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OpenOffice Goes LGPL
Motor writes "According to the OpenOffice.org site, Sun has decided to relicense OpenOffice under the LGPL alone and retire its Sun Industry Standards Source License (SISSL). Sun supporters claim that it's part of Sun's move to reduce the number of open source licenses. Of course it could just be PR, since Sun stirred up a lot of bad publicity with the introduction of the CDDL for the release of Solaris. Either way, it's good news for OpenOffice."
Is there a good comparison of the terms of the two licenses? I am not even going to RTFA, much less both licenses side by side. It's Saturday, people.
Now how about the JDK? :D
and they're changing the name of OpenOffice to:
OOMLA!!!!!
That's good.
Maybe it's just me, but from the looks of it, OOo is already LGPLed.
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
OpenOffice.org is not "going" LGPL - it was already LGPL and SISSL.
It is now just LGPL. I don't see how this is "good news" for OO at all - maybe good news for OSI or others who would like to see less of a proliferation of Open Source licences.
My pics.
The LGPL allows you to use its code in commercial projects without releasing the source. This way they can charge for any improvement they make over OpenOffice.
This will clear up some legalese and speed adoption of OpenOffice.org. Bravo! The LGPL means that perhaps other application can make use of some of the tasty spell check and spreadsheet functionality.
IMO, the less software licences, the better.
Although one can invent his own unique licence for every piece of code he writes, I don't see how it would be a smart move.
Licence your product under GPL or BSD licence (or a known commercial one), then at least I know (approximately) under what terms you have released the product.
To be honest, I really don't want to read the whole licence before installing some program just to make sure I have the right to use it.
4 or 5 licences would be enough IMO. Well, of course there are some people/companies that think the standard licences are not the way to go.
Please explain to a lay man (myself), how LGPL is different as compared to the GPL. A side by side explanation on key terms and points would be very useful and much appreciated. Thanks.
Commercial companies need to stop fearing the wrath of the ten to twelve bearded gnu freaks out there and get on with moving their open source code bases to the only viable license, the BSD.
Why is there so much damn whining about CDDL just because its not GPL? There are some very legitimate business and legal reasons that Sun could not use GPL which have been explained, ad nauseum, in other forums. It's not as if they just arbitrarily chose it to piss of the Stallman's diciples.
I think that Sun should get a pat on the back for this. OpenOffice 1.9 is really "in the zone" when it comes to a productivity application. This just makes a great product a fantastic one. In these days of tight budgets, any company, large or small, should think twice about paying $300+ for a productivity suite that you could get for free (in both senses of the word) in OpenOffice.
Warning the author of parent is on crack.
All of these acitivities require a degree of programming skills.
To install under most Linux distributions, you must convert the "Linux" rpm files from OO/Sun to tar.gz using rpm2tgz and then extract them. Sun seems to be under the impression that "Linux" is just another name for "Redhat". It rather sucks but if you want to test the Beta you can just convert and extract, or wait for it to show up in your distro's repository.
apt-get install openoffice?
Does this sound like a fair comparision? To me it does. The main distinction between BSD and GPL was that with BSD, you don't have to release the source code, and with GPL you do.
Pick one..
emerge openoffice
emerge openoffice-bin
emerge openoffice-ximian
emerge openoffice-ximian-bin
Sun bought up this office product and open-sourced it and gave it away and gave us an alternative to the Microsoft monopoly.
But besides that, what has Sun ever done for us?
I'm not going to thank them for now moving it to the simple LGPL license. I'm going to damn them anyway. Because... um. Because I like to be constantly pissed off?
fifth sigma, inc.
Something about a company releasing a commercial product based on my work and not giving me a cent does not appeal to me.
It's all allright Bill, you get your cookie soon...
It must be Zonk's fault. It is always Zonk's fault. Please go to Preferences and uncheck Zonk's stories. (it's a joke. laugh)
I'm sorry, the number you have dialed is an imaginary number. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and dial again.
As much as I hate the auto* tools (e.g. automake, autoconf etc) or to be more precise the people that write the *.in files with tests that dont work, the build procedure for OO is so broken it isnt even funny, they use their own make, require a tcsh is installed, need ant, need python installed, its just broken and if they ever want a greater community to praticipate in its development this needs to get fixed fast.
Then don't write for BSD licenses.. simple.. choice.. now stfu
As far as I have understood the Ximian version of Openoffice (http://go-oo.org/) was born out of the fact that some developers did not want to license their code under Sun's terms. Is there any comment on whether the Ximianized OO will be merging with the main one now?
I personally use XOO because it has far better KDE integration than the regular one.
