Collabora Online moves out of The Document Foundation

Posted Oct 2, 2020 16:38 UTC (Fri) by amacater (subscriber, #790)
In reply to: Collabora Online moves out of The Document Foundation by Wol
Parent article: Collabora Online moves out of The Document Foundation

Software developers don't have to be paid to work on Free software: many of them are paid by other people and projects and do Free software work for fun.

The saddest of this is that Oracle acted as dog in the manger when handing Open Office over to the Apache project who've done nothing with it otherwise we'd have had one unified brand which would have worked better.

Collabora Online moves out of The Document Foundation

Posted Oct 2, 2020 18:16 UTC (Fri) by jra (subscriber, #55261) [Link] (1 responses)

In my experience doing Free Software work for fun works when a project is starting out and is small. Once a project reaches a certain size/complexity level then paid development helps promote advancement of the code much more than could be done "for fun".

I don't know exactly when that level is, but I know it when I see it :-).

Collabora Online moves out of The Document Foundation

Posted Oct 2, 2020 21:02 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

I'd say it's when a project is so large that doing big things with it means it fills your head for weeks. You can't really do that *and* work for most of your hours on something else.

How big a project that is depends on the person (for me it's not very big at all: I can get into that state over 10k-line projects easily). But I'm damn sure that something the monstrous size of LibreOffice is way over whatever threshold exists.

Collabora Online moves out of The Document Foundation

Posted Oct 2, 2020 18:26 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (2 responses)

> Software developers don't have to be paid to work on Free software: many of them are paid by other people and projects and do Free software work for fun.

Some will but as we have increasingly seen, if you are going to rely on a project, it is better to have it funded directly one way or the other instead of relying on hobbyists to do it part time when they are interested. Otherwise the situation with things like OpenSSL and now Libreoffice is going to blow up

Collabora Online moves out of The Document Foundation

Posted Oct 2, 2020 19:10 UTC (Fri) by amacater (subscriber, #790) [Link] (1 responses)

There's a continuum - OpenBSD and Debian are, perhaps, at one end - individual developers not paid - through to Fedora and CentOS where there's a commercial Red Hat underwriting things, paying some but not all, and you can believe or not the alleged commercial cost of the Linux kernel if it had had to be paid for. Collabora and Michael Meeks have done huge amounts over the years - maybe it's time that someone can monetise a Libre Office derivative for the first time since Star Office.

My day job couldn't ever have paid for the experience that Debian has given me : but, by the same token, Debian would have been none the better if I'd been paid to do Debian work all through the years: it was the Free commitment that got me interested and has kept me going through the years - I can always say "I _know_ it doesn't have to be this bad" with a clear conscience in work.

Collabora Online moves out of The Document Foundation

Posted Oct 2, 2020 21:18 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

> Collabora and Michael Meeks have done huge amounts over the years - maybe it's time that someone can monetise a Libre Office derivative for the first time since Star Office

That's what Collabora Office is. Trouble is, that model didn't pan out as hoped and the risk is Collabora will take their work elsewhere as already has happened for Libreoffice Online. LWN has covered some of the warning signs before

>Debian would have been none the better if I'd been paid to do Debian work all through the years: it was the Free commitment that got me interested and has kept me going through the years

That maybe true for you but you wouldn't able to make that claim about Debian developers in general. Also distributions benefit immensely from upstream projects many of core ones are largely driven by paid developers including for the Linux kernel. They also benefit from other distributions which are commercial, so there is a lot of shared work, Canonical etc in the case of Debian.

For upstream projects themselves on the other hand, if they are complex and not necessarily fun to deal with and they don't have a viable way to sustain themselves commercially, they often languish

Collabora Online moves out of The Document Foundation

Posted Oct 2, 2020 19:03 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (3 responses)

> Software developers don't have to be paid to work on Free software: many of them are paid by other people and projects and do Free software work for fun.

Trouble for me is I'm "paid by other people", with a job that is (a) low paid, (b) physically exhausting, and (c) I have a disabled wife ...

I have no time to sit down and *concentrate* on programming, which means basically I have no time to offer.

And if the minority who do have free time sabotage it for those who want to contribute but need to eat, that is a BIG problem - you've just alienated probably the *majority* of people willing and able to contribute.

Cheers,
Wol

Collabora Online moves out of The Document Foundation

Posted Oct 2, 2020 21:03 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

You help out a lot on mailing lists. You've saved God knows how many people's blown RAID arrays. That's not valueless at all!

Collabora Online moves out of The Document Foundation

Posted Oct 2, 2020 22:55 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

Thanks. The problem is I have plenty I *want* to do (dig into the kernel raid code, write a DATABASIC compiler/runtime), and for that I need time where I can sit and think. That's not possible if you're exhausted from working, or you're caring for someone who has short-term memory "issues".

Reading and replying to emails on a low-volume mailing list isn't that taxing :-)

Cheers,
Wol

Collabora Online moves out of The Document Foundation

Posted Oct 3, 2020 0:31 UTC (Sat) by gerdesj (subscriber, #5446) [Link]

"I have no time to sit down and *concentrate* on programming, which means basically I have no time to offer."

"E pur si muove" as a famous bloke once said. You are still here and perform a part in the community, you have been doing this for quite a while and I suspect for some time to come.

You give what you can. That may not be in terms of cranking out code but that is not the only important input to the effort (whatever that might mean to you.) You don't hesitate to dive in and say your piece and in general it is well received or at least listened to and considered.

Keep it up matey.

Cheers, Wol

Cheers
Jon