Slashdot Mirror
Sun Offers To Relax OpenOffice.org License
An anonymous reader writes "This article at The Register says Sun has offered to relax licensing terms for contributers' code. "The moves should go some way towards muting criticism from the OpenOffice.org community that Sun was treating members as free labour and nothing else, and taking them at face value...""
A commercial company trying to use open source, like the contributor said, as a source for free labor.
People, wake up. Strong copyleft licenses are the only way to go. If the FSF has a problem with the license, you should too! The reasons are REAL!
- Cdub
Contrast that press release with this recent statement by Bill Joy:
Joy said the SCSL, which he helped develop to cover Java and several
other Sun software technologies, "fixed the flaws in the open-source
licensing" by providing a better foundation for profiting off the
software. The SCSL permits others to see and modify source code,
but gives Sun the authority to accept or reject those changes. Sun
also has the authority to charge royalties to companies shipping
products using the software.
1) company looks at the GPL
2) company thinks it should create a different license
3) company receives criticism
4) company updates license
5) (repeat steps 3-4)
6) finally, company license is like the GPL but with a different name.
There are still structural problems that keep the project from working. It doesn't yet offer a fair quid-pro-quo for the developers, and this is underscored by Sun's recent actions on MacOS - they forked their own project without a word to their community. Sun promised to transfer the code base to an OpenOffice.org foundation and backed out. They have made no covenant to keep the project free as long as they develop it. So, why would someone on the outside want to invest the huge time (possibly close to a year) to ramp up on that project to the point that they can make a contribution? They'll spend that time on GNOME, KDE, or something equally complex where there's a more fair proposition for the outside developers.
I was at the OpenOffice BOF last night. There were about a dozen people. Many of them were not programmers. Imagine a Bof with Linus - how big would that have been? The OO BOF should be no smaller. This was embarassing.
Sun spent a lot of money on StarOffice, but they must realize that the value of this product isn't its revenue capture, it's an MS Office killer. They must now do what's necessary to make a real community work for OpenOffice. Yesterday's announcement is only a baby step in that direction.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I don't want to put words in Bruce's mouth, but I'm sure he was trying to say that the road to open source respectability lies through a quality suite of productivity applications. The business world runs on Microsoft Office-- for better or for worse-- and as long as no such software is available on other platforms, those platforms will be unable to penetrate into corporate IT. If the goal is to create a platform that is adopted by a significant fraction of the computer market, an office productivity suite is the only way to get there.
Of course, if I'm misinterpreting Bruce's comments, he'll be on here in about three seconds correcting me.
A usable and pretty high-level XML word-processer is the killer app.
Lately one of my core responsibilities at my job has been taking documentation from another company, which came to us as part of an acquisition of one of the other company's business units, and revising and reformatting it for publication. To do this I have to do simple things, like replace certain trademarks with other trademarks, but also some complex things. For instance, the company that sold us the software and IP produced their documents on an odd-sized sheet of paper, about 10" square. Our corporate style calls for a different size page, along with different typesetting and layout and whatnot. Converting 2,000 pages of documentation this way is not a trivial task.
So I've spent a lot of time lately thinking about word processors, and page layout apps. The other company did everything with FrameMaker on UNIX. Since it's not 1991 any more, we do things with Adobe InCopy, for galley production, and InDesign, for pagination. Getting the documents from one format to another is a tedious process.
My boss's boss wanted to know why we didn't just do everything in MS Word, so documents could be emailed around the company using that "track changes" feature. We had to explain the difference between formatted documents, like what Word products, and structured documents, like you get out of FrameMaker or InCopy.
After that little run-in, I think an XML-based word processor would be a terrible idea. People who use word processors aren't looking to create structured documents. They just want to bang out a memo, or a fax cover sheet, or a letter to grandma. Forcing those users to work in a structured environment would be murder, and would result in a terrible user experience.
On the other hand, I think there's a place in certain environments-- like mine, for instance-- for a structured document processor. Such a program would have only the most basic formatting features, like the ability to italicize text. It would also be able to import style sheets and apply paragraph-level styles to parts of the document, structuring it implicitly. I've managed to turn Microsoft Word into that kind of tool by setting up my own document template and style sheet, so the suits at the C-level can create documents that we can bring into InDesign. But the best tool for this that I've found so far is really InCopy.
I know I'm rambling, but my point is simply to say that formatted documents and structured documents are very different things, and a tool for producing one doesn't automatically equate into a tool for producing the other. An XML word processor might end up being a very poor word processor indeed.
Isn't it in our interest to kill an MS cash cow? They are too darned powerful for comfort.
I personally try to stay away from anti-Microsoft agendas, no matter what their motivation. I'm just a little concerned about the effect of a power vacuum. If Microsoft were to vanish tomorrow (or partially vanish, say from the office software market), how sure are you that what would rise up to take its place would be better than the status quo? I'm not saying you should or shouldn't act in a certain way; I'm just explaining my opinion on the subject.
