What's next for Apache OpenOffice
The current chair of the AOO project management committee (PMC) is Dennis Hamilton, whose term is set to end shortly. He has been concerned about the sustainability of the project for some time (see this message from one year ago, for example), a concern sharpened by the routine requirement that he report to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) board on the project's status. The board, seemingly, had asked few questions about the status of AOO until recently, when the handling of CVE-2016-1513 (or the lack thereof) came to its attention. Now the board is apparently asking some sharp questions indeed and requiring monthly (rather than every three months as usual) reports from the project. "Retirement" of the project, it seems, has been explicitly mentioned as a possibility.
Pondering retirement
In response, on September 1, Hamilton went to the AOO development list with a detailed description of what retiring the project would involve. He said:
Given that, he said, it is time to openly face the prospect that AOO is not
sustainable and needs to be wound down. ASF board member (and corporate
vice president) Jim Jagielski added that
"it has become obvious to the board that AOO has not been a healthy
project for some time.
" Given that, he said, the important thing is
to figure out what is to be done now.
This conversation has been widely reported; the result, unsurprisingly, has been a strong "we told you so" response. There has been quite a bit of rehashing of the history of the AOO project and how the current situation came to be. But Jagielski had a point when he said that most of that does not matter; what does matter is what happens next. Your editor would agree. There may be an opportunity to make things better for developers and users of free office suites, but doing so may require forgiving and forgetting quite a bit of unpleasant history.
Jagielski suggested that, while the project cannot sustain itself as an end-user-focused effort, it may be able to go forward as a framework that others could build applications with. Who those others would be was not specified. He suggested that the OpenOffice.org domain could be redirected to LibreOffice — a suggestion that still seems to be seen as heretical by many in the AOO project.
To top things off, he even said that the project might consider making an apology of sorts for the excesses of one of its advocates in the past. While his tone might be read as being less than fully sincere, one would hope that any such apology, should it be forthcoming, would be taken at its word and accepted fully. LibreOffice developers could even consider making an apology of their own (they have not been 100% perfect either), perhaps ahead of anything from AOO. The sharing of some conciliatory words could do a lot to end the hostilities of past years, enable cooperation, and bring about a solution that is good for everybody involved.
Pondering non-retirement
The above discussion, like much of the conversation on the net as a whole, has an underlying assumption that AOO will, indeed, wind down. The project has been unable to compete with LibreOffice; its commit volume and developer participation are not just lower, they are two orders of magnitude lower. LibreOffice makes regular feature and maintenance releases; AOO has been unable to put out even a single emergency security-fix release. LibreOffice has significant corporate investment driving its development; AOO, seemingly, has none since IBM ceased its involvement. The current AOO development community is too small to even hope to fully understand its (large) code base, much less make significant improvements to it. So, to many, it seems clear that AOO is not sustainable.
There are, however, AOO developers who disagree with this assessment. Some of them clearly think that AOO can be saved and saw Hamilton's message as something close to an act of sabotage. Others saw it as "liberating" and as a way to kickstart the process of bringing in new developers. AOO's remaining community has a clear attachment to the project and a strong lack of desire for any kind of accommodation with LibreOffice. It was said by a few that AOO provides an important competition for LibreOffice, though what form that competition takes when the project has not made a feature release for 2.5 years is not clear.
What is clear is that AOO needs to bring in more developers if it is
going to survive. To that end, a new recruitment mailing list has been created to
help new developers get started. Plans are forming to try to turn the
current round of publicity into a call for developers to join a
reinvigorated AOO project. Jagielski has claimed that "AOO has simply been
overloaded w/ emails from developers and other contributors offering their
help, skills, talents and support
" since the discussion started, but
that overload is not yet evident on the mailing lists.
The developers involved must surely be aware of just how big a challenge they face. Many office-suite users may not have heard of LibreOffice, but the development community is well aware of the relative health of the two projects; attracting them will continue to be hard. The state of the code base, which has not seen the sort of energy put in by LibreOffice to make development easier, will not help. There is no financial investment going into AOO and, seemingly, no plans to try to attract any; if a company did come in, it would likely end up dominating the project in short order — a situation with its own problems.
AOO also has an interesting problem that is not shared by many other
projects: it is subject to the decisions of a foundation board of directors
that is concerned about potential damage to the overall Apache brand. Even
if the AOO developers feel they are making progress, the possibility of the
board pulling the plug on them is real. As board member Greg Stein
recently said,
"PMCs do *not* want the Board involved ... it rarely turns out well
for them
". Should such a thing happen to AOO, its developers
would still have the source, of course, but would lose access to the ASF's
resources and, probably, the OpenOffice brand. With such a cloud hovering
over them, it is not surprising that AOO developers are concerned and
asking for more time.
So the challenge is real. But one thing should be kept in mind here: the free-software community is famous for proceeding in the face of "you can't possibly accomplish that" criticism and proving the critics wrong. A quick look back at what was said about the GNU project in the 1980s, or Linux in the early 1990s, will drive that lesson home. One should never underestimate what a small group of determined developers can do. If the AOO developers think they can muster the resources to manage their code base, they should probably be given the space — by the ASF board and the world as a whole — to try.
The board, though, would be right to want some specific milestones to demonstrate that the project is back in good health and able to meet its users' needs. Apache OpenOffice cannot continue to distribute software that it cannot fix and cannot keep secure, using a well-known trademark to keep up a user base that may be unaware that there is little underneath. One way or another, that is a situation that needs to be fixed.
It is rare for the community to talk overtly about shutting down a project;
usually, projects either just fade away or they are killed by a parent
company with little warning. It is the type of discussion that we
naturally tend to shy away from. But, like people, projects have a life
cycle and do not last forever. Facing up to that cycle can motivate
developers to rejuvenate a project or, at worst, can help minimize the pain
caused by a shutdown. The AOO project has thus begun an important
conversation; quite a bit rides on how it ends.
Posted Sep 8, 2016 10:09 UTC (Thu)
by xtifr (guest, #143)
[Link] (32 responses)
But, again, as an outsider, I have to ask, what would the appeal be in volunteering my time and efforts to help AOO? I'm not a license fantatic; both permissive and share-alike licenses are just fine in my book. And LO has had major cleanups of the code base. In fact, I've done a little browsing on the LO repository, and they're still doing a lot of cleanup. It's clear that the old OO code had a *lot* of technical debt. Many of the changes I saw in the LO code were exactly the sort of changes I'd *hope* to see!
So, what would be my incentive to work on the old, musty code that's still full of technical debt instead of the much-improved LO code? Why would I want to help turn that into a library instead of the newer, cleaner, and probably faster code offered by LO?
Or is the recruitment effort mainly aimed at LO folks, hoping they'll contribute to both projects? If so, then obviously AOO has little interest in trying to appeal to me. But again, I'm at least mildly curious what they think they're offering that would persuade people to take on the extra work involved in dealing with their quite divergent codebase? Is AOO even using C++11 yet? (I can't imagine anyone who has gotten used to C++11 wanting to go back to a previous standard; the difference is night and day.)
I understand being attached to a project and not wanting to give it up. I've been there. But unless AOO has something to offer which will lure people in, I can't imagine how they can even dream of surviving. And I haven't heard anything that would lure me or anyone I know in. So, ASF/AOO folks, how about it? What would be my motive in helping you out? Or anyone else's motive?
Posted Sep 8, 2016 11:13 UTC (Thu)
by johannbg (guest, #65743)
[Link] (20 responses)
I think most people understand and realize for AOO this is not just about developers, fixing and releasing "code" this is about managing to rebuild an entire community surrounding the OpenOffice brand from ground up and that's a lot of a lot of work for a lot of people.
1. http://www.openoffice.org/
Posted Sep 8, 2016 16:16 UTC (Thu)
by rahvin (guest, #16953)
[Link] (2 responses)
I don't give high odds for AOO to attract the talent they need to accomplish this but I wish them luck.
Posted Sep 8, 2016 17:11 UTC (Thu)
by johannbg (guest, #65743)
[Link]
These roles are but not limited to the following.
Developers
In the beginning of a project the developer or group of developers are in all of those roles but as the project grows and gains popularity by end users, the end users starts contributing back in which an community starts forming around the project and the roles gradually move from the developer(s) and on to the community members.
Unfortunately the above is something that a lot of developers seem to look down upon the significant the other roles play in the total success of an project as in they have tendency to see little to no value in the other roles but they will quickly find out if those roles existed and suddenly vanish since they would have 6x more load on their back and they also quickly find out when those roles starts to isolate themselves and be filled with community members since they discover they have more time on their hands ( or more time focusing strictly on the code )
So if you say that there where 1000's of hours being spent in one role (developer) in LO then there are equal or more hours being spent in any of those other roles and AOO needs to fill in *all* of those roles not just one (developers) to be on par with LO and to be able to successfully sustain and maintain itself.