Never hopefully!
It was already LGPL, but they're dropping the alternate license, which I assume gave Sun additional rights. If Sun is requiring copyright assignment to them for any offically-accepted changes, then Sun can re-release it under any license they want anyway, because they own it.
This only matters if the SISSL gave rights not available with the LGPL, or if Sun isn't requiring copyright assignment for accepted patches (which would otherwise force Star Office to become LGPL, too).
First of all you've downloaded the wrong file...you need OOo_2.0beta2_Win32Intel_install.zip
Just right click on it, unzip it, then double-click on 'setup.exe' and follow the instructions to install..Simple!
Will there be any merger or code share between Gnome Office and Open office?
http://www.gnome.org/gnome-office/
http://www.gnome.org/projects/gnumeric/
http://www.abisource.com/
There are many Linux distros that use RPM, not just RedHat. It may be a RedHat-only RPM, in which case you're right, but bitching about it being an RPM is just stupid.
I'm sure with their "call" to reduce the number of licenses does not include CDDL. And I certainly view this move as a, look we mean what we have said about license reduction.
If Sun really was interested in reducing the proliferation of licenses, they would have not created CDDL in the first place. So IMV this move, though a nice gesture is just to hide their other guy behind the curtain.
Be that as it may. The very first action the developers should take is rip out all that java crap.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
Huh!
If you were a bit observant while reading, you'd have realized that I am dealing with Linux and a Debian based distro in particular. Are you saying that these days, the file you mention above installs smoothly on Debian based distros? I have not touched Windows in a loooong time.
Disclaimer: I am a developer of the Mac OS X OpenOffice.org port as well as a founder of the NeoOffice project.
If anyone is affected by this, it will most drastically affect IBM. If you look at the original list of Sun Copyright Assignment signers, you'll notice that IBM is listed as one of the original signers. Curiously, this page is no longer accessible (the wayback machine lists it as blocked by robots.txt) and there are few IBM-OpenOffice.org references left. Has IBM made any source code contributions to the OpenOffice.org product? No. Why should they...
They develop IBM/Lotus Workplace. Workplace incorporates OpenOffice.org code directly and provides their Word/Excel style integration with the old Notes environment. Doubtless they have probably made enhancements to the code to support collaboration. Since SISSL allows for binary only distribution, however, IBM never had a need to join the OpenOffice.org project to develop Workplace. They could happily have their own team of engineers working on it and had no obligation to share that work with others under SISSL.
So is this a good thing? Who knows. IBM very well may just stick with the last version of source released under SISSL for Workplace. OOo 1.x/2.x is "good enough", so unless future LGPL only versions have some type of major advantage, there's no need for IBM to contribute back their Workplace enhancements.
This is really ironic, though, since LGPL was actually thrown into the original OOo license as an afterthought (I think by Joerg, but may be mistaken). The afterthought has won out!!
For me personally, this is a good thing since it legitimizes GPL-only forks like NeoOffice and hopefully can help them stop accusing us of stealing OpenOffice.org and engaging in illegal activities when all we do is exercise our rights under the LGPL license.
ed
how dual licensing works? It seems to me having two licenses, especially if one is more permisive than the other is a bit strange. Then again, I know nothing of law. So could someone explain this?
True, but if you download OO2, you select language and operating system - for Linux, your choice is x86 or PPC. What it gives you is a bunch of RPM files. There is no option for .deb or just a good old tarball, they just assume that Linux=RPM (Redhat Package Manager) files. My first attempt to install was to install RPM and try to use that - didn't work because it insisted that none of the dependencies were installed. rpm2tgz worked fine though. I'm pretty sure that between the debian based distros, source based distros, and various other package formats that RPM distros likely make up far less than half of Linux users - not all Linux users as Sun seems to assume. A tar.gz would work for everyone.
I can't believe the word JAVA appears only two times (parent and this one) in the comments.
Buanzo Consulting - 15 Years of GNU/Linux experience, for you.
But they can do that with pretty much any open source licence, including the (L)GPL. They have to release the source if they sell the product, but nothing stops them doing so commercially, nor obliges them to give any of the money they receive back to the original programmer(s).
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Right, simple choice. I do not release under a BSD license. I just do not get why people keep telling me BSD is superior, when it obviously does not fit my needs.
that sun owned the copyright on openoffice.
i thought they only owned staroffice.
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
He's just being an asshole, and trying to brag about the Windows install being easier. Please don't feed the trolls.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
This has nothing to do with reducing license proliferation. It has everything to do with the continuing spat between IBM and Sun.
