Collabora and OwnCloud Announce LibreOffice Online (itworld.com) 67
sfcrazy writes: Collabora Productivity, a UK-based consulting company, has collaborated with ownCloud Inc. to release a developer edition of online LibreOffice, which they call CODE (Collabora Online Development Edition). "The office suite implementation runs on ownCloud server. That's where all the processing and heavy lifting is done. The rendering happens at the client side. Currently there are three apps: writer (equivalent to MS Word), spreadsheet (Excel) and presentation (PowerPoint). At the moment users can create new documents and edit them. Other functionality, such as collaborative editing, is in the pipeline."
Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
I like LibreOffice, It is my default tool. But the reason why I like it is because it installs on my PC, so I can use it without internet. If I want a cloud office tools I would go with office. And not deal with compatibility issues.
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I like LibreOffice, It is my default tool. But the reason why I like it is because it installs on my PC, so I can use it without internet. If I want a cloud office tools I would go with office. And not deal with compatibility issues.
Because cloud, that's why.
Why have a bloated client on your desktop when you can run an even slower version of it in the cloud?
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This. You can gain SYNERGIES by migrating DEVOPS to the CLOUD!!!!!!11111
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Don't forget apps!
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More than 1 reason (Score:2)
Remember that this is the UK, not the US. "Snooping" is guaranteed to the government, there is no fight about a Constitution. MI5 and MI6 have full access to anything you do in this product.
Sure, there is some cost benefits to using "Cloud" but that comes at the risk of Security. People may not like it, but I refuse to use Ubuntu for the same reason I would not use this product.
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One could host ownCloud with this plug-in on a home server (RPi?) but admittedly we're talking small numbers of people.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do you choose LibreOffice over Microsoft Office? In your answer to that question, I think you will find your answer to your original question.
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Mainly because there isn't a reasonable replacement for Office type compatibility with Linux. "Oh, but you can run Windows in a VM" can go fuck itself.
I currently use OwnCloud to share documents with my wife and kid because we don't keep the same hours and are often in different countries. It's really awesome that OC has gotten robust enough to handle editing via the web...saves a few steps (which helps out the wife and kid).
Oh, and regarding your compatibility issues - if M$ bothered to accept open docume
Re:Why? (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not one to bitch about /. at all, and I think this might be my first time. But, seriously? Can they not include a link to the fucking product? No? So, I click a link to RTFA, a crime against nature, and do they have a fucking link to the damned site? No! Holy shitballs people. This is not complicated to add.
Here:
https://www.collaboraoffice.co... [collaboraoffice.com]
It comes, as the "easy' solution, of a VM based on openSUSE and they have an image there to download if you want to try it. There... Now we actually have a handy-dandy link to the actual site and application. It's a start. Normally I'm okay but I'm old, tired, and cranky. I'm also KGIII and still not logging in, damn it. In fact, I'm gonna take a nap.
opensource (Score:3)
I like LibreOffice, It is my default tool. But the reason why I like it is because it installs on my PC, so I can use it without internet. If I want a cloud office tools I would go with office.
...but if you go with owncloud, you'll get a cloud office that is free/libre opensource software - just like libreoffice. :
and it installs on your server, so
- you can use it without relying on some other potentially not secure 3rd party provider
- you and colleagues can use it without internet if all your laptop are on the same network as your server.
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Ive been looking for a product similar to google apps but theres nothing out there thats "free" that allows me to do this for our work environment. Budgets are tight, yo!
I also took a look at Alfresco for a sharepoint alternative but that doesnt integrate incredibly well with office so that you can check out items. It does document control pretty well though.
My main reasoning for google apps was because it allows collaborative editing. If this adds it like the summary says it will, I would test it out im
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It took to the bottom of the thread to answer the question. In the mist of anti-ms rant there is an answer to "Why"
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And this can be installed on a server under your own control, so you have the best of both.
It used to be terrible (Score:4, Interesting)
Hopefully they've improved this. I tried this software about a year ago and it was nearly unusable due to the lack of features. It didn't even support page breaks at the time. Some functionality is optional (bibliographies), some is required (page breaks). They probably shouldn't have included it in ownCloud before it had all of the required functionality, because that bad impression stuck with me.
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I do remember there used to be something that I considered basic missing, don't remember if it was page breaks.
Anyway, Page breaks are available (at least in version 5).
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It wasn't mentioned but I'll presume this is about Writer.
While I have problems with some of the bugs still in Writer, it has had page breaks for years. Insert->Manual Break->Page Break. Couldn't be more plain.
As an aside, I installed Libre Writer last night and checked. It still has the same bugs OpenOffice Writer has, so I uninstalled it. No need to 'upgrade' since Writer is the only part I use.
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There have been a lot of other improvements in LibreOffice (as oppposed to OpenOffice).
Care to be more specific on the bugs?
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I assume you're talking about the online word processor and not LibreOffice Writer? LibreOffice Writer and versions before all the way back to StarOffice all supported various kinds of page breaks.