Posted Sep 10, 2016 8:17 UTC (Sat)
by dtardon (subscriber, #53317)
[Link]
Posted Sep 8, 2016 16:39 UTC (Thu)
by servilio-ap (subscriber, #56287)
[Link] (6 responses)
I don't think they have years… I doubt the ASF board wants to wait for the next vulnerability.
Posted Sep 8, 2016 17:22 UTC (Thu)
by johannbg (guest, #65743)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Sep 8, 2016 17:54 UTC (Thu)
by cesarb (subscriber, #6266)
[Link]
Posted Sep 9, 2016 5:51 UTC (Fri)
by alison (subscriber, #63752)
[Link] (3 responses)
Kudos to ASF then. It would be great if Linux Foundation similarly shutdown dead projects and took their git repos and mailing lists down.
Posted Sep 13, 2016 11:33 UTC (Tue)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Sep 13, 2016 15:06 UTC (Tue)
by alison (subscriber, #63752)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Sep 14, 2016 23:53 UTC (Wed)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link]
Posted Sep 8, 2016 21:05 UTC (Thu)
by jimjag (guest, #84477)
[Link] (9 responses)
I guess then there is no reason for any new web-servers to pop up, like caddy, since it will take them years to get to the level of httpd or nginx. Or look at the various text editors (Bbedit, Sublime, Atom, Textmate...) or IDEs (...) or .... *grin*
There is the assumption that LO and AOO have to be *direct competition* or that there is no place for AOO. Or that AOO must match LO feature-for-feature or else it's worthless and should die. But that's a strawman argument.
The world is big enough for LO and lots of other FOSS open office suites. The issue isn't that AOO shouldn't exist, but rather IF it exists, it should be actively supported. It appears that that is being addressed.
Posted Sep 8, 2016 21:12 UTC (Thu)
by ovitters (guest, #27950)
[Link]
It's not being addressed at all. Words on a mailing list are meaningless if the amount of work is huge. Every project wants more people to help out. Every project tries to attract more people.
Another webserver is completely different from the case here: two projects originating from the same codebase. One isn't able to make releases. The other has a 100 times the amount of commits. That's just on a development side. There's way more to a project that just development.
Posted Sep 8, 2016 21:48 UTC (Thu)
by smurf (subscriber, #17840)
[Link] (2 responses)
The issue is whether there's any sound reason for AOO to continue to exist in the first place.
Now, apply that to AOO vs. LO. There are, to the best of my knowledge, four material differences between AOO and LO:
The only reasonable case for choosing AOO over LO is the license. Meaning, some company would want to create some sort of proprietary module/enhancement/whatever which they then (presumably) sell, in order to get their developer time back. (The other reason to keep code proprietary – trade secrets etc. – doesn't fly here. It's a friggin' office package, for pity's sake.)
However, AFAIK that idea does not work in practice because first you need to get it to build, then you need to make sure that your customers won't get bitten by any number of unfixed bugs and/or missing features in AOO. You'll never make any money that way.
The result is what we're seeing here. It's very unlikely to change.
In fact, I have a personal suspicion why some AOO supporters refuse to give up. This is, to the best of my knowledge, the first time that two pieces of open-source software have been in direct competition with each other, the *only* difference between them being the freedom/permissiveness of their license. Guess what? the GPL version wins by two orders of magnitude. To some anti-GPL zealots, that seems to be simply unacceptable.
Posted Sep 9, 2016 7:58 UTC (Fri)
by moltonel (guest, #45207)
[Link]
I'd be curious to know of any commercial third-party which decided to base itself on AOO rather than LO.
Posted Sep 11, 2016 21:22 UTC (Sun)
by louie (guest, #3285)
[Link]
Posted Sep 8, 2016 21:55 UTC (Thu)
by xtifr (guest, #143)
[Link] (3 responses)
The only similar case I can think of to the AOO/LO one is the longstanding Emacs/XEmacs split. And frankly, that's not a situation any project should want to emulate. I suspect the project which benefited the most from *that* split was vim! ;)
So, my question, which started this subthread, remains: what reasons can AOO/ASF folks offer me to make me want to contribute to *their* project? I'm not a license fanatic (so "we're not share-alike" is not an incentive), and if I merely want to encourage diversity in the market, I have a variety of projects I can go help. What about AOO *specifically* would make me want to contribute to it instead LO *or a third option*?
If you can't answer that simple question, you may find it hard to keep onto any new developers you may happen to luck onto. Because there's a good question people will be asking them the same question.
Posted Sep 9, 2016 11:20 UTC (Fri)
by jimjag (guest, #84477)
[Link] (2 responses)
nginx was a heavily modified fork of Apache 1.3
Posted Sep 9, 2016 12:12 UTC (Fri)
by niner (subscriber, #26151)
[Link]
Or do you mean "removed all Apache source and wrote new source" by "heavily modified fork"?
niginx' development history is available in full at http://hg.nginx.org/nginx
Version 0 available at http://hg.nginx.org/nginx/rev/0 has a staggering amount of 2241 lines of code according to cloc. This already includes sendfile support which did not appear until Apache 2.0.44 according to https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/core.html#enablesen...
What I cannot find is any reference at all to any of the central Apache http data structures or functions. None.
Posted Sep 9, 2016 19:58 UTC (Fri)
by xtifr (guest, #143)
[Link]
So what's AOO's selling point? If you want to be a successful fork, you need *some* sort of selling point. For developers or users. I asked this at the start of the thread, and you ignored it, I asked it in the post you *just responded to* and you blatantly ignored it. Nobody needs a fork that exists *just to be* a fork. And, as should now be clear, nobody needs a fork whose only benefit is "we don't use a share-alike license". So what's the pitch?
The AOO folks are out begging for help, but they don't seem to be offering *any reasons* why someone would want to help them. Do you actually have a reason why you think AOO deserves our support? I don't know how to ask any more plainly than that. Oh, wait. If you do have a reason, *what is it?*
I am *bending over backwards* to try to be fair to AOO and give them a chance to explain their position and elicit my sympathy. The fact that I'm being pointedly ignored does not speak well for the project.
Posted Sep 9, 2016 9:04 UTC (Fri)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link]
Office suites are exactly the reverse, huge functional surface, huge document format compatibility requirements, no amount of cleverness can compensate lack of functional coverage, and coverage requires lots of coding.
Posted Sep 8, 2016 14:22 UTC (Thu)
by david.a.wheeler (subscriber, #72896)
[Link] (8 responses)
That is the fundamental problem for AOO. The only reason developer would support AOO, besides its OO trademark, is that AOO uses the Apache license (a permissive license). Very few people seem to think that having a permissive license is important for traditional office suites; even IBM has stopped caring. The Apache Software Foundation does not accept share-alike licenses, but all the development effort and backing for an OSS office suite is behind the copylefted version (LibreOffice).
If AOO won't be maintained, I think the Apache Software Foundation should just let the LibreOffice developers acquire the OOo trademarks and domain name, with the clear caveat that LibreOffice can't call it "Apache". Trademark (and company) acquisitions happen all the time in industry. Maybe sell it for a few bucks; if ASF gets some money, that might mollify some.
Posted Sep 8, 2016 15:48 UTC (Thu)
by moltonel (guest, #45207)
[Link] (2 responses)
The trademark issue remains a big one, but trademark alone was not enough to retain/attract developers to AOO. However, trademark alone is the main reason why some LO contributors and some outside observers have strong negative feelings towards Apache/AOO. If openoffice.org simply redirected to LO, the hardships faced by AOO would hardly be newsworthy. But it'd make it clear that AOO has "lost" and is a very hard pill to swallow. If openoffice.org pointed to both LO and AOO, it could mend a lot of bridges and maybe ressurect cross-polination between the projects. Making oppenoffice.org a shared home would greatly reduce the flak received by AOO from various angles, and make Apache look like an enabler of the wider OpenOffice community rather than a failing member of it.
Posted Sep 8, 2016 16:31 UTC (Thu)
by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Sep 9, 2016 0:21 UTC (Fri)
by simosx (guest, #24338)
[Link]
I have been on the AOO dev mailing list.
There is extreme hatred among the AOO list members that they do not want to even mention LibreOffice on the openoffice.org.
Really sad attitude. In fact, what keeps the contributors of AOO from giving up, is their hatred for LibreOffice!
Posted Sep 8, 2016 21:07 UTC (Thu)
by jimjag (guest, #84477)
[Link] (2 responses)
We would never do something so crass. Posted Sep 19, 2016 11:03 UTC (Mon)
by thestinger (guest, #91827)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Sep 19, 2016 15:43 UTC (Mon)
by orcmid (guest, #74478)
[Link]
Apache, Apache OpenOffice, OpenOffice, and the gull-wing
When there are requests to make use of those marks in various ways, and written permission is provided, a statement such as the above is required for inclusion where permissions are stated in conjunction with the permitted use. Please note that registration is not a requirement although there are values to it in regimes where there are such arrangements. Sometimes registrations are legally transferred but that may not show up until such time as the registration comes up for renewal.