But look at it from a different perspective: MS Office, for all its market penetration, is pretty dreadful software. It's complex and inconsistent, and I frequently find myself struggling to get work done in spite of it. There's a lot of room for improvement in office software, and there are a lot of users who would benefit from it. Of course, that means there are also a lot of people who will form a negative impression if the alternative product-- whatever it happens to be-- should stumble.
I think you and I are saying the same thing, only for different reasons. Which is fine by me.
Now when you add to that Mozilla finally has come around to being high quality. It'd mean Linux finally has the 3 of the last 4 major (Word Processor, SpreadSheet, Web Browsing are the new ones, it's had decent e-mail forever) killer apps that Windows has had for 5-10 years.
It'd mean I could buy my Mom a machine for $400, and put all free (as in beer) software on it, and she'd be happy if OpenOffice we're good enough.
Linux is grand and glorious, but it's a Server OS. It's based on a Server OS, it'll always be a Server OS. OS X is the first UNIX like OS that has a real quality desktop with full application inter-operability with the MS Suite. If Open Office could do that, it'd move a number of UNIX platforms into that category. Not being in that category will move you right off the list of desktop OS'es at every single place I've ever worked. Yeah the developers use it but that's it.
For that matter, screw Linux. Lets just talk about on the Windows platform. Do you know how much money is pissed away on licensing for Office? I think it's something on the order of 2-3 Billion dollars a year. That represents an incredibly amount of economic resources spent on this one little thing. I know MS does get it, and does good things for the economy, but personally, I'd rather see that money used by the business for developing their business rather then giving it all to a single company (even if it wasn't MS). Freeing people up from the burden of paying for a high quality office suite, would have incredible impact on the economics of computing. Probably more so then Linux ever has or will. A free high quality word processor that was cross platform would be a much bigger deal to people outside of the IT industry then Linux ever will be.
It'll take forever, just like people believing in Linux. Just step back and remember where Linux was in 1993/4. Lets see RedHat had just released it's first edition. SLS and Slackware were king of the distribution Hill. People had heard of it, but nobody actually used it publically. Open Office is probably in the same boat. Yet it works, its good, but not good enough to base a business on just yet. It'll get there. It could easily grow to have a much larger user base then Linux does. It could easily make Linux look like small potatoes to be honest. Because the set of people who need a UNIX like OS is much smaller then the set of people who need to be able to reliable create new content, and generate valuable information on a spreadsheet.
Neither Emacs nor LaTeX has any chance of filling that niche for the general public. They've been around long enough that if they we're going to, we'd have seen a lot more push in that direction by now.
Kirby
I suspect the reason that BSD is open source is more the enlightened policies (at the time) of Berkeley towards software developed at the university than Bill Joy's influence. Keep in mind that Sun has built a huge company around taking Berkeley UNIX and turning it into a proprietary OS.
I think Bruce's point is that if something like OO is finished (along with easier installation and configuration for Linux), and that results in lots of people (especially companies) switching to a Free/Open platform, we'll be in a lot stronger position to deal with those threats, since we'll have more powerful friends. It might be harder to do that if Free/OSS culture remains just a fairly small minority culture, while everyone important/influential uses WinXP/MSOffice and doesn't really care what we have to think.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Really, I'm kind of a jerk that way. But seriously, I think there's another point here, which is that the reason why we want Open Source to gain respectability is to provide ourselves with popular support, and the protection it provides.
In the past there has been a lot of talk about "it doesn't matter what Microsoft does, and it doesn't matter if anyone ever adopts Linux, because Linux will never die. We'll just keep building it and using it, and I don't care if anyone else likes it, because I do."
That talk has been shown in recent years to be slightly--not totally--naive. There has been a very real legal movement in this country to squelch those things that make Open Source possible, to kill our right to use our own property--computers--and our own ideas, as we see fit. Everything from horrible management of patents to the Big Bad Acronyms (DRM, DMCA, and UCITA to name a few) are all having a negative impact on our coding freedom. And don't pretend it's just in this country. The US has the power to push its unfavorable laws onto other nations, and it has already started to do so. France and Australia in particular seem to be a in race with America to see who can squelch intellectual freedom faster.
The drive to Open everything is the force opposing that. OpenOffice is a flagship product of that force, our flapping banner (to mix a metaphor). So for one thing, how does it look that one of our banner products isn't truly free? Next, OO is an important tool for winning converts to our platform, and from there to our cause. If Sun doesn't give OO the freedom it needs to attract developers, it won't develop, and therefore its power to help our cause for freedom will be lost.
I'm with ya, Bruce.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
I have to agree with Bruce, OpenOffice is crucial to Open Source becoming widespread. I would place it along with the Linux kernel, Mozilla, Samba, and Apache. All of these have a vast number of supporters and end-users. They are the crown jewels of Open Source and get a good bit of ink from the media.
