LibreOffice Pushes Back, Releases 3.6.3

Yesterday Rob Weir said he didn't believe the LibreOffice user numbers. Apparently, he's been accusing The Document Foundation of discouraging contributions to OpenOffice as well. The folks at TDF are not happy and some pushed right back today. In related news, LibreOffice 3.6.3 was announced today too.

Boy oh boy, it seems the rivalry between the two popular office suites is heating up. After Weir's blog post yesterday questioning the LibreOffice download numbers given in a recent announcement, Italo Vignoli became angry according to one post today. After regaining his composure he said Weir's recent words are "the backlash of a scared man."

Vignoli first said those figures given in that announcement were "estimates," which was one of Weir points. But he followed that up with the list of new LibreOffice converts:

Maybe, if the French Government, the City of Munich in Germany, the Hospitals of Copenhagen in Denmark, Regione Umbria, Provincia di Milano and Consorzio dei Comuni della Provincia di Bolzano in Italy, the City of Limerick in Ireland, the Câmara Municipal de Vieira do Minho in Portugal, the City of Grygov in the Czeck Republic, the City of Las Palmas in Spain, the City of Largo in Florida, the municipality of Pilea-Hortiatis in Greece and the Public Library System of Chicago - amongst the others - had not chosen to migrate to LibreOffice, then Mr Weir would have ignored The Document Foundation.

In addition, Weir today publicly accused "certain external parties" of contacting OpenOffice developers, especially new ones, and trying "to discourage them from contributing to the Apache OpenOffice project." He also said, "certain external parties were contacting journalists who mentioned OpenOffice and telling them that it was no longer being developed and to link to a different product instead."

Italio quickly repudiated the accusation saying, "Do you really think that journalists would listen to someone bashing another company, organization, project or product? Really? I suppose that journalists are going to be sincerely flabbergasted by your words, as they show the utmost consideration you have of their wits and independence.

Your message is a testament of your attitude. In fact, only someone who has spent the last 24 months bashing with rabid language and spreading FUD over The Document Foundation and LibreOffice could conceive such an ill concept about the media."

In related news, The Document Foundation today announced the release of LibreOffice 3.6.3, the third update to the 3.6 series. Some of the improvements include a "fix for layout problems with version 3.6 and up, don't add old cond formats if new ones are already loaded," and "FILESAVE: crash when i have delete rows." Download the new release from www.libreoffice.org.

In other news, LibreOffice Quality Heros were posted today.