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Apache votes to accept OpenOffice.org for incubation
On Thu, Jun 9, 2011 at 12:00 PM, Sam Ruby <rubys@intertwingly.net> wrote: > > Binding votes are ones that are cast by Incubator PMC members. Quorum > is 3 binding +1 yes votes. Once quorum is met, if more +1 votes are > received than -1, the vote carries. Otherwise, the vote fails. Vote started on Friday, June 10th at 12:02pm EDT: http://s.apache.org/VgS Voting is now closed. Quorum was achieved, and the vote passes. Voting results: --- Summary --- Binding: +1: 41 --: 1 -0: 1 -1: 5 Non-binding: +1: 45 +0: 2 ±0: 1 -0: 1 -1: 8 --- Details --- Binding: +1 aadamchik Andrus Adamchik +1 adc Alan Cabrera +1 akarasulu Alex Karasulu -- antelder Anthony Elder +1 ate Ate Douma +1 bdelacretaz Bertrand Delacretaz +1 bimargulies Benson Margulies +1 brett Brett Porter +1 clr Craig Russell +1 curcuru Shane Curcuru +1 danese Danese Cooper +1 dims Davanum Srinivas +1 dirkx Dirk-Willem van Gulik +1 elecharny Emmanuel Lecharny -0 gnodet Guillaume Nodet +1 grobmeier Christian Grobmeier +1 gstein Greg Stein +1 jim Jim Jagielski +1 joes Joe Schaefer +1 jukka Jukka Zitting +1 jvermillard Julien Vermillard +1 kevan Kevan Lee Miller +1 leosimons Leo Simons +1 lresende Luciano Resende +1 marrs Marcel Offermans +1 marvin Marvin Humphrey +1 mattmann Chris Mattmann +1 mturk Mladen Turk -1 niallp Niall Pemberton +1 nick Nick Burch -1 niclas Par Niclas Hedhman +1 noel Noel J. Bergman +1 noirin Noirin Plunkett +1 pauls Karl Pauls -1 psteitz Phil Steitz +1 rdonkin Robert Burrell Donkin +1 rgardler Ross Duncan Gardler +1 rgoers Ralph Goers +1 rhirsch Richard Hirsch +1 rubys Sam Ruby -1 sanjiva Sanjiva Weerawarana +1 sdeboy Scott Deboy +1 stoddard Bill Stoddard +1 struberg Mark Struberg -1 twilliams Tim Williams +1 upayavira Upayavira +1 wrowe William A. Rowe Jr. +1 zwoop Leif Hedstrom Non-binding: +1 aaf Alexei Fedotov +0 aku Andreas Kuckartz +1 asavory Andrew Savory +1 bayard Henri Yandell +1 damjan Damjan Jovanovic (v) +1 eric Eric Charles +1 edwardsmj Mike Edwards +1 florent Florent André (v) +1 jkosin James Kosin -1 stevel Steve Loughran +1 mikemccand Michael McCandless -1 niq Nick Kew +1 ngn Niklas Gustavsson +1 rickhall Richard S. Hall -0 seelmann Stefan Seelmann +1 scottbw Scott Wilson +1 sgala Santiago Gala +1 svanderwaal Sander van der Waal +1 wave Dave Fisher (v) +1 yegor Yegor Kozlov (v) +1 --- Eric Bachard (v) +1 --- Mathias Bauer (v) -1 --- Thorsten Behrens +1 --- Stephan Bergmann (v) +1 --- Raphael Bircher (v) +1 --- Andy Brown (v) +1 --- Alexandro Colorado (v) -1 --- Keith Curtis -1 --- Florian Effenberger +1 --- Roman H. Gelbort (v) +1 --- Pedro Giffuni +1 --- Larry Gusaas +1 --- Daniel Haischt +1 --- Dennis E. Hamilton (v) +1 --- Don Harbison (v) +1 --- Kazunari Hirano (v) +1 --- Christoph Jopp +1 --- Steve Lee (v) +1 --- Dieter Loeschky (v) +1 --- Ian Lynch (v) +1 --- Carl Marcum (v) +1 --- Marcus +1 --- Ingrid von der Mehden (v) -1 --- Volker Merschmann +0 --- Cor Nouws +1 --- Simon Phipps ±0 --- Manfred A. Reiter +1 --- Phillip Rhodes (v) +1 --- Andrew Rist (v) +1 --- Jürgen Schmidt (v) -1 --- André Schnabel +1 --- Jomar Silva (v) +1 --- Louis Suárez-Potts (v) +1 --- Malte Timmermann (v) +1 --- Jochen Wiedmann +1 --- Donald Whytock -1 --- Simos Xenitellis (Log in to post comments)
Apache votes to accept OpenOffice.org for incubation Posted Jun 13, 2011 17:47 UTC (Mon) by boog (subscriber, #30882) [Link]
Despite a certain amount of bad blood between the LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org projects, it is maybe worth pointing out that multiple competing implementations of the ODF standard are nonetheless a good thing for the standard.
