Sun Urged to Give Up OpenOffice Control

inc_x writes "Developers from OpenOffice.org are urging Sun to set the project free and bring it under a foundation. Sun's dominance over the project makes other companies such as IBM, Redhat and Novell reluctant to contribute more. Both Mozilla and Eclipse managed to attract an increasing number of developers after the projects were moved over to an independent foundation."

Comments

good step

[Pavel Stratil]

It's now clear that Sun understood it's possition in the linux/unix world. It's to open up or die eventually. Will Microsoft ever get this?

Re:good step

[cnettel]

Sun's main selling point has always been a platform, where the hardware and software together gives the client the (sense of an) advantage. This means that Sun may continue selling hardware, with software support just a selling point for that hardware. MS could of course turn to just rely on MSN and Xbox, but it would be a much more radical change than the Sun decision of opening up.

Re:good step

[FireFury03]

MS could of course turn to just rely on MSN and Xbox

Didn't the XBox related activities make a loss?

Re:good step

[Professor_UNIX]

It's to open up or die eventually. Will Microsoft ever get this?

Probably not, and look at the results: Microsoft is hurting today more than ever! Profits are down enormously due to software piracy by Homebrew Computer Club members and the Harvard IT department just busted them for using their computer time for doing rebuilds of Windows Vista. If this continues Microsoft is going to head into a death-spiral and be out of business within the year. Microsoft needs to desperately find some product of theirs that they can market profitably. Until then I'm afraid it is only a matter of time before Red Hat and others in the Open Source community overtake them in the marketplace and hammer the final nail into the coffin of the dying proprietary software industry.

Re:good step

[aCapitalist]

Hehe, humor is always the best comeback.

Re:good step

[ratatask]

> Will Microsoft ever get this?
Why would they ?
For Microsoft it's not a choice of "open up or die".
What makes you think Microsoft will die if it doesn't open up ?
Microsoft is growing by the day, and does not need to open up to continue.
At All.

(I'm just stating these facts - I have not mentioned a word on wether I
agree that they /should/ "open up")

Re:good step

[hodet]

That's funny I enjoyed reading it. Apparently the joke was lost on the mods though for modding this insightful. Funny yes, insightful no.

Re:good step

[JohnFluxx]

Um, no, it's more that the insightfulness was lost on you.

Re:good step

[sgbett]

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=MSFT&t=5y&l=on&z=m &q=l&c=%5EIXIC

IANA Financial Advisor, but over the last 5 years MSFT hasn't gone anywhere.

Re:good step

[hackstraw]

It's now clear that Sun understood it's possition in the linux/unix world. It's to open up or die eventually. Will Microsoft ever get this?

Sun is really getting it. Before too much longer they will be rebranding Opteron systems and selling them with Linux on them. Or better yet, they might start selling Linux systems at Wal-Mart.

Sun is really sharpening the cutting edge.

Re:good step

[Anonymous Coward]

> It's now clear that Sun understood it's possition in the linux/unix world. It's to open up or die
> eventually. Will Microsoft ever get this?

They have nothing to "get".
As far as I know, they are still doing well and making heaps of money.

Re:good step

[trparky]

You obviously are one of those "Linux can't do any wrong" people. Let me tell you, Linux is nowhere near being able to be used by Joe Somebody.

For instance, if Joe Somebody walks into Best Buy and buys a piece of shrink wrapped software, he is going to expect it to work out of the box with no issues. He is not going to expect to have to hack config files and compile the thing before he uses it.

Until there is universal binary support for everything under the sun, Linux will never be able to be run by Joe Somebody.

And don't get me started on the updating procedure. Joe Somebody is not going to want to spend a weekend recompiling his kernel just because there is a security issue. And lets not forget that sometimes, you may end up with an unbootable kernel. Then what? Do you expect Joe Somebody to know how to recover from that? I sure as hell don't.

Why just look at your standard home machine filled with spyware, viruses, and who knows what. If they can't keep their computer clean of malware, how do you expect them to know how to recover from a failed kernel compile.

This is where part of the Linux architecture has to change, and Microsoft has it partially right in the coming version of Windows, not Vista. The idea is to make the core kernel small and tiny, a micro-kernel if you will, and then larger sub-modules that fit into the micro-kernel. If something were to go wrong with an update, the system would continue to work so that the failed update could be corrected.

The core micro-kernel would contain only what is needed to load the core of the OS and load the various sub-modules.

Don't get me wrong, I love Linux and what it is doing to the marketplace, but things have to change before Linux can be run by Joe Somebody AKA someone who wouldn't know a RAM chip from a CPU.

Linux may not be king of the desktop, but it sure is when it comes to the server market. 85% of all web servers run Linux. Why? Because it is rock-solid stable and it takes hit after hit and keeps on coming back for more. Windows can't do that and I am not afraid to admit it!

Linux, Apache, PHP, Perl, and MySQL...a match made in heaven!

Re:good step

[larry bagina]

Linux may not be king of the desktop, but it sure is when it comes to the server market. 85% of all web servers run Linux. Why? Because it is rock-solid stable and it takes hit after hit and keeps on coming back for more. Windows can't do that and I am not afraid to admit it!

I think a more important reason is that linux is free, whereas Windows (or Solaris, AIX et alia) cost money up front. There are thousands of webhosting companies trying to compete on price, it's a low margin business and cutting overhead is the only way to survive.

If ignored the low margin and virtual host webservers, I think you'd see more Windows and other commercial OSes being used.

Re:good step

[shmlco]

And the fact that if you're a business you can afford to hire an expert to setup and maintain the silly thing...

Re:good step

[Anonymous Coward]

"universal binary support for everything under the sun"

Huh? I don't know of any OS that's able to run binaries for every platform/cpu that exists and binaries compiled for Linux DO run on every Linux system especially using ELF (Executable and Linking Format).

Also distributions offer their own precompiled kernel if you really do have to update your kernel, and if your kernel compile fails you could just select the previous kernel from your bootloader.

Also what does it matter if it's a "microkernel" (or the n'th incarnation of it) or not, it's certainly not a new concept and in practice it doesn't give any big difference (look at Windows stability vs Linux).

etcetera etcetera

Re:good step

[Risen888]

Yes, of course, as did IE (and MS Office/Works, at first). MSFT is willing to eat that if it gives them a foot in the door.

Frankly, I don't see Xbox playing out quite like that, though. Sony and Nintendo are two rather well-entrenched brands, they're not going to be pushed out without a fight (see Sony's recent PS3 multiplayer announcement). MSFT had better be prepared to post a loss on the Xbox for years if that's their long-term plan.

Re:good step

[Anonymous Coward]

isn't that whays being done anyways?

Re:good step

[FireFury03]

Yes, of course, as did IE (and MS Office/Works, at first). MSFT is willing to eat that if it gives them a foot in the door.

My point was that the original poster said that MS could drop all their other business and survive on the Xbox alone, which isn't the case since the Xbox lost them money.

