

33 Developers Leave OpenOffice.org - dkd903
http://digitizor.com/2010/11/01/and-so-the-exodus-begins-33-developers-leave-openoffice-org/

======
sp4rki
I really hope Libre Office gets some momentum going and completely kills off
Open Office. Oracle has a knack of screwing things up... OpenSolaris, Java,
OpenOffice... I honestly think Oracle's motto is now the opposite of Google's
and more in line with Microsoft's: "How evil do you want to be today?"

~~~
tiles
I hope it exceeds just beating OpenOffice. Even under Sun, I feel OpenOffice
didn't really have what it takes to be a successor to Microsoft Office, even
though it was certainly a capable piece of software. Hopefully freed from the
shackles of _all_ bureaucracy we can see a capable Office suite emerge. For
these reasons I'm glad Oracle was a catalyst to their departure.

~~~
momotomo
Second this. I'd love to switch to openoffice full time. I'm a heavy, heavy MS
Office suite user and even with the UI changes in 2007 / 2010, it's still
light years ahead of openoffice in terms of workflow (at least in my
experience).

Additionally the MS home use program in my workplace lets me stay current with
the Office Pro suite for $15 bucks a release...pretty hard to justify
switching.

------
tzs
Other sources have said that most of these people aren't developers, but
rather were people who worked on non-coding aspects of OO.

Also, one of the big complaints many had about how OpenOffice was run as an
open source project was that most of the contributions came from Sun employees
being paid to work on it. Contributions from non-Sun developers were
supposedly hard to get accepted.

Are these people who are leaving part of that group of Sun/Oracle employees,
or are these from the non-employee developers?

------
jasoncwarner
As it happens, I am looking for a core OOo/Libre Office developer. I am the
Ubuntu Desktop Manager and I have a position open for someone looking to work
on OOo/Libre. If you know someone who fits the bill, pass my info along to
them!

~~~
roel_v
In a paid position?

~~~
mmavnn
There are several (paying) posts in the team mentioned being advertised at
<http://webapps.ubuntu.com/employment/> (one of which specifically mentions
Open Office). They're in the 'Ubuntu platform' section.

~~~
roel_v
Ah yes I see, that's nice. It's even available for remote workers. Thanks.

------
mrinterweb
What rough percentage is 33 developers from the Open Office project?

~~~
niels_olson
What percentage of the commits do these developers represent?

~~~
AndyKelley
The list of developers, with their respective number of commits, as of Nov 1
2010 [1][2]:

    
    
      Total commits: 15811
      
      Michael Meeks: 2493 (15%) <-- single most impactful developer
      Rene Engelhard: 1429 (9%)
      Jan Holešovský: 1233 (8%)
      Thorsten Behrens: 510 (3%)
      Caolán McNamara: 10 (0%)
      Jesús Corrius: 9 (0%)
      Sophie Gautier: 1 (0%)
      Olivier Hallot: 1 (0%)
      Cor Nouws: 1 (0%)
      
      André Schnabel (not in git)
      Charles-H. Schulz (not in git)
      Florian Effenberger (not in git)
      Italo Vignoli (not in git)
      Christoph Noack (not in git)
      Claudio Filho (not in git)
      Davide Dozza (not in git)
      Leif Lyngby Lodahl (not in git)
      Peter Pöml (not in git)
      Jacqueline Rahemipour (not in git)
      Daniel Stoni (not in git)
      Thomas Krumbein (not in git)
      
      some notable members who apparently did *not* leave Oracle:
      Kohei Yoshida: 1612 (10%)
      Noel Power: 1574 (10%)
      Tor Lillqvist: 1203 (8%)
      Petr Mladek: 1048 (7%)
    

[1]: <http://www.documentfoundation.org/foundation/>

[2]: <http://www.documentfoundation.org/develop/>

~~~
niels_olson
Hmmmmmm . . . Losing 35% of your labor force (by commits) is nontrivial, and
probably enough that the disenfranchised could mount a considerable counter-
presence. However, if I was Larry Ellison, I would think that if another 35%
percent of the productive commits are still at Oracle (probably more), I was
could backfill the loss with some idle talent, scrub the shops for some folks
who have been chaffing under their current management, for example. I'd be
betting that product is still quite viable, and for damn sure I wouldn't be
giving those renegade sons of bitches the trademark they obviously covet.

The view from the vantage of Meeks et al must be quite a bit more complex, and
it must seem colder and less safe. Gotta find job. What's the unemployment
rate here in California these days? Best of luck to the Document Foundation.

~~~
mmavnn
Meeks doesn't work for Oracle (he worked for Novell, last time I checked). I
suspect this is also true of most of the other people on the list.

Edit: still Novell, Michael's blog is at
<http://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/>

------
esponapule
This is the best thing that could happen for the software, it will continue,
as FOSS and innovate. This is a good thing.

~~~
Supermighty
True, but it will take some time.

I hope that Oracle donates the name, as it will cut the time it takes down.

------
itissid
Oracle is like an compulsively over possessive mother who told her son "no
girl is ever going to replace me sonny, I am going to keep you from the
world". In the end the son may grow up with personality issues and terribly
deficient in many social skills and perhaps even impotent.

But the mother does not realize that the son is 15 years old and perhaps has
more than sufficient brain function to contemplate escape plans.

------
wyclif
It's the Document Foundation, not "Documents" plural. Little details like the
name of the company discussed in the article are important.

------
chrisaycock
What's next? The OpenSparc guys call it quits?

------
loup-vaillant
I wonder if the same will happen to MySql and VirtualBox? Because it feels
like it should.

------
beagledude
I admire the gusto of these guys

