Posted: Wed Sep 01, 2010 3:05 pm Post subject: Changes in NeoOffice support services
What changes are we making?
I have bad news to report: I will no longer be able to work full-time on NeoOffice. We will continue to provide support in our forums but due to increased family responsibilities I will only be able to work no more than 10 hours per week on NeoOffice development and support.
Because of this sharp drop in my available work hours, we must ration the support services that we provide our donors. So starting 2 September 2010, only NeoOffice donors who have donated US$100.00 or more within the last year will be able to post support requests.
Please note that NeoOffice donors who have donated US$25.00 or more before 2 September 2010 and within the last year will still be able to post support requests. In other words, we will not take away the support services that donors had already earned prior to this change.
Also note that we will continue to provide free NeoOffice downloads to all users and we will continue to provide NeoOffice Mobile support without any change so NeoMobile Mobile support will still be available for donors who have donated US$10.00 or more within the last year.
Why must we make these changes?
Increasing family responsibilities that I can no longer defer has made it impossible for me to continue to work full-time on NeoOffice development and support. While hopefully at some point in the future these family responsibilities will subside, for the foreseeable future I must devote a substantial portion of my time away from NeoOffice.
Unfortunately, we do not have the funds to hire an engineer to work on NeoOffice. Nor can Fran, Ed, or Tim replace me as they already have jobs at other companies and none of them are in a position to quit their jobs to work on NeoOffice full-time.
Is the NeoOffice project still viable?
We believe the answer is yes. Since we released NeoOffice 3.1.1, we have made a many stability improvements and we believe that our upcoming NeoOffice 3.1.2 release scheduled for later this month will be our most stable release ever.
Our only issue is that my available time is now severely limited. Even though the number of support requests is small, nearly all of the support requests involve complex issues or bugs that occur only in rare cases. As a result, most of the support requests that we now see require a significant amount of time and a thorough understanding of NeoOffice's underlying OpenOffice.org code.
By providing support for donors who have donated US$100 or more within the last year, we can ensure that those who depend on NeoOffice for their critical business operations have access to our limited engineering time if they encounter a serious issue in NeoOffice.
Posted: Tue Sep 07, 2010 10:10 am Post subject: NeoOffice 3.1.2 released
We are pleased to announce the release of NeoOffice 3.1.2. NeoOffice 3.1.2 is available for all users from the NeoOffice download page.
In NeoOffice 3.1.2, we have fixed several critical crashing and hanging bugs found by our users and we have added the following security and stability improvements:
- Temporary files are encrypted when FileVault is enabled
- Fix for bugs that cause embedded images to be lost after saving Writer or Impress documents
Because NeoOffice 3.1.2 contains many bug fixes, we recommend that all NeoOffice users install this new version. NeoOffice 3.1.2 can be downloaded by all Mac OS X users from the NeoOffice download page. The NeoOffice project is funded entirely by donations from our users so please consider making a small donation before downloading to help us continue to improve NeoOffice.
If you have any support questions, a list of suggested steps for finding an answer for a problem as fast as possible is available on the NeoOffice Support page. Since over half of our donations come from a small percentage of our users, we provide priority support to our most generous donors in our NeoOffice forums.
Posted: Thu Oct 28, 2010 6:24 am Post subject: NeoOffice 3.1.2 Patch 1 released
Since we released NeoOffice 3.1.2 in early Septebmer, we have been busily fixing any significant bugs reported by our donors. To ensure that NeoOffice users have the most stable code available, we have fixed all critical bugs reported by our donors and released NeoOffice 3.1.2 Patch 1.
NeoOffice 3.1.2 Patch 1 can be downloaded from the following URL:
Below is a list of the bugs that we fixed in NeoOffice 3.1.2 Patch 1:
3635 File :: Save As menu defaults to ODF file format instead of current format
3636 Printer Options dialog displays incorrect Notes setting
3637 Focus moves to wrong window after closing floating window
3638 Header content is not saved in .doc file
If you have any support questions, a list of suggested steps for finding an answer for a problem as fast as possible is available on the NeoOffice Support page. Since over half of our donations come from a very small percentage of our users, we can only provide support to our most generous donors in our NeoOffice forums.
