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What's next for Apache OpenOffice

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Re: What's next for Apache OpenOffice

#61

Post by simosx »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #21
polaic_lake wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least some on both sides of the LibreOffice/OpenOffice split hate each other with the heat of 10,000 suns. There will be no reconciliation.

Why is that? What has fueled this divide?

It was a german company, StarDivision, that initial created StarOffice. Sun Microsystems bought StarDivision and open-sourced StarOffice into "OpenOffice.org". All that, around 2000.

It appears that the original developers of StarOffice, who then moved onto OpenOffice.org, did not have a good understanding on how free/open-source development works. They were unwilling to open up the development to new people and often rejected even the smallest contributions. A well-known example was about source code comments in German. There were contributions to write them in English, however the developers were shooting down even such straightforward changes.

In addition, Sun Microsystems would still produce StarOffice, an installation package of OpenOffice.org with some proprietary components. The project managers (Sun Microsystems) at OpenOffice.org would put emphasis to the StarOffice features instead of increasing the community involvement.

Somewhere around 2006, IBM got a license from Sun to produce an office suite based on OpenOffice.org, called IBM Symphony.

After Sun Microsystems was bought by Oracle, the same situation continued for a bit until Oracle could not figure a way to monetize from OOo and pulled the resources.

The lure for an office suite is that Microsoft has MSOffice which is a cash cow. It makes a lot of money for them. Both Sun Microsystems and IBM wanted a piece of that money. The permissive licence would enable them to make money by packaging the open-source OOo with their own proprietary additions so that customers would be compelled to buy it.

What they did not understand was the an office suite is a very complex piece of software. Apart from developers, it requires additional skillsets to produce the final package.

Just like the Linux kernel is stuck to the GPLv2 licence, it makes it easier to get everyone to work together. IBM famously declared around 2000 that IBM loves Linux. They made and make lots of money on Linux, even if Linux does not have a permissive licence.

It is an issue of greed to go for a permissive licence. That is, you benefit from all the volunteer work and then you have the right to add your proprietary bits and pieces that differentiates you from the open-source version.

If IBM had the foresight, they should have accepted the way LibreOffice is taking over. Just like with Linux, IBM is using it to gain big contracts because they pay their developer to develop it and support their customers at the same time. IBM could have done the same with the office suite. But no, they wanted the whole pie and a few additional slices.

Re: What's next for Apache OpenOffice

#62

Post by cesarb »

simosx wrote: post #57
jimjag wrote: post #14

It is a shame that the article is behind a paywall; it sounds as if it is a very well balanced article. There seems to have been many things that people forgot about when following the previous thread ( https://lwn.net/Articles/699047/ and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12411747 ), which I hope to relate here: 1. The whole issue was an open and honest DISCUSSION. Many people took this as an indication that AOO…

> 2. Because of this "publicity", the AOO has been overwhelmed by lots and lots of offers of support, which have been graciously and thankfully accepted. Is that really happening? I do not see significant traffic on the dev mailing list. In addition, the new "recruitement" mailing list does not appear to be active. Does it have any list archives so that we can establish whether there are loads of actual offers of sup…

The archives for the "recruitment" list seem to be at https://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/openoffice-recruit...

Re: What's next for Apache OpenOffice

#63

Post by jimjag »

cyphar wrote: post #46
jimjag wrote: post #14

It is a shame that the article is behind a paywall; it sounds as if it is a very well balanced article. There seems to have been many things that people forgot about when following the previous thread ( https://lwn.net/Articles/699047/ and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12411747 ), which I hope to relate here: 1. The whole issue was an open and honest DISCUSSION. Many people took this as an indication that AOO…

> But certainly there is room for other players in this game, and certainly room for one (or more) that are under a permissive license. Why is "like $X but under a permissive license" something that people champion for? Are we not all in the same boat, trying to replace proprietary software so users can live in freedom? Permissive licenses simply do not help achieve this goal as effectively as copyleft licenses do. I…

If the whole issue is "Copyleft Good; Permissive Bad" (as implied by "But championing "we also allow proprietary forks" is not helping any users of free software."), then there is nothing more to discuss.

There are places for permissive FOSS licenses, weak copyleft and strong copyleft. If you don't agree with that (and even the FSF does!), then no matter what, any discussion or debate is moot.

Re: What's next for Apache OpenOffice

#64

Post by jimjag »

r0muald wrote: post #45
ZenoArrow wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for being open to the idea of a merger, even if the possibility seems remote, and thank you for your work on open-source office suites (regardless of the project in question), they're a highly important part of the open source software ecosystem. I'll leave with one more idea, just in case a full on merger doesn't work out, and that's what I'll call a soft merger. If a goal of modularity is pursued, there m…

I appreciate your comment as a genuine expression of confidence and hope. However, it seems that this generic comment could reference an existing initiative that is already being used by several office suites http://www.documentliberation.org/ So it's not like there aren't already chances for the integration you propose, that span a broader section of the FOSS landscape than just LO/AOO. But ... You'll see that Docum…

"So it's not like there aren't already chances for the integration you propose, that span a broader section of the FOSS landscape than just LO/AOO. But ... You'll see that Document Liberation is spearheaded by LO/TDF and ignored by AOO/ASF."

