Team OpenOffice White Label Office (powered by Apache Open Office)

Posted Dec 23, 2011 6:37 UTC (Fri) by eru (subscriber, #2753)
Parent article: Team OpenOffice White Label Office (powered by Apache Open Office)

(TeamOO are excellent engineers, we can't expect them to also be excellent marketeers)

Actuallly at this point it looks to me like Team OpenOffice is much better at marketing their fork than Apache is. For example, a month or two ago they approached my mailbox with a quite reasonable message announcing their existence and asking if I want to receive further updates (I did), and the present stir-up is also a way to prevent their project from slipping into obscurity.

Team OpenOffice White Label Office (powered by Apache Open Office)

Posted Dec 23, 2011 7:24 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (3 responses)

As Libreoffice has shown already, the mere fact that they are doing a release unlike Apache makes them better at marketing. Releases are critically important for momentum. The license cleansing is being prioritized by Apache and that is a huge mistake.

Team OpenOffice White Label Office (powered by Apache Open Office)

Posted Dec 23, 2011 21:41 UTC (Fri) by rlhamil (guest, #6472) [Link] (2 responses)

Sorry, best to get the legalities pure first - it means both commercial and non-commercial participants can have equal confidence that they're not opening themselves up for something unexpected.

Here's what I want to see:
* releases, for all the platforms (or their successors) supported when Oracle pulled out. I use OS X, Solaris (both SPARC and x86) and yes, occasionally Linux too, so I wouldn't want to see any of those go. And since too many places still use Windows, keeping OO alive there at least allows documents to be freed from proprietary formats, which (from an archival and interoperability perspective) might well be more important than than the code itself.

Here's who I want to have the first shot at profiting from any businesses that distribute or support releases:
* any of the original StarDivision developers that have remained active throughout
* other significant long-term active contributors, commercial or non-commercial

_If_ it contributes to a long future of releases, I'm fine with something that delays releases for a few months now, like making sure all the "i"'s are dotted and "t"'s crossed. Otherwise...not so much. But once the legalities are such that the risk is minimal and the licensing situation not overly confusing, I think releases should be time-based _unless_ there's a clear need for skipping one occasionally to catch up on bugs or something.

Team OpenOffice White Label Office (powered by Apache Open Office)

Posted Dec 23, 2011 22:26 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (1 responses)

"Sorry, best to get the legalities pure first - it means both commercial and non-commercial participants can have equal confidence that they're not opening themselves up for something unexpected."

Like what? Apache wants to rewrite code under LGPL or GPL and only want to release under Apache license. That is not really that important or one that yields any more confidence. It can be a gradual process.

ASL only

Posted Jan 1, 2012 10:51 UTC (Sun) by gvy (guest, #11981) [Link]

But Microsoft can still influence how things go from here on. If they have to live with open source, the Apache project is Microsoft's preferred direction. Apache doesn't use the dreaded GPL and its enforced sharing of source-code. (the dreaded Bruce three years ago)

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