LWN: Comments on "Oracle donates OpenOffice.org to Apache"

Oracle donates OpenOffice.org to Apache

Hausvib6 — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 03:09:42 +0000

Legally, there will be no problem for TDF by taking any new improvements from OO.o. Technically, there will be another cause of eye cancer: merging two diverging codebases.

Apache should have declined.

Lennie — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 18:10:56 +0000

The GPL does help with companies contributing to Linux. If company A contributes to the project, there is no competitor B that will take their changes and make a better competing product for the code is not available for company A.

Because the GPL says the user can do whatever it wants with the code it is obligated to receive with the product, including posting it back to the project.

I don't know if companies think that far ahead, some would really like to keep their changes to themselfs I would prosume.

What it does do is create more fragmentated development, unlike the Linux kernel it seems. Although licensing isn't the cause that the different BSD versions exist and licensing didn't prevent that the different Linux distributions exist either.

Each license has their advantages/disadvantages.

Switch back ?

Lennie — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 17:58:14 +0000

"It should be noted that, even in the Linux world, most major distributions have switched over to LO, or plan to, so some kind of a switch back to OOo would be required."

Euh... not completely true. Most Linux distributions, because of the slow processes at Sun/Oracle didn't use plain-vanilla OpenOffice but http://www.go-oo.org/

Which is a set of patches against OpenOffice which were not yet accepted.

One of the first things that happend after LibreOffice source repository was created is to merge those patches. Maybe of the Linux distributions are in the "LibreOffice-camp".

So the Linux distrbutions have always been using the same "lineage", only the branding changed.

If they switched to OpenOffice.org it be like switching back to what they were using many, many years ago.

Oracle donates OpenOffice.org to Apache

csigler — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 22:44:50 +0000

I'd like to agree. In the end the high visibility of the new-and-improved OO.o project licensed to ASF and (in a way) sponsored by IBM may turn out to benefit LO in areas of the code where LO won't develop new or improved functionality, that is, areas where none of their developers feel an itch they need to scratch.

Only problem, historically, is that IBM has said they contributed some important code/features to OO.o. This, from what I've read, turned out to be a massive code dump -- no interchange or cooperation with those working on OO.o at the time, and the patches were against an *ancient* version of the code base, 1.1.5. If this is how IBM will contribute to the ASF OO.o project (and to LO), it may be of little use to anyone except their own clients.

Clemmitt

Oracle donates OpenOffice.org to Apache

xtifr — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 22:03:55 +0000

There's another factor that's being overlooked in all this: the LO code has already undergone massive cleanupand I do mean massive! Dead code removal, duplicate code (and data) consolidation and restructuring, macro reorganization, comment cleanup, etc. For Joe Randomcoder, working on the LO codebase is likely to be far more appealing/less intimidating, at least at the moment; the learning curve for jumping into the OOo code has to be much higher! This is especially likely to be a factor if Joe is (as is likely) already using or about to switch to the LO from his distribution.

For some, the license may be a bigger factorcertainly the license issues have gotten more pressbut that will cut both ways, with some preferring the Apache license, and others the copyleft. But unless OOo can match the current quality of the LO code, all those who are fairly happy with either license (which I suspect is a large number, though that may just be my own biases showing) will be more attracted to the LO project. A cleanup of the OOo code would solve this, but would take time, which will allow LO to pull farther ahead on features. The fact that OOo has been stagnant so long is a disadvantage that will be hard to overcome.

What would be sad is if the OOo project ends up collapsing because of the quality of its code, and then people start attributing its collapse to the license instead.

Oracle donates OpenOffice.org to Apache

runekock — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 21:23:08 +0000

This may well benefit LibreOffice in the end. IBM and any other companies that want the Apache project to succeed, will want to pour resources into it. And the resulting code can be used by LibreOffice.

As IBM won't accept any copy-left license, the alternative would be that IBM kept all their code to themselves. Now, they'll probably develop the core in Apache, and only keep their special UI closed.

Oracle donates OpenOffice.org to Apache

zeekec — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 15:39:52 +0000

Ummm.... The BSD style licenses already donate all the code to copy-left projects. It's the nature of the license.

Apache should have declined.

rsidd — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 13:12:05 +0000

Nonetheless, in the mid-1990s FreeBSD (2.x and 3.x) was clearly superior to Linux (1.2 and 2.0) in nearly all departments. If the BSDs hadn't been busy fighting one another and had been more welcoming of newcomers and new ideas, I think the free software world would look rather different today.