Re:good step

[hodet]

...and still is.

Re:good step

[daddyrief]

I see truth. mod up!

should happen

[Anonymous Coward]

The next logical step - should have been done allready. I can't really se OO go very much further unless they go this way.

Re:should happen

[Daengbo]

How could Sun then relicense the program for sale as StarOffice? In my understanding, the Mozilla foundation can continue to operate on its own while Netscape Navigator is released because of the MPL license, but OO.o is under the LGPL, and Sun requires all submissions to be signed over to the company so that the program can be dual-licensed. How would this work if OO.o became its own Org, like Mozilla. I don't see it happening unless Sun gives up the StarOffice brand.

Re:should happen

[Lussarn]

If Sun as you say has the copyright on the complete program today they can relicence it in any way they want. They don't have to use only LGPL, they can even use a BSD licence. I don't see the problem.

Re:should happen

[Anonymous Coward]

What about releases of future versions that incorporate changes that Sun wouldn't own?
Is there some guarantee that Sun could still take a foundation OpenOffice under some future license and link the code with its own proprietary additions to sell as StarOffice?

Re:should happen

[Lussarn]

If Sun sets up the foundation and lays the groundwork for the licences on the codebase it's very likely they can ensure to be able to use the code in proprietary programs in the future. However, as seen with Wine some projects goes from BSD to LGPL licences to ensure not being ripped of by companies. But as this is Suns codebase to begin with a similiar scenario would be very unlikely.

Re:should happen

[mshiltonj]

I don't see it happening unless Sun gives up the StarOffice brand.

So it's all about marketing, then, isn't it?

Re:should happen

[Daengbo]

It's kind of my point that they really can't keep the current license and still sell StarOffice, because they wouldn't be able to take code which isn't theirs and relicense it. They would have to move OO.o to a BSD-style license to still sell StarOffice, right? And that would alienate a large number of developers who prefer the (L)GPL. Sun would also be seeing numerous, virtually identical competing offerings from other companies (e.g. IBM). I just don't see the motivation for Sun to do this. When Mozilla was cut loose, it looked to me to be a way to cut developer salaries, and since the Netscape brand was pretty much defunct (and free!) anyway, there was nofinancial disincentive to move Mozilla into its own org. StarOffice is, as far as I can tell, making "some" money for Sun, still, and is an up-and-comer, not a has-been. My two won (SKW).

Re:should happen

[Daengbo]

For Sun, the company, it probably is about whether it's a good financial move for them or not, wouldn't you agree. Since they're the ones making the decision, and not the developers, about whether to move OO.o or not, I expect that marketing will weigh in heavily.

Re:should happen

[Lussarn]

I agree with most everything of your post except this.

And that would alienate a large number of developers who prefer the (L)GPL

As it is now outside developers need to hand over copyright to Sun, I can't in any way believe they wouldn't prefer a more liberate licence as they gain nothing from GPL in this case.

But as you say, loosening the grip is a risk for Sun. Hopefully Sun can see some opportunities in the risk too.

Re:should happen

[CastrTroy]

I think they should just kill StarOffice. Open up OpenOffice, and just use that. More people would use it, more people would improve it, and it would just be better in the long run. Does StarOffice even offer anything that OpenOffice doesn't? Couldn't they just sell you OpenOffice support, instead of trying to make 2 of the same product.

Re:should happen

[m50d]

If new code went to this foundation codebase, sun wouldn't be able to include it in staroffice (unless they make it BSD, yes, but I doubt they want to do that). So the free OOo will rapidly overtake staroffice features-wise. I doubt Sun wants that.

Re:should happen

[duffbeer703]

"How could Sun then relicense the program for sale as StarOffice?"

Easy.

They just make a deal with the organization that takes responsibility for OO.o to give them special licensing terms.

Re:should happen

[Lumpy]

I don't see the problem.

I do.

  they cant take all the developers work and sell it as theirs.

THAT is the problem they are having. Everyhing submitted under the GPL by others is NOT THEIRS TO SELL.

If they want to take the current code and do what they want, then fine. but they cant take all the free programming, wrap it up and call it theirs if they release it.

Re:should happen

[supabeast!]

You're so right. OpenOffice is doomed if people can't add even MORE code. It really needs other big companies kicking in their ideas, so we can make it even slower and more bloated. OpenOffice will definately succeed if developers can make it take longer to load up than Photoshop CS2.

Re:should happen

[Ded Bob]

However, as seen with Wine some projects goes from BSD to LGPL licences to ensure not being ripped of by companies.

I am curious about what companies Wine has stopped. As I see it now, Wine is a one company show when it used to have at least two with TransGaming.

BTW, you can never "rip off" something with a BSD or MIT license. That is just FUD. As long as you follow the terms of a license, how can you "rip" it off?

It is interesting that the development community go Novell to release Xgl even though it was under the MIT license.

Re:should happen

[pinky0x51]

I don't see the problem. At the end it's not a license issue.
People don't buy StarOffice because they maybe use a proprietary license. They buy it because they want a "product" with a company in the back wo is "responsible" if something goes wrong and they have a phone number they could call. Maybe they like some add-ons like a better spellchecker etc too.

So Sun can also offers a StarOffice from a community driven OpenOffice. Just take from time to time the latest OOo, call it StarOffice, put it into a box with a nice handbook, some add-ons etc. And costumers will be happy to get a "product" from a reputable company. That's why they buy StarOffice and not because they like software with lots of restrictions through proprietary licencing.

Re:should happen

[MooUK]

There is nothing stopping you selling and supporting a GPL'd (or similar) product. NOTHING AT ALL. Contrary to many people's opinions, you are perfectly allowed to sell it - in fact, you don't HAVE to provide the source to anyone who hasn't got the binaries. However, someone who has bought it can then distribute it themselves. But since the main reason anyone would buy StarOffice is the support of the big-name company BEHIND it, a free version of the same product being available wouldn't be a problem at all.

Re:should happen

[MooUK]

There wouldn't be anything stopping them selling OO.o, or selling support for it (which is, as you said, WHY people buy it - the support) under the GPL or LGPL. There is no reason here for them not to sell it. The GPL does NOT prevent selling your product, contrary to most people's interpretations of it.

(In other words, the parent is right.)

Re:should happen

[pinky0x51]

>There wouldn't be anything stopping them selling OO.o, or selling support for it...

have i said that they couldn't sell it???

My argument _was_ that they can perfectly sell their StarOffice based on a free OOo even if they don't hold the copyright and even if they don't control the developement.

Re:should happen

[pinky0x51]

sorry, forget my last post. It was a misunderstanding, as i see it now you have agree with your post to my post.

At least now we have said it 3 times, so nobody can overlook it ;)

Re:should happen

[marcosdumay]

If it is on LGPL, why can't they use it?

Re:should happen

[c_forq]

Does StarOffice even offer anything that OpenOffice doesn't?