Posted: Sat Dec 04, 2010 4:44 pm Post subject: NeoOffice 3.1.2 Patch 2 released
Since we released the last NeoOffice 3.1.2 patch in late October, we have been busily fixing any significant bugs reported by our donors. To ensure that NeoOffice users have the most stable code available, we have fixed all critical bugs reported by our donors and released NeoOffice 3.1.2 Patch 2.
NeoOffice 3.1.2 Patch 2 can be downloaded from the following URL:
Below is a list of the bugs that we fixed in NeoOffice 3.1.2 Patch 2:
3639 - Linked Calc formulas do not update
3640 - Pasting HTML into Thunderbird contains extraneous data
3642 - Export as PDF causes NeoOffice to crash
3643 - Excessive CPU usage when opening an embedded OLE object in Writer
If you have any support questions, a list of suggested steps for finding an answer for a problem as fast as possible is available on the NeoOffice Support page. Since over half of our donations come from a very small percentage of our users, we can only provide support to our most generous donors in our NeoOffice forums.
Posted: Mon Dec 27, 2010 12:22 pm Post subject: Snow Leopard users should upgrade to NeoOffice 3.1.2
We have seen some reports by some users that they suddenly cannot open files by double-clicking on a file in the Finder or the Desktop after upgrading to or installing system updates for Mac OS X 10.6.x.
If you encounter this problem, then you are running an old version of NeoOffice and you should download and install NeoOffice 3.1.2 from the NeoOffice download page.
This problem is caused by Apple's Java system update that was released a couple of months ago. Prior to the release of Apple's Java system update, we found that Apple made incompatible changes that broke the file opening functionality in old versions of NeoOffice. To fix this issue, we reworked our code and in September 2010 we released our fix in NeoOffice 3.1.2.
Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2011 9:34 am Post subject: NeoOffice 3.1.2 Patch 3 released
Since we released the last NeoOffice 3.1.2 patch in early December, we have been busily fixing any significant bugs reported by our donors. To ensure that NeoOffice users have the most stable code available, we have fixed all critical bugs reported by our donors and released NeoOffice 3.1.2 Patch 3.
NeoOffice 3.1.2 Patch 3 can be downloaded by all users from the NeoOffice patch download page. The patch includes the following bug fixes:
- NeoOffice's export as PDF code has been changed to produce significantly smaller PDF files than before
- NeoOffice's copy, paste, drag, and drop code has been reimplemented to remove all code that might fail when run on Apple's upcoming Mac OS X 10.7 Lion release
If you have any support questions, a list of suggested steps for finding an answer for a problem as fast as possible is available on the NeoOffice Support page. Since over half of our donations come from a very small percentage of our users, we can only provide support to our most generous donors in our NeoOffice forums.
Posted: Fri Feb 11, 2011 10:44 am Post subject: NeoOffice 3.1.2 Patch 4 released
Shortly after we released NeoOffice 3.1.2 Patch 3 last week, one of our donors found the following two bugs in NeoOffice's drag and drop code (in Patch 3 we had reimplemented that code to remove all code that might fail when run on Apple's upcoming Mac OS X 10.7 Lion release):
3644 - Calc hangs when cell editing field is dragged
3645 - Dragged item from other applications is dropped at wrong location
We have fixed the above two bugs in NeoOffice 3.1.2 Patch 4. Because one of the bugs that we fixed was a critical hanging bug, we recommend that all NeoOffice 3.1.2 users install Patch 4. NeoOffice 3.1.2 Patch 4 can be downloaded by all users from the NeoOffice patch download page.