And the .org name was always awful; they're welcome to it.
What's in a name? Posted Jun 13, 2011 18:04 UTC (Mon) by wt (guest, #11793) [Link]
As for the name, I really liked the Openoffice.org name better than LibreOffice. Having said that, I nearly always called it OpenOffice (without the .org part), and I find LibreOffice somewhat more cumbersome to pronounce. I just think that OpenOffice has a better speech rhythm than LibreOffice, and I find that I have more trouble communicating the LibreOffice name to others.
Having said all this, I am but one person, and I understand that other may have different POVs.
What's in a name? Posted Jun 14, 2011 8:25 UTC (Tue) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link]
Just to give an example of other POV: being French, I read LibreOffice as L-ee-bro-f-ee-s, which sound nicer than O-pun-O-fis which is longer, a bit camel-shaped, and less French.
What's in a name? Posted Jun 14, 2011 10:54 UTC (Tue) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]
Same here. To a native Spanish speaker, LibreOffice is much more easy on the eyes (and easier to say) than OpenOffice.
What's in a name? Posted Jun 15, 2011 15:13 UTC (Wed) by eean (guest, #50420) [Link]
as a native Spanish speaker... don't you find the mixed languages sort of offensive on the eyes?
What's in a name? Posted Jun 16, 2011 7:56 UTC (Thu) by quotemstr (subscriber, #45331) [Link]
Is "television" painful to yours?
Apache votes to accept OpenOffice.org for incubation Posted Jun 14, 2011 0:16 UTC (Tue) by j16sdiz (guest, #57302) [Link]
LibreOffice and OOo share most of the source code, so it is still the "same" implementation.
I would like to see Calligra suite (Koffice) fly. But no windows build is a blocker. Yes, it "support" windows. But the "support" is: it builds some years ago, we did nothing to broke it, let's assume it is not rotten.
Apache votes to accept OpenOffice.org for incubation Posted Jun 14, 2011 8:44 UTC (Tue) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link]
Maybe they should use some better cross-compilation tools to enable them to build Windows versions from Linux: https://lwn.net/Articles/307732/ (MinGW etc). This might make it more acceptable to Linux developers to do this, but they would first have to want to support Windows.
The Decline and Fall of OpenOffice.org Posted Jun 13, 2011 18:05 UTC (Mon) by mjw (subscriber, #16740) [Link]
Bruce Byfield had an article on the matter with some interesting numbers on contributors of the original OpenOffice.org, those now contributing to LibreOffice through The Document Foundation (more than openoffice.org ever had) and the background of those volunteering for the new Apache project (less than half appear to have worked with the code before):
http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/Blogs/Off-the-Beat-B...
The Decline and Fall of OpenOffice.org Posted Jun 14, 2011 4:59 UTC (Tue) by Bystander (guest, #75675) [Link]
Using Bruce's numbers for LibreOffice and the most recent information on contributors to the Apache OpenOffice.org incubator, we get something like the following:
After more than 8 months, LibreOffice has:
124 people who previously contributed to OpenOffice.org
After 1 day as an Apache incubator project, Apache OpenOffice.org has:
35 people who previously contributed to OpenOffice.org
And by Bruce's count, there are still 220 original OpenOffice.org contributors who have not contributed to LibreOffice. There's a pretty good chance that a number of those people may be persuaded to contribute to the new OpenOffice.org. Now that the Apache incubator is approved, the project can start recruiting in earnest. Add in the people who may decide to contribute to both projects along with potential new recruits, and it's far too early to say which project will have the greatest momentum a few months from now.
