I use NeoOffice rarely

[jcarter]

NeoOffice does all I need for the time being, but a friend sent me this,
http://www.libreoffice.org/
I dont know if I would ever find a use for it, but Im downloading it anyway for fun.
Maybe some of you here would want it.
jane

[Xairbusdriver]

OpenOffice was developed by Sun many years ago. Sun was purchased by Oracle. The 'passion' of Sun for the app is somewhat less at Oracle and many of the original programmers have defected and formed a new Open Source organization to develop Libre. The main differences will probably be the amount of money that is available from Oracle as opposed to the Libre group. Whether any real money is put into the effort by Oracle remains to be seen, of course. Not many businesses are interested in spending money on "free" software. Sooner or later, the app morphs into 'commercial' app, its development stops, the rights to the code is sold, the free version becomes a crippled version of the commercial one, etc.

"Oracle is to data as Adobe is to graphics. Neither seems too concerned about users without large wallets." Grumpy

[Paddy]

Actually, Oracle has already dumped OpenOffice - they gave it to the Apache Incubator.

From Wikipedia:

QUOTE

After acquiring Sun in 2010, Oracle Corporation stopped supporting commercial development[7] and contributed the suite to the Apache Incubator to become a project of the Apache Software Foundation.

From OpenOffice.org:

QUOTE

On June 1, 2011, Oracle announced that it was donating OpenOffice.org's code to The Apache Software Foundation's Incubator. A preliminary OpenOffice.org incubator http://incubator.apache.org/openofficeorg/ site has been established as of June 13, 2011 for the transition.

So...it remains to be seen where it goes. Meanwhile LibreOffice is being actively developed, and the most recent update of NeoOffice appeared just over a month ago.

Nice comparison of the three: http://easyosx.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/openvsneovslibre/

[jcarter]

Thank you for the info.
 My husband's sister worked for Sun for years, but she never mentioned this.
Though I would never really need any of it, so probably wouldnt have paid attention if she had mentioned it either.
She probably did, will have to ask her next time we all get together.
But its nice to know about this.
Jane

[Shades of Gray]

I had used NeoOffice for some time, but also have LibreOffice. The version I use most is Symphony (from IBM). It only includes Writer, Calc, and Presentation, but that is all I need. It has done a reliable job and does not crash. LibreOffice will occasionally.