Also in Patch 4, we have fixed a bug that has annoyed many Writer users: when scrolling in Writer documents, NeoOffice's underlying OpenOffice.org 3.1.1 code would sometimes cause a Writer document to "jump back" to the page where the cursor is. Oracle's OpenOffice.org engineers fixed this annoying bug in newer versions of OpenOffice.org so we fixed it by extracting selected portions of Writer code from OpenOffice.org 3.2 and merging it into the NeoOffice code.
If you have any support questions, a list of suggested steps for finding an answer for a problem as fast as possible is available on the NeoOffice Support page. Since over half of our donations come from a very small percentage of our users, we can only provide support to our most generous donors in our NeoOffice forums.
Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2011 6:16 am Post subject: NeoOffice 3.1.2 Patch 5 released
Since we released the last NeoOffice 3.1.2 patch in early February, we have been busily fixing any significant bugs reported by our donors. To ensure that NeoOffice users have the most stable code available, we have fixed all critical bugs reported by our donors and released NeoOffice 3.1.2 Patch 5.
NeoOffice 3.1.2 Patch 5 can be downloaded by all users from the NeoOffice patch download page. The patch includes the following bug fixes:
3098 - Tooltips remain visible after switching to another application
3646 - Dropping Calc edit field text to desktop creates empty .textClipping file
3647 - Destination rectangle not shown when dragging cells in Calc
3648 - Calc crashes when deleting a row after certain undo actions
3649 - Minimizing document window disables dragging to document's child windows
3650 - Writer rulers do not match page margins after opening
If you have any support questions, a list of suggested steps for finding an answer for a problem as fast as possible is available on the NeoOffice Support page. Since over half of our donations come from a very small percentage of our users, we can only provide support to our most generous donors in our NeoOffice forums.
- New Mac OS X 10.7 Lion compatible code
- Expanded font support
- Significant reduction in size of PDF files
The NeoOffice project is funded entirely by donations from our users so please consider making a small donation before downloading to help us continue to improve NeoOffice.
If you have any support questions, a list of suggested steps for finding an answer for a problem as fast as possible is available on the NeoOffice Support page. Since over half of our donations come from a small percentage of our users, we provide priority support to our most generous donors in our NeoOffice forums.
Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2011 9:29 am Post subject: NeoOffice 3.2 Beta Patch 1 released
After we released NeoOffice 3.2 Beta last week, we have been busily testing our code on the most recent Mac OS X 10.7 Lion release available from Apple. While NeoOffice 3.2 Beta installs and runs on Lion, we have made some changes to the NeoOffice code that should make the NeoOffice installation process smoother for new users. In addition, we have fixed 2 hanging bugs reported by our donors.
To ensure that NeoOffice users have the most stable code available, we have released these Lion changes and bug fixes in NeoOffice 3.2 Beta Patch 1. We have also backported these Lion changes and bug fixes in NeoOffice 3.1.2 Patch 6.
NeoOffice 3.2 Beta Patch 1 can be downloaded by all users from the NeoOffice Beta patch download page. NeoOffice 3.1.2 Patch 6 can be downloaded by all users from the NeoOffice patch download page. Both patches include the following Lion changes and bug fixes:
- When NeoOffice is first run on a Mac OS X 10.7 Lion machine that does not have Java installed, the dialog that appears now reads "To open NeoOffice..." instead of "To open java...". Also, after installing the Java system update from this dialog, NeoOffice will automatically relaunch.
- On Mac OS X 10.6 and higher, Apple's Image Capture dialog would cause NeoOffice to hang if that dialog's red close button was pressed. We found a way to disabled the red close button in that dialog to prevent this hanging bug from occurring.
- Dragging the icon in a NeoOffice document's titlebar into the same or another NeoOffice document would cause NeoOffice to hang. This hanging bug has been fixed.
If you have any support questions, a list of suggested steps for finding an answer for a problem as fast as possible is available on the NeoOffice Support page. Since over half of our donations come from a very small percentage of our users, we can only provide support to our most generous donors in our NeoOffice forums.
Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2011 8:19 am Post subject: NeoOffice 3.2 Beta Patch 2 released
After we released NeoOffice 3.2 Beta Patch 1 last week, we have been busily testing our code on the most recent Mac OS X 10.7 Lion release available from Apple. While NeoOffice 3.2 Beta installs and runs on Lion, we have made some changes to the NeoOffice code that should make NeoOffice run smoother on Lion.
To ensure that NeoOffice users have the most stable code available, we have released these Lion changes in NeoOffice 3.2 Beta Patch 2. We have also backported some of these Lion changes in NeoOffice 3.1.2 Patch 7.
- Lion allows resizing windows by dragging on any part of the window's edge and dragging the left edge would sometimes cause the window shape to "snap back" after dragging. Both of these patches eliminate this snapping back behavior.
- On Lion, most windows with titlebars now have a rounded bottom corners but NeoOffice would display such windows with squared corners. NeoOffice 3.2 Beta Patch 2 fixes this by displaying all non-floating windows with titlebars with rounded bottom corners when running NeoOffice on Lion.
If you have any support questions, a list of suggested steps for finding an answer for a problem as fast as possible is available on the NeoOffice Support page. Since over half of our donations come from a very small percentage of our users, we can only provide support to our most generous donors in our NeoOffice forums.
Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2011 9:29 am Post subject: NeoOffice 3.2 Beta Patch 3 released
After we released the last NeoOffice 3.2 Beta patch last week, we have been busily testing our code on the most recent Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Developer Preview 2 release available from Apple. While NeoOffice 3.2 Beta installs and runs on Lion, some new bugs did appear in Lion Developer Preview 2. We have fixed those bugs and have released NeoOffice 3.2 Beta Patch 3.
NeoOffice 3.2 Beta Patch 2 can be downloaded by all users from the NeoOffice Beta patch download page. The patches includes fixes for the following bugs:
Bug 3653 - Crash when removing or disabling font in Font Book application
Bug 3654 - Menubar does not update when changing active window on Mac OS X 10.7 Lion
Bug 3655 - Accessing menubar while printing causes hanging
Bug 3656 - Native comboboxes and listboxes do not paint properly on Mac OS X 10.7 Lion
Bug 3657 - Printing large document with many images excessive memory
If you have any support questions, a list of suggested steps for finding an answer for a problem as fast as possible is available on the NeoOffice Support page. Since over half of our donations come from a very small percentage of our users, we can only provide support to our most generous donors in our NeoOffice forums.
Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 10:43 am Post subject: NeoOffice 3.1.2 Patch 8 released
Since we released the last NeoOffice 3.1.2 patch last month, we have been busily fixing any significant bugs reported by our donors. To ensure that NeoOffice users have the most stable code available, we have fixed all critical bugs reported by our donors and released NeoOffice 3.1.2 Patch 8.
NeoOffice 3.1.2 Patch 8 can be downloaded by all users from the NeoOffice 3.1.2 patch download page. The patch includes the following bug fixes:
3658 - NeoOffice no longer puts temporary files within FileVault folder
3659 - Export to PDF causes stretched glyphs to be miskerned
If you have any support questions, a list of suggested steps for finding an answer for a problem as fast as possible is available on the NeoOffice Support page. Since over half of our donations come from a very small percentage of our users, we can only provide support to our most generous donors in our NeoOffice forums.
Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 12:32 pm Post subject: NeoOffice 3.2 released
SANTA CLARA, CA - 19 April 2011 - NeoOffice.org is pleased to announce the release of NeoOffice 3.2. NeoOffice 3.2 can be downloaded by all NeoOffice donors who have donatedUS$10 (or €7 or £6 or CA$10 or AU$10 or ¥834) or more within the last year from the NeoOffice download page.
For those who want to download a free version of NeoOffice, no donation is required to download our older NeoOffice 3.1.2 version.