The Decline and Fall of OpenOffice.org Posted Jun 14, 2011 10:54 UTC (Tue) by keithcu (guest, #58738) [Link]
The volunteers to the Apache effort are mostly naive people who were sitting on the sidelines waiting to see what would happen. If the teams were merged and LibreOffice was made the mainline, they would have followed along. This fork was created by the leaders, not by the community. Inside LibreOffice, people weren't grumbling and complaining about wanting to fork.
Here is my list of reasons why the fork is bad:
The Decline and Fall of OpenOffice.org Posted Jun 14, 2011 11:13 UTC (Tue) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]
I hope that if this is true, then OpenOffice will bit-rot and die eventually.
The Decline and Fall of OpenOffice.org Posted Jun 14, 2011 13:43 UTC (Tue) by spaetz (subscriber, #32870) [Link]
Take this analysis with a grain of salt. I feel competent to say this because I created the LO credits page, that Bruce uses as a source of data. :-).
First of all, the LO credits is based on actual code changes contributed in their name, taken from the git. The initial apache list of committers seems nothing more than a list of people being interested in the project, there are forum administrators and other non-coders in there. I see also a number of employees from Oracle who have previously been involved in non-coding positions, such as a "community manager."
Don't misunderstand me, I wish the Apache project good luck and it's great to have people signed up that want to support it. A healthy community of non-coders is certainly crucial. But attempting to compare these numbers is futile and dangerous.
Sebastian
Apache votes to accept OpenOffice.org for incubation Posted Jun 13, 2011 22:02 UTC (Mon) by butlerm (subscriber, #13312) [Link]
Now that the original OpenOffice code is now available under the Apache License, wouldn't it make a lot of sense for the LibreOffice folks to switch to the Apache License too, so code can flow both ways?
Using the Apache License instead of the GPL seems to be likely the number one reason why Oracle preferred to make OpenOffice an Apache project. If they keep making significant contributions, allowing closed forks of LibreOffice derived code seems like more than a reasonable compromise.
Pragmatically speaking, the lack of copyleft provisions doesn't seem to have hurt the ASF projects in any way. If you get much less in the way of outside contributions than you would otherwise, insisting on copyleft seems more like pointless ideological rigidity, than something that will actually put more and better open source software in the hands of more people.
Apache votes to accept OpenOffice.org for incubation Posted Jun 13, 2011 22:25 UTC (Mon) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
it's clear what the benefits to openoffice would be to have the code flow both ways, but what exactly is the benefit to libreoffice?
yes it allows openoffice to keep up easier, and it helps people making proprietary forks. but why should libreoffice developers care about either of these?
Apache votes to accept OpenOffice.org for incubation Posted Jun 14, 2011 2:05 UTC (Tue) by butlerm (subscriber, #13312) [Link]
The main reason is that without the ability for code to move in both directions the code bases are likely to diverge much more than they would otherwise, to the degree that LibreOffice eventually completely foregoes nearly all contributions made to the much more permissively licensed Apache project. Oracle is making a major compromise by placing their software under a permissive license, surely it isn't entirely unreasonable to expect other participants in what ought to be the same software project to do the same?
Apache votes to accept OpenOffice.org for incubation Posted Jun 14, 2011 9:43 UTC (Tue) by simosx (subscriber, #24338) [Link]
Oracle gave up on OpenOffice.org and dumped it to the ASF.
They might have been some contractual obligations from Oracle to IBM, since IBM Lotus Symphony is closed-source and based on the OpenOffice.org code.
An office suite is an important and complex piece of software. Perhaps similar to the Linux kernel. It's better to be copyleft than permissive, so that all contribute to the same pot, and there is no cheating.
Apache votes to accept OpenOffice.org for incubation Posted Jun 24, 2011 4:53 UTC (Fri) by wtanksleyjr (guest, #74601) [Link]
> Imagine if the Linux kernel had a permissive license; would it be celebrating today the 20th anniversary?
We know that BSD survived this long while even competing against the much stronger Linux (which became strong during a time of legal troubles for BSD)... So I'm guessing the answer to your question is "yes, it would".
...not that this disproves your preference here. Personally, I'm inclined to leave things as they are (which seems to be your opinion also).
-Wm
Apache votes to accept OpenOffice.org for incubation Posted Jun 14, 2011 13:29 UTC (Tue) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]
Code does flow in two ways: from the OO.o repo to the LibreOffice repo and from the OO.o repo to the secret IBM Lotus Symphony repo.
Will IBM make things easier for the OO.o by allowing the OO.o people to use the code from their Symphony repo? Or do you only ask RedHat and SUSE for such generosity?
