OpenOffice 4.1.2 Teased, LibO Conference Wrap-up

Apache OpenOffice has been practically declared dead by many while others suggest folding back into LibreOffice. It's true the last release was a year ago, but release manager Andrea Pescetti recently blogged OpenOffice 4.1.2 is right around the corner. The LibreOffice Conference wrapped up Monday and a couple of attendees blogged of their experiences. Elsewhere, Jesse Smith summarized the current state of Linux touch desktops and Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols said there will never be a year of the Linux desktop.

There wasn't a lot of detail in Andrea Pescetti's weekend post teasing the coming release of Apache OpenOffice 4.1.2. However, he did say that all the code changes have been made and the team is finishing up release details such as release notes, changelogs, and press announcements. Pescetti continued by saying, "Dozens of old and new developers contributed in recent weeks." There was some worry if there were enough developers to do the work back in March. In August, Red Hat's Christian Schaller wondered if OpenOffice should just close up shop and ship the furniture to LibreOffice. However, Bruce Byfield recently discovered a half dozen messages a day filing through the OpenOffice development mailing list discussing fixes and code commits. Byfield also summarized some of the steps taken at OpenOffice to try and turn the situation around such as appointing a new release manager and declared OpenOffice "not dead yet."

Pescetti didn't say when the announcement was coming, other than "soon," but he did say, "For users, improvements are expected in stability (fixes in all modules: Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Base), Microsoft interoperability (Sharepoint) and documents import. For developers, OpenOffice 4.1.2 is designed to be easier to build on modern systems and on non-mainstream systems." Pescetti also said OpenOffice could use some more volunteers to help with testing the release for QA and translations of the release notes and documentation.

Mihai Varga posted some information on the LibreOffice Conference just recently concluded. He said the development team have been working hard on LibreOffice Online to bring it many of the features enjoyed in the full stand-alone version. Varga also included a video of LO presentation as well as the slides from his talk on client side development.

Florian Effenberger also blogged a bit on this year's conference. He said 150 participants from 30 different countries attended and brought with it a real family feel. He was impressed with how far some had to travel just to get there. They shared "good times and joyful moments in beautiful Aarhus, Denmark meeting new friends and catching up with colleagues." A cake was provided to celebrate LibreOffice's fifth anniversary. The next conference will be in September 2016 in Brno, Czech Republic.

In other news:

* ​Why there will never be a year of the Linux desktop

* Reach out and touch a desktop

* VectorLinux Light Has That Old-School Linux Feeling

* Sabayon 15.10 press release