Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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.
Exactly. It pisses me off to no end that my college has moved from teaching C/C++ for introductory courses to teaching Java. If it were an open standard, there would be no problem. But as it stands right now they are teaching a single vender proprietary language for general purpose programming courses. Given the vast number of projects and companies which depend on Java, I would love to see Sun release their implementation under the GPL and create an independant organization to control the future standardization and direction of the language. I'll use Java when I can use ANSI Java and have a selection of platform implementations to choose from.
Why should Sun GPL their implementation. Seriously, why? The damand for Sun to do so seems to stem from slashdotters, and I havent yet seen a good reason *WHY* they should give away their Java implementation under the GPL. The specification I agree with - put it under the control of a independant standards body, but Sun should keep their implementation and everyone can still implement their own. Why is it that theres a rather vocal number of slashdotters who seem to demand that companies (not just Sun) give away their code? Write your goddamn own.
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.
If it were an open standard...
It is an open standard!
The simple reason that there are no comparable open source implementations is that no open source developers have invested as much time to write the standard libraries. Let's not kid ourselves.
However, GCJ/GIJ are great. That project has made huge advances on an open implementation.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
Well whats good for Sun is not good for users and the future of the language.
Java is falling behind because it frankly has no way to update itself despite upgrades from Sun itself. Hell, even IBM is having trouble making their version of Java better. Mainly because its considering proprietary because its not from sun.
Java is designed to write portable apps to all platforms. You can not write your own java api and have that same app work on another system. So its a mute point.
C#.net is better as a language and we all have to wait for sun to stamp yet another revision to catch up. Microsoft has the resources to improve it when Sun does not.
In perl and other opensource languages you have developers improving the language itself. If Sun let the community upgrade it and develop more libraries it will improve and not die out.
http://saveie6.com/
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.
Of course they see no reason to do this. That would require seeing themselves as incompetent in maintaining a language as the rest of the world (excluding people knowing one programming language or less) does.
Linux is not Windows
Personally I get a bit worried when people talk about "falling behind" for a language (or major library for that matter). Java gets updated, in major ways, every few years. Since the language is the very basis for applications it cannot however run around and change all the time, it is supposed to be the vehicle of delivery for applications. If the language is so completely wrong that is needs to be changed in a major way one might as well instead create a new lanaguage.
The basic thing here is that while end-user applications should evolve as much as possible lower-level libraries and languages can not. There are probably billions of lines of Java out there, there are tools that parse Java code, there are languages targetting the JVM, there are libraries in turn relying on Sun's libraries. Changing the playing rules (even without breaking backwards compatibility) would invalidate a lot of work down the line.
I for one rather hope that Sun does not plan to add as major changes in 1.6 as they did in 1.5. This is not a hunt for some glorified ultimate language, there is real work being done that should not be constantly disturbed.
Some people might now just say "so stick to one version of Java and let the rest of us have new features". The problem is that doing so will fragment the language badly. People will have to not just learn one revision, they will have to learn a new one for each job they do, and then typically juggle the differences in their minds. Making the actual situation much more complex than the language appears to be when only considering each revision by itself.
Now of course there is .NET, which is a fine platform as well. I don't see that much need to update Java any more in response to it however, 1.5 added the most important bits. Doing anything more major soon would just make the relationship between Java 1.4 and 1.6 meaningless, people could just as well switch to .NET as go to another completely different platform.
Code is already shared where possible. Take for example the WordPerfect importer. It originally was AbiWord's importer. When it became better and better, we split it off into the libwpd library. These days libwpd is used by AbiWord (naturally), OpenOffice and even KOffice.
So, what is the legal status of such projects ? Can Sun shut them down ? I'm not asking if it is profitable for Sun to do this, I'm asking if it is possible for them to do this ?
It's legal. It's just that Sun has made a sophisticated product very carefully with very high quality standards, and it is difficult for open source developers to match that in a fully-compatible way.
In short, is it safe to begin new projects in Java, or should I look into Ruby or something ? Or should I just stick to C and forget all about this current fad of object-orientation ?-)
Sun will be there, and Java will be there. And if not, some open product will likely suit your needs (GIJ and GCJ are very good actually, they just haven't reimplmented the entire standard library). Or IBM. Remember, the standards are open.
Next, the language is different from the programming approach. Use object-oriented thinking when it makes the most sense. Use procedural or functional programming when those make more sense. And then just pick the language based on where you see the project going and what features of the language you think will help. A java program is not necessarily object-oriented, it just provides the tools in case you are thinking that way while programming.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
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.
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.
If you want an open-source Java compiler and an open-source Java virtual machine, there is nothing stopping you from writing one. The Java Language Specification is available for free from Sun's web site, and so is the Java Virtual Machine Specification. These should give you enough information to make a GPLed implementation if you wish to do so.
Sun's JVM and compiler are not the only implementations of Java out there. This is because Java is a standard. This gives you the ultimate freedom, because if you don't like the license of one of the implementations, you can in theory create your own implementation that has whatever license you like. I really don't get why people think Sun needs to open source their Java software. Nobody bitched and moaned when AT&T didn't provide a GPL C or C++ compiler implementation. Instead, people created their own implementation. You may have heard of it; it's called gcc. How is the Java situation any different at all?
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
Funding SCO and complying with contractual obligations to get access to x86 drivers for UNIX are two different things and you know it.
How is the Java situation any different at all?
That's a fair question. To me the difference is that gcc and glibc/libstdc++ are shipped with distros like Debian. You're right in that nothing stops people making their own Java implementation - it's just that the Java library is enormous so it's a a huge job.
Some people who are against the opening of Java worry that it will produce a thousand slightly incompatible forks, but I think we can do the same comparison with gcc - it hasn't happened there, so I don't think it's likely. It's in everyone's interests for Java to remain compatible.
It's partly in Sun's interests to make Java more desirable for programmers working on Linux. Right now there's a move by people to start writing more graphical apps in things like Python (using pygtk) or C# (using Mono/Gtk#). People are deterred from using Java partly because it's not shipped with distros, even though there are Java bindings for GTK/GNOME.
If this continues then Java will get marginalised, and perhaps miss any chance it had to catch programmers who want a more productive language. So I think it's in Sun's interests to make it easily shippable by distros. By making it automatically available, they'll promote Java's mindshare among all those thousands of open source programmers (as opposed to corporate shops developing apps using Tomcat or struts or whatever they use now).