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Apache Open Office as an unmaintained project?

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Re: Apache Open Office as an unmaintained project?

#261

Post by ptx »

toyg wrote: post #259
ptx wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such as what stuff? Draw a diagram if you prefer, but a few examples of these nefarious non-free licenses promoted by the OSI would be sufficient.

Crap like Sun's CDDL and MPL were endorsed by OSI although they were developed explicitly in opposition to the GPL. Yeah, they might be nominally "free", but their aim was fairly nefarious at the time. OSI endorses all sorts of licenses that are free in name only.

OK, so you're saying that Open Source is "not the same thing" as Free Software and there was a "need to create a new definition for it" to include "stuff that did not fit the Free Software definition". You give the CDDL and the MPL as examples of such stuff.

But if you take a look at the Free Software Foundation's list [0] of Free Software licenses, you will see that it lists both the CDDL and the MPL as Free Software according to the Free Software Definition.

So why should a new definition have been needed to allow these licenses when they are already allowed by the old definition? Maybe you could supply some of that context you were talking about?

[0] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html

Re: Apache Open Office as an unmaintained project?

#262

Post by toyg »

ptx wrote: post #261
toyg wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crap like Sun's CDDL and MPL were endorsed by OSI although they were developed explicitly in opposition to the GPL. Yeah, they might be nominally "free", but their aim was fairly nefarious at the time. OSI endorses all sorts of licenses that are free in name only.

OK, so you're saying that Open Source is "not the same thing" as Free Software and there was a "need to create a new definition for it" to include "stuff that did not fit the Free Software definition". You give the CDDL and the MPL as examples of such stuff. But if you take a look at the Free Software Foundation's list [0] of Free Software licenses, you will see that it lists both the CDDL and the MPL as Free Softwar…

CDDL and MPL were defined as "free" only after a lengthy debate, and remain incompatible with the GPL - which, at the time, was widely considered the gold standard of free licenses. Without OSI as an ideological cover, they would have been ostracized even harder than they were.

> So why should a new definition have been needed to allow these licenses when they are already allowed by the old definition?

Maybe you should ask the founders of OSI? If their work was fundamentally pointless, why did they do it? Because it wasn't pointless, it was seen as necessary to be able to say "we are Good Guys, but not like them dirty GPL hippies".

Re: Apache Open Office as an unmaintained project?

#263

Post by pjmlp »

neonsunset wrote: post #260
pjmlp wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it won't, as it might be using the breaking for change introduced in C# 5, or .NET Framework features not made available on .NET Core. Likewise C and C++ have had enough breaking changes since 2010.

It depends. Some projects can be retargeted to netstandard2.0/net6(8).0 without any changes at all, some require minor update of dependencies and some other - do face breaking changes in library code because APIs did get deprecated. With that said, neither IL nor C# itself had any changes breaking forward compatibility (aside from a very early change to foreach recently discussed here).

C# isn't used in isolation without standard library.

Also, "it depends" isn't the same as "If you feed 10 year old C# to a modern compiler it will compile it fine."

Re: Apache Open Office as an unmaintained project?

#264

Post by kwhitefoot »

hollerith wrote: post #135
kwhitefoot wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on what features you need. Libre Office is a suite with database, word processor, spreadsheet, Abiword is just a word processor, WordGrinder is terminal based program specifically for first drafts that can export to ODT, HTML, etc., O20.Word is a clone of MS Word 2019, there are more: Calligrawords, Focuswriter, etc. Abiword is probably the best compromise between simplicity, familiarity, and features. It'…

>> WYSIWYG text processor >Emacs Org-mode How is org mode WYSIWYG?

You are quite right, it was just a sudden thought before I hit the submit button that such a tool can actually be just as useful as a WYSIWYG word processor.

Does anyone remember Wordstar? It was not WYSIWYG but it was perfectly usable. I wrote hundreds of pages of documentation using it on a Z80 extension to an Apple ][. In my opinion such a word processor is in fact more productive than WYSIWYG. Moving to MS Word was a step backwards.

Re: Apache Open Office as an unmaintained project?