I know star office has at least a better spellcheck and a tech support line. They also have some migration tools that I don't think are included in OpenOffice, in addition to better MS document compatibility and conversion. Also is the mail merge in OpenOffice yet? I know that is new in the newest star office. I personally don't see this happening as long as StarOffice is making money. Why close down a stream of income?

Re:should happen

[ptlis]

They can, but only if non-Sun developers sign over their copyright to them ala mySQL - the problem stems from the fact that contributors to OO.o are contributing code to the GPL'd version and Sun does not own the copyrights to these changes unless the submitter signs them over (infact, I believe Sun already requires contributers to do this so the changes can be rolled back into StarOffice). Of course the GGP is correct - people buy StarOffice for the support Sun offers with it and not the rebranding so the arguement can easily be made that Sun has nothing to lose by only maintaining a GPL version of the codebase, making it easier for developers to contribute source code to the project.

Re:should happen

[kimvette]

They absolutely CAN sell it; they just have to provide the source with it and leave the licenses and copyrights intact.

There is good reason to choose a commercial (pay/free) StarOffice over a GPL (free/free) OpenOffice.org suite - if you're in a corporate office environment you'll likely want the pretty Impress and other document templates, the clipart galleries, animations, as well as the support your secretary will need. There is every bit as much value "buying" a GPL product as there is buying a vendor-lock mechanism such as Microsoft Office; support and value-added items.

Re:should happen

[kimvette]

Uh, the code in Photoshop CS2 isn't there just to take up space, and contrary to what you may think there are no loops like:

while (count 15 seconds)
{
      waste time crunching randomized numbers here, pinning the CPU and thrashing the hard disk for no good purpose other than to annoy you
}

Every bit of code is there to provide features for graphic designers. I gave my art director three options, all licensed and installed on his PC:

  - Adobe CS2
  - The Gimp
  - Paint Shop Pro (since uninstalled and given to my brother for the occasional work he does for us)

He has run The Gimp exactly once just to check it out. He found the GUI counterintuitive (especially when multitasking - when bringing the document forward, the palettes stay below everything else. That pisses ME off every single time I use The Gimp as well). He hates The Gimp. The only reason I use The Gimp instead of Photoshop is that Photoshop for Linux is not (yet) available.

He has used Paint Shop Pro a couple of timezs just for a couple of filters it had that Photoshop didn't, but he has since implemented his own filters.

Sit a professional graphic designer in front of The Gimp and he'll ask if you're joking. I would have to agree, even though graphic design is not my primary focus. Effects which come free in CS2 in the form of layer effects take roughly 30 clicks and 8 to 10 passes of various filters in The Gimp to achieve similar results, and if you're not happy with the results in CS2, it's the tweaking of a setting or two to remove, modify, or reapply an effect, whereas it's having to repeat the same many steps in The Gimp, and you're not likely to ever get the same effect exactly the same multiple times because there are so many steps involved. When I have to design something for a client that isn't just image editing but requires design, I usually go to my designer's workstation and use Adobe CS2. I may be pro-Linux and Pro-OSS, but I definitely see and appreciate the value in commercial products. If Adobe CS2 is ever released for Linux, I'll definitely be one of the first to buy it. Well, I take that back - I'll wait for the first patch to be released.

There is definitely value in Adobe CS2, and the "bloat" as you put it does not go to waste. If you think it's waste, you should be choosing a lighter tool because you obviously don't need the functionality it provides, but I assure you it is not bloat. Photoshop is not and was never intended to be a lightweight tool. If lightweight is what you need, check out Paint Shop Pro, The Gimp, or maybe even Photoshop Elements.

Re:should happen

[CodyEbberson]

Wouldn't it be the same as Eclipse -> WebSphere for IBM?

Re:should happen

[rm69990]

StarOffice is just OpenOffice plus some proprietary additions, which is allowed by the LGPL.

Re:should happen

[richlv]

they do not relicense anything. actually, you could take oo.org code, add something and sell it as ohmygodoffice right now. there are companies/individuals that are/were doing this.

actually, having all copyright dually assigned allowed sun to drop sissl (that is, dual licensing) at launch of oo.org 2.0 an thus oo.org is licensed as lgpl only now.

http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS3294924491.html

there also is a faq linked from that article (and you probably could find a lot of info in oo.org mailing list archives / website and other places)
http://www.openoffice.org/FAQs/license-change.html

Re:should happen

[Anonymous Coward]

I love bolding random words for no reason.

Re:should happen

[Anonymous Coward]

And why not just fork OOo? LGPL is fine license, and if the developers outside Sun would outnumber and outsmart the Sun insiders, they can just fork OOo and license their contribution as LGPL only (without giving copyrights to Sun). If IBM, RedHat etc. do not like Sun's control, they can fork OOo without asking, rename it to TrueFreeOffice, establish foundation and go ahead. They allready contribute a lot to The Kernel with much stricter license so why not LGPL? But the situation is different - 95% of the development is from Sun.

Re:should happen

[Bing Tsher E]

As long as you follow the terms of a license, how can you "rip" it off?

In some people's understanding of the language, if somebody fixes the fuckups in your code but doesn't give you back the fixes, they 'ripped you off.' It doesn't work that way in any other industry, but apparently it does in the world of buggy software developers.

Re:should happen

[rtb61]

There is also the amount of credit they have received for creating open office in the first place. Sun might feel that the recognition they have received to date might not have been as great as they would have hoped for when then first released open office.

This in part most probably was a result of their foot in, foot out approach rather than jumping right in. They also got caught in a bit of a microsoft marketing trap at the wrong time which made them look bad in front of the open source community. Now they have to recover from some of those lapses and start moving forward again.

With their level of expertise, a most probable direction would be customised Linux distributions to suit, major corporations and governments. They might also incorporate a method for those larger institutions to create and maintain their own distributions and contracting the establishment, hosting and quality assurance of a distribution. There is also the medical are of computing technology which they can expand into and incorporate open source in some areas of development.

They need to make a big splash in the services and support side to increase growth, releasing open office would be a good way but they need to make sure it is done well. They need a mascot, perhaps a promotional competition and to work with someone else for the missing messaging piece, perhaps IBM might partner with SUN, release Lotus notes and Domino and combine them with open office for a complete office suite.

Never!!!

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Without Sun's beneficient guidance, how will OpenOffice truely embrace the awesome power and control that can only be offered by Java(TM)!!?

How can OpenOffice hope to succeed without object-oriented interfaces with sandboxed wrapper pardiagm extensible intuiative platform-independant mainatainable code... paradigms?

Only Java(TM) with its mastodonicly magnificant API can hope to keep OpenOffice afloat!

Re:Never!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly Suns strategic long term strategy is to leverage cross-platform turnkey J2EE technologies by employing SOAP on Rails with XMLHttpRequest.

Wait..BINGO!

Re:Never!!!

[Antique Geekmeister]

Your metaphor is confusing. I thought the mastodon was an arctic creature, in the cold wastes of the world, who benefitted and increased their range of influence from having the Sun's influence lessened.

