

Oracle 'donates' OpenOffice.org to Apache foundation - rb01usa
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/communication-breakdown-10000030/oracle-donates-openofficeorg-to-apache-foundation-10022593/?tag=mncol;txt

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codeup
As expected Oracle didn't donate it to The Document Foundation. There will be
more calls to merge the OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice projects now. That is
really what needs to be done, both office suites are still almost identical.

The Apache Software Foundation and The Document Foundation have to overcome
their egos and do the right thing. Then we could credit TDF with 'liberating'
OOO and ASF with closing the deal.

If they don't merge OOO and LO this 'donation' could create a new division in
the Open Source community.

~~~
rbanffy
> That is really what needs to be done, both office suites are still almost
> identical.

Except for licensing. LGPL prevents proprietary forks. IIRC Apache allows
them. I wonder why Oracle would want to change the license (or not donate OOo
directly to the Document Foundation)

~~~
jchrisa
grant to Apache Software Foundation usually means a grant of any patents
covering the code, so that is a reason to be happy they went Apache.

~~~
rbanffy
Wouldn't moving to LGPLv3 be a more natural transition?

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sciurus
GNOME and LibreOffice developer Michael Meeks' summary:

"Apparently this is a somewhat divisive attempt by an exiting Oracle, along
with IBM to sideline the existing developer community, their governance, their
aspirations, membership, licensing choice (explicitly adapted to meet IBM's
needs incidentally), bylaws, and so on. All of this despite a profound,
frequently stated open-ness to including new (particularly large) corporate
contributors inside TDF, and taking their advice seriously."

<http://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2011-06-01.html>

~~~
nodata
Have you got any more sources for the IBM part? I can't find much.

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mbreese
It sounds to me like Oracle realized that they didn't quite grok community
driven open-source projects and are finally starting to donate them to good
homes (Jenkins to Eclipse and OOo to Apache). All it took was for the projects
to go through the hell of major forks before Oracle realized what was going
on.

It's probably too late to engender any kind of good will out to this though.
They put both of those communities through hell. And neither of these products
fall under an Oracle core-competency.

But I wouldn't expect the same result with either Java or MySQL anytime soon.
Those are both things that Oracle "gets" and knows how to extract profit from.

~~~
naner
Honestly, it seems like they're just pragmatically dumping projects they don't
want or can't make a profit off of.

~~~
carussell
Better this way than the way most projects go.

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fingerprinter
This is one of those things that I can read as both good news and bad news.

I'm really hopeful that the LibreOffice and OOo communities could now get
together and work together and even collapse the code base to one codebase
again, but I'm doubtful that will happen. It would be a huge shame to see
split efforts continue as it would hurt both projects and, frankly, they are
both still lacking FAR behind any of the proprietary competitors.

Not to mention Calligra is rapidly gaining ground on both. If Calligra gets
the same level of MS office compatibility, it would leapfrog both OOo and
LibreOffice in my mind.

This is going to be a test of the two communities and their ability to see the
big picture as well as navigate a political situation. I really am wondering
how they will both will fare.

~~~
tobylane
MS office compatibility is a good point, but that's everyone's goal, even
Apple's Pages isn't much good at it.

From what I understand, someone just needs to make a dedicated browser for
Office online.

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cschep
LibreOffice is such a bad name, hopefully if they merge back to OpenOffice and
drop the stupid .org from their name. Is it the name of the project or their
website? nobody knows!

~~~
weavejester
I believe they only used OpenOffice.org because OpenOffice was already
trademarked.

~~~
Tiomaidh
When they discovered that, it might've been a good time to think up a
different name.

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irrelative
Why the quotes around "donates"? This doesn't seem like a white elephant, or a
trojan horse. It's commendable that they gave it up rather than let it rot.

~~~
codeup
"despite Oracle's talk of 'donation', a lengthy process precedes the ASF's
acceptance of candidates"

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nettdata
As with all of their projects.

With a project of this size, scope, and adoption, I'd imagine the "acceptance"
will be somewhat rubber stamped, and the process will focus on setting up the
proper ASF development environment, review of existing code, etc.

I think a lot of people are looking for drama where none exists; ASF is just
following the same procedures that EVERY project would be forced to go
through.

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joeyh
Bradley Kuhn's take on this is that "relicensing part of the codebase out from
under LibreOffice may actually be the most insidious attack Oracle and IBM
could make on the project"

<http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2011/06/01/open-office.html>

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jnw2
Is there a good argument against Oracle releasing ZFS under the GPL (so that
it could be integrated into the Linux kernel)?

~~~
koenigdavidmj
No more reason to buy Solaris licenses?

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jabo
How about donating MySQL too!

~~~
narad
That would make even bigger news. :-)

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Fice
Apache will likely release OOo under their permissive license allowing the
code to be incorporated into proprietary software.

So why do Oracle want to make the OOo code available to Microsoft and IBM for
use in their office suites? This may make it harder for OOo to compete with
proprietary office software.

~~~
fanf2
I think the Apache bureaucracy will kill that branch of the project and
development will continue on the LibreOffice branch.

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nextparadigms
After they chased everyone away, now they just to just get rid of it and save
themselves the hassle.They might as well donate all their Java patents to
Google and save themselves another embarrassment.

~~~
rbanffy
> They might as well donate all their Java patents to Google

Are you kidding?!

They could donate them to the FSF, ASF or any other non-profit entity
dedicated to promote of free and open-source software. Donating them to Google
would create a whole lot of temptations the folks in Mountain View really
don't need.

~~~
Kaizyn
But they have "Don't be evil" as a motto. How could they possibly be tempted
by that?

~~~
ascendant
Ok, we get it. Google is "evil". I'd pay $0.05 for every time someone wants to
harp on this and DOESNT.

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ldng
And when they mess up with OpenJDK they'll give it to the PHP community ? What
about MySQL, which bureaucratic and loosely related community shall it be
given in case thinks goes south in your opinion ?