Apache votes to accept OpenOffice.org for incubation Posted Jun 13, 2011 22:41 UTC (Mon) by lutchann (subscriber, #8872) [Link]
> Pragmatically speaking, the lack of copyleft provisions doesn't seem to have hurt the ASF projects in any way.
*shrug* Personally I'm much more inclined to contribute code to copyleft projects than those that allow anybody (or one particular entity) to take my work proprietary.
It's easy to count contributors, it's impossible to count those that choose not to contribute.
Apache votes to accept OpenOffice.org for incubation Posted Jun 14, 2011 1:37 UTC (Tue) by butlerm (subscriber, #13312) [Link]
That is a reasonable position, but it has consequences. It means that the project you contribute to will not to receive contributions from companies that require the ability to make closed forks. In some cases, those contributions may be substantial, and they are foregone by non-company-owned projects with copyleft licenses. MySQL and its derivatives, for example, would not exist on a non-company-owned copyleft basis. OpenOffice would never have been developed on a non-company-owned copyleft basis either. It ought to be obvious that between the two, a permissively licensed project like PostgreSQL is far more stable and likely to thrive in the long run than a company-owned copyleft project like MySQL.
There is a natural transition from company-owned copyleft to permissive licenses that doesn't exist from company-owned copyleft to non-company-owned copyleft. No doubt Oracle's point of view is "we developed or paid for most of this code, why would we want not only to give up our preferred position, but lose the ability to make closed forks of what is mostly our own software"? So the question here is, which project is more likely to thrive, a permissively licensed project that Oracle is still likely to make substantial contributions to, or a non-company-owned copyleft project that it is not? Seems like an open and shut case to me.
Apache votes to accept OpenOffice.org for incubation Posted Jun 14, 2011 2:53 UTC (Tue) by freemars (subscriber, #4235) [Link] So the question here is, which project is more likely to thrive, a permissively licensed project that Oracle is still likely to make substantial contributions to, or a non-company-owned copyleft project that it is not? Seems like an open and shut case to me. Since contributions to OO.org can be incorporated into LibreOffice it can take advantage of anything Oracle adds. But if someone comes up with a killer addition to LibreOffice it can't be pulled back into OO.org. Yep, seems like an open and shut case.
Apache votes to accept OpenOffice.org for incubation Posted Jun 14, 2011 6:48 UTC (Tue) by butlerm (subscriber, #13312) [Link]
Well, if you are actively trying to kill OpenOffice, and you have the time, manpower, and resources to do so, being as unfriendly to them as possible, and making it likely that none of their work will be compatible with your code base sounds like an excellent way to do this. I didn't know OpenOffice was the enemy though.
Apache votes to accept OpenOffice.org for incubation Posted Jun 14, 2011 3:09 UTC (Tue) by lutchann (subscriber, #8872) [Link]
> It means that the project you contribute to will not to receive contributions from companies that require the ability to make closed forks.
That is exactly my reasoning. Why would I volunteer my time to help a company create a product that I get no rights to in return? I don't care what contributions they may or may not promise to make to the open part of the code; they can do it without my help.
> It ought to be obvious that between the two, a permissively licensed project like PostgreSQL is far more stable and likely to thrive in the long run than a company-owned copyleft project like MySQL.
I'm not sure I follow. Last I checked MySQL enjoyed far greater popularity than PostgreSQL. And in spite of the fact that Oracle is trying to kill it, active development communities have sprung up around its various forks.
In any event, I agree that permissive licensing is a sensible choice for many projects, but I think there are perfectly good reasons to use a copyleft license for other projects. Your outright dismissal of copyleft seems unwarranted and contradictory to real-world experience.
Apache votes to accept OpenOffice.org for incubation Posted Jun 14, 2011 7:29 UTC (Tue) by butlerm (subscriber, #13312) [Link] Why would I volunteer my time to help a company create a product that I get no rights to in return?That does not follow. We are talking about open source here, in particular a non-company owned, permissively licensed project. With the Apache License you have far more rights than you do with the GPL. The GPL is designed to limit your rights in a manner that works pretty well so long as a single company doesn't control the copyright. By choosing a company owned GPL licensed project like MySQL over a permissively licensed project like PostgreSQL, you are giving up rights out of spite, and in particular giving them to a company who can do things you can't. Are you really eager to assign your copyrights to Oracle or some other commercial enterprise just so you can have a less permissive, politically correct license, while they have carte blanche to do anything? I certainly do not mean to make an outright dismissal of copyleft. My point is that a permissive license is almost always better than company owned copyleft, and in many cases superior to non-company owned copyleft as well. Maintaining ideological purity at the cost of driving away companies that are sufficiently enlightened to permissively license their source code with the same favor in return seems like shooting yourself in the foot to me. If a company is making substantial contributions to a project that I benefit from, I don't lay awake at night thinking that somehow, some way they are getting the better of the deal because a few lines of code I wrote ended up in some dead end proprietary fork.
