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OpenOffice Goes LGPL

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the good-news-for-the-written-word dept.

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."

6 of 185 comments (clear)

  1. Just so you all know.... by tpgp · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    --
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    1. Re:Just so you all know.... by Motor · · Score: 5, Informative

      OpenOffice.org is not "going" LGPL - it was already LGPL and SISSL.

      The article summary has this bit: "Is relicensed under the LGPL alone."

      I submitted the article with the title: "OpenOffice single license: LGPL". One of the editors changed it to: "OpenOffice goes LGPL" -- which is extremely misleading.

      --
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  2. Re:Comparison of terms? by tmasssey · · Score: 5, Informative
    The biggest difference is that if you contribute and distribute your changes to an (L)GPL project, you must make your source publicly available. Under the SISSL, you could distribute binary-only versions of the project.

    The difference between the GPL and the LGPL is that LGPL projects assume that others will create projects that interface with the original LGPL project, but that are not strictly part of the original project. Under the GPL, such items would need to be made available under the GPL themselves; under the LGPL, they can be licensed however the copyright holder sees fit.

    --
    Linux IT Consulting and Domino Development in Michigan
  3. Re:Please, slashdot law geeks by zerblat · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's in the OOo FAQ.

    --
    Please alter my pants as fashion dictates.
  4. Re:Fantastic ... by jiushao · · Score: 4, Informative
    It is completely and in every way legal. The only real restriction that Sun has is that the implementation has to pass their certification to be able to use the Java logotype and be called "a certified Java implementation".

    It is more than a bit expensive to pass the certification however so the open source projects will probably never do so (though some company might push through one specific version at some point). It is not really an all that important point however, the technology and specification is all legal to implement.

  5. Shot across the bow at IBM by soullessbastard · · Score: 5, Informative

    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