Apache OpenOffice is a free open source office suite that includes six applications: Writer (word processor), Calc (spreadsheets), Impress (presentations), Draw (diagramming and graphics), Base (database), and Math (formulas).
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Drools
Score 7.0 out of 10
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Drools is an open source business rules management system developed by Red Hat.
In my opinion, Apache OpenOffice is best suited for writing, editing and proofreading texts in any language. You can also download additional language packages that really take up little space in your PC's storage. Of course, Apache OpenOffice is comprehensive of spreadsheet-/drawing-/database-related softwares and so on, but I primarily use it for writing and editing my own texts. I don't see any scenarios where it is less appropriate, at least so far.
As an open source rule engine and product suite, Drools is well suited for the small and middle scale business to manage and integrate the rules to build the rule-driven system which can process the business-critical data and events to produce the automated decision. It is better to use Drools in the well-secured environment (back-end behind the DMZ), not putting it on the customer-facing front or exposing it directly the to public where may bring direct security risk in the enterprise environment. Drools still needs a lot hardening on the security side.
The number one strength of OpenOffice is the flexibility it gives. We can open any file type, save any file type - it's pretty much invincible. Even if we're going to work on this in a different program, just being able to open some of these ancient files that we get from local city governments is a huge win for us.
It's also administrator friendly - I'll use it a lot on the road because the licensing is so much easier to deal with than trying to check out a license from a server or make sure that everybody has internet connectivity.
It just looks pretty! It's legitimately a quality product, the layout looks good, it's not nearly as pushy as "other suites," and for the money it's the best!
Fusion doesn't support persistence of working memory, which brings some extra high availability risk to our business.
Guvnor still has a lot room to be implemented, it is not so user-friendly for non-technical people, so a lot of business users complain it is hard to master.
Rule execution server doesn't even have JMX implemented, hard to be monitored.
Drools is still lacking support for key Web services standards.
It is a cheap alternative; however, with Microsoft 365 licenses also dropping significantly, we might opt to go in that direction to maintain uniformity.
It's good overall, just the UI it's not the prettiest, feels like an older version of MS office, but gets the job done. Once get the hang of it it's easy to use, besides it has great documentation on how to use it and there are many forums that discuss many related topics.
Is there really support? There is a user forum but I do not see much developer input. Support options are limited. The most recent (Sept 2019) version of the product seems to have issues operating under Windows 10, yet there are few recent comments in the community forum, most comments are regarding older versions.
Apache OpenOffice is less intense on our computer systems and saves us a ton of financial resources. Since our document creation and editing needs are typical of a small business and not very complex, Apache OpenOffice is sufficient for us. We think that almost any smaller to medium sized business would feel the same way if they don't have a need to make or edit complex documents.
The IT department quickly adopted Drools as it is a very good java-based rule engine, which saves a lot of time to meet the project timeline and balanced our business requirements.
Recently we start considering the OpenRules, which may be more business user-friendly.