There are such requests for use and there are cases where the producer of a confusing use that would causes confusion is requested to stop and that is usually accomplished, sometimes quickly.
Posted Sep 8, 2016 15:19 UTC (Thu)
by Jonimus (subscriber, #89694)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Sep 8, 2016 20:23 UTC (Thu)
by xtifr (guest, #143)
[Link]
That's why I asked *them*, not the peanut gallery. [sticks out tongue]
If they have a reason other than "share-alike is bad!", it would be interesting to know. And if they can't offer anything else, maybe, just maybe, the ones who can't answer my question will stop to think* what that implies.
Which is *why* I asked them and not the peanut gallery. [evil grin]
* I know, I know. I'm a dirty, stinking optimist.
Posted Sep 8, 2016 10:10 UTC (Thu)
by SimonO (guest, #56318)
[Link]
The best possible outcome for all (potential) users of any office software suite is that there is a single and well supported/developed free and open one. All pointers to OpenOffice.org should be redirected to LibreOffice, which could go on as LibreOffice or OpenOffice, I don't care, as long as it is clear there is only one. There Can Be Only One!
Regardless of what users choose to use, I think it's safe to say that the developers have voted with their feet to go for LibreOffice. For the sake of open standards and free software, please remove the confusion by having only one true version of Libre/Open Office.
(I know there are other free and open office suites, but as these are totally different code-bases, there's no confusion and these implementations provide more credibility for open standards, not less)
Posted Sep 8, 2016 11:04 UTC (Thu)
by smurf (subscriber, #17840)
[Link] (5 responses)
No it can't be. This would require sanitizing the code base and the build system. The intersection of "people who can be motivated to do that" and "people who have not already done that work" (in LibreOffice) appears to be the null set.
Also note the passive-aggressive tone of this statement. Yeah, sure it can be saved. *If* somebody steps up and does it. Anybody, as long as it's not "some of them" because, again, if these people would be willing to get off their plush behind and start doing the work they'd already have done it.
Grant the LO people a license to use the OOo brand, and chalk the whole experience up to the fact that sometimes you gotta learn from your failure (and others' success) the hard way.
Posted Sep 8, 2016 21:10 UTC (Thu)
by jimjag (guest, #84477)
[Link] (4 responses)
That seem pretty presumptuous of you.
Posted Sep 9, 2016 0:26 UTC (Fri)
by simosx (guest, #24338)
[Link] (3 responses)
> That seem pretty presumptuous of you.
The discussions on the dev mailing list of AOO do not look promising.
Posted Sep 9, 2016 12:13 UTC (Fri)
by jimjag (guest, #84477)
[Link] (2 responses)
I would suggest that that is your opinion. I would also suggest that more objective people would say the exact opposite.
Posted Sep 13, 2016 12:21 UTC (Tue)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Sep 14, 2016 13:27 UTC (Wed)
by andy@barnes.net (guest, #5890)
[Link]
I know, I trolled.
Posted Sep 8, 2016 11:05 UTC (Thu)
by seanyoung (subscriber, #28711)
[Link] (23 responses)
When LibreOffice came about I decided to revisit those bugs and dealing with LibreOffice has been an absolute pleasure. It's so easy to build (just type "make"!), submitting patches was a breeze and the because there are regular releases, my patch appeared in a stable LibreOffice not that long after. After that I decided to some larger work (new import filter for MS Write and MS Word for DOS) and I've enjoyed taking part. I almost feel guilty for contributing more.
Recently I got an email from (apache) openoffice to confirm whether my original problem "was reproducable". Why would I bother?
Posted Sep 9, 2016 8:36 UTC (Fri)
by branden (guest, #7029)
[Link] (18 responses)
Posted Sep 9, 2016 11:23 UTC (Fri)
by jimjag (guest, #84477)
[Link] (17 responses)
That's because it is obvious that with some posts there is no reason to try to respond to them. Their minds are made up and nothing can be said that will make any difference at all.
Posted Sep 9, 2016 13:52 UTC (Fri)
by bunk (subscriber, #44933)
[Link] (13 responses)
> That's because it is obvious that with some posts there is no reason to try to respond to them. Their minds are made up and nothing can be said that will make any difference at all.
Jim, what are you trying to achieve here?
The L in LWN is for Linux, and AOO has nearly no users on Linux.
Bragging here how many volunteers AOO got might have given a short-term boost to your ego, but that will fade once you realize that 99% of these people will have disappeared because there was noone who was mentoring them.
Someone must have an overview which tasks are required for making the 4.1.3 and 4.2.0 releases, which of these tasks are suitable for newcomers without years of OO development experience, and then distribute these among the volunteers (10 people trying to fix the same bug would only cause frustration).
If a newcomer has a code change, he needs guidance how code review and committing work.
In some cases you have volunteers today for work that will only be needed in several months.
You have experience with both code development and managing large projects, and it would be a better use your time if you would step in as volunteer coordinator for AOO instead of wasting your time arguing with random people on the internet.
Posted Sep 9, 2016 14:16 UTC (Fri)
by jimjag (guest, #84477)
[Link] (5 responses)
Historical accuracy and the clarification of the FUD that is being propagated.
>wasting your time arguing with random people on the internet
That is exactly what I am doing... But then I am "called out" for not responding to various comments.
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.
Posted Sep 9, 2016 14:51 UTC (Fri)
by martin.langhoff (subscriber, #61417)
[Link]
Jimjag has shown some willingness to do that, imperfect but promising. Everyone needs to let go of the past to take advantage of the opportunity of _today_.
As I noted elsewhere, don't become what you hate...
Posted Sep 9, 2016 14:57 UTC (Fri)
by bunk (subscriber, #44933)
[Link]
And the success of Open Source projects rarely depends on differences between licenses, who screams loudest, or what FUD is somewhere on the internet.
The only thing that will matter for the future of AOO is whether or not AOO development will get back on track.
Think of the translation volunteer example I described.
I pointed out an area where your skills could be very helpful for getting AOO development back on track.
Posted Sep 11, 2016 16:00 UTC (Sun)
by niner (subscriber, #26151)
[Link]
You mean like your completely baseless claim that nginx was an Apache httpd fork?
The post confronting you with evidence to the contrary is one of those you conveniently ignore. Well at least it shows clearly what you are really after.
Posted Sep 15, 2016 11:51 UTC (Thu)
by WolfWings (subscriber, #56790)
[Link] (1 responses)
The sheer level of 'leg in throat' you exhibited with the nginx claim by itself is staggering in how much of a bald-faced and brazen lie it is, trivially debunked in five minutes of Googling.
Especially with the near-zero overlap in configuration or outward-facing components the two projects display would refute it to begin with, and nginx at this point actually being the better of the two for maintaining backwards compatibility in their configuration files w/ the 2.2 -> 2.4 config-file changes that purged major configuration-file syntax components.
So that claim came across purely as trying to claim "Yet another project profiting unjustly by stealing something from an Apache project!" like a fanatic. Note: Being a fanatic is not a good thing. Being fanatical can be, but losing those last two letters is a pitfall.
Apache unfortunately with their long-standing stance on licensing acts more and more like a fanatic with each passing year, and in my line of work as a 'mercenary' Linux Admin (meaning I handle and have on-going access to hundreds of unique environments of various sizes regardless of what components they have; as long as the sites stay functional and the developers can push code changes the clients are happy) I see developers moving from Solr, httpd, Cassandra, and ActiveMQ to Sphinx, nginx, ReThinkDB, and RabbitMQ month after month.
Many Apache projects, while they did build the backbone of the internet, have had a newer generation of services and tools developed that surpass what they offer, usually in features or ease of maintenance/deployment. About the only remaining 'infrastructure level' projects I can think of that Apache offers the only pony in the horse-show is Hadoop, and Tomcat, both of which are only of common use in my experienc ein fairly large environments where you usually have development teams not developers.
But please, continue railing against the dying of the light of the permission Apache license and evil forks that cared more about the end-users than your stigmata. The rest of us will continue getting up every day and getting work done with tools that work, instead of ones that are mostly name-recognition and inertia-based. :)
Posted Sep 15, 2016 12:05 UTC (Thu)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link]
FWIW, Apache-licensed code is more prevalent than ever -- Witness Android, for example. It's the overwhemingly-preferred corporate "open source" play.
(But outside of Apache itself I'm not familiar with any Apache-licensed project that's not utterly dominated by the corporate entity that created it...)
