Should we give up OpenOffice for dead?

In the drafts section of this blog there is one of mine on how to install certain software, I have not decided to delete it because it is one of the most emblematic open source titles, but I have not decided to write it either because its development is going at a snail's pace. Thus, I transfer the question to you: should we give OpenOffice for dead?

The LibreOffice developers seem to think so and do not shy away from saying so in your Twitter account.

Today marks nine years since the last major update of OpenOffice (4.1). If you're still using it, but want something more up-to-date, check out LibreOffice! It is based on OpenOffice and is also free and open source, but with great improvements and many fixes:

A Little History

OpenOffice has a long history in the world of software. Its origins date back to 1985 when a German company called StarDivision released an office suite called StarOffice. A decade later, StarOffice had become the affordable alternative to Microsoft Office.

When Sun Microsystem acquired StarOffice it decided to release the source code under the name OpenOffice.org.  The project soon formed a community of developers and versions for other operating systems such as Mac or Linux appeared. StarOffice was based on the OpenOffice code but included enhancements implemented by Sun.

Most Linux distributions included a version of OpenOffice with enhancements made by Novell known as OpenOffice Go. Some time later, IBM released its own fork with an improved interface and the addition of a browser. It became known as the Lotus Symphony.

In 2011 Oracle acquired Sun Microsystem and questioned its support for different open source projects up to now supported by Sun. Most of the OpenOffice developers decided to break away and create a fork known as LibreOffice.. They would later create an entity under German law known as The Document Foundation. The first version of LibreOffice incorporated the improvements of OpenOffice Go into the main development.

Under the influence of IBM, Oracle released the code to The Apache Foundation where it was continued by those developers who did not switch to LibreOffice.

Should we give up OpenOffice for dead?

For a long time, as a blogger, I covered the releases of both projects. However, it is becoming more and more difficult for me to put together the minimum number of words that articles should have. LinuxAdictos. Update announcement emails are increasingly spaced out and less and less relevant.

I told you at the beginning that I was writing an installation tutorial, I didn't finish it because to install it and take screenshots I had to uninstall LibreOffice, and, frankly, I didn't see any reason to bother.

Regarding the title question, from LibreOffice they maintain that Apache OpenOffice does not have enough developers to guarantee the correction of security problems. However, from OpenOffice they claim that they still have a number of users of several million, which continues to justify the continuity of the project.

Things did not go well between the two communities, although I know that, at least at the beginning, they collaborated in the detection and correction of errors.

Personally, I think that its existence is no longer justified. Not only because of its own shortcomings but because there are many alternatives to LibreOffice that we can install knowing that we have updates. These alternatives are both free and proprietary software.

Some of them are:

• CalligraSuite: Under the umbrella of the KDE project we have this office suite and graphic design that includes a word processor, a spreadsheet, a database manager, and a presentation program. It also offers a project manager and a vector graphics editor.
• Abiword/Gnumeric: In the Linux repositories we find a word processor and a spreadsheet developed by the GNOME project. They are installed independently.
• GNOME Docs: It is not an office suite, but a viewer that allows you to display, organize and print documents created and hosted with Google Docs and Microsoft 365