Sorry, but no. Posted Jun 14, 2011 9:51 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] The GPL is designed to limit your rights in a manner that works pretty well so long as a single company doesn't control the copyright. Nope. GPL is designed to limit IBM's rights. Oracle's rights. Microsoft's rights. Note: LibreOffice does not even use GPL, it uses LGPL/MPL. So the only right it denies to you is the right to charge me for my own code. Sorry, but this is not something I'm willing to concede. Are you really eager to assign your copyrights to Oracle or some other commercial enterprise just so you can have a less permissive, politically correct license, while they have carte blanche to do anything? These who forget the history... Go-OO and later LibreOffice was started by people who explicitly refused to give carte blanche to Sun and later Oracle. If a company is making substantial contributions to a project that I benefit from, I don't lay awake at night thinking that somehow, some way they are getting the better of the deal because a few lines of code I wrote ended up in some dead end proprietary fork. I don't see many "substantial contributions". I see the code dump designed to "cut the losses". Perhaps it was easier for Oracle to do that rather then just close OpenOffice.org project, I'm not sure. But to expect further contributions to OpenOffice.org from Sun... I'll believe that when I'll see that.
Apache votes to accept OpenOffice.org for incubation Posted Jun 14, 2011 12:48 UTC (Tue) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link] By choosing a company owned GPL licensed project like MySQL over a permissively licensed project like PostgreSQL, you are giving up rights out of spite, and in particular giving them to a company who can do things you can't. I believe that the commenter referred to the "active development communities [which] have sprung up around its various forks [of MySQL]", and did not advocate signing over contributions to Oracle. I know that the latest anti-copyleft meme is to call copyleft "bad" because single-ownership projects ask people to sign over their contributions or to license them permissively for the benefit of the owner, but in such circumstances the copyleft licence isn't the thing at fault. It's like blaming Newton's laws for a headache from a falling apple instead of the guy shaking the tree. What people should be taking away from the whole contributor agreement thing is a cautiousness about licensing one's own contributions under terms that one would not normally find acceptable. So, if a project demands permissively-licensed contributions but makes its code available under a copyleft licence, one should be asking oneself why a copyleft-licensed contribution is not good enough. And for the mostly ignored case of a company releasing a single-owner project under a permissive licence, one should again decide to contribute based on the licence and also on the basis of any future change in policy by the owner. People have used the "company X stopped releasing Y under the GPL and made new versions under EULA Z" as an argument against the GPL, ridiculous as that may seem: such behavioural changes can occur independently of the project licence and are enabled by the willingness of contributors to accept potentially unfavourable terms of contribution.
Apache votes to accept OpenOffice.org for incubation Posted Jun 14, 2011 13:08 UTC (Tue) by lutchann (subscriber, #8872) [Link]
> Are you really eager to assign your copyrights to Oracle or some other commercial enterprise
Ah, we're just misunderstanding each other. I would never contribute to a project that required copyright assignment, regardless of the license(s) under which the code was distributed. (Actually that's not quite true--I might be willing to assign copyright to the FSF. Maybe.)
> My point is that a permissive license is almost always better than company owned copyleft, and in many cases superior to non-company owned copyleft as well.
Agreed, although I think I'm rather more in favor of "non-company owned copyleft" than you are.
Apache votes to accept OpenOffice.org for incubation Posted Jun 14, 2011 8:50 UTC (Tue) by aristedes (guest, #35729) [Link]
> That is exactly my reasoning. Why would I volunteer my time to help a company create a product that I get no rights to in return
I guess that depends on why you contribute to open source. If your goal is to 'stick it to the man' and ensure that companies cannot employ programmers, build on your work, sell a product, then copyleft achieves those goals. If on the other hand, you contribute to open source to advance the state of software on this planet, however it is distributed, then an Apache-style license is more helpful.
