What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 8, 2016 19:39 UTC (Thu) by flussence (guest, #85566)
Parent article: What's next for Apache OpenOffice

>AOO has simply been overloaded w/ emails from developers and other contributors offering their help, skills, talents and support
Sounds almost as optimistic as XFree86: their homepage proudly proclaims that it's “the premier open source X11-based desktop infrastructure”, and they also used to have a list of all the Linux distros that still package their software, right on the front page, as late as 2014.

I think they still do, technically...

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 8:47 UTC (Fri) by branden (guest, #7029) [Link] (5 responses)

Having watched the XFree86/X.Org fork closely at the time, I can't help but notice that hostility to copyleft licenses, and more broadly to anything that might conceivably have ever passed within 1 AU of the Free Software Foundation, appears to be a common trait between the erstwhile XFree86 Core Team and the ASF.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 9:13 UTC (Fri) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]

It's interesting to see how many of the people proposing to save AOO have ~15 years of IT life — they left uni for proprietary coding about when Linux became a serious option for pretty much anyone that minded about systems, marginalizing BSDs.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 13, 2016 19:08 UTC (Tue) by jg (guest, #17537) [Link] (3 responses)

It was the XFree86 license change away from the MIT license that triggered (the last straw on the camel's back) the XFree86/X.org fork. (From as permissive as you can get to slightly less permissive, but incompatible with the (L)GPL). This would have made many who had mixed code bases more than a bit unhappy, particularly (L)GPL application users.

Fundamentally, changing a license (without active permission/cooperation by those who contributed to the code base) in effect disenfranchises those who invested in the code base under the original terms, and is often very problematic.

Jim Gettys

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 13, 2016 20:42 UTC (Tue) by branden (guest, #7029) [Link] (2 responses)

Perfectly true and well-said, Jim.

Copyright licenses are almost infinitely flexible, but there is a reason we have only a handful of stable points around which FLOSS licenses, as actually used, accumulate. Shifts among these points are meaningful and require effort, not just from the putative owners of copyrights but from the communities around them.

I view both the XFree86 and AOO relicensing decisions as essentially ideological, even though they moved different directions on the permissiveness spectrum.

In hindsight I think the XFree86/X.Org split proceeded relatively painlessly because David Dawes and David Wexelblat were fairly open and frank about not wanting most of the community that had grown up around the code base, even if they refused to openly acknowledge that the license change was their primary means of ridding themselves of that community.

By contrast, AOO proclaimed itself the rightful heir of community leadership, but made relicensing one of the first things on their agenda.

Those familiar with the story of King Canute commanding the waves could easily predict the outcome.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 15, 2016 16:27 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> In hindsight I think the XFree86/X.Org split proceeded relatively painlessly because David Dawes and David Wexelblat were fairly open and frank about not wanting most of the community that had grown up around the code base, even if they refused to openly acknowledge that the license change was their primary means of ridding themselves of that community.

Notably, the community they wanted shot of included the person who had written most of the code over the previous few years ...

Cheers,
Wol

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 15, 2016 16:28 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> Those familiar with the story of King Canute commanding the waves could easily predict the outcome.

Actually, I think those who know the story well would come to the opposite conclusion ...

King Knut was fed up with all his sycophants, so he took them down to the beach and said "Watch how powerful I am!". He knew what would happen ...

Cheers,
Wol