
OpenOffice.org Council members resign - esponapule
http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/OpenOffice-org-Council-members-resign-Update-1124478.html
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jgrahamc
Am I alone in thinking that the right solution to the
OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice mess (by which I mean the software itself) is to
start all over again?

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arkitaip
Joel disagrees: rewriting stuff from scratch is often a very bad idea
<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html>

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rimantas
The key word is "often". OpenOffice needs it's own "Firefox moment".

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markkat
Can anyone give some background on this? I just switched from Windows to
Ubuntu, and have just started to familiarize myself with OpenOffice.

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gaius

      1. Star Division wrote StarOffice
      2. Sun bought Star Division and forked, StarOffice commercial and OpenOffice free
      3. Oracle bought Sun
      4. OpenOffice devs decide to fork OpenOffice again, to spite Oracle
      5. Oracle says fine, but we're keeping the name
      6. OpenOffice devs throw toys out of pram, Oracle asks them politely to go home
      7. OpenOffice devs "resign"

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mdda
If you're talking kids and toys :

Oracle is the new kid who is sitting in the corner writing his name in marker
all over 'his toys'.

The Libre kids just want to share toys, and think the new kid is a bully.

Maybe one day they'll all play together. But it'll probably take the new kid
realizing that the kids that share each get to play with shiny new toys.

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gaius
Forking the code is absolutely fine. Wanting the name too to pretend that the
shareholders who underwrote all this development aren't part of it is just
plain rude.

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davidw
Do you think the Oracle shareholders really care much one way or the other
about the OpenOffice name?

I think if anything, the more profit-minded amongst them would simply be happy
to cut loose a project that is probably not bringing in any direct revenues.

The argument for keeping it might be to develop it as "Project Stick It To
Microsoft", and attempt to undercut the office revenues. Even that, though,
doesn't really gain anything for Oracle in the short term.

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gaius
Yes. It is an asset that Sun paid cash money for, and Oracle paid cash money
for in turn. So of course they care.

My personal opinion is that eventually we'll see OO Calc getting the same
integration with Oracle that Excel has with MSAS/SQL Server, and possibly OO
Writer will form the core of a report writing engine.

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davidw
> Yes. It is an asset that Sun paid cash money for, and Oracle paid cash money
> for in turn. So of course they care.

"Paid cash for" is a sunk cost. They care about what it's going to do for them
now and in the future. How much revenue did it bring in for Sun?

Maybe they can hack at it to make what you describe, but at that point do you
think Oracle will care much about what it's called? I think it'd have a new
name, myself. Oracle something, most likely.

I just don't see Oracle caring that much about it one way or the other. They
wanted the server stuff, supposedly, and Java, most certainly. I can't see OO
having figured much one way or the other, really.

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gaius
Oracle Open Office dot Org. OOOO.

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va_coder
This reminds me of how Stallman's open source ideas have really shook up the
software industry.

I wonder what he thinks about all the recent turf battles with Java, Android,
OpenOffice etc.

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27182818284
He talked a little bit about Android and iPhone in his interview for Reddit
recently. If you haven't seen it yet, it is worth a read.
<http://blog.reddit.com/2010/07/rms-ama.html>

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roadnottaken
Does anyone know what this means to the future of the project?

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viraptor
Some of the people already joined LibreOffice as far as I understand, so it
means that OOo is basically dead. LibreOffice can be thought of as a natural
continuation if they do the development (so far it's been only an
organisation, without code releases, but those should come soon).

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esponapule
OO will serve as a test bed for Oracle Office but it will not be innovative
and free, OO will just be free.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Office>

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viraptor
This is the plan, yes. But it depends on how many devs quit. It enough people
shift to LibreOffice, that plan might fail and OO will be either scrapped, or
only available to paying customers.

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linuxaddict
So a bunch of non-important people quit? Big deal.

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esponapule
the deal is the steering committee is now made up of all Oracle employees, no
one from the community, a BIG deal for FOSS

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ahi
Probably also a big deal for all the Oracle (Sun) employees who used to be
working on a vital community project. Morale matters.