Posted Sep 9, 2016 18:14 UTC (Fri)
by chirlu (guest, #89906)
[Link] (6 responses)
While the L in LWN did indeed originally stand for Linux, LWN is now about free software in general. See the FAQ (https://lwn.net/op/FAQ.lwn):
> LWN, initially, was "Linux Weekly News." That name has been deemphasized over time as we have moved beyond just the weekly coverage, and as we have looked at the free software community as a whole. We have yet to come up with a better meaning for LWN, however.
Posted Sep 9, 2016 20:11 UTC (Fri)
by branden (guest, #7029)
[Link]
Libre Weekly News
?
Posted Sep 10, 2016 14:42 UTC (Sat)
by david.a.wheeler (subscriber, #72896)
[Link] (4 responses)
Posted Sep 10, 2016 14:48 UTC (Sat)
by tao (subscriber, #17563)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Sep 10, 2016 16:00 UTC (Sat)
by liw (subscriber, #6379)
[Link] (1 responses)
-- Lars Wirzenius
Posted Sep 10, 2016 16:18 UTC (Sat)
by branden (guest, #7029)
[Link]
And instant banhammer for anyone saying "c******g w***n"...
Posted Sep 10, 2016 15:10 UTC (Sat)
by gracinet (guest, #89400)
[Link]
Posted Sep 9, 2016 15:18 UTC (Fri)
by smurf (subscriber, #17840)
[Link]
Well, my mind is made up because, having listened to both sides, I find the arguments in favor of continuing AAO development substantially flawed.
In what way would not responding to me pointing out that (perceived(?)) flaw help change my mind?
Posted Sep 9, 2016 20:14 UTC (Fri)
by branden (guest, #7029)
[Link]
Or just, you know, respond to him.
Posted Sep 11, 2016 11:38 UTC (Sun)
by seanyoung (subscriber, #28711)
[Link]
However due to historical reasons the trademark and domain are with AOO and with AOO not succeeding as well as LO, many feel that LibreOffice is the "rightful" place of the OpenOffice brand and domain, and AOO having it damages the brand.
That's not how trademark law works. Wishing ill on the AOO project is not going to make the trademark move and antagonising AOO members is just going to make it less likely. Any schadenfreude is just not helpful.
Posted Sep 16, 2016 1:26 UTC (Fri)
by welinder (guest, #4699)
[Link] (3 responses)
Way too often the lifespan of, say a bug report regarding generation of wrong ods files, is something like this:
1. Report
For accuracy related bug reports, change (2) to a few rounds of "it's floating-point, you don't know what you're talking about".
The above actually isn't specific to LO. I understand that it can be hard to find time to look at all bug reports. What I do not understand is (3): it's basically saying "we haven't had time to look at your report; would you please do some extra work, the result of which we won't look at either". I say "While you're at it, why don't you give me a nice paper cut and pour lemon juice on it? We're closed."
On re-reading, I find I sound too negative. I don't mean to. The point is, with respect to ignoring bug reports I fear that AOO is in the same class as many large and active projects.
Posted Sep 16, 2016 1:53 UTC (Fri)
by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Sep 17, 2016 11:55 UTC (Sat)
by hummassa (subscriber, #307)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Sep 17, 2016 12:10 UTC (Sat)
by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946)
[Link]
Posted Sep 8, 2016 11:38 UTC (Thu)
by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)
[Link] (18 responses)
A GNU fork that never merged was emacs/xemacs -- but emacs never really ceased development, and eventually it was xemacs that fell behind. I don't expect that to happen in this case either. A more likely outcome is what happened with the XFree86/Xorg split. XFree86 limped on and still has a webpage, but hasn't had a release since 2008. AOO will meet the same fate unless they dump the project and embrace LO.
Posted Sep 8, 2016 13:06 UTC (Thu)
by njd27 (subscriber, #5770)
[Link] (1 responses)
To my mind, the main losers out of all of this are the thousands of Windows users who are still using AOO and haven't had the benefit of the last 2 years of LO improvements. Hopefully the inertia will die out eventually.
Posted Sep 8, 2016 15:47 UTC (Thu)
by josh (subscriber, #17465)
[Link]
"active" seems like a bit of a stretch. It does seem to still get a few security and bugfix releases per year.
Posted Sep 9, 2016 8:51 UTC (Fri)
by branden (guest, #7029)
[Link]
It's worth keeping examples like the above in mind when one hears, from organizations sharply critical of the FSF, lamentations of its rigidity and blinkeredness.
Posted Sep 9, 2016 11:39 UTC (Fri)
by tao (subscriber, #17563)
[Link] (14 responses)
So the situation isn't really comparable.
Posted Sep 9, 2016 15:29 UTC (Fri)
by zlynx (guest, #2285)
[Link] (13 responses)
Without changing the license the egcs devs could have also decided to fix the GPL version to version 2 only instead of v2 or later. That would have made a GPL v3 egcs impossible.
So it is somewhat comparable.
Posted Sep 9, 2016 15:53 UTC (Fri)
by bunk (subscriber, #44933)
[Link] (11 responses)
Posted Sep 9, 2016 16:12 UTC (Fri)
by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)
[Link] (10 responses)
Posted Sep 9, 2016 23:36 UTC (Fri)
by flussence (guest, #85566)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Sep 15, 2016 16:15 UTC (Thu)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
If you want to call it "passive aggressive", then yes, that doesn't sound far off.
I certainly get the impression he is NOT trying to confront the arguments on their merits...
Cheers,
Posted Sep 13, 2016 12:42 UTC (Tue)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link] (7 responses)
The Apache thing was a corporate code drop and an intentional license change without any of the original developers following along and sort of hoping to build up momentum from there (it didn't). egcs never *had* to build up momentum. On the contrary, a lot of pent-up development effort was immediately unleashed into it. Combine that with the fact that the corporate code drop was more or less unable to incorporate useful amounts of code from the actually living project, and doom was more or less certain from the start unless corporate sponsorship and a pre-made developer base larger than LO's could be found somewhere.
Posted Sep 13, 2016 13:02 UTC (Tue)
by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Sep 14, 2016 23:54 UTC (Wed)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link]
What you said is right.
Posted Sep 13, 2016 13:57 UTC (Tue)
by orcmid (guest, #74478)
[Link] (3 responses)
Minor correction #2: Technically, there was no "license change." Oracle holds the copyright and all code released under LGPL2 is still under LGPL2. What Oracle did was grant a different license to the Apache Software Foundation (not unlike Sun made different license arrangements with commercial producers). The grant to the ASF allowed ASF to distribute the to-ASF licensed code under a license of its choosing, hence the Apache License. Similarly, IBM made a license grant to ASF for their originally closed-source Lotus Symphony code derived from the OpenOffice.org code licensed to them. Indeed, it is only through Apache that any code developed for Symphony finds its way into LibreOffice.
Posted Sep 13, 2016 15:55 UTC (Tue)
by bunk (subscriber, #44933)
[Link] (2 responses)
What went wrong with CVE-2016-1513, resulting in even http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=2016-1513 not mentioning that older LO versions are vulnerable?
> Minor correction #2: Technically, there was no "license change." Oracle holds the copyright and all code released under LGPL2 is still under LGPL2. What Oracle did was grant a different license to the Apache Software Foundation (not unlike Sun made different license arrangements with commercial producers). The grant to the ASF allowed ASF to distribute the to-ASF licensed code under a license of its choosing, hence the Apache License.
One could say AOO was created with a licensing that makes it impossible for AOO to take code from LO.
The important point is the order of events - no matter how you call it, the problem was introduced by the AOO side months after LO was started.
> Similarly, IBM made a license grant to ASF for their originally closed-source Lotus Symphony code derived from the OpenOffice.org code licensed to them. Indeed, it is only through Apache that any code developed for Symphony finds its way into LibreOffice.
It seems there is/was a lot of politics by Oracle and IBM involved.
I do not see a fundamental reason why IBM could not just have relicensed the Symphony code under the ASL, and then publish it as a tarball somewhere. Less work for them, and the code is in LO a year earlier.
Posted Sep 13, 2016 17:08 UTC (Tue)
by orcmid (guest, #74478)
[Link] (1 responses)
The reporter only provided their result for AOO 4.1.2. My mistake was I confirmed that the defect is not in a current release of LibreOffice and did not consider the case of down-version releases that would still be under maintenance.
I did inform [Officesecurity] before our disclosure, but it was very short notice.
To avoid that happening again, we are now always informing [Officesecurity] of pending AOO disclosures of defects that might still matter in that community, and they get to decide whether that is the case or not.
I didn't word the CVE and I have no account for that. The AOO advisory, linked from that CVE does mention the prospect. Of course that doesn't name other products. I assume that other descendants of the openoffice.org code base will issue their own advisories as they see fit. I know the patch we published is used by at least one other.
