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A discordant symphonyA discordant symphonyPosted Jan 24, 2013 8:20 UTC (Thu) by aristedes (guest, #35729)In reply to: A discordant symphony by branden Parent article: A discordant symphony
I am quite baffled as to the level of bad temper in this thread. Rob has been far more patient than I can understand continually replying to the same questions again and again.
The original article started the ball rolling with factually incorrect statements about Apache keeping stuff secret in branches (where the entire svn tree is in fact public, including the branches). And then posters continued to pound the same tired rhetoric again and again:
1. Apache should prioritise the review the legal state of the donation, so that it can be released under an Apache license as soon as possible.
2. Whether Apache contributors are working hard on merging the appropriate parts of the donation with OpenOffice is irrelevant, their first responsibility should be to provide a legal vetting service and release the code under an Apache license to the LibreOffice project (and others, but we all know there aren't any others). Merging code back into OpenOffice can take second priority to this.
3. Because the project is instead working on merging code to their own plan, then Apache must be secretive or malicious or something else quite sinister.
Have a got this about right?
It is perfectly clear to everyone here that the code has been donated by IBM. That some parts of it might still have license issues and Apache cannot currently make a blanket statement that it is all guaranteed to end up under ALv2. Not without quite a lot of work to check it all.
Do you think that all that is needed is Rob single handedly putting a note on the website to say "We release all this under the ALv2" and that he is not doing this to spite you all? The entire Apache Foundation NEVER releases anything under the ALv2 license unless it goes through the proper processes, is verified (quality/code/etc) and is voted on. This forms the core of the Foundation's reputation.
If this code is terribly valuable to LibreOffice, perhaps some volunteers from that project could step forward to help merge it into OpenOffice and where it will easily travel downstream to LibreOffice.
I've only come into this thread when the paywall was lifted, but it isn't the typical quality of conversation I've come to expect on LWN.
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A discordant symphony Posted Jan 24, 2013 8:51 UTC (Thu) by jrn (subscriber, #64214) [Link]
> I am quite baffled as to the level of bad temper in this thread.
Likewise.
> It is perfectly clear to everyone here that the code has been donated by IBM.
Donated to the ASF, yes. All donated to the public (rather than just the parts that make their way to the openoffice.org codebase), not so clear to me.
A discordant symphony Posted Jan 25, 2013 4:55 UTC (Fri) by aristedes (guest, #35729) [Link]
> Donated to the ASF, yes. All donated to the public (rather than just the parts that make their way to the openoffice.org codebase), not so clear to me.
I'd say that is a fair assessment. If IBM assigned rights to the ASF, that doesn't mean they released the code under the ALv2 to the general public. Eventually the good bits will end up there, and perhaps you could make a case that the code was *effectively* released by IBM under the ALv2, but that would be for lawyers to argue.
Maybe the bad temper here is because the LibreOffice people thought that IBM should have donated it to them instead and now are stamping their foot saying "but we are the REAL open source office suite".
A discordant symphony Posted Jan 25, 2013 6:48 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
it's not that the LO people are saying that the content should have been donated to them, it's that they are saying that IBM should have donated the content to the community, not to any one set of developers to mine as they choose and to bury as they choose. Even 'toss it over the fence' releases are better than having a biased gatekeeper deciding what lines to put under a opensource license and what lines to keep proprietary and turn into complete dead-ends.
I will also say that this is the first time that I've heard of a company donating code where the code is not then available in it's entirety, and you instead have a second layer of people (not the people donating the code) deciding what parts will actually be made Open Source
A discordant symphony Posted Jan 25, 2013 12:40 UTC (Fri) by bosyber (subscriber, #84963) [Link]
Indeed, a striking difference to http://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/533425/30446205161e3983/ (lighthouse opensourced), where despite the usual probems a community is now able to use and work on a thought to be lost program because all available code and information is provided as openly as possible.
A discordant symphony Posted Jan 26, 2013 6:52 UTC (Sat) by aristedes (guest, #35729) [Link]
Then you haven't looked very hard. There are hundreds of examples just within Apache of corporate donations to Apache projects. In each and every one of those cases, the Apache release (which includes part or all of that code) is not controlled by the company making the donation. This case is absolutely no different. Google Wave and Cloudscape/Derby are two huge examples I can think of immediately.
I am sure there are lots of similar situations outside of Apache (but I'm less familiar with those).
Now what "biased gatekeeper" are you talking about keeping code proprietary? What absolute nonsense. The entire purpose of all the people who work for Apache is to release code under a liberal open source license. There is no great secret conspiracy. If you see something valuable that you want in LO, then go and help the OpenOffice people integrate it into the code base which LO will merge at some point (assuming LO will continue as Apache OpenOffice with additional patches).
You are so negative toward the Apache volunteers working toward similar open source goals (mostly in their free time) for the benefit of both the Apache OpenOffice and LibreOffice projects. What is it exactly you think the project should do differently?
A discordant symphony Posted Feb 1, 2013 1:11 UTC (Fri) by mema (guest, #89121) [Link]
I'd suggest it happens much more often then you are aware. Quite often I hear about donations to free software but there is no code at all to be seen until the project it was donated to integrates it.
The difference may well be that Apache is more open and the code is visible even before integration, unlike many other free software entities.
A discordant symphony Posted Feb 1, 2013 1:29 UTC (Fri) by mema (guest, #89121) [Link]
Donated to the ASF is just as much donated to the "public" as if the code was donated to a GPL project or even the FSF itself. In fact more so, perhaps. Neither is public domain, which is the only real code donated to the public.
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