In this case, an Apache release (we are a long way from that yet) will achieve an important goal all on its own: any derivative of that code release will inherit important Apache license items, such as the fact that the code will be unencumbered by any patents and trademarks Oracle owns. The LibreOffice fork does not have those rights today. This will in itself benefit both the OO and LibreOffice forks.
Lots of things are possible here:
1. The forks merge under the Apache license
Let's see how it plays out. It will be interesting.
Ari
Apache votes to accept OpenOffice.org for incubation Posted Jun 14, 2011 8:56 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
"I guess that depends on why you contribute to open source. If your goal is to 'stick it to the man' and ensure that companies cannot employ programmers, build on your work, sell a product, then copyleft achieves those goals. If on the other hand, you contribute to open source to advance the state of software on this planet, however it is distributed, then an Apache-style license is more helpful."
Nonsense. Companies employ programmers to work on copyleft licensed codebases all the time. I can hardly think of any major IT organization that does not do that. The goals of copyleft license is encourage a software commons. Anything else is just pure FUD.
Apache votes to accept OpenOffice.org for incubation Posted Jun 14, 2011 16:45 UTC (Tue) by rahvin (subscriber, #16953) [Link]
And more importantly, history has shown that permissive licenses just don't work in some situations. The BSD code was open and free to use under a permissive license. What developed around that same time was not an open and fair system where every worked toward the common good but in fact a closed competitive system where everyone kept their improvements to themselves in the name of competition. Such a system would still exist (and the reinventing of the wheel over and over again) had Linux not been licensed with the GPL. The restrictions in the GPL force cooperation on the community with entities that if given the opportunity would close up and refuse contributions.
IBM even made a public statement that were Linux not GPL they wouldn't contribute for fear competitors would use their work and improve and not give back.
So you might argue permissive is better, but I'll argue the GPL is better because it forces everyone to equal footing. A real study of the issue would be needed, but I'd be willing to bet that in almost all circumstances (yes there are exceptions that IMO are more about timing than license) a GPL project will move along better than a permissively licensed project.
Apache votes to accept OpenOffice.org for incubation Posted Jun 17, 2011 1:14 UTC (Fri) by aristedes (guest, #35729) [Link]
My language might have been too emotive but I'm certainly not arguing copyleft == bad. I would actually suggest that there are stronger reasons to contribute code upstream: that is, few companies can afford to maintain their own fork of (say) Apache httpd, so in fact there are probably few such forks and plenty of contributions to the original project. You don't need to use the law as a stick in every situation.
You argue that IBM does not contribute back to Apache licensed code, but that is just incorrect. They are one of the largest corporate supporters of Apache projects (and there are many more). Yes it is a shame they pulled out of Apache Harmony for strategic/political reasons, but their employees are still to be found all over contributions.
You argue that the BSD projects don't have an open system with people working to a common good. That is quite the reverse of my experience with FreeBSD. Many companies contribute code and their employees' time to FreeBSD.
If you want to study competing projects with different licenses, it would certainly be interesting, but I don't think you can dismiss the entire Ruby/Rails ecosystem (MIT license), the Apache projects, the various BSD projects, and a range of other projects like postgresql as all inferior to their GPL cousins.
I personally contribute to both GPL and Apache/BSD licensed projects. I don't feel that my work on Apache projects somehow represents me being exploited by 'big corporate'.
Apache votes to accept OpenOffice.org for incubation Posted Jun 17, 2011 2:26 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
"My language might have been too emotive but I'm certainly not arguing copyleft == bad"
You are doing far worse than that. You are ascribing bad motivations to people contributing to copyleft licensed codebases ignoring all the historical reasons and current research on this topic and also making factually incorrect claims about the impact of copyleft licensed codebases on commercial organizations.
Apache votes to accept OpenOffice.org for incubation Posted Jun 14, 2011 13:30 UTC (Tue) by lutchann (subscriber, #8872) [Link]
> If your goal is to 'stick it to the man' and ensure that companies cannot employ programmers, build on your work, sell a product, then copyleft achieves those goals.
I wasn't aware that I had a moral obligation to allow companies to profit from my work without giving me anything in return. I guess I'll tear up these contracts and start working for my clients for free.
> If on the other hand, you contribute to open source to advance the state of software on this planet, however it is distributed, then an Apache-style license is more helpful.