Posted Sep 13, 2016 19:30 UTC (Tue)
by bunk (subscriber, #44933)
[Link]
My guess (that could be wrong) would be that they found the issue while checking which of the fuzzing fixes in LO might be exploitable.
It isn't that uncommon that someone finds vulnerabilities in Open Source software by going through normal bugfixes - until the fix has reached all users, there are still years where it can be exploited if the finder has intentions other than publishing.
> I assume that other descendants of the openoffice.org code base will issue their own advisories as they see fit. I know the patch we published is used by at least one other.
What other direct (not through LO) descendants exist of the AOO code base?
The only area where AOO could have an advantage over LO would be for companies who don't want to use LO for license reasons.
And these descendants should have a financial interest in keeping AOO alive.
Posted Sep 15, 2016 16:19 UTC (Thu)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
egcs forked because there was pent-up developer demand that couldn't get their changes into gcc.
LO (Go-OO) forked because there was pent-up developer demand that couldn't get their changes into Sun Open Office.
Likewise Xorg forked because there was pent-up developer demand that couldn't get their changes into XFree.
So all those projects were vibrant from the start, getting off to a flying start. Unfortunately, AOO is the direct descendant of Sun Open Office, with a reputation for cathedral development and a disinclination for accepting outside help ... :-(
Cheers,
Posted Sep 12, 2016 10:41 UTC (Mon)
by mina86 (guest, #68442)
[Link]
That's not true in general. Whether FSF requires copyright assignment is dependent on a project. Some do require it, some don't.
Posted Sep 8, 2016 15:45 UTC (Thu)
by martin.langhoff (subscriber, #61417)
[Link] (11 responses)
This was not the first fraught fork, and it won't be the last. Perhaps the dev community at LibreOffice takes Jim's gestures and helps build the bridge that is obviously needed here.
Posted Sep 8, 2016 23:47 UTC (Thu)
by bunk (subscriber, #44933)
[Link] (9 responses)
The LO people are sitting on 13 years (sic) of LGPL development (ooo-build was started in 2003), which makes the licence change of AOO in 2011 a real problem.
Posted Sep 9, 2016 0:09 UTC (Fri)
by bunk (subscriber, #44933)
[Link]
Posted Sep 9, 2016 13:55 UTC (Fri)
by martin.langhoff (subscriber, #61417)
[Link] (7 responses)
It's not something that can happen overnight; there's a dozen reasons that say it can't be done. With a bit of time, and community-building, it'll turn out that it can be done.
Maybe AOO needs to make one more try, see if they can actually make a security fix release; see whether a feature release can be put together. If over that time they get pestered, they'll bolster their pride and soldier on, ready to die with in their boots.
If we can muster a friendlier "why don't you try the same thing you are doing, but here in LO?", I'm sure there are more productive conversations to be had.
Posted Sep 9, 2016 13:57 UTC (Fri)
by martin.langhoff (subscriber, #61417)
[Link] (6 responses)
I essentially mean: working to avoid becoming what you hate.
Posted Sep 9, 2016 15:17 UTC (Fri)
by bunk (subscriber, #44933)
[Link] (5 responses)
All the people who were doing actual work on OO already went to LO years ago.
You are aware that Jim is a member of the ASF board, not someone who does work or has any direct position in AOO?
Posted Sep 9, 2016 15:36 UTC (Fri)
by martin.langhoff (subscriber, #61417)
[Link] (4 responses)
The AOO dev mailing list thread is interesting, with various posters indicating they are passionate about keeping the AOO flame, but they haven't committed a thing in ages. And at my last read, I could not spot any "let's get builds out with the security fix!" thread (maybe it's elsewhere?).
AOO will follow its path, it's theirs. It will be easier to come together... if we make it easier.
Posted Sep 9, 2016 16:14 UTC (Fri)
by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167)
[Link]
For comparison, it takes LibreOffice about four weeks to ship each micro version update. I'm not aware of any emergency security releases for LibreOffice, with a "responsible disclosure" type policy they could be slip-streamed into existing releases because of the rapid cadence. A bug identified in March becomes a patch in April and a release in May accompanying the CVE announcement. I would presume they can rush out an emergency fix in under a week if somebody released something nasty under a "full disclosure" approach.
Posted Sep 9, 2016 16:15 UTC (Fri)
by excors (subscriber, #95769)
[Link]
That's probably https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/4b1922a18c9b479ae0c2... (in which, after AOO sat on the security bug for about 11 months and still failed to come up with a satisfactory fix, then hit the current crisis and presumably became more aware of the importance and urgency of this (for its own reputation and maybe for its continued existence, not just for its users' security), there is now a goal to hopefully do a 4.1.3 release about 2 months from now).
Posted Sep 9, 2016 16:27 UTC (Fri)
by orcmid (guest, #74478)
[Link] (1 responses)
There are many ways to contribute to an Apache project, and having made code commits is one of them. Lately, if you have followed the dev@ list for the project, you'll find that Jim is working on the MacOSX build process.
There is a private and discrete coverage of security matters, the same as for all projects at the ASF and elsewhere. You can find the ASF policies and practices with regard to security reports at <https://www.apache.org/security/> and pages linked from there.
Since you are following dev@, please notice that there is work at a streamlined 4.1.3 maintenance release. Whatever the next release is, you can expect to see any disclosures and advisories related to that distribution at that time and not before.
Posted Sep 13, 2016 16:41 UTC (Tue)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link]
Posted Sep 10, 2016 8:39 UTC (Sat)
by dtardon (subscriber, #53317)
[Link]
Posted Sep 8, 2016 19:39 UTC (Thu)
by flussence (guest, #85566)
[Link] (6 responses)
I think they still do, technically...
Posted Sep 9, 2016 8:47 UTC (Fri)
by branden (guest, #7029)
[Link] (5 responses)
Posted Sep 9, 2016 9:13 UTC (Fri)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link]
Posted Sep 13, 2016 19:08 UTC (Tue)
by jg (guest, #17537)
[Link] (3 responses)
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
Posted Sep 13, 2016 20:42 UTC (Tue)
by branden (guest, #7029)
[Link] (2 responses)
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.
Posted Sep 15, 2016 16:27 UTC (Thu)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
Notably, the community they wanted shot of included the person who had written most of the code over the previous few years ...
Cheers,
Posted Sep 15, 2016 16:28 UTC (Thu)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
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,
Posted Sep 8, 2016 20:57 UTC (Thu)
by jimjag (guest, #84477)
[Link] (11 responses)
1. The whole issue was an open and honest DISCUSSION. Many people took this as an indication that AOO was dead. I fear that my own response to Dennis' post on-list went a bit too far in reinforcing that (mis)belief but the lack of (perceived) developer energy was the basis for the whole discussion. Dennis did not say "AOO is dead, what should we do" but rather that the AOO community should discuss, as a contingency plan what a retirement would look like.
I may plan or discuss my funeral (or final wishes), but that does not mean I am dead or dying. :-)
But think about this: what other project would be so open and candid? Such openness, and the true appreciation that discussion be done in public is a core part of the Apache Way. It's also a core part of what open source work.
2. Because of this "publicity", the AOO has been overwhelmed by lots and lots of offers of support, which have been graciously and thankfully accepted.
3. People have also forgotten that choices, even in FOSS, are a Good Thing. LibreOffice is very successful, and they should be congratulated for their success. But certainly there is room for other players in this game, and certainly room for one (or more) that are under a permissive license. The thing is is that they don't have to be clones; they can have different audiences, different "missions" so-to-speak.
4. It is sad when we in the FOSS community degrade ourselves to simple, base license-wars. There are good, solid reasons for permissive, weak copyleft and strong copyleft, and I've contributed to them all.
IMO, what's next for Apache OpenOffice is what the Apache OpenOffice community decides; it sounds as if this whole kerflunkle has served as a kick-in-the-arse to the AOO team: they see how important AOO still is to numerous people, and they have loads of new volunteers offering to help. A 4.1.3 release is forthcoming so that is good news and a step in the right direction.
Posted Sep 8, 2016 21:22 UTC (Thu)
by ovitters (guest, #27950)
[Link]
Whenever I go to some conference I get the positive energy. I go back, then fail to do anything that I really want to do.
Regarding your points:
At least AOO finally stopped attacking LO in the LWN comments.
Posted Sep 8, 2016 22:21 UTC (Thu)
by glaubitz (subscriber, #96452)
[Link]
We are not talking about a small text editor here that can be maintained by 1-2 developers easily, we are talking about an office suite, one of the most complex and largest software projects currently imaginable and unless a miracle happens and a huge amount of very talented and motivated developers is suddenly going to join AOO, there is absolutely no chance that a project of that size can be successfully maintained and developed in the future.
As the old saying goes, "Rather a calamitous end than an endless calamity."