Sorry, but that is incorrect. There is the Incubating ODF toolkit at Apache for example. Now it is true, of course, that the TDF is focused on ODF (in other words, that is it's stated goal), but Apache is hardly ignoring it. The mission statements of Apache and TDF are wildly different, but characterizing something as being "ignored" simply shows an ignorance on how the ASF operates.

Re: What's next for Apache OpenOffice

#65

Post by Grishnakh »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #48
sksnxjis wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I can think of no reason why Oracle would decide to donate the OOo project to the Apache foundation other than to generate confusion in the marketplace and deflect criticism. For a tax break? No, those assets have already been written off as R&D. Maybe it's just for the PR. I cannot conceive of Larry Ellison doing anything out of altruism.

Can you write off IPR as R&D? You could probably massively over-inflate the value of the OO.org trademarks (and the copyrights). Donating then might be a financial mechanism, it dumps the trademarks but also prevents others from using them without having to use them yourself??? Oracle and Apache's accounts would show what's happening there.

This is a conspiracy theory, but perhaps MS paid them off to do it this way just to generate confusion.

Re: What's next for Apache OpenOffice

#68

Post by cyphar »

jimjag wrote: post #63
cyphar wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But certainly there is room for other players in this game, and certainly room for one (or more) that are under a permissive license. Why is "like $X but under a permissive license" something that people champion for? Are we not all in the same boat, trying to replace proprietary software so users can live in freedom? Permissive licenses simply do not help achieve this goal as effectively as copyleft licenses do. I…

If the whole issue is "Copyleft Good; Permissive Bad" (as implied by "But championing "we also allow proprietary forks" is not helping any users of free software."), then there is nothing more to discuss. There are places for permissive FOSS licenses, weak copyleft and strong copyleft. If you don't agree with that (and even the FSF does!), then no matter what, any discussion or debate is moot.

> There are places for permissive FOSS licenses, weak copyleft and strong copyleft. If you don't agree with that (and even the FSF does!), then no matter what, any discussion or debate is moot.

The two examples the FSF agrees with:

1. Base reference implementations of open standards. 2. Small snippets of code (smaller than 300 lines).

AOO is neither of these. Yes, I agree that permissive licenses have a use, but saying that "this $largeproject is under a permissive license!" as a positive thing doesn't sit right with me". It's like saying in a work report "amazing! we haven't had any murders in the office in the past 3 weeks." It's a correct statement, but the implication is that permissively licensing it has a benefit _for users_. This is simply untrue, as AOO is neither a base implementation of a standard nor is it a small piece of software.

Re: What's next for Apache OpenOffice

#69

Post by cyphar »

nkurz wrote: post #59
cyphar wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But certainly there is room for other players in this game, and certainly room for one (or more) that are under a permissive license. Why is "like $X but under a permissive license" something that people champion for? Are we not all in the same boat, trying to replace proprietary software so users can live in freedom? Permissive licenses simply do not help achieve this goal as effectively as copyleft licenses do. I…

Permissive licenses simply do not help achieve this goal as effectively as copyleft licenses do. I use to share that view, but I'm no longer sure if this is true. Do you have evidence you could point to, or is this a instinctual opinion? I don't have evidence going the other way, but I don't think it's a clear cut truth.

> Do you have evidence you could point to, or is this a instinctual opinion?

The Sony PlayStation is based on a fork of FreeBSD. It is entirely proprietary. Lots of different embedded device also use BSD because they are permissively licensed. Anybody who gets such a device is screwed because they cannot modify it or even know what the device is doing. This is true for the majority of IoT devices (which is a serious problem going forward). To be fair, there aren't nearly enough GPL enforcement lawsuits as there should be (which is why I donate to the Software Freedom Conservancy) so it's not like the copyleft side is /much/ better but at least copyleft does help achieve the goal.

In addition, GPLv3's anti-tivoisation clauses are quite unique in the free software world and are specifically written to ensure that users have freedom over devices that try to undermine the spirit of the GPL. You won't find any permissive license that has such protections for your freedom (because it's not enforceable without making the license copyleft).

This argument doesn't hold for standards, generally. Because what matters for a standard is adoption. Sure, you're making it possible to have a proprietary fork of your reference implementation but at least users can be sure that the specification is actually used (and if the spec is Apache licensed then you're safe from patents which is something that can't be said of proprietary specifications). But Apache OpenOffice isn't a standard, so this is not really all that relevant.

Re: What's next for Apache OpenOffice

#70

Post by davidgerard »

maccam94 wrote: post #50
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I remember it, mostly from following discussions on LWN, Oracle wanted to wash its hands of it, and IBM who built software on top of this platform wanted an Apache style licence. I feel IBM isn't getting enough of the blame for it coming to this.

True, IBM has built some stuff on top of OOo and I'm certain they prefer a license that doesn't require contributing their changes back. From what I understand they probably have the strongest interest in AOO's continued existence, but I didn't know if they were involved with Oracle's decision to donate OOo to the Apache project.

They were deeply involved. This is all heavily referenced in the history on Wikipedia.
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