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I don't do anything fancy with Word/Excel/Powerpoint or their LibreOffice equivalents Writer/Calc/Impress, so this would be fine for me - except my itch has already been scratched by the open source web-hosted equivalents Etherpad/Ethercalc/Hacker Slides running on the open source Sandstorm platform (sandstorm.io).
I guess the killer featu
Re:Ugh. (Score:5, Interesting)
LibreOffice on the desktop is mediocre
I respect your right to your opinion, based on your own criteria in your own environment, but I find LibreOffice excellent. It does everything I need 100% of the time. I've done anything from letters to 500 page books and it's all been good.
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Long COMPILE times? What, you're (frequently?) building versions of LibreOffice? Whatever for?
Compile times for LibreOffice are of little interest to 99.99% of the users. (And who knows what compile times for MS Office are anyhow?)
Doesn't "render" Excel properly? What does that mean? Are you talking about VB macros or something? Won't open your PowerPoint? Huh?
If you're already using MS Office for your work, I don't see your point.
Terrible name (Score:3)
Why would you name a product "code" when that term already has meaning? Name it "Own Office" or "Collabora Online" or even "Snicker Pig." Those are all terms that do not already have meaning. I can't ask a someone "Do you use code?"
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Almost as dumb as calling a company "alphabet".
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Or "Word".
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It is not named "code" - it is named "Collabora Online Development Edition" - CODE is the abbreviation. Once it is finished it might be named "Collabora Online" or something similar.
I don't get this (Score:4, Insightful)
It's easy to see why commercial software providers would want to push users toward the cloud: they get to charge subscriptions instead of a one-time buy.
But for users, there aren't any compelling advantages that I can see.
Sure, you outsource software maintenance, and if all goes right availability could be higher. But that comes at a high price: your data being exposed, absolute reliance on your internet connection, no control over e.g. the upgrade schedule, no more communication between applications etc.
Being able to access my documents from anywhere is no argument. My laptop goes everywhere with me, so I already have that without having to store my documents on the cloud.
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OwnCloud is something you host yourself (usually), not out in the wild (although obviously accessible from the internets). This gives the option of allowing people to edit files on your home cloud without them having to have a client installed (think: Accessing from a Linux computer or an Android phone and need to edit a spreadsheet or document, you can do it via the web and not have to install other bullshit)
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Re:I don't get this (Score:4, Interesting)
Now that is a fine theory right there except that OwnCloud is Free and Open Source,
Yes, I got that. So the normal argument in favor of cloud software (the vendor gets to increase their income) doesn't apply.
Am I the only one who prefers having applications run locally instead of having to cram everything inside a browser window?
Re: I don't get this (Score:1)
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There's no guarantee that locally-installed software will remain subscription-free.
Don't forget about the widely-used Adobe tool suite, Adobe Creative Cloud [adobe.com].
It wouldn't surprise me if MS Windows & MS Office moved in that direction in the next decade.
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It would be somewhat nicer if the collaborative editing features worked in the proper non web based version too. There's no reason it couldn't and the native version is much better since web browsers are a bloaty, inefficient VM. You could have the best of both worlds. Online access and collaborative editing, with the efficiency and resource usage of native code.
Re: collaborative editing is in the pipeline (Score:1)
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Actually, I use sandstorm.io + Etherpad, Ethercalc, and Hacker Slides.
I have mod points but I would rather say thanks for the pointer to sandstorm.
The use of randomized hostnames for separation to increase security is an interesting design choice, but it will have to be self-signed wildcard certs because wildcard certs are still pretty pricey.
I gave the demo at https://demo.sandstorm.io/ [sandstorm.io] at a run through, it is actually a pretty neat framework.
I noticed mongo mentioned in the the debug log, I need to take look at the code because I hear Postgres does NoSQL pretty well the
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I keep reading criticisms of Mongo, so its use bothers me a little. On the other hand, at work we're ditching Postgres. We've found Postgres to be ironclad and bulletproof, but the open source high availability options we've tried for it sucked - the logs are littered with dropped connections. From our internal testing, MySQL + Percona works better - at least so far. (I hav
Your own local (Score:2)
If I want cloudy office Google is there (or Office 365 which I seem to keep getting with various employments).
BUT... these cloudy office suite that you mention (Google Docs and Microsoft Office 365) are proprietary and closed-source.
Your only possibility to use them is to connect to the servers of said companies.
(Although there are possibility of local install, but they cost way too much).
Whereas owncloud is opensource, and you can install it on your own servers. You can build your very own cloud if you want - hence the name.
If there are document that you don't want to (or can't legally afford to) transit through u
I'm so glad... (Score:4, Funny)
OwnCloud and LibreOffice normally self contained (Score:2)
OwnCloud is usually self contained. Not out on the Public Internet. OwnCloud is a replication service that keeps Synchronization between different machines. It is a good stop-gap measure to address the LibreOffice Android issues.
This is the future (Score:1)