Adrian
Posted Sep 8, 2016 22:46 UTC (Thu)
by pr1268 (guest, #24648)
[Link]
Agreed, but having a choice implies there are two (or more) actively supported and admired competitors. This applies to both FLOSS and proprietary software. (Case in point: Remember how MS stalled IE at version 6 for five years? Firefox [and a few other web browsers] emerged victorious.) AOO's reticence (or outright lack of resources) to fixing security flaws speaks volumes about its "active support" (or lack thereof), and, IMO, LO won admiration from many more users than AOO after the fork, especially for its aggressive release/update schedule (acrimonious flame wars and berating by a certain few individuals notwithstanding). Also agreed. But, FLOSS license wars are nothing new here. In fact, having witnessed the whole debacle from the sidelines, I wasn't aware that this was a serious bone of contention with regards to AOO vs. LO. I will even defend AOO here in saying that there is no reason to assume a licensing row has anything to do with LO's greater success (or perception thereof). Quite often, having a different, incompatible license is a feature (as some have pointed out here regarding AOO).
Posted Sep 9, 2016 1:09 UTC (Fri)
by bunk (subscriber, #44933)
[Link] (4 responses)
What "audiences" and "missions" do you have in mind for AOO, that would differ significantly from what LO is currently doing?
> 4. It is sad when we in the FOSS community degrade ourselves to simple, base license-wars. There are good, solid reasons for permissive, weak copyleft and strong copyleft, and I've contributed to them all.
Jim, you are the only one who is harping the license topic all the time.
The only "license-war" seems to be AOO people complaining that the AOO license change makes it impossible to take code from LO to AOO.
The AOO license change was after LO was started, so for me as bystander this doesn't look like something where anyone could blame the LO developers.
Posted Sep 9, 2016 14:38 UTC (Fri)
by jimjag (guest, #84477)
[Link]
Even a cursory review of the various related thread show that this is simply untrue.
Posted Sep 9, 2016 15:26 UTC (Fri)
by smurf (subscriber, #17840)
[Link] (2 responses)
This dicsussion is not about the license. Not primarily, anyway.
> Jim, you are the only one who is harping the license topic all the time.
Wrong.
That being said, as of today the permissiveness of the license is (IMHO) the only reason somebody would decide to participate in AOO instead of LO … assuming there's a material advantage of doing so, which I doubt when considering AOO's shortcomings.
Posted Sep 9, 2016 16:27 UTC (Fri)
by cesarb (subscriber, #6266)
[Link]
In the HN thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12456071) I saw another reason: the developer already being used to and comfortable with how the ASF works.
Posted Sep 10, 2016 3:45 UTC (Sat)
by zorro (subscriber, #45643)
[Link]
Posted Sep 9, 2016 8:58 UTC (Fri)
by moltonel (guest, #45207)
[Link]
But until they do (and it'll take them years to get back on track even in the most optimist projections), having average users directed to AOO is really irresponsible. The users who are not savvy enough to switch projects are also the ones most vulnerable to security issues in their software. And if those users get bitten by an AOO bug hard enough that they look for alternatives, chances are that they'll switch to MS Office rather than LO. It's currently one of the greatest thorn in FOSS's side.
For 5 years people have been waiting for AOO to either suceed (and make the trademark proud) or die off (and return the trademark to LO). Neither has happened or look likely to happen soon, and many people's patience is exhausted. It's really sad when the third option (give/share the trademark to/with LO, and compete on merit without Oracle's spitefull choice of successor mess up the popularity numbers) is technically easy.
Posted Sep 9, 2016 11:19 UTC (Fri)
by niner (subscriber, #26151)
[Link]
With that single step, you could remove all the bad blood and the basis for all the criticism and all the ranting. And you'd show how you care about your users and about free software. And most of all you'd gain the time needed to re-build your development team. It's a win-win-win.
Posted Sep 15, 2016 13:16 UTC (Thu)
by HelloWorld (guest, #56129)
[Link]
> Because of this "publicity", the AOO has been overwhelmed by lots and lots of offers of support, which have been graciously and thankfully accepted.
> But certainly there is room for other players in this game, and certainly room for one (or more) that are under a permissive license. The thing is is that they don't have to be clones; they can have different audiences, different "missions" so-to-speak.
IOW, perhaps AOO *could* have some sort of mission that is distinct from LO's, but I don't see it, and you haven't presented one. If permissive licensing was one, then hordes of ASL2 fans should rush towards OpenOffice right now and commit tons of useful code. But they don't, meaning that apparently they care more about the technical improvements (build system, code cleanup etc.) that LO made. And I don't see any reason for that to change.
> they see how important AOO still is to numerous people
Anyway, I honestly hope that you'll be able to stop deluding yourself soon. It's dead, Jim.
Posted Sep 8, 2016 21:14 UTC (Thu)
by orcmid (guest, #74478)
[Link] (8 responses)
I am commenting to commend the balanced treatment of the article itself.
I do have one factual correction. The Board has been attentive to the state of the project as long as I have been the Chair and have prodded the Project Management Committee to have the state of the project visible to and understood by the project's public.
There have been two marked progressions over the last year or so.
1. It has been made clear that the animosity to any other project is inconsistent with the principles of the Apache Software Foundation as a charity that provides free software as a public good. While participants have their personal grievances, whatever the circumstances -- real or imagined or feared -- those are not expressions of positions of the Apache OpenOffice project. In fact, they are not the business of the Apache OpenOffice project. At the same time, we must be tolerant about the diversity of opinions that are expressed on our mailing lists, keeping in mind that the ASF Code of Conduct does apply to all users of the list.
2. There is more reporting of actual facts about the state of various elements of the project where there is no requirement for confidentiality. The recent discussion about what retirement would involve, as well as the discussion on how to re-invigorate the project are all part of that.
The greatest challenge is to suppress fears about criticism and disparagement and deal transparently and responsibly with the challenges the project faces. I trust that will continue. There will obviously be disagreement, especially around what some perceive as political matters. It is important not to shrink from that.
Posted Sep 8, 2016 22:15 UTC (Thu)
by luya (subscriber, #50741)
[Link]
Speaking as an outsider observer.
The real problem is the AOO board failed their works with that maxim: actions speak louder than words.
By simply tracking Apache openoffice.org website and the bug reports, it becomes clear the project is no longer viable for many years since IBM dropped their support. Constructive valid criticism pointed the failure of AOO project as a whole as seen publicly. Majority of plan suggested by AOO are already done on LO so why not joining the force. LO team are willing to admit mistake as well but AOO must realize their own actions already tarnished OpenOffice.org and they need to do the logical decision: redirect openoffice.org to libreoffice.org. That way, their legacy will be restored.
Posted Sep 9, 2016 0:48 UTC (Fri)
by simosx (guest, #24338)
[Link]
Judging from http://www.mail-archive.com/dev@openoffice.apache.org/msg...
In there, it says:
> Still, I have to say that even though Rob wrote questionable posts on his own blog (never speaking for Apache or OpenOffice) and even though his bad temper is not under discussion, he also was an outstanding contributor and a decent community member.
Oh, he was not speaking for Apache or Apache OpenOffice when talking publicly about Apache OpenOffice and LibreOffice?
The Apache Software Foundation should have known better; they are run by volunteers. If you are a volunteer, there is nothing that compels you to accept crap like that emanating from Rob Weir.
Posted Sep 9, 2016 5:18 UTC (Fri)
by ncm (guest, #165)
[Link] (5 responses)
But the Apache Foundation has bigger problems even than AOO. Count the ghits for "Apache is where projects go to die". This is a pervasive problem in project governance, with the condition of AOO just an especially visible symptom.
Sometimes projects deserve a dignified death. ASF could perform a service by helping to direct remnant users of dying or dead projects to active alternatives, instead of tricking people into staying dependent on them. (Certainly Xerces-C passed its sell-by date many years ago. My first project at each of two employers in 200x was getting them off it.).
ASF's concentration on Java projects still gives me hope that Java will go that way too.
Posted Sep 9, 2016 8:41 UTC (Fri)
by branden (guest, #7029)
[Link]
(That's a good thing, in my book. ;-) )
Posted Sep 9, 2016 11:27 UTC (Fri)
by jimjag (guest, #84477)
[Link]
Posted Sep 13, 2016 16:59 UTC (Tue)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link] (2 responses)
It's fairly clear that the Apache Board is doing an excellent job in one area: playing ostrich and denying problems until it is much too late to fix them.
Posted Sep 14, 2016 20:55 UTC (Wed)
by oever (guest, #987)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Sep 14, 2016 23:56 UTC (Wed)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link]
Posted Sep 9, 2016 13:48 UTC (Fri)
by martin.langhoff (subscriber, #61417)
[Link] (14 responses)
Jimjag has been notably gracious towards LO in some of his recent statements. I'm sure some of his other statements still grate; but remember: Nothing is ever perfect. Build the bridge that can be built now. In many of the posts from LO supporters I see the glimpses of a bitter truth: if you are not careful, you can become what you hate. Your grievances have been voiced plenty. We've heard them. Today is the day you once thought of as a faraway future; it's here now... but only if you let go of the past. Step away from the anger. Onwards and upwards...