Re:Never!!!

[Shawn is an Asshole]

I thought it was a band.

Re:Never!!!

[williamhb]

Without Sun's beneficient guidance, how will OpenOffice truely embrace the awesome power and control that can only be offered by Java(TM)!!?

That's not as dumb as it seems - for office applications there's not much to be lost in running within a VM, and delegating garbage collection and a few other things to the VM, and eventually gaining more portable binaries by publishing bytecode rather than machine code. (So you no longer have to publish binaries per OS/processor combo, but only per OS. I'm assuming you probably will still be making some OS-specific calls). The objection to Java is simply that the FOSS implementations of the VM are not up to scratch yet.

Re:Never!!!

[LDoggg_]

The objection to Java is simply that the FOSS implementations of the VM are not up to scratch yet.

Pull down fedora core 4, and update to the latest packages.

The free java stack still isn't 100%, but man its getting close.
FC4's eclipse & Open Office2 both use it.

Re:Never!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you just say 'abloat'??

Re:Never!!!

[leenks]

I take it that they don't use GNU Classpath then?

Re:Never!!!

[LDoggg_]

As far as I know the merge isn't yet complete, but a lot of work is being done to make gcj/gij run on classpath.

Re:Never!!!

[Plug]

Soap goes on a rope, not on rails!

Re:Never!!!

[Bing Tsher E]

Mastodon Linux, however, is the last a.out distribution.

Being urged by developers is one thing

[kernelblaha]

And doing what they say is quite another. I wonder if Sun will let OO go?

Re:Being urged by developers is one thing

[TheRaven64]

Considering that over 80% of OpenOffice.org developers are employed by Sun (statistic provided by Novell), I wonder who, exactly, the developers asking for this are. I attended a talk by a Novell OpenOffice.org guy a while back, and his view was that the baroque build system was the biggest reason that new developers didn't get involved, and they had people working on simplifying that.

Re:Being urged by developers is one thing

[kernelblaha]

Interesting, that view implies that the whole discussion about licensing is somehow irrelevant.

Re:Being urged by developers is one thing

[TheRaven64]

This discussion isn't about licensing. OO.o is LGPL'd, and no one seems to be arguing that it should be something different. The discussion is about whether Sun should hold the copyrights or not. Sun automatically holds the copyrights on any code written by their employees, so the only issue is whether they should be expected to give up the copyright on:

1. All of the existing code including the code they bought from Star Division, and
2. 80% of all new contributions.

All because someone, presumably in the remaining 20% pool, thinks that they should. Sun signing OO.o over to a foundation wouldn't make it any more Free - it's already LGPL'd, and you can do anything that the LGPL allows with it. This sounds very much like an attention seeking article to me. 'Look! Sun bought an office suite, released it to the community under the LGPL and paid most of the developers, but I want more! They shouldn't be allowed their name on it either!'

Re:Being urged by developers is one thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen. I can't believe sometimes how people will keep asking for MORE MORE MORE. On the other hand, perhaps they would acheive greater market penetration if they did hand it over, but I'm going to be honest and say I don't see that happening.

Re:Being urged by developers is one thing

[smallguy78]

Java TM is the Chevrolet HHR of the UI world

Re:Being urged by developers is one thing

[sbrown123]

Sun automatically holds the copyrights on any code written by their employees

If they submitted it to a LGPL licensed project, they automatically forfeit the copyright. Thats the magic of LGPL. But if I remember right Sun uses its own "special" license.

All because someone, presumably in the remaining 20% pool, thinks that they should.

No, it has nothing to do with any of those points you just mentioned. I don't work on OpenOffice or use it. But I do use Eclipse. Recently I got in to an argument with some Sun developers about their continued work on NetBeans, another open source IDE like Eclipse. I asked why they continued to spend time and money working on NetBeans rather than combining resources and efforts with other companies and OSS programmers in to improving Eclipse. They gave all sorts of silly reasons. They continued the FUD about how IBM runs Eclipse just like they run NetBeans. That's silly since Eclipse was put in an outside foundation some time back and includes companies like Nokia and Oracle to name just a few. The most humorous one is that Eclispe uses a "inferior" widget set. Thats like crying about some program using Gtk over Qt or vice versa.

Sun has a DIH (Don't-Invent-Here) frame of mind. They HAVE to control every aspect of their "open source" initiatives. Eclipse was run by a foundation which they could not control. So they built NetBeans with the mentality that they could destroy Eclipse. This, in turn, splits OSS programmers in to two seperate camps rather than combine them to create a single, better tool.

Sun doesn't like Open Source. What they like is programmers working on THEIR projects for free. They then wrap these in to products with better features and sell them. The uber version of NetBeans is Sun Studio. Open Office is repackaged and sold and Star Office.

To summarize: Sun equates Open Source as a way to get programmers to work on their products for free.

Re:Being urged by developers is one thing

[thanasakis]

Worlds biggest open source code contributor doesn't like open source. News at 11.

Re:Being urged by developers is one thing

[Bill_Mische]

"...they automatically forfeit the copyright. "

C'mon you know better than that.

They merely allowed other people to copy it under the terms of the licence. If the licence is breached then normal copyright applies. Similarly in the event that you had a line of code included in a project then you would be able to enforce the terms of licence for *your* line of code.

As to the rest, I might agree with your summary but I find the "how dare they compete with us" attitude of the middle bit a little silly.

Re:Being urged by developers is one thing

[LDoggg_]

So they built NetBeans with the mentality that they could destroy Eclipse.

Huh?
Don't get me wrong, Eclipse is my choice of IDE, but isn't netbeans/forte 3 or 4 years older than eclipse?

OTI built SWT and the basis for what was to be a replacement for IBM's Visual Age for Java. The eclipse foundation didn't get set up until November 2001

Sun doesn't like Open Source.

Ok, they were just kidding about the open source license of OpenOffice, and they never really meant to pay their own developers to work on it. Sure.

Re:Being urged by developers is one thing

[Kjella]

"Sun automatically holds the copyrights on any code written by their employees"

If they submitted it to a LGPL licensed project, they automatically forfeit the copyright. Thats the magic of LGPL. But if I remember right Sun uses its own "special" license.

You know, even for slashdot your understanding of copyright is extremely low. And your memory isn't very good either. Could I have a -1, Clueless mod please?

Re:Being urged by developers is one thing

[Anonymous Coward]

You really have no clue what you're talking about. From your pathetic misunderstanding of copyright law right down to your "Netbeans was built to destroy Eclipse" comment your post is riddled with factual errors. Please do us all a favour and just stop posting because it's incredibly obvious that you don't have the slightest clue what you're talking about.

The last couple lines of your post just exemplify your complete and utter stupidity.

Re:Being urged by developers is one thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow! You have absolutely no clue what you're talking about. Practically every sentence in your post is wrong. You've just taken stupidity and ignorance to a whole new level!

Re:Being urged by developers is one thing

[sbrown123]

You know, even for slashdot your understanding of copyright is extremely low.

