Using Java/Cocoa binding, its look is like native integration with the Mac OS X system. This means, for example, native access to all the fonts in Mac OS X a different way than OpenOffice.org does (OpenOffice.org does use all Apple fonts, but not the same way).
NeoOffice uses GPL license and is built on top of OpenOffice.org X11 by using Java/Cocoa bindings for the User Interface (UI).
Said differently, it means uses a license not compatible with OpenOffice.org, so, to avoid legal issues, NeoOffice code cannot be used in OpenOffice.org, and OpenOffice.org developers must entirely rewrite the code for the same features.
More informations in About NeoOffice
OpenOffice.org Aqua
The [OpenOffice.org Aqua] project brought native support for Mac Aqua into the OpenOffice.org core project. Since the 3.0 release Mac/Aqua is considered one of the primary platforms of the core project.
Mac OS X port Home: [Mac OS X port Home] Aqua links: [Aqua Version of OpenOffice.org] Blogs: [Developers blogs]
Q1: Where can I find OpenOffice.org or NeoOffice?
A: You can download both from respective sites.
Download OpenOffice.org from here (openoffice.org)
Download NeoOffice from here (neooffice.org)
Q2: Why does there seem to be several parallel efforts?
A: This is a very normal situation in open source. And because of historical and personal choices.
This mail from Kevin Hendricks provides some historical details.
If you want to really understand the situation, here's some additional reading for you: History of NeoOffice and OpenOffice.org, Quote from Patrick may explain some of the licensing situation, and finally, you may also want to read another FAQ
Q3: Where do I get support for OpenOffice.org Mac/Aqua ?
A: The support.openoffice.org is the main place for all support related to openoffice.org.
The OpenOffice.org for Mac OSX support page is specifically for Mac OS X users.
Q4: But it would be more efficient, if there would be only one effort...
A: Probably. A proposal to work together has been made, and NeoOffice developers refused.
OpenOffice.org does concern several developers who are working on their free time only. Any change is for OpenOffice.org project, and the name of the developer who wrote the code does not appear in the code after integration : this is community project.
The NeoOffice project is a Patrick Luby and Ed Peterlin project only.
The problem is : there is curently no possibility for OpenOffice.org to use NeoOffice code, even if this code is interesting, because of the licensing issues. So every change must be rewritten for OpenOffice.org project, using another implementation. Even when the licence for a change is compatible with the core project other kinds of legal threats were [used].
A big part of changes are using Java in NeoOffice, and this is as wrote Ed Peterlin, a short term choice. The Java part of NeoOffice is not interesting for OpenOffice.org since OpenOffice.org project wants to use only Cocoa/Carbon.
Further informations are available at: http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/
