An open letter to Apache OpenOffice

Posted Oct 14, 2020 7:03 UTC (Wed) by tdz (subscriber, #58733)
Parent article: An open letter to Apache OpenOffice

At this point, the mockery between the two projects is just childish.

An open letter to Apache OpenOffice

Posted Oct 14, 2020 19:29 UTC (Wed) by ViRa-2020 (guest, #142531) [Link] (7 responses)

+1. - If after an initial message from side A the response from side B is

* https://blogs.apache.org/foundation/entry/the-apache-soft...

WITHOUT allowing the possibility to comment, I also believe, that it would have been better to be silent until something sufficient / more important can be published!

Just my 2 cents ...

An open letter to Apache OpenOffice

Posted Oct 14, 2020 20:38 UTC (Wed) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325) [Link] (3 responses)

Wow, that is one of the most ridiculous things I've read all year. For example, this line is clearly intended to sound impressive:

> 12 releases have been made under the auspices of the ASF.

They are including point releases, as can be seen on https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OOOUSERS/Rele.... The 13th release, 4.2.0, is "planned" and they correctly didn't count it, but they incorrectly did count 3.5, which says it was "merged" into 4.0. Or maybe their numbers are right and their wiki is wrong, I have no way of knowing. Regardless, they have made twelve-ish releases, of whatever kind, over an eight year period. For comparison, here's LibreOffice's list of old releases: http://downloadarchive.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice...

And then there's this:

> "The need and, in fact, the demand, for a permissively licensed Open Source office suite, available to the masses and not just the privileged few fortunate enough to have the latest hardware and software, has never been greater within the last two decades," said Jim Jagielski, ASF co-Founder and Apache OpenOffice incubating mentor. "Apache OpenOffice exists to provide essential functionality, with as few licensing restrictions as possible, to the world at large. It is truly a noble mission, and I am honored to be a small part of it."

That statement is very carefully worded to exclude LibreOffice from consideration as a valid alternative. I can't imagine this was an accident.

An open letter to Apache OpenOffice

Posted Oct 14, 2020 21:40 UTC (Wed) by oever (guest, #987) [Link] (2 responses)

AOO is licensed permissively because IBM demanded it. They needed a permissive license to continue using AOO in IBM Lotus Symphony. Since IBM Lotus Symphony is discontinued, the need for a permissively licensed office suite is lower now than when AOO moved to Apache.

Jagielski does not substantiate the claim that there is a great demand for a permissively licensed office suite.

An open letter to Apache OpenOffice

Posted Oct 16, 2020 6:19 UTC (Fri) by edomaur (subscriber, #14520) [Link] (1 responses)

It's also related to the way the Apache Foundation manage its various projects, if I remember correctly they are by definition required to use the Apache License. So, each time a project move under the Apache umbrella, it adopts the ASL.

An open letter to Apache OpenOffice

Posted Oct 16, 2020 10:52 UTC (Fri) by amacater (subscriber, #790) [Link]

Blame Oracle, perhaps, for dog in the manger tactics. As successors in title to Sun Microsystems, they chose deliberately to pass OpenOffice to the Apache Foundation, knowing full well that an incompatible licence would make life more difficult for LibreOffice, despite requests at the time to allow a merger or licence compatibility. That's similar to the problems with Sun's CDDL, all the OpenSolaris derivatives problems with licensing and, indeed, the spat with Google over Java. At this point, it's not explicable by incompetence, unfamiliarity with or lack of understanding of FLOSS licence dynamics: it does feel more like malice or spite.

An open letter to Apache OpenOffice

Posted Oct 14, 2020 23:58 UTC (Wed) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link] (2 responses)

It's not clear that's intended as a direct response to the LO letter. It is the 20th anniversary of OpenOffice being open sourced, so there's a reason for any project descended from it to blog about their project right now. The AOO post seems very mild if it's intended as a direct response to the LO letter.

That said, I find it striking that ASF talks about AOO as a top-level project. 12 releases in 8 years isn't exactly setting the world on fire in terms of development speed, especially since they've been waiting about 4 years now for 4.2 to come out. It doesn't say anything good about ASF that something moving at that pace is considered a top-level project.

An open letter to Apache OpenOffice

Posted Oct 15, 2020 7:42 UTC (Thu) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link]

It is for reasons that ASF is said to be where projects go to die.

An open letter to Apache OpenOffice

Posted Oct 16, 2020 6:59 UTC (Fri) by gstein (guest, #3612) [Link]

"Top Level Project" (TLP) is an idiom related to the ASF's structure. Some projects have sub-projects. The TLPs report directly to the Board. They're at the "top" of the organization. (and not at top of rankings, which it seems you're inferring)