OO has always been available under both the LGPL and Sun's BSD-ish SISSL license. Much to Sun's annoyance (and the annoyance of some community members), IBM forked the 1.x code and used it as the basis of their document clients in the closed-source IBM Workplace product. IBM hasn't released one line of that code, much of which involves modularization and could've been of great value to the community. Thanks to the SISSL terms, they don't have to.
Is IBM doing wrong here? Well, they are 100% within their legal rights, even if it wasn't the most community-friendly move. Sun set the rules and IBM is following them. Sun has now decided to change the rules of the game so that IBM cannot do this again. They can continue with their forked 1.x codebase, but if they want to move up to the improved 2.x code they're going to have to play nice with the community under the terms of the LGPL - and release their code changes.
Sun's situation with StarOffice is unchanged, because they remain the copyright holder of the mainline OO code (all contributors must sign a joint copyright agreement). They never needed SISSL in the first place. As owner of the code, Sun can still make proprietary changes to OO without releasing the source - they can do exactly what IBM is doing - but without SISSL, IBM cannot.
License proliferation is not and has never been a serious issue for Sun. It's complete hogwash and I'm surprised to see Slashdot seem to buy it hook line and sinker. Folks, this is the company that - just months ago - rather than suggest improvements to the MPL or adopt one of the dozens of other existing licenses that might be suitable, instead hand-crafted the new CDDL license for their own use. This is the company that just recently reshuffled all the semi-open and academic Java licenses once again. None of which is necessarily wrong or bad (CDDL, for example, is a perfectly fine open source and free software license - yet another one) - but all of which shows that this is a company that doesn't really care about the license proliferation problem. This move was targeted at hurting IBM and IBM alone. The license stuff is spin.
Will IBM rise to the challenge, adopt the 2.x codebase for future Workplace revisions, and help the community by releasing code? Or will they continue with their SISSL fork? We'll see.
With GPL though, anyone who purchases the software would recieve the source code, and in turn be able to release it free if they wanted. That really discourages companies from trying to sell a product.
If there are only 4 or 5 licenses it also becomes much easier to assure compatibility (only in the direction from less restricted to more restricted, not the other way around). Something like Public Domain -> Attribute only (MIT style?) -> Link only (LGPL?) -> totally copyleft (GPL).
Not really my idea, heard it some time ago here on /.
karma police: arrest this man, he talks in maths; he buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio. [radiohead]
Of course it could just be PR, since Sun stirred up a lot of bad publicity with the introduction of the CDDL for the release of Solaris.
You know, the groundless Sun-bashing on here is just absurd, and is really stupid.
Sun has done some awfuly nice things for the open-source world that probably wouldn't have happened any time soon without them. They're doing this *despite* the fact that their business is one of the *the most impacted* by the increasing use of open source.
Sun is out to make a buck. Yes, that's a good thing to keep in mind. They're like Apple, IBM, and Microsoft. However, they, like IBM, have chosen to generally work *with* the open source world, as opposed to attacking it, like Microsoft.
What I can't figure out is why whenever I see a story about Sun doing something to help open source, about eight-six-zillion people on here immediately start ragging on Sun. You don't like Solaris? Fine. I prefer Linux myself. You think Sun hardware is overpriced? Fine. I agree. But Sun doesn't bully their way into my life a la Microsoft and then spread shitty products all over. Seriously, it sounds like some of the people on here had their parents murdered by Sun or something. Give them a goddamn break already. If they do something like SCO did, then you can start up the hating. But I don't see any reason to Sun-bash when Sun isn't doing anything wrong.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
Disclaimer: I am a Mac OS X OpenOffice.org developer and a founder of the NeoOffice project.
While licensing is part of the spats that have caused these forks in the past (note: RedHat has their own separate "fork"), it's not the only problem. It's the mentality of Sun (a.k.a "OpenOffice.org") developers as a whole. The patch submission process doesn't allow for innovation. Rather, it's a tedious sequence of submitting and resubmitting patches. In general, patches that add functionality for a single platform only are rejected...everything must target the lowest common denominator. Ximan's alpha patches weren't incorporated quickly enough to allow their icon set to work with 1.0.3, so they shipped using a different code line.
Simply changing licenses doesn't address the fact that if your code patches aren't what Sun wants, they just won't accept them. OOo development needs to move to a neutral body before real progress can happen.