Oracle donates OpenOffice.org to Apache

simosx — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 11:07:10 +0000

Apparently Oracle wanted to transfer the copyrights to the ASF, but ASF declined, saying they are "not needed" for them. Imagine that!

My screwball theory.

skitching — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 11:03:09 +0000

Oracle making such a large amount of effort for a "face saving" effort whose success is uncertain just doesn't seem likely to me. As you note, Oracle seem to think that OO is not a profit source for them, so don't care a whole lot what becomes of it.

I would think that pressure from IBM is more likely; they have a commercial product that will soon be made obsolete by progress in the LO fork, whose code they cannot merge back into their Symphony product. If IBM can get the office-suite community to gather around an Apache-licensed suite then they can continue to offer Symphony as latest-OOo + proprietary extensions. Yes, they can partially do this with LO if they can package their extensions as "plugins" but it won't be so easy as being able to directly modify the core code. There might be payment from IBM to Oracle involved, but IBM and Oracle still interact in many ways so compensation could take many forms.

Oracle might vaguely have the same idea in mind; use the Apache releases as a "base" to then modify with their own secret sauce and release as "Oracle Office".

Of course the risk for IBM/Oracle is that other companies are free to do this too, but I can't see many other corporates wanting to leap into the office suite market.

Whether this would be good or bad for free software isn't clear; the ASF (IMO) takes the view that even when the above behaviour (free core + proprietary extensions) is occurring, the free core moves forward faster than a pure GPL'd tool would anyway, due to the extra full-time developers - and therefore even users of just the free core are winners. Personally, I'd love to see some proper research on this topic; 20 years of free software should now be enough to provide sound statistics for an analysis of an ASL vs GPL approach.

As for the ASF's motives in participating? Well, (a) the philisophical reason above, and (b) the bar for getting a project into the incubator is deliberately very low; after all, "incubator" projects are still *not* apache projects. Something in the incubator stage is forbidden from making any releases claiming to be an "Apache project". Getting out of the incubator is far tougher, and includes convincing the ASF membership that project leadership is properly merit-based, and that no one company dominates the project (see the Apache rules and regulations for the full details). If the project can't reach this level, then it will never become an actual Apache project. So in some sense, there is nothing to lose; if it succeeds in gathering wide-spread support, then good. If not, then it dies in the incubator phase.

Disclosure: I'm an emeritus Apache member..

Apache should have declined.

paulj — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 10:49:19 +0000

BSD had legal problems that weren't resolved until years after Linus started on Linux. The BSD splits were largely due to these legal problems. It was the legal problems with BSD, not the splits, that created the vacuum that likely helped Linux to develop.

Apache should have declined.

smurf — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 09:00:14 +0000

Damn right.

The same thing happened to the BSDs. I sometimes wonder whether there'd even *be* a Linux today if they hadn't split up.

I do hope that contributors stay with LO. Let the OOo branch die a well-deserved death, no matter under whose leadership.

Oracle donates OpenOffice.org to Apache

smurf — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 08:54:26 +0000

There is no chance in hell of any non-copyleft/BSD-centered organization donating anything, much less code, to a copyleft/GNU-centered organization.
Or vice versa.

Oracle donates OpenOffice.org to Apache

rsidd — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 08:18:50 +0000

IANAL either, but the really key thing to me was that Oracle is transferring the OpenOffice.org trademark to the ASF. The Apache licence is a very permissive licence, so if the OOo codebase is released under that licence, there is nothing to stop LO from using it. But it does not permit use of trademarks in derived code. However, if the ASF will now own the OOo trademark, what's to stop them allowing LibreOffice to use it -- if, that is, both parties want to? Then wouldn't that be as good as transferring rights to TDF in the first place?

Apache should have declined.

nettings — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 07:26:56 +0000

This is a sad state of affairs. The playground bully finally managed to piss off everybody except one or two other playground bullies, and the civilised majority just walked away, creating a huge and rightfully deserved PR disaster for the bully.
Apache's acceptance of the code will help to contain this PR disaster. I don't think that's helpful. OOo should be left to fall flat on its face.

The incubator project will either fail (leading to wasted effort) or succeed in creating a fork, which will also lead to duplicated and hence wasted effort. I don't see any potential benefits in it (except for Oracle and IBM, for whom I couldn't care less).
And how Apache's decision to cooperate (again) with entities that have effectively torpedoed large Apache projects in the past is a sign of "maturity" rather than stupidity is not clear to me either.