Not really. LGPL license is pretty clear. What's not clear is Sun's motivation for the JCA (Joint Copyright Agreement) which is required of all contributors of code to the OpenOffice project. This is a curious document since the LGPL already covers copyright and ownership. From the JCA:

2. Contributor hereby assigns to Sun joint ownership in all worldwide common law and statutory rights associated with the copyrights, copyright application, copyright registration and moral rights in the Contribution to the extent allowable under applicable local laws and copyright conventions. Contributor agrees that this assignment may be submitted by Sun to register a copyright in the Contribution. Contributor retains the right to use the Contribution for Contributor's own purposes. This Joint Copyright Assignment supersedes and replaces all prior copyright assignments made by Contributor to Sun under the OpenOffice.org project.

Now, Mr. Copyright Lawyer, please explain how Sun is unable to close the OpenOffice project off tommorow, claim complete copyright ownership, and allow only Star Office to exist? What will stop them? You think they are just a bunch of "great guys" who can do no wrong? Money doesn't matter to THAT corporation right?

Re:Being urged by developers is one thing

[sbrown123]

I cover most of your post here (I hate duplication):

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=176677&thresho ld=0&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=14669661#146701 75

As to the rest, I might agree with your summary but I find the "how dare they compete with us" attitude of the middle bit a little silly.

Who is the "us" that is competing? And what is being competed for?

Re:Being urged by developers is one thing

[sbrown123]

I don't think anyone has a problem with Sun contributing code. Its just the controlling part that irks people. You ever hear the term "Free As In Beer"? Well, imagine someone (Sun) gives you a beer at a local bar. You go to drink it and notice that Sun still has a hand on the glass. Seems kinda odd having someone hanging on the glass that your trying to drink from right? I mean, you can drink it yourself. You ask Sun why he refuses to remove his hand from the glass. Sun explains that its for your best interest and his. Little creepy huh?

Re:Being urged by developers is one thing

[sbrown123]

The eclipse foundation didn't get set up until November 2001

A preview of the Eclipse was sent out in June of 2000. News spread. Sun opened the code for NetBeans in August of 2000.

Re:Being urged by developers is one thing

[SQLz]

If they submitted it to a LGPL licensed project, they automatically forfeit the copyright. Thats the magic of LGPL.

Survey Says?.......XXX

The LGPL basically relies on copyright law to work. The LGPL is what gives people permission to use and distribute a copyrighted work, all copyright laws are still in effect. The magic of the LGPL vs the GPL is the fact the application using LGPL code doesn't have to be under an open souce license.

Re:Being urged by developers is one thing

[thanasakis]

Sorry, but your analogy could be applied not only to Sun but also to many many many companies and organizations that contribute code and maintain OSS projects. Do you mean that Linus Torvalds does not maintain control over the code that goes inside the linux kernel? Give me a break..

Re:Being urged by developers is one thing

[LDoggg_]

Even if that's true, how on earth does it support your claim that Sun "built NetBeans with the mentality that they could destroy Eclipse. "

Re:Being urged by developers is one thing

[sbrown123]

The difference is that Linus Trovolds, and most OSS organizations and contributing companies, don't require OSS developers to sign special copyright agreements:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=176677&cid=146 70175

Re:Being urged by developers is one thing

[sbrown123]

I won't go down the NetBeans versus Eclipse, IBM versus Sun, or SWT versus Swing battle. Those are all non-issues to the bigger picture.

Competition makes better systems right? Sun must agree with you since they pay for their NetBeans developers to blog online. Most of its just simple bashing Eclipse to keep the battle roaring. Sure, most of it is very objectionable and often times questionable in accuracy. I have been compiling some great links to some very interesting blog entries by lead Sun developers/managers aimed at the Eclipse foundation (not the Eclipse IDE, but the foundation itself). I've even watched Eclipse members ask Sun to participate in Eclipse, or even become a strategic partner to Eclipse:

http://www.eclipse.org/membership/members/strategi c.php

Stupid Eclipse foundation keeps wanting to work as a team. I mean, you can do much more as an individual than you can ever do as a team.

Re:Being urged by developers is one thing

[thanasakis]

Did you read the OO.org faq?

OTOH I suspect that nothing they could do about OO.org license would make you feel safe that they won't doublecross you.

Re:Being urged by developers is one thing

[Bing Tsher E]

To summarize: You don't like Sun.

Nothing new there.

There have been Sun haters nearly as long as there have been Microsoft or IBM haters.

Re:Being urged by developers is one thing

[Bing Tsher E]

I won't go down the NetBeans versus Eclipse, IBM versus Sun, or SWT versus Swing battle. Those are all non-issues to the bigger picture.

Everybody keeps refuting all your FUD, so you'll instead just opt to go down the 'Sun bad. Hate Sun.' route, eh?

Re:Being urged by developers is one thing

[sbrown123]

Everybody keeps refuting all your FUD

Everybody huh? Like what, five or six people constitutes everyone. Yes, we live in a small, small world.

so you'll instead just opt to go down the 'Sun bad. Hate Sun.' route, eh?

I don't hate Sun.

Re:Being urged by developers is one thing

[sbrown123]

I suspect that nothing they could do about OO.org license would make you feel safe that they won't doublecross you.

No, they can do like the article states and donate the intellectual property to an independent not-for-profit foundation. Or, if thats too much, revoke the JCA and not make it a future requirement of contributions. That way we don't have to trust that they will always have good intentions. Your right, maybe I have too little faith in the good will of publicly traded corporations.

Re:Being urged by developers is one thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, pretty much everyone. Notice how there isn't a single post of yours that has been modded up? Practically everything you've said has been total FUD and a lot of people just don't care enough to respond to somebody who is so blatantly stupid.

The future is here

[Anonymous Coward]

Were movoing to cobol man, COBOL!

Re:The future is here

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely you mean COBOL.net

Fork it

[16K Ram Pack]

As far as I recall from the license, the issue is that under OOo, you have to in essence give up your code copyright.

But, I also understand that this doesn't stop someone taking the OOo code, removing all the OpenOffice.org references, and releasing it under another name without giving the changes back to Sun.

Re:Fork it

[Anonymous Coward]

But, I also understand that this doesn't stop someone taking the OOo code, removing all the OpenOffice.org references, and releasing it under another name without giving the changes back to Sun.

This already happens.

The last 'discount computer' someone bought here which advertised as coming with "Office Suite" turned out not to be Microsoft Office, or OO.o, it turned out to be some disc pressed in china which *was* OO.o but all OO.o references removed and replaced with "Future Office" or something like that. It was hilarious if it wasn't so annoying. We threw it out and installed the real OO.o, of course.

I for one..

[jimsteri]

I for one.. Just kidding. I don't actually see why Sun would not agree with this. But on the other hand I'm thinking from the user aspect and not corporation aspect. More developers sounds good for me, usually more and better features. But putting OO under its own foundation probably means less money for Sun?

Re:I for one..