The NeoOffice project is funded entirely by donations from our users. The cost and time spent on NeoOffice is very large for Patrick Luby and Ed Peterlin - the Mac software engineers that have created all of the improvements in NeoOffice that are not in OpenOffice.org or LibreOffice. While many free software products such as OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice are funded by huge donations from large corporations such as Oracle and Novell, NeoOffice has no corporate sponsors. Without any corporate sponsors, Patrick and Ed must rely exclusively on donations from our users to continue implementing the latest Mac OS X features in NeoOffice.
If you have any support questions, a list of suggested steps for finding an answer for a problem as fast as possible is available on the NeoOffice Support page. Since most of our donations come from a small percentage of our users, we provide priority support to our most generous donors in our NeoOffice forums.
Special thanks also go to the following organizations and people:
All NeoOffice donors. The NeoOffice project is funded entirely by the time and money donated by our users. Without the generous donations and volunteer hours made by our users, NeoOffice would not exist.
All of the NeoOffice mirror sites. By mirroring NeoOffice, these sites allow us to provide free downloads of an older NeoOffice version by absorbing a large portion of the substantial bandwidth costs associated with the millions of downloads made by NeoOffice users each year.
Like NeoOffice.org, these organizations and people are dedicated to providing open source software as a public service to people throughout the world at minimal cost. Their generosity helps make applications like NeoOffice possible.
About NeoOffice.org
Since 2003, NeoOffice has been the leading open source office software created and supported by Mac software engineers specifically for Mac OS X and is used by over half a million people worldwide. NeoOffice.org is funded NeoOffice entirely by the time and money donated by our users. For more information, visit http://www.neooffice.org/.
Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2011 9:33 am Post subject: Our rebuttal of recent false accusations against NeoOffice
Since we began limiting our download services of our latest NeoOffice release to only current and past donors, we have seen a disturbing trend start to emerge in the following software review sites:
In the above review sites, several posters accuse us of "illegal" and "fraudulent" activity. Their assertion is that the GNU General Public License (GPL), requires us to provide free downloads of NeoOffice binaries.
We take all such accusations of illegal or license non-compliance seriously. Our review of the GPL indicates that their assertion that we must provide downloads of free binaries to all internet users is flat out wrong for the following reasons:
1. The GPL only puts requirements on source code, not pre-built binaries - The foundation of the GPL is to ensure that anyone can access, modify, and redistribute source code. To ensure compliance with the GPL's source code requirements, we have always provided detailed instructions for accessing and compiling NeoOffice's source code here. Anyone is free to compile their own custom build.
2. Selling download services for pre-built binaries is not a violation of the GPL - Apparently this misunderstanding of the GPL is so common GNU - the organization that wrote the GPL - clearly states that there is no such requirement in the GPL on the following FAQ:
Quote:
I just found out that a company has a copy of a GPL'ed program, and it costs money to get it. Aren't they violating the GPL by not making it available on the Internet?
No. The GPL does not require anyone to use the Internet for distribution. It also does not require anyone in particular to redistribute the program....
3. This is a source code licensing issue, not a legal issue - Oracle owns the copyright to all of the OpenOffice.org code that NeoOffice uses so this is a copyright licensing issue between us and Oracle. Oracle releases the OpenOffice.org code under the GNU Limited General Public License and it is the LGPL that is what give both us and LibreOffice permission to copy, modify, and redistribute the OpenOffice.org source code. The only difference is that we have released all of our additions and modifications to the OpenOffice.org code under the GPL. We believe that the LGPL that Oracle and LibreOffice use is too "proprietary friendly" so we have always used licenses the NeoOffice source code under the GPL under as allowed by section 2.b of the LGPL.
We won't try to guess what motivations these posters have for making such blatantly false accusations, but they clearly have threatened to litigate. Should any litigation come about, we will aggressively defend our GPL compliance.
We will also aggressively defend anyone's right to take our GPL source code and make a better product. To be honest, funding and running NeoOffice is no easy task for Ed Peterlin and I. We both started NeoOffice because we value choice and, even now, office suite options for Mac users is limited. So if someone else can produce a better product using our code as a starting code and releases their code under the GPL like we have, then everyone wins.
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