My screwball theory.

rahvin — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 04:51:21 +0000

It doesn't trump or save face, it only makes them look like a spoiled child that can't handle losing. They created the problem and got beat at their own game, had a temper tantrum and refused to cooperate. You'd think they could be adults about it, but as they say a companies attitude and responsibility generally derive directly from the CEO and from everything I've read about Larry Ellison that explains it all.

Oracle donates OpenOffice.org to Apache

BrucePerens — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 03:49:45 +0000

Pragmatism != maturity. Pragmatism, in this community, generally is used to describe a willingness to ignore long-term goals in favor of short-term ones.

Oracle donates OpenOffice.org to Apache

butlerm — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 01:58:26 +0000

The Apache License is a BSD-ish license that is permissive enough that there is no real reason to require copyright assignment from anyone. The normal reason why people ask for copyright assignment is so that they (and only they) can relicense derivatives on any terms they feel like. This is typically how dual licensing is accomplished, one copyleft license for anyone, plus we own the copyright, so we can sell our special sauce version without making source available, but everyone else has to share, etc.

With a permissive license like the Apache License that generally isn't necessary. Anyone can create closed derivatives if they feel that is appropriate, not just the people with the copyright. In many ways a BSD licensed project without copyright assignment is more open than a GPL licensed project with it. The latter always creates a preferred party who can do things that none of the other participants can do.

Oracle donates OpenOffice.org to Apache

mjw — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 00:57:44 +0000

I think people are first watching if anything actually comes out of this. libreoffice has been pretty active and has basically gotten all the active community members now:
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice?s=idle
The old code base has been abandoned and doesn't really see much changes anymore:
http://hg.services.openoffice.org/?sort=lastchange

Maybe these new apache committers will actually start coding again, but it seems the first order of business is getting rid of all the MPL/[L]GPL dependencies. Which will be a lot of work without any gain (of new features). So it might be better to just sit back and watch whether anything useful actually pops out before starting grand merging plans.

My screwball theory.

csigler — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 00:52:52 +0000

I have a very simplistic theory of this (frenzied) transfer of rights via licensing from Oracle to ASF. Oracle saw OO.o as another profit center when they purchased Sun, probably not a major one, but something, and it pokes a finger in Microsoft's office suite near-monopoly eye to boot. They allowed a few months to try to develop OO.o, devoting man-hours to the project, but when they did a review they saw it was unlikely to make any profit even in the long-term. So, being profit-oriented (and they are a for-profit company), they decided to stop the bleeding and cut it loose.

But there's a problem: TDF. They effectively became Oracle's competitor in the open-source office suite marketplace once they gave up working under Sun/Oracle's umbrella and started their own skunk-works (and a surprising successful one). Money is the most important channel of revenue in the industry, but it's not the only one. Abandoning OO.o or turning it over to TDF would not only abandon monetary profit, but also surrender corporate recognition, as well as industry and end-user esteem, to TDF, their de-facto competitor. So, what to do so as not to look like a kicked cur when it comes to their OO.o "experiment?"

The decision to license rights to all things OO.o to ASF is their way of saving face, of trumping the (highly successful) ongoing work of TDF on the code base, and of cooperating with IBM. Who knows, there may be a confidential agreement between Oracle and IBM that involves monetary reimbursement, but of course that is just idle and perhaps conspiratorial speculation.

Now, as necessary, please contradict and correct me. I'd really like to understand all this better.

Clemmitt

Oracle donates OpenOffice.org to Apache

DOT — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 00:28:31 +0000

LibreOffice's codebase is older than it seems. Go-oo was started in 2007, so that's more than 3 years of code commits from many people without copyright assignment. Relicensing can become tricky.

Oracle donates OpenOffice.org to Apache

csigler — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 00:27:51 +0000

I think one problem is that Oracle is retaining what I'd term "backstop control" of the project by retaining copyright ownership. Quoting Allen Pulsifer:

"... Oracle has retained ownership of the copyrights, and granted the ASF a license."

I'm *not* a copyright, trademark or licensing expert, but wouldn't this allow Oracle to control to whom and when ASF might transfer any rights of ownership or use? Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Clemmitt

Oracle donates OpenOffice.org to Apache

kripkenstein — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 23:27:10 +0000

In theory, I think TDF/LO can merge with a new Apache-licensed OOo under the ASF. TDF/LO has less than a year of code commits. It should be possible to take the new Apache code, and apply those changesets, assuming the writers of those changesets are ok with the Apache license.