[Zemplar]

Except on thing: StarOffice

It would make sense.

[zenmojodaddy]

If Sun were to sever all ties to the project, and coders are more willing to contribute, that would be beneficial to pretty much everyone - including Sun, since they can still polish up the end product and release a commercial version, no?

Plus, it might make it easier for someone to take the Mozilla route and split the suite up into smaller components, for those of us who don't particularly need a spreadsheet or presentation tool but would love a lean version of Writer.

S'pose this is one of those, 'If you love it, set it free' kinda things.

Re:It would make sense.

[TheRaven64]

Today, Sun employs 80% of the developers. Novell employs the majority of the remainder. Do you seriously think that there are enough people interested in developing OO.o outside of Sun to make this worth their while? The code base is quite hideous in places - mainly inherited from the Star Division days - and it takes a long while for a developer to really get up to speed. I think most people interested on working on an office quite would rather work on something with a cleaner codebase (e.g. AbiWord, KOffice) than struggle through OO.o.

I suppose this is one of those, 'if you're paying for it, you may as well keep your name on it' kind of things.

Re:It would make sense.

[zenmojodaddy]

On the other hand, if IBM, Red Hat et al are encouraged to commit manpower to the project by a loosening if licence restrictions, wouldn't that help in cleaning up the codebase?

That's couple of pretty big ifs, of course. Many open source projects, for good or bad, tend to focus on the addition of new features rather than just making the old ones work properly and cleanly, every time; so chances are, more manpower might well be used deployed on tasks other than cleaning and streamlining, despite OOo sorely needing a bit of both. Still, a guy can dream.

Re:It would make sense.

[T-Ranger]

I dont think its licenses, but shared control that the likes of Novell and Red Hat are after. Novell, or at least two paticular people inside of Novell, given the choice, would have prefered Mono over Java, Im sure. Red Hat, likely neither, or at least some changes to Java requirements, exposure to the codebase, and coordination with the various OSS Java projects (either a delay, or limits on default build and runtime requirements of Java).

As far as features vs. fixes, its a matter of mandate. Sun is interested in selling Star Office, which requires features, and new features, to sell upgrades. A OOo foundation would be interested in OOo, which might mean market share and thus features, but might also mean high quality software, marketshare be dammed (relevent to commercial downstreem packagers).

Consider, Perl 6. Perl at least appears to be loosing marketshare as new and cool things are actually being shipped by other communities. But Perl 6 has the goal of producing high quality software first, with the long term positive benifits outweighing the short term losses. The Perl hackers were well aware of this when they set down their path of choice.

Re:It would make sense.

[gregeth]

"The code base is quite hideous in places"

No kidding. I remember back with OO.o 1.1 having a problem launching it on my laptop when I would be at work with my laptop that was at the time running FC(1,2?). Fedora had auto-configured cups and automatically added printers found on the network. After running an strace I realized that OO.o would wait until it could contact the printer on my coworkers computer (running cups). It wouldn't even timeout or anything. I don't know why an office suite would need to check something like that, although to give them credit MS Office has a 30 second timeout if it can't connect to a print server (it was an issue of an older version of samba).

We really need a "firefox" version of OO.o or something.

It All Depends on Sun's Goals

[bgfay]

If Sun is interested in goodwill, then this seems a great way to go. If Sun is interested in hurting Microsoft, then this is a great way to go. If Sun is interested in a broader partnership with Google, then this can't hurt that either.

I'm not as informed about all this as I could be, so who can say what the downsides are for Sun if they release this to a Mozilla-like foundation?

Anything that keeps OpenOffice going, helps it become faster and less of a resource hog, and further forces open document standards on the proprietary office suites is a good thing to me.

Re:It All Depends on Sun's Goals

[Decaff]

If Sun is interested in goodwill, then this seems a great way to go.

Open Office is possibly the single most important reason why Linux is useful as a workstation OS. Seems to me like they deserve all the goodwill anyway.

Re:It All Depends on Sun's Goals

[Daengbo]

You can say that (and I use OO.o a lot, too), but I really think that Gnome and KDE's office products would be a lot further along if OO.o weren't in the picture. Much of the rapid development that was happening to bring KOffice along went quiet when OO.o was released, if I remember correctly. I love OO.o, but I sometimes wonder if we would now have a significantly lighter, "cleaner" office suite had OO.o not dropped into the picture when it had.

Re:It All Depends on Sun's Goals

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny. I thought Sun's motive was making money.

Giving it to a foundation wouldn't help Sun's bottom line, but then again, maybe nothing else will either.

Nevertheless, it is terribly audacious to ask Sun to give away for free something that (1) they originally bought (as Star Office) from another company; and that (2) Sun employees were and are largely responsible for improvements.

Re:It All Depends on Sun's Goals

[Decaff]

I love OO.o, but I sometimes wonder if we would now have a significantly lighter, "cleaner" office suite had OO.o not dropped into the picture when it had.

You may be right, but, sadly, I don't think that users want a light clean suite - they want something that looks like MS Office.

Re:It All Depends on Sun's Goals

[Octorian]

Well, you have 3 categories of users:
1) People who want it to look/work like MS Office
2) People who *need* it to be compatable with MS Office files (for more than just the basic lowest-common-denomenator features)
3) People who evangelize how it can replace MS Office, but don't personally fall into group 1 or group 2.

The reasons I'm not using OpenOffice at work are because I fall into group #2. (Oh, and OO.o 2.0 isn't so great on the Mac, at the moment, and my work machine is thankfully a PowerBook with a legal license of MS Office 2004)

At home, however, I run SuSE Linux and OO.o 2.0 works pretty well. But then again, the only MS Office files I have to interact with are the occasional simple MS Word document, and nothing fancy.

Re:It All Depends on Sun's Goals

[Decaff]

2) People who *need* it to be compatable with MS Office files (for more than just the basic lowest-common-denomenator features) ....
The reasons I'm not using OpenOffice at work are because I fall into group #2.

I have installed Open Office as the main Office suite at a medium size company that needs to exchange MS Office documents with other organisations and with customers. I have had very few problems with compatibility.

Re:It All Depends on Sun's Goals

[Anonymous Coward]

And I think that Linux would be further along if KDE wasn't in the picture - $3000 for a commercial development license? Can you say "retarded"?

You may believe (as many Linux users seem to) that closed-source commercial software is evil, but the most popular desktop OS in the world (Windows) got where it is today with a mix of closed -and- open source applications. Both of which seem to be absolutely essential for a platform's success.

Re:It All Depends on Sun's Goals

[Anonymous Coward]

you have a wierd definition of useful and workstation.

Every Personal Computer here has Office on it.

Every workstation has the high power apps that need the poweer of a workstation such as Graphics, 3d modeling, compiling, Scientific, etc.

Those do NOT have office on them. And most of them are either Silicon Graphics or SUN boxes. (We do have a few of Intel with windows as workstations as well for the AVID editors and Maya 3d.)

what you use in the office is NOT a workstation but a simple PC. and an office suite really is only a nicething(tm) but not critical on a workstation.