It doesn't help that Sun, RedHat, and Novell have a secret development board that decides the development direction from OOo without any input from the community. (this is not random accusation...it was revealed to me by someone on the inside). Open source doesn't necessarily help the little guy.
ed
Check out the posting history - there's a definite pattern.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
...now let me me one of many to say, good move, now do the same for Java. Before Java's relevance is destroyed by Microsoft and Novell.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
I recently purchased a number of new machines for my business and decided to attempt to transition from Excel/Word to Open Office. Although there have been a few file format inconstancies, and the feature set can sometimes be awkward, I'm generally impressed. 1,000 Karma Kredits for the folks at OO and some pecuniary support if I choose to stay with them a year from now.
If they do something like SCO did, then you can start up the hating.
Sun expands Unix deal with SCO
Sun paid about $10 million to SCO and received warrants to buy 210,000 shares of SCOX as part of the deal.
I do agree with you that Sun has also done some awfully nice things for the open-source world. Sun is a friend when it's in Sun's interest (buying StarOffice and releasing the source under GPL) and a foe when that is in Sun's interest (funding SCO).
I just do not get why people keep telling me BSD is superior, when it obviously does not fit my needs.
For the same reason that people keep proselytizing the GPL. It's a choice and everyone assumes everyone else is a moron who made the wrong one.
"My God...it's full of trolls!"
It's perfectly legitimate to question why Sun contimues to use any other open source licenses than L/GPL, now that they clearly are consistent with Sun's strategy and interests. But PR is a perfectly legitimate reason to release source under the L/GPL. In fact, "Public Relations" is not only most of the reason any corporation releases any source. Such a PR release is also probably the best, most legitimate PR any corporation is capable of performing.
Sun deserves a lot of credit for OpenOffice. They've invested a lot of time, and competitive risk, in producing the most viable alternative to Microsoft Office. Including the also-rans from Apple, IBM, WordPerfect, and everyone else. They early on folded its proprietary version when the open version proved the way to go - rather than stick to their guns and throw good money after bad.
One might question why it's taken so long, and why Sun is holding on with other, equally strategic apps not under L/GPL. But why bother? Those questions haven't helped get the code released. Market realities, though, have produced results. Like this excellent result with OpenOffice. Instead of kneejerk criticism, how about some more kudos? And even better: how about some revolutionary uses of the OO code, including patches and integration with more open sourceware?
--
make install -not war
I take your point, but it seems to depend on context. The major Linux distros, for example, seem to be seeling pretty well from my local PC store at around 30-40 pounds (I'm in the UK), which is a pretty significant fraction of the asking price for Windows XP Home.
I guess it's all about convenience. Whereas things like Firefox or OpenOffice.org can usually just be downloaded from the project's web site, it's harder to find a "pre-fab" version of SUSE Linux for example. I guess the convenience is worth the asking price for enough people to pay up, even if theoretically they could find a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend who'd installed the same version they wanted and could legally lend them the CDs.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Under usual GPL and LGPL projects, there are so many contributors that own so many sections of the code that it is impractal for any one person to try to sell-out the project.
While current version of OpenOffice will appear under the LGPL, the "contributor agreement" allows Sun at any time to take the entire code tree and make future close source versions. This includes the potental for selling the rights to any company that pays a high enough price. I was assured over three years ago that Sun would assign the copyright of OpenOffice to a non-profit organization which is dedicated to keeping OpenOffice under an Open Source license. Now, in September 2005, how much progress has Sun made in creating this non-profit? Is Sun, the copyright holder of 100% of OpenOffice under a charter of dedication to FOSS or to it's profits?
Think that Sun will not ever do a 180? Ask anyone about a company called Caldera Systems which three years ago was promoting UnitedLinux as it's future. Ask if they are helping or hurting the efforts of UnitedLinux now.
As long as Sun has failed at it's promise of assigning control to a non-profit (and they don't even need to create one, the FSF already exists!), the number of licenses OpenOffice is covered by can split as quickly as it converged. History has shown that the change can be a simple as a change in the CEO.
Now this can become a trick issue.
If the code that random hacker is lets say embeded in 3 projects all GPL and then you go and use it in a commerical product. You are still in trouble.
Random hacker gets out of it that he turned it over in the believing that it was only going to be used in a GPL project and that you were only after the right to change licence in case of major problems being found in GPL. Basicly you are up the creek. Common though coder turns over copyright I am safe not so the coder would have turned it over with a implied contract.
Perhaps Sun is changing the licensing to force IBM to open the code of its fork. So if they use any of OOo 2 in the Wokplace editors they will have to comply with the LGPL requirement to open the code.
Just a thought.
Why is there so much whining? Over the last decade, Sun has released "open" source code, and even documentation, under some licenses that are quite evil: licenses that forbid you to work on related projects, licenses that force you to give whatever you do to Sun, licenses that force reciprocal patent agreements on you. And Sun has misrepresented what they were doing. Nobody has time to keep track of how Sun wants to mislead people today with language hidden deep inside complex license agreements.