I hack on software in my free time because I use it and want to improve it to better fit my needs. I contribute my improvements back to the original project because I want to reward other people who do the same. Copyleft ensures this reciprocity; permissive licenses do not.
Apache votes to accept OpenOffice.org for incubation Posted Jun 14, 2011 13:44 UTC (Tue) by spaetz (subscriber, #32870) [Link]
> Now that the original OpenOffice code is now available under the Apache License, wouldn't it make a lot of sense for the LibreOffice folks to switch to the Apache License too, so code can flow both ways?
They can't (easily). They have accepted contributions from 200+ people without copyright assignment and licensed the contributions under LGPL and MPL. Good luck in trying to get me to relicense my contributions ;P
What?!? Posted Jun 14, 2011 8:23 UTC (Tue) by slashdot (guest, #22014) [Link]
Why are they accepting this fork of LibreOffice clearly done on purely "political" grounds, when LibreOffice is the project widely supported by distributions and the community?
Surely it would be best to accelerate the death of OpenOffice rather than lending support to it?
What?!? Posted Jun 14, 2011 9:49 UTC (Tue) by simosx (subscriber, #24338) [Link]
For the Apache Software Foundation members it looks like they get their chance to prove themselves and become better known in the community.
Their problem is that the magnitude of OpenOffice.org is too big for them. It involves interaction with the community, bug reports from end-users, usability, marketing, localisation. The ASF never had to deal with these, and they expect from the community to come and help. Well, they alienated the community.
What?!? Posted Jun 14, 2011 16:52 UTC (Tue) by rahvin (subscriber, #16953) [Link]
Give it time. If the project stagnates as many are predicting the ASF might decide to dump the project and give control to LO. Worst case the project dies a slow horrible death but either way LO still exists.
Even in the best case scenario you won't see much improvement, IBM isn't going to dump back their improvements nor do I think any other commercial entity will. So in the end in the best case you have a few individuals working on the codebase in their spare time. This is a big code base, you need a big vibrant community to move this project forward. Without the project moving forward I just can't see developers sticking around.
What?!? Posted Jun 15, 2011 23:09 UTC (Wed) by xtifr (subscriber, #143) [Link]
It's merely in the incubator, not a mainstream Apache project. As to why? OOo is a large code grant under their preferred license. The Apache project is very much in favor of the Apache license (for some odd reason), so to at least a small extent, it's in their favor to have an APL'd OOo thrive and grow. Whatever "political" grounds you may have in mind are probably irrelevant to the fact that this is a major contribution of APL-licensed code. Apache doesn't work for "the distributions", nor are they identical to the Linux community (though there's overlap, of course). The Apache community includes Windows fans, Solaris fans, BSD fans, etc. Some smallish parts of the Apache community despise Linux and/or the GPL, though most are probably neutral at worst, and some are big fans.
I don't see how accelerating the death of OOo has _any_ benefit to the Apache community. Not likely to be all that helpful either, but it could help promote their license, which I'm sure they'd like.
OpenOffice.Org and the LibreOffice Imperative Posted Jun 14, 2011 9:10 UTC (Tue) by mjw (subscriber, #16740) [Link]
Simon Phipps has a nice article about what happened with lots of background links: http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/06/openo...
He makes the point that "Code Is Not Community". And has some practical advise for those that might not directly contribute right now:
> What does that mean for you? If you use GNU/Linux in almost any flavour, you're may already be using LibreOffice since some distributions already switched to it. If not, or if you use Windows or a Mac, you should just ignore all this noise and leave things to sort themselves out at Apache. Then, in the mean time, you'll find the best code and the most innovations happening at LibreOffice - go there right now and download the latest version! http://www.libreoffice.org/download
And then there's NeoOffice Posted Jun 16, 2011 3:48 UTC (Thu) by bjlucier (subscriber, #5281) [Link] There's also NeoOffice, a version of OpenOffice.org for the Macintosh, which is distributed under the GPL; to my non-lawyerly understanding, this implies that improvements in NeoOffice (and there are many, the ones I especially notice are in mathematical font handling) can't be merged back either to LibreOffice or OpenOffice.org. The NeoOffice authors are taking an approach similar to RedHat with RHEL, distributing binaries of the latest version only to people who donate (money) to the project. I understand the reasons for different projects when different goals exist (even slightly different goals), but I think it would be better if these particular projects could find a way to work together.
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