Workstations = high power typically multi processor. PeeCee = what you have in front of you for "office work"

Re:It All Depends on Sun's Goals

[Anonym0us Cow Herd]

You may believe (as many Linux users seem to) that closed-source commercial software is evil, but the most popular desktop OS in the world (Windows) got where it is today with a mix of closed -and- open source applications.

You omit a very important point.

The most popular desktop OS got where it is today through the leveraging of monopoly power and exclusionary arrangements with OEM's.

In fact this point is so important, that to point it out seriously undermines your argument that closed source is important to achieve success.

Re:It All Depends on Sun's Goals

[Anonym0us Cow Herd]

I understand your argument about the distinction between a workstation and an office PC.

It is outdated thinking.

If a workstation is so powerful, why can't it run an office suite, e-mail, browser, etc.? It is just a matter of software. The workstation has a processor, memory, disk, OS, etc.

Those high end applications you mention, they could, in principle, run on a high end version of what you call an "office pc". (I don't want to get into the difference between Windows and *ix here.)

In fact, the reason for the end of the age of workstations as Sun, Apollo, Domain, etc. used to sell, is because Intel PC's got so darned cheap, and with Linux, X, GCC, etc. you didn't need a $30,000 box from Sun to do the same thing you could do on a $4000 high end Dell quad Xeon with Linux.

The high end Linux box can run the same office, browser, e-mail, etc. as the low end Linux desktop.

Re:It All Depends on Sun's Goals

[poot_rootbeer]

Seems to me like they deserve all the goodwill anyway.

My thought exactly.

It's like when a bum asks you for change, and you give him a dollar, and the next words out of his mouth are "Gimme another dollar."

The nature of Open Source is that Sun can't really take their dollar back. But I wouldn't blame them if they felt resentment towards those who insist that one free dollar isn't enough.

Re:It All Depends on Sun's Goals

[Anonymous Coward]

Try an Excel sheet with some macros...

Re:It All Depends on Sun's Goals

[Decaff]

Try an Excel sheet with some macros...

Very few people use Excel to transfer software (macros). Virtually all cases where Excel is transferred between companies is for exchange of data.

But if you insist on going on about macros, the issue of portability arises even between different versions of MS Office.

Re:It All Depends on Sun's Goals

[davidsyes]

Oh, how I WISH IBM/LOTUS would see it that way.

Having TWO flagship office suites for Linux/FLOSS couldn't hurt. There are PLENTY of IBM customers who are still using SmartSuite, yet, IBM must be interested (it would seem) in not rocking the ms boat, as in not encouraging those customers to dump *doze a little bit more. Or, not encouraging those customers to switch to OO.o, they encourage those customers to stay on SmartSuite, which won't run native on Linux.

Re:It All Depends on Sun's Goals

[Anonymous Coward]

Much of the rapid development that was happening to bring KOffice along went quiet when OO.o was released, if I remember correctly.

Ahh... the famous KDE fallacy. Some nice screenshots and a bit of user interface code and a hype article on slashdot == finished app. It's been a common theme on slashdot for 5 years now.

Clue: KOffice slowed down because all the low-hanging fruit had been picked. It entered the phase of development in which all much of the fun easy pay-off stuff had already been done... and it moved in the phase that all software developers know about the "elbow-grease" phase, in which you must buckle down and get all the tough stuff done.

Re:It All Depends on Sun's Goals

[Bing Tsher E]

So you're saying that all 'Excel' is, is a container to transfer data between different companies?

Man, you live in a different world than the rest of us....

Re:It All Depends on Sun's Goals

[Bing Tsher E]

The high end Linux box can run the same office, browser, e-mail, etc. as the low end Linux desktop.

You mean: they can both run the same low end office, browser, email, etc.? I dunno. The browsers, at least, on Linux, aren't really low end. The rest... maybe.

Re:It All Depends on Sun's Goals

[masdog]

There is a fourth category as well. People who want an office suite but don't want to/can't afford to pay for MS Office or the few Windows alternatives that are available. We need some of #2, but not to the same level as most business users. The ability to make word documents, spreadsheets, and simple powerpoints that aren't cluttered with all sorts of garbage animations.

OpenOffice, as it stands right now, is great for home users, students, and small businesses. It provides enough compatibility with Microsoft Office to allow you to work on documents and presentations at home. While it will not replace Office on the corporate desktop in the foreseeable (sic) future, it could very easily take a place on the home desktop.

I'm no evangelist, but I have recommended it to friends of mine who were looking for an office suite.

Re:It All Depends on Sun's Goals

[vurian]

Nonsense. And I say this as a KOffice developer. KOffice slowed down because the students who started it graduated and got jobs; because the KOffice hackers started to work on KDE's core libraries; because (in case) a core KOffice developer wanted to code in Java, not C++, and because much of the urgency disappeared when OO got open-sourced. Especially the latter. Fortunately, nowdays, KOffice development is fast & healthy again. We're going to release 1.5 in early March and that release will show major progress in all applications. We're working hard on OpenDocument and OpenFormula support, cross-language scripting, application integration, user interface polishing... And we're having fun, something I doubt many StarOffice of OpenOffice developers have.

Re:It All Depends on Sun's Goals

[ArtDent]

Did you read the article? IBM *is* encouraging users to use OpenOffice.org. More specificly, they're trying to sell Workplace Documents, which primarily (on the client side) consists of OO.o-based editors.

SmartSuite is, mercifully, dead. They don't even try to encourage IBMers to use it anymore.

Porting SmartSuite would be a considerable effort, which would yield what? A crappy, boken office suite on a platform where better alternatives are already available?

Re:It All Depends on Sun's Goals

[Decaff]

So you're saying that all 'Excel' is, is a container to transfer data between different companies?

Of course not! It is a way of transferring data + calculations + presentations. However, what is hardly ever required is transfer of a rich set of macros. People are usually transferring a spreadsheet, NOT a full-featured VBA application.

Man, you live in a different world than the rest of us....

This would be true if what you were saying above were true. It isn't.

Don't

[Anonymous Coward]

While it's probably possible to fork it, it wouldn't be a good idea imho, especially seeing that the bulk of OO developers are from Sun anyway. So I don't think a fork would achieve much and I don't think a fork is really merited in any way at this point.

This isn't about forking however, but about better organizing OO developement, in order to attract more external developers, which would of course be a very good thing and probably also benefit Sun.

Re:Don't

[MooUK]

There already are forks. Mostly for porting, I believe, but I know several exist.

Just don't ask me to remember their names...

Maybe Sun should keep it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla, for all the support it has, still hasn't achieved any of their goals. 4 years later it's still essentially NS code, and it's plagued by code nobody likes, and bugs both inherited and introduced.

With Sun at least you've got one company at the wheel so to speak.

Re:Maybe Sun should keep it?