Therefore, when it comes to Sun, there is a simple rule: if it's not one of the standard, well-known open source licenses (GPL, MIT X11, LGPL, BSD, Artistic), you should probably avoid it unless you are a lawyer and can spend the time analyzing the license very carefully.
I don't remember whether the CDDL contained any objectionable clauses, but Sun only has to blame themselves for this level of mistrust, not just because of the evil licenses Sun has tried to push on people, but also because of the statements Schwartz and McNealy keep making and the company they keep.
While no one but Sun has really dared touch the core language and bytecode
My friend, you must not have heard of the JCP. http://tankammo.com/article/javamyths#Sun
, they "touch" the core language and bytecode every day.Will.
It's Yet Another Copyleft GPL-incompatible License. As if we need more of those. Come on, if you're going copyleft, choose GPL. Or LGPL. Please.
It's not intrinsically free. I.E., individual applications of it may be, with a liberal interpretation, or may not be, with a lawyer one. Notably it's capable of failing Debian's Dissident test, and to boot it contains a choice-of-venue provision, which can be a HUGE burden on a licensee. It also has a number of weasel-worded lawyer clauses that could be used in nasty ways (especially around the patent section; probably this license is not adequete to avoid patent-controlled software).
One would have to analyse each license declaration that invokes this thing. Maybe somebody could formulate a sample declaration that always forms a free license, but otherwise...
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
The money you pay for a boxed linux cd also usually comes with support.
So, you haven't actually read the CDDL, but you just like to bitch about it as if you know what the fuck you are talking about. As far as I know, it is written in English and is not hard to follow. If you just want to pile on the slashdot karma-whoring bandwagon, then this is the right place, but why don't you actually read a couple of the licenses and learn for yourself what the differences are rather than spreading bullshit FUD. You may as well work for Microsoft.
Sure they can take OO private, but it'd be pretty !@$#(*!&#$ pointless.
The instant they do that, the last LGPL version of the code is forked, and Sun loses control...
It sounds like we are losing freedoms under this change.
Debian packages are available for the beta version of OOo on their site, and the 1.1.4 has a tar.gz available.
-- Linux user #369862
but between this, "GPL forbids linking" and the GFDL, I don't agree with him on a lot of things.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
The momentum in Free Software centers around Linux and other GPL code. The CDDL and GPL are mutually incompatible, so the code is walled off from the greater Open/Free world. "Opening" Solaris under terms that prevent it from being used to help Linux is really just a publicity stunt, or maybe an attempt to get some free development out of the "community". It certainly does not mean that Sun supports the principles of Free Software.
The CDDL release is not evil, agreed, but I would consider it neutral (and soon to be irrelevant) rather than positive. A release under a GPL-compatible license would be very positive. As to whether doing so would make sense for Sun from a business sense, I doubt it.
RPM is an open, documented, workable format. When it was decided upon, the perceived majority of the userbase would have been using distributions that use RPM (Red Hat, SuSE, Mandrake, Conectiva). Certainly today, the largest enterprise systems are still RPM based (Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Enterprise Linux, etc.). It's also the format standardized by the Linux Standard Base.
Besides, as an independent software vendor, how long are you going to spend making different packages for small markets when most of those users will get the package directly from their distribution install media?
If you were using a Debian system, you could have investigated Alien to convert from .rpm to .deb.
You also didn't persist with rpm very long.
should have worked fine.Said distros are sold that price for price of the support and documentation that come with them (support you don't have when you buy WXP Home), and sometimes for price of paid softwares bundled in the package, not for the distro itself.
Ah yeah, really hard, I mean you have to click on links to Novell from suse.de, really really hard walli walli walli
and everyone clearly knows that one can't find any freely downloadable distro on teh intarweb
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
So, you haven't actually read the CDDL, but you just like to bitch about it as if you know what the fuck you are talking about.
I'm not bitching about the CDDL, I'm bitching about Sun's past attempts to cheat and mislead the open source community with a variety of confusing licenses and legal loopholes hidden inside them. At some point, enough is enough, and there is no point for me or anybody else to waste time on the CDDL or any other junk Sun dreams up. If Sun wants to deal at all with the open source community, at this point, they must stick to standard open source licenses: BSD, GPL, LGPL, MIT.
You may as well work for Microsoft.
I don't work for Microsoft, but maybe you do. Or maybe you just work for McNealy and Schwartz--it amounts to the same thing--Sun has become pretty much as evil as Microsoft.