Oracle proposes donating OpenOffice.org to Apache Software Foundation

Posted Jun 1, 2011 22:30 UTC (Wed) by jmalcolm (subscriber, #8876)
Parent article: Oracle proposes donating OpenOffice.org to Apache Software Foundation

I have very mixed feelings about this.

My first instinct is that LibreOffice stepped up, provided a huge service to the community, and essential won against Oracle in the market. We should all just get behind LibreOffice and leave OpenOffice.org to die on the vine.

It seems like LibreOffice has some real momentum. They have made it really easy for people to contribute and people are actually pitching in. They seem to have unlocked a groundswell of contributor potential that OpenOffice.org just never mustered. I even got myself on the contributors list.

I do not agree that LibreOffice could not compete with Oracle, the ASF, and IBM. I think that even IBM was contributing to LibreOffice before Oracle made this move.

That said, I do actually prefer the Apache license overall. I also understand the value of having commercial backers like IBM. So, if LibreOffice would have been APL2.0 to begin with, that would have been great.

The whole idea of Oracle and IBM taking what little leverage they have left in this situation to essentially spit in the face of LibreOffice also just rubs me the wrong way.

Oracle proposes donating OpenOffice.org to Apache Software Foundation

Posted Jun 1, 2011 23:15 UTC (Wed) by donbarry (guest, #10485) [Link]

This is exactly what Oracle, IBM, and VMware are doing in the
Hudson/Jenkins software fiasco.
Having thoroughly alienated a large community, Oracle is now "donating"
code which includes large swaths for which they do not have relicensing
rights to Eclipse, which is all too willing to accept it. And Oracle
promises that major contributions of labor will suddenly materialize from
the industry partners in the aftermath.

But really, it's just to take the attention and buzz away from Jenkins,
the renamed Hudson project, with all the original contributors and quite
a few new ones. Oracle cannot stand success elsewhere, and
like a bird of paradise seeing unwanted extraneous attention to a peahen, struts and displays to return attention to itself. The community cost is at once potentially large, but also irrelevant to Oracle.