How's OpenOffice now that it's Apache's?

[flip-mode]

Has anyone spent any quality time with Apache OpenOffice? It's pretty annoying that there is now a LibreOffice and an OpenOffice, and in spite of my relative ignorance of the finer details of the open source world, I find myself thinking Oracle has probably done enormous harm over the past few years and genuinely deserves to die in a fire.

Anyway, some chap is apparently very impressed with OpenOffice now that Apache has taken the helm:
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=90443

[axeman]

Last I checked, OpenOffice had pretty much stalled, nothing being done with it since it was moved to Apache.

According to Wikipedia, it looks like pretty all that has happened is taking the old OOo 3.4 beta and making it compatible with the Apache license, and some small bug fixes.

The work done in the thirteen months since the OpenOffice.org 3.4 beta was mainly licence changes,[130] removing or replacing as much code under licenses unacceptable to Apache[131] as possible. Language support was considerably reduced, to 15 languages[2] from a 2009 peak of over 110.[3] Java is no longer bundled with the installer.[132]

I'm thinking anyone saying it is better than the last Oracle OO or LO is just placebo effect in operation. Or possibly that the original OOo 3.4 was going to be pretty good.

[Ringofett]

Not sure who you heard all that from, but Libre has left OpenOffice choking in its dust. They've fixed some admittedly obscure but useful issues vs. Word and Excel to where now I still prefer Office, but concede Libre is acceptable.

[Washer]

I've had better luck with compatibility and stability with LibreOffice.

[flip-mode]

Not sure who you heard all that from

You didn't see the link in the first post?

[just brew it!]

TBH I haven't tried OO lately; I had switched to the Go-oo fork prior to the Oracle/OpenOffice/LibreOffice train wreck, and these days just tend to stick with whatever Debian/Ubuntu are shipping (currently LibreOffice).

Guess I ought to give OO another chance...

I'm on the fence regarding whether it's a good thing to have two closely related (but competing) office suites like this. On the one hand, competition can spur innovation; on the other hand, you've gotta believe there's some wasted effort, with people on both teams spending time trying to fix the same bugs. If Apache has fixed OO's governance issues maybe there's a chance the two projects will merge back together at some point?