#265

Post by systems_glitch »

JohnFen wrote: post #148
broeng wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then we fear it's a dead project, and move on in search for something else with active contributors.

Certainly not everyone. Personally, I pay little attention to that sort of thing at all. I don't care if it's a "dead" project or not -- as long as the software is meeting my needs, that's the only thing that matters. If/when it stops doing that, then I'll look for alternatives.

Same here. I run Slackware on all of my engineering and development workstations. It does what I want, nothing gets hosed when running updates, and I don't feel like my main job is sysadmin.

But I keep getting told I need a "Slackware intervention" :P

Re: Apache Open Office as an unmaintained project?

#266

Post by pxc »

worthless-trash wrote: post #246
AceJohnny2 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debian is not a commercial entity. It's a volunteer organization. In fact there's been quite a bit of vitriol about Canonical (company behind Ubuntu) profiting (for what that's worth) from all the hard work from Debian volunteers and not sharing as much of that value back to Debian as was felt was deserved.

I've always wondered about that, I feel like ubuntu sometimes doesn't contribute fixes upstream. When I hear 'it works on ubuntu but not on distro X', it makes me wonder why ubuntu devs didnt post the fixes upstream. * I do realise that different release timings can fudge with the timing, but when fedora is building upstream versions and I hear it, its a bit.. disheartening.

> When I hear 'it works on ubuntu but not on distro X', it makes me wonder why ubuntu devs didnt post the fixes upstream.

I think this usually doesn't really have to do with Canonical at all, but with third party developers only testing against and building for Ubuntu.

Re: Apache Open Office as an unmaintained project?

#267

Post by pxc »

pjmlp wrote: post #256
raxxorraxor wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the current market you reliably can do both. Nobody in software can deny the importance of open source software, if only for learning or training. Without FOSS, there would only be stagnation. You can even develop commercial software and still support FOSS. This isn't some think the kids of the 90s do. Most new open source projects are created by younger developers.

Try to make a living from open source desktop software, or open source games. Younger developers are re-discovering public domain and shareware, while rebranding them as open core.

> Try to make a living from [...] open source games.

To me, many of the elements of political interest with free software in general don't really come into play with games (although some incidental issues, like privacy concerns, certainly do come into play in practice). Part of what makes software freedom urgent where it matters most is a very material dependency on software— it matters most when we depend on that software to make our livings, or to access medical care, or to access education. The stakes are lower for games, and I imagine that many people who care deeply about free software are still comfortable buying and running proprietary games. I know I am.

I don't think there's a serious problem with making/selling proprietary games, either, even if you're generally committed to free software.

Re: Apache Open Office as an unmaintained project?

#268

Post by worthless-trash »

pxc wrote: post #266
worthless-trash wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always wondered about that, I feel like ubuntu sometimes doesn't contribute fixes upstream. When I hear 'it works on ubuntu but not on distro X', it makes me wonder why ubuntu devs didnt post the fixes upstream. * I do realise that different release timings can fudge with the timing, but when fedora is building upstream versions and I hear it, its a bit.. disheartening.

> When I hear 'it works on ubuntu but not on distro X', it makes me wonder why ubuntu devs didnt post the fixes upstream. I think this usually doesn't really have to do with Canonical at all, but with third party developers only testing against and building for Ubuntu.

Possibly, the examples I chased down are usually patches to the gnome userspace stack.

Re: Apache Open Office as an unmaintained project?

#269

Post by tivert »

IseardMi wrote: post #37

It looks like most of the recent commits are done by someone as mostly a way of learning and not for the sake of the project itself. https://github.com/apache/openoffice/commit/d2a7b3cc90e95392...

> It looks like most of the recent commits are done by someone as mostly a way of learning and not for the sake of the project itself.

> https://github.com/apache/openoffice/commit/d2a7b3cc90e95392...

From that link:

> Most of the commits here seams to be mainly white space changes to random files.

It might not be "learning" but rather an attempt to game GitHub (e.g. rack up a lot of commits to important-sounding repos). My understanding is go around using automated tools to submit PRs that fix whitespace and typos in order to do that.

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