Posted Sep 9, 2016 15:07 UTC (Fri)
by bunk (subscriber, #44933)
[Link] (13 responses)
And for reaching the LO people Jim is building his bridge on the wrong place.
Posted Sep 9, 2016 15:20 UTC (Fri)
by martin.langhoff (subscriber, #61417)
[Link] (12 responses)
Jimjag suggested _on AOO's mailing list_ to put a links or redirect to LO. I never thought I'd see that. Jon Corbet pointed it out. It's a hint at a direction. What will be more productive, finding olive branches to counteroffer or raking him through the coals?
"What would {someone unhelpful} do? Nitpick, complain, divide. How can I do _the exact opposite_?"
Posted Sep 9, 2016 15:44 UTC (Fri)
by bunk (subscriber, #44933)
[Link] (11 responses)
You seem to confuse a pretty civil discussion on the internet with actual hate.
> Jimjag suggested _on AOO's mailing list_ to put a links or redirect to LO. I never thought I'd see that. Jon Corbet pointed it out. It's a hint at a direction. What will be more productive, finding olive branches to counteroffer or raking him through the coals?
You missed that Jim's "olive branch" had a pretty hefty price tag attached.
You should read his whole email, including the last section:
The stated purpose of this olive branch was to move part of the LO development to the ASF.
Posted Sep 9, 2016 15:55 UTC (Fri)
by martin.langhoff (subscriber, #61417)
[Link] (1 responses)
> You missed that Jim's "olive branch" had a pretty hefty price tag attached.
Yeah, I get it. But take it as the start of a conversation, instead of as a take/leave offer.
Posted Sep 9, 2016 16:27 UTC (Fri)
by bunk (subscriber, #44933)
[Link]
Next are between 5 and 10 million more downloads of the latest AOO release that does *not* contain the "released" CVE fix that triggered the whole discussion...
> > You missed that Jim's "olive branch" had a pretty hefty price tag attached.
A conversation about what, and with whom?
Here are random people from the internet, not the TDF/LO developers.
Posted Sep 9, 2016 16:29 UTC (Fri)
by jimjag (guest, #84477)
[Link] (7 responses)
Hogwash.
What I said, and I quote, is "I think we will see all players in the OO development eco-system be willing contributors to the new project."
Which means just that, that we see contributions from all players in the OO eco-system. No where does it say death to LO or move part of LO development at all.
The idea is to remove roadblocks and past harm which have prevented cooperation between LO and AOO. That should have been obvious.
It is FUD like this, and people misrepresenting things to bolster their own argument, that caused all this in the 1st place. I am trying to help everyone see a way past this and through this, but some people simply want to perpetuate the hate and the FUD. This is really, really sad... This thread has lost whatever usefulness it may have had.
Posted Sep 9, 2016 17:44 UTC (Fri)
by bunk (subscriber, #44933)
[Link] (6 responses)
If there was a misunderstanding on my side, can you stop throwing insults at me and explain here in detail what you were suggesting?
I will be glad to apologize if I misunderstood your intentions.
> The idea is to remove roadblocks and past harm which have prevented cooperation between LO and AOO. That should have been obvious.
Whether you like it or not, the biggest roadblock for that in the future is the licensing of AOO.
> What I said, and I quote, is "I think we will see all players in the OO development eco-system be willing contributors to the new project."
Can you explain how that would look like in practice, considering that LO already has several years of development that cannot get into AOO under the ASF licensing policies?
Rebases on top of Oracle OO were already a pain for the LO developers with Go-oo 6 years ago, and one result of what happened in the past is that you cannot simply put LO on top of some core part of AOO.
To me your email sounded as if you were expecting from the LO developers to change the license of everything they have done in that "core" part to your license in exchange for your "olive branch".
A pretty dead project is not really in a position to demand a license change from a pretty alive project, and even when ignoring all philosophical differences regarding licensing there are close to 1000 contributors who hold the copyright on their respective contributions to LO.
If your new project would not have required changing the license (or throwing away) of existing LO code, then please explain that here.
Posted Sep 9, 2016 18:17 UTC (Fri)
by martin.langhoff (subscriber, #61417)
[Link] (5 responses)
As a third party observer, I'd say Jim can be forgiven for being frustrated. As can everyone. Time to shift gears.
Maybe Jim envisions a smaller AOO, focused on being a library/backend for other projects (maybe not for LO). It is a de-escalation of AOO's ambition; maybe proprietary tools benefit from having a great docx/xlsx parser/engine/writer they can embed under a permissive license. That's a very "small" example -- I am just imagining possibilities.
It's an alternative path for AOO, humbler than being an end-user package, but perhaps useful.
This would in turn get AOO out of the end-user Office package business, and clear the path to the redirect in discussion.
Again, this is an opening for a discussion. Helps if folks bring goodwill and are prepared for an initial positive read of other folks intentions.
Posted Sep 9, 2016 19:12 UTC (Fri)
by bunk (subscriber, #44933)
[Link] (4 responses)
It would be good if Jim (not you) could explain what he had in mind in his email.
My reading of his email was that his "generous offer" was in reality a demand/expectation that the LO developers should change the license of a substantial part of their code to his license in exchange, and then maintain that code at the ASF.
This is not hate, I simply do not see any other way how the contents of his email would make sense from a technical point of view.
Let us stop speculating what he might have thought, and wait whether there will be an answer from Jim that explains it.
Posted Sep 9, 2016 19:16 UTC (Fri)
by martin.langhoff (subscriber, #61417)
[Link] (3 responses)
He just did. You are talking in circles, and with a very negative perspective.
Posted Sep 9, 2016 20:23 UTC (Fri)
by bunk (subscriber, #44933)
[Link] (1 responses)
Take as an example the one sentence Jim repeated from his email:
Who are these players in the OO development eco-system Jim is talking about?
LO is picking the few changes in AOO it does not already have in some form.
Can you name a single other player who is currently doing development based on the AOO code?
I do not see any, and the fact that AOO development is dead for nearly a year now after IBM left is also telling.
I fully admit having a negative perspective here, because this sentence from his email he emphasized again sounds a lot less gracious once you understand that you can replace "all players in the OO development eco-system" with "the LO developers" without changing the meaning.
Posted Sep 10, 2016 0:10 UTC (Sat)
by JanC_ (guest, #34940)
[Link]
Would be nice to hear from them (and/or any other projects based on AOO).
Posted Sep 9, 2016 23:18 UTC (Fri)
by smurf (subscriber, #17840)
[Link]
>He just did.
No he did not, at least not beyond the level of "pipe dream".
I am calling this a pipe dream because some un-answered questions immediately come to mind. Questions which are material to rational discussion of this idea, if only because otherwise people will think they talk about the same thing but actually don't.
* which license? if it's GPL then LO already is at least 95% of wherever this idea is supposed to go – you're done, thanks, would you mind transferring the domains and trademarks to LO? – thus I'll assume something permissive …
* … which immediately begets the question how the massive number of build system infrastructure and bug fixes that are in LO are going to end up in AOOlib. Somebody needs to triage them, ask the LO contributors for permission, port their changes over (and rewrite (or work around) anything written by people who object to re-licensing), and then convince the LO people to switch over to AAOlib. (Without immediately causing another fork, by people who won't tolerate permissive licenses.) Or alternately play this game of catch-up for the foreseeable future.
* All of the above work is at least 250% nonproductive. (100% because you're not adding any new features, another 100% because you're going to introduce hard-to-track bugs you need to fix, and at least 50% by introducting friction and inefficiencies because there are now two bug trackers, versions to keep in sync of, blame to shift back and forth between AOOlib and LOfrontend.) Why would anybody who is not an anti-GPL zealot(+) even think of doing all of this work for no material gain?
(+): Please do not misunderstand. I am not calling you an anti-GPL zealot. I ask why you, presumed to not be one of these zealots, would want to do this.
* Let's face it, you do not have any manpower for this. You may have a number of people who *said* they'd help, but (a) they're probably not sufficiently many and/or don't have the right skill set, (b) we both know that some will end up not willing or able to actually do it. Thus you'll need some company to underwrite the effort …
* … but what is the business case of spending a man-year (source: personal seat-of-the-pants guesstimate, probably on the low side) on legwork for Your Proprietary Feature? Let's assume that said YPF takes a man-month to implement, which is not at all unreasonable. Releasing the source code will never cost you as much revenue as you've just burned creating/integrating/fixing-obscure-bugs-in AAOlib.
