Apache OpenOffice

[lucy24]

What the heck is “Apache OpenOffice”? In active logs I see various versions ranging from
Apache OpenOffice/4.1.3
through
Apache OpenOffice/4.1.6

More to the point: What are they doing? Do they serve some legitimate law-abiding function, or can I safely block the UA globally?

[mack]

Do you have any PDF or other documents that can be opened by one of the OO applications.. CSV or Excell perhaps?

Mack.

[iamlost]

Apache OpenOffice, a successor project of OpenOffice.org, is an open-source office productivity software suite.

What you are seeing is likely use of an extension that utilises the system default browser to access the web from within AOO.

[lucy24]

They never request anything except the images associated with some page or other. Most recently

:: detour to re-check ::

A tangle of PROPFIND, HEAD and GET making a total of 21 requests for the same 3 images over a 7-minute period. Further delving--fortunately it happened to be quite an obscure page, so not much “noise” in logs--reveals that there was a human visit from the same IP a couple hours earlier.

One time last December there were over 1000 requests, again just for a small group of images. As you can imagine, this was exasperating.

:: still further cross-checking ::

Oh, there we go. Same IP also visited a different (but closely related) page, giving getpocket.com/ as referer. Yeah, they're saving stuff.

[wilderness]

lucy,
likely functions in the same capacity as MS Office, in that somebody has saved one of your pages and the images requests are in-line-link-requests.

[engine]

Yup, as wilderness says, they may have attempted to embed images in an OO document, and every time it gets opened it calls the original images.

[lucy24]

:: lightbulb ::

Instead of blocking, I can add the user-agent to my standard hotlink function. They’ll figure it out eventually.

[wilderness]

I may have to change my MS Office to just plain Office.
It's likely that OfficeOrg, although quite fashionable at one time (multiple platforms) is far less common these days.

[tangor]

These folks I block ... (and others like them). I actually have a policy statement on my site that says YOU CAN USE THE IMAGES, JUST DON'T LINK TO THIS SITE ... In other words, I will nuke you into the next several generations.

My blocks these days are for "office" since none of them actually play nice.

[tangor]

After ignoring my logs for nearly a year, I am back into them ... and have noticed an increase in "apache" + "java" user agents. Might have to change my thinking yet again! I suspect these are also part of the Apache Open Office?