Tonight I did a re-install of a friend's PC that lost a hard drive. She got a new hard drive sent under warranty. It came with 7 CD's to re-install the system (WinXP). After 2 hours of feeding it CD's it finally came up. Microsoft Works and Quicken were installed, and some other crud programs. My friend asked if it had MS Office, we looked and no, no MS Office. My friend wanted to know if I could install Office as the Office CD was lost. (Ever heard that one?). I had to politly refuse, as that would be wrong.
The next thing I did was go to OpenOffice.org and D/L Open Office. 10 min later I am installing it, and explaning how this is Open Source, it is free of any EULA's or licencing restrictions, and will open (and save) Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents. After going through a lot of EULA's in the course of installing WinXP, this was like a breath of fresh air!
So if you have a friend that asks to "borrow" your copy of Office, just say no. And point them to freedom that is OpenOffice.
Next time I am over there I am installing Mozilla as it is more secure than IE.
I may be bad with names, but I'll never forget your IP address
I agree with your final conclusions (OOo should have a lot more developers, and Sun needs to do more work to become more open), but I also know that the situation is more nuanced. There are several barriers to starting development on the OOo codebase, some of which you recognise in your post.
First of all, there is the complexity of the code itself. OOo is written mainly in C++, using all kinds of goodies such as templates etc. With the vast majority of OpenSource developers disliking writing code in C++, this kind of narrows the field a bit. Also, sun has a pretty large team of developers writing OpenOffice.org code, and volunteer coders have to try and fit into a group of devs that all share the same two offices. Many decisions on many levels are made within these offices. This is not on purpose, to keep people out, but simply due to the fact that this type of decision taking is easier. However, to the credit of the devs, 99% of the stuff still passes on the mailing lists. But you are stuck on an issue, it is easier to take a stroll down the hallway to ask someone then it is to wait for a reply to a mail.
Even so, there are quite a few successfull volunteer devs, like Kevin B. Hendricks, who do a tremendous job despite the difficulties.
Then there were the legal issues. Before the current JCA, all your work belonged to Sun. Period. This raised the hackles of many, including myself - I am the "vocal critic" quoted in the article - and we have worked hard for a long time to get the current agreement on the table and approved. I really believe that this JCA is the best compromise possible given the circumstances. OpenOffice.org is LGPL, and the copyright of your stuff now remains yours. But you also give Sun the rights to your work, meaning that Sun has some assurance about the future availabillity of your work, if and when it gets included in their commercial product. Microsoft is not very likely to come after volunteers for infringing patents on the MSOffice file format, for example, but it can and will go after Sun for the same. Without copyright assignment, Sun cannot ever mount a legal defense to such a case. So in the end, the current deal is a compromise that should work for all.
The there are the Sun politics. As you have been with HP for some time, I guess you know how this works. Within Sun, there are those who think that OpenSource is cool, and those who think OpenSource sucks. Within Sun, OOo/SO is a large project, and people from both camps work on the project. Tony siress, and his ridiculous statements on the whole MacOS issue are a case in point.Note, however, that Tony publicly apologised about his statements, and Sun claims he spoke out-of-line i.e. the whole MacOS thing is not going to happen, if it ever was. So not all issues that need to be cleared by Sun go as fast. for example, this particular JCA/PDL deal has been on the table for quite some time (months). However, getting cleared by the lawyers and passing through the strata of anti-OpenSource elements inside Sun has really kept it back for much longer then needed.
The Foundation is another sore point inside the community. The whole issue of the foundation has been formally scrapped by Sun, to much discontent form the community. However, we *are* moving in the right direction. This deal is one step, and pretty soon some other developments will move, in terms of project governance. I am sure, that with the right amount of pressure, the Foundation will eventually be set up. The JCA is a critical piece in this issue, since developers can now, potentially, assign copyright to a future Foundation instead of to Sun. This means that Sun is no longer a required (although desired) party to a Foundation.
In the meantime, OOo/SO are MS Office killers, and takeup and interest are massive. This is a good thing. It needs to be better, though, and for that we need more programmers. Unfortunately, the OOo code is hard, and crufty. There are areas *nobody* dares to touch. So in many cases, the true hobbyist programmers back out due to complexity. KOffice were going to use our MSOffice filters. After going through the code, they kindly declined, and started looking at other solutions. On the positive side, we are talking with many groups, commercial as well as non-commercial, about building on the OOo XML file format. More suites using a standard file format is also a good thing. oeone are apperantly working with us on the groupware components - another step in the right direction.
Bruce, Sun has a long ways to go yet in the OpenOffice.org adventure, but I firmly believe that with the right kind of pressure, the right kind of volunteer mentality and the right kind of love, it will become a huge success - both for the OpenSource community as a whole, as well as for Sun. At the end of the day, the focus is on creating a win-win situation for all involved.
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.