* Oh yes: don't forget that you've also placed your product a year behind schedule, the instant you decided on embarking on this endeavor.
Posted Sep 15, 2016 16:36 UTC (Thu)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
And if the developers - you know, the people who write the code - refuse to agree to the Apache licence (as sounds likely), where do Apache go then?
Cheers,
Posted Sep 10, 2016 9:46 UTC (Sat)
by karath (subscriber, #19025)
[Link] (5 responses)
If you want an apology for past insults or something concrete like the domain, then name-calling and finger pointing is not likely to lead in that direction.
If, however, you want to finger-point and name-call then don't be surprised at the result.
Posted Sep 10, 2016 10:27 UTC (Sat)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link] (3 responses)
The way AOO continues to exploit the good will associated to OO.o (a brand that was largely built by the people that went to the TDF, SUN marketing being abysmal), while letting the codebase rot, is infuriating to many.
Many people there are sick of getting answered "I tried AOO and it was junk" when they state they are proud of what LO accomplished.
AOO does not stand on its own merits. Remove the confusion between AOO and OO.o, and what is left?
Another project, that tried valiantly to survive without claiming a brand that was built by others, would generate very different feelings. There is little continuity between OO.o contributors and past or present AOO contributors.
Posted Sep 10, 2016 10:50 UTC (Sat)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link] (2 responses)
1. AOO finally does something worthwhile with the OO.o codebase (people are quite sceptical of this given the project past lack of traction and focus on deceptive marketing over coding)
Frankly, 3. seems the most likely right now.
Posted Sep 10, 2016 16:24 UTC (Sat)
by branden (guest, #7029)
[Link]
AOO has already done its worst to LO. The outcome is clear.
Time to see if the Apache board has a sense of community larger than the ASF.
Posted Sep 10, 2016 21:47 UTC (Sat)
by smurf (subscriber, #17840)
[Link]
That being said, the ball is in their court. A "Hello. If you're looking for an end-user-ready product based on OpenOffice.Org, please go to http://www.libreoffice.org/" type of statement should have been added to the oo.org homepage a year ago, when it became clear that the CVE wouldn't get fixed any time soon.
Posted Sep 15, 2016 16:42 UTC (Thu)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
From my point of view, what *I* want is for us LO people to be left alone on our turf to get on with what we want to do.
The problem, as others have pointed out, is that the Open Office name is well known out there, and LO can't afford to let it be abandoned because they will be badly hurt by the fallout. All this fuss about "hand the Open Office trademark over to TDF" is damage-limitation by the LO people.
Cheers,
Posted Aug 2, 2017 16:29 UTC (Wed)
by nettings (subscriber, #429)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Aug 5, 2017 8:51 UTC (Sat)
by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389)
[Link]
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-startup-kite-trie...
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
2. https://www.libreoffice.org/
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
Infrastructure
Documentation
Quality Assurance
Localization
Marketing
Designers
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
or atleast it will take them year(s) to just get to the level that LO is
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
AOO vs. LO
All the examples you cite have some distinguishing feature which actually makes sense to the people writing or using that code, otherwise they wouldn't write/use it.
* A large number of features, code cleanups, and bug fixes are in LO but not in AOO
* LO has many active contributors and a community worthy of that name, resulting in faster bugfix turnaround
* LO has a working multi-platform build system
* AOO has a permissive license.
How advantageous is the AOO license ?
MPL, not GPL
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
Why volunteer?
as an outsider, I have to ask, what would the appeal be in volunteering my time and efforts to help AOO? I'm not a license fantatic; both permissive and share-alike licenses are just fine in my book.
Why volunteer?
+1. Is there a single good argument on the AOO side to not point openoffice.org to both LO and AOO? That they don't do so already suggests that, in their minds, they and not LO are the "legitimate" inheritors of OOo.
Why volunteer?
Why volunteer?
I brought this issue up in a few ways. They sidestepped/ignored my request.
Why volunteer?
Why volunteer?
Why volunteer?
logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of
the Apache Software Foundation <http://apache.org> in
the United States and/or other countries.
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
Consolidation please!
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
AOO was never shipped by Linux distributions, and looking at the download statistics at SF only approx. 2% of all current AOO downloads are for Linux.
AOO comes with translations for ~ 40 languages.
You will need translation updates for all of them after the 4.2.0 string freeze.
You have volunteers for translations.
Someone has to explain the translation update process to everyone volunteering for translations, and keep track of them so that they can be contacted closer to the 4.2.0 string freeze.
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
Who is responsible that they will still be available when the translations will be needed for making the 4.2.0 release?
I don't personally care about AOO, and whether or not the future of AOO is important enough for you to participate in the actual development of AOO is your decision.
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
LWN bacronym: "Libre Wide News"?
LWN bacronym: "Libre Wide News"?
LWN bacronym: "Libre Wide News"?
LWN backronym
LWN bacronym: "Libre Wide News"?
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
> Their minds are made up and nothing can be said that will make any difference at all.
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
2. Crickets
3. Auto-generated "is that problem still there?"
4. "Yes"
5. Repeat from 3 until reporter gets tired.
6. Auto-generated close
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
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What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
Nope. Quite a few have picked up on it. I get the sense that it's a symptom of some deep rooted cultural problem in Apache, since everyone knows it's not the first time they've had representatives here acting like this. The less words we give them to spin out of context, the better.
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
Wol
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
(Whether that was done intentionally by Oracle is a separate question.)
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
Wol
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
That is the reason why AOO is dead since IBM left.
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
Whatever the next release is, you can expect to see any disclosures and advisories related to that distribution at that time and not before.
I'm fairly certain that the existence of a security hole in 4.1.2 is widely known by now. (Far more widely known than it would have been if the bug had just been fixed in a quick point release with an advisory like more or less every other project can manage.)
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
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.
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
Wol
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
Wol
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
1. Other people joined the discussion and hoped AOO would finally stop/merge with LO
2. "Soon we will do something" is what AOO had said years
3. You cannot even put out a security fix
4. That's specific to AOO itself
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
3. People have also forgotten that choices, even in FOSS, are a Good Thing.
4. It is sad when we in the FOSS community degrade ourselves to simple, base license-wars.
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
Sure, but it doesn't mean you're not dying either. And AOO clearly is dying, the numbers are unambiguous. Fyi, I am not and never was affiliated to LO or AOO in any way other than as an occasional user.
How many lines of code (or translation, artwork etc.) were committed as a result?
So what is AOO's mission compared to LO's? I'll quote myself from here: https://lwn.net/Comments/699409/
In order to justify the existence of a fork with that sort of argument you show some feature that
- cannot be implemented in LibreOffice because of technical reasons, or the direction the project is meant to take, or maintainability concerns etc.
- can be implemented in AOO in principle as the reason doesn't apply there
- can be implemented in practice, i. e. there's somebody willing to do the work
Sometimes that is the case, see for instance the fork of DragonFlyBSD from FreeBSD. But for AOO I haven't seen any such reason.
I suppose that depends on your definition of “numerous”. It certainly doesn't have a meaningful amount of developer mindshare, and while it might be important to some users, that is most likely because they know the brand and haven't realised yet that all meaningful development is done in LO.
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
it looks like the bad behaviour of Rob Weir is being swept under the carpet.
He was trying to bitch-talk against LibreOffice from his blog, attacking individual LibreOffice contributors, just to score points in favour of Apache OpenOffice.
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
Apache has lots of active goodies for Java programmers such as
Lucene, POI, FOP, Jena, Tomcat, Ant.
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
Graciousness - Do not become what you hate
Graciousness - Do not become what you hate
This is a quite civilized discussion here.
Graciousness - Do not become what you hate
Graciousness - Do not become what you hate
https://lwn.net/Articles/699110/
Graciousness - Do not become what you hate
Graciousness - Do not become what you hate
> Yeah, I get it. But take it as the start of a conversation, instead of as a take/leave offer.
Graciousness - Do not become what you hate
>You should read his whole email, including the last section: https://lwn.net/Articles/699110/
>The stated purpose of this olive branch was to move part of the LO development to the ASF.
Graciousness - Do not become what you hate
Graciousness - Do not become what you hate
Graciousness - Do not become what you hate
> Maybe Jim envisions ...
Graciousness - Do not become what you hate
Graciousness - Do not become what you hate
"I think we will see all players in the OO development eco-system be willing contributors to the new project."
Graciousness - Do not become what you hate
Graciousness - Do not become what you hate
Graciousness - Do not become what you hate
Wol
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
2. AOO makes crystal-clear it's just one of OO.o inheritors, and lets users evaluate each of them on their own merits (ie competes honestly)
3. AOO crashes and burns. Confusion solved.
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
What's next for Apache OpenOffice
Wol
A look at Oracle might have important lessons to teach...
A look at Oracle might have important lessons to teach...