Normally this sort of thing is too hard to do, but here we have a fairly short history for the LO fork, everything should be very well documented in the repo history etc.

Is there any reason not to do this, aside from people that object to the Apache license? Seems like all efforts could be unified.

Oracle donates OpenOffice.org to Apache

mastro — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 22:42:31 +0000

I hope they're smart enough to accept the donation, recognize that they only have a name while the LibreOffice guys have the source code and offer to donate or license the trademark to then.

Oracle donates OpenOffice.org to Apache

sspr — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 21:50:51 +0000

Strikingly similar to the whole Jenkins/Hudson fork (http://jenkins-ci.org/content/hudsons-future): First bully the community Sun had built around a product (Hudson/OO.org) into a fork. Then some months later, donate same project to some foundation (Eclipse/ASF). Watch the fork doing considerably better than the foundation version (https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=... very interesting read!).

LO was merging OO.org code in already. I don't see what changes with moving that OO.org code to ASF. They got their infrastructure, they are doing releases, they are being supported by major distributors. I hope/believe the LO community has the same momentum as the Jenkins one has.

Licensing

brugolsky — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 21:04:44 +0000

Can we expect the usual copyleft flame wars in which TDF/LO is accused of "stealing" from OO.o, for merely following the license? Or are office suite hackers more mature than OS hackers? :-/

Oracle donates OpenOffice.org to Apache

mjw — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 20:37:03 +0000

That assumes they actually knew and that they care about the same values as their peers.

But it seems clear a lot of apache hackers really hadn't noticed (as the article states, they don't do any/much desktop work). And a couple of times it was stated that there was a huge hurry, which is why some things seem so hectic.

And it looks like some people just wanted to make sure this announcement was done before LibreOffice 3.4 was released (two days later), The Document Foundation actually incorporated (almost finalized, but currently they are under the SPI and the German Freies Office Deutschland e.V.) and the official board of directors election (scheduled in a couple of weeks now that they have more than a 100 members). Also The Document Foundation actually was a bit too busy to do much promotion, most people involved were actually just hacking and coordinating making sure the community was able to push out LibreOffice releases. Just note that only after this decision by Oracle they made public they had actually officially offered to help them with taking care of the openoffice.org domain and community: http://blog.documentfoundation.org/2011/06/06/publishing-...

Had this offer to apache be done just a little later, then people might have had a bit more chance to know and there would have been less FUD about TDG/LO. But as it stands, outside of the free software/desktop world, The Document Foundation and LibreOffice weren't that well known. Even if most people on LWN know they are the openoffice.org community in exile with hundreds of contributors.

And unlike other free software foundations the ASF's strength is that it is kind of blind to their contributors, as long as you hack under Apache rules (no copyleft! ever! lots of PMCs with various +1 voting rules) anybody is welcome. These rigid dogmatic rules, where officially only the individual counts, is precisely why they are trusted by companies to dump code. It just is a calculated risk for them with clear rules they can understand. Adding more individuals to a project will give you more standing/influence. And often it does result in more free software. That does mean they get gamed sometimes to have a big buzz about there being a real new community around. But they cannot just change their rules and sometimes say "no, really, this is too obviously just a poke in the eye of the real community/project, go away, you are just deceiving". Then they would destroy their greatest strength, attracting corporations willing to make their software free software as long as the ASF guards that the communities these corporations (and individuals!) that work under their auspicious don't use anything copylefty.

So doing like you suggest might make good sense viewed from the larger free software/open source community sense, but it would destroy the things the ASF actually stands for. And with that probably their ability to attract new corporate hackers and code.

Oracle donates OpenOffice.org to Apache

rahulsundaram — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 19:45:56 +0000

Even better would be to accept it and then donate it to TDF but I don't think Apache foundation will do that. They will likely want to leverage this opportunity to push their brand to the desktop.

Oracle donates OpenOffice.org to Apache

atai — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 19:42:39 +0000

In any case, Apache should have recognized that a community and an organization already exist that manage essentially the same code base, and out of respect for their peers in the free software/open source community, the ASF should defer to the TDF and should have refused to accept Oracle's donation.

Oracle donates OpenOffice.org to Apache

clugstj — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 19:15:02 +0000

"It is a testament to the pragmatism and maturity of the ASF that it has seemingly not allowed those other problems to interfere with the current OOo contribution."

One could argue that it is a testament to their foolishness to ignore the past actions of IBM and Sun/Oracle.