[kiddygrinder]

Heh, that site you mentioned, registered to Dynadot Privacy really smacks of a Grass Roots campaign by interested parties. I was particularly amused by the popup that was essentially an image of a firefox crash. It didn't even do anything interesting when clicked on.

Re:Maybe Sun should keep it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I like it too. It's definitely anti-firefox and there's some pretty obvious trolling but it's good for a laugh and it does point out a couple of problems people like to gloss over.

Causation or correlation?

[Tim C]

Genuine question - did Mozilla and Eclipse gain developers because they were "set free", or is that just coincidence? (Remember - just because B followed A, doesn't mean that A caused B)

Re:Causation or correlation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Eclipse has become the dominant IDE because it was set free, otherwise there would have been no other reason to use Eclipse 1.0 over NetBeans or what have you. Because it targets Java programmers you can bet that it definately benefited by this (I see a Java bug in the tool I do my Java coding, I fix it)...

I'm not sure Mozilla is not so open and shut, devs would have had different reasons for working on it which may have been related to past loyalty to the browser, hatered of IE, or just plain curiousity... But I'm not sure what the OSS developer counts were for the Netscape/AOL Mozilla vs. Mozilla.org Mozilla releases.

Re:Causation or correlation?

[Savage-Rabbit]

Genuine question - did Mozilla and Eclipse gain developers because they were "set free", or is that just coincidence? (Remember - just because B followed A, doesn't mean that A caused B)

Genuine answer - Alot of developers have clauses in their employment contracts about what they can and cannot do in their spare time in terms of software develoment. In my own case (I had a lawyer check my contract) I can am free to work on OSS projects if they :

1) Do not undermine the business of my employer. That is the OSS project represents a competing product.
2) The project is not conntrolled by a competing company or corporation.

So I am guessing that it was at least partly a case of Mozilla and Eclipse gaining developers because they were 'set free'.

Some developers have truly draconian clauses in their contracts about the extent to which they can participate in OSS projects. I have even heard of people being forbidden by contract to develop software for anybody but their employer no matter what the circumstance or the nature of the development work (ie. even if it is an OSS project that is solely for their own enjoyment, unrelated to the employers line of business and not for profit). Such clauses would probably not hold up in court, at least not in most EU countries, but corporations include them in employment contracts anyway. The same goes for anti competition clauses, ie. "If you quit and start working for a rival corporation you must remain unemployed for N months before starting your new job". Supreme courts in a nubmer of European countries have have declared such anti competition clauses to be invalid but they keep being included in employment contracts regardless. I suppose employers are counting on their terror value since employees may be reluctant to take the matter to court even if they will win because of the legal cost and the time-demands and hassle of a court case.

Re:Causation or correlation?

[Tim C]

there would have been no other reason to use Eclipse 1.0 over NetBeans or what have you

I used a fairly early release of Eclipse, and (on my machine at least) there were plenty of reasons not to use it - not least of which was that any time it redrew the interface you could practically see it doing so. (In fact you could, if you resized the window) In contrast, JBuilder was much, much faster and just downright more usable.

Now, time has passed, and I switched to Eclipse from JBuilder about a year ago, and Eclipse has improved a hell of a lot in that time. Back then though, I can't really see how anyone could be using it for serious work, except maybe on really beefy machines.

Re:Causation or correlation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla did not gain developers as it became a Foundation.
In fact, a significant part of Mozilla modules still lack owners (most module owners were Netscape employees, and when Netscape laid them off, only a small percentage of them was re-employed by companies like Novell and IBM that wanted them to continue working on Mozilla, while an even smaller percentage continued working on Mozilla in their spare time), Firefox devs are constantly complaining about no new blood coming in (mostly because the entire end-user focus and dumbing down of things is less appealing than the power-user atmosphere that Mozilla had - there's a much bigger barrier going from using the product to reporting a bug to fixing a bug nowadays then there was five years ago), and I personally can think of only two new "main" developers (people who've been active enough to be given actual responsibility) in the last three years.

Re:Causation or correlation?

[NutscrapeSucks]

I think it's clear that Mozilla was saddled by bad product management at AOL/Netscape ... which lead to things like ugly skins, a mailer nobody wanted, and a bloated design with huge startup times.

While Firefox was a smart way to 'reboot' the product, I think a most of credit for Mozilla's turnaround goes to Moore's Law.

Re:Causation or correlation?

[mmilinkov]

I think that I am in a position to state categorically that more developers became involved in Eclipse because IBM set it free. The basic reason is that IBM competitors were not willing to use or contribute to Eclipse projects as long as IBM was in control. I can't say I blame them.

Just look at what's happened since independence day...BEA is now leading the WebTools project, Sybase is leading the DataTools project, Actuate is leading BIRT, etc. etc. It is highly unlikely this would have happened with IBM in a controlling position.

Mike Milinkovich
Executive Director
Eclipse Foundation

That's strange

[ThePhilips]

That's strange. We do hear that request from IBM.

But in fact I heard that most FLOSS developers are turned down by the size and overall (low) quality of OOo code.

As one developer said on blog (I failed to find that remark again) the thing is only paid Sun developers would work on it. And only because they are paid to do so. Compilation take ages and level of requirements for development is high - that all creates entry barrier to FLOSS developers, most of whome work in their own spare time.

To put in prospective: what would you want to spend you time on: hacking Linux kernel and then in 10 minutes seeing your changes or waiting N hours when OOo compilation finishes?

I never looked into OOo sources. But the pace of progress project makes - and the kind of progress it makes - tell quite much about how project is organized. I truly hope that KOffice would be able to run on Wind0ze - in office unfortunately I'm completely confined to the M$ Wind0ze. At the moment only OOo can read the SXW files OOo produces upon import from M$O... AbiWord fails completely to pick up styles in such documents. KOffice 1.4 is quite close to render the files the way as OOo does.

Pretentiousness

[NekoXP]

Mozilla has gotten new developers since Firefox, NOT because it's not controlled by AOL/Netscape anymore.

I wish developers would be less pretentious about their choice of projects. Surely successful projects
which have significant amounts of corporate backing, both financial and in terms of management, are some
of the better projects to work on. You have defined goals, a great infrastructure to work in, and nobody
ever complained about the way Mozilla was being run before The Foundation (in fact The Foundation works
exactly the same way for every developer in terms of bug tracking, IRC events, software testing and
releases, as it did during AOL's tenure)

OpenOffice could get more developers if it had some unsubstantial hype or managed to get a bunch of new
features it already had (get rid of Java and implement everything the same way, some other way :) but
not just because Sun would have dropped it. I actually think OpenOffice (like Seamonkey becoming a tiny
little sideproject in view of Firefox's popularity) would suffer for it.

Codebase

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I've heard (and seen, to an extent), OpenOffice.org has such a complex codebase that the only developers willing to work on it are those paid by Sun. No one will be interested in learning such a weird and large codebase.

Re:Codebase

[aCapitalist]

It's true. But what is "turning it over" (it's already open source) to random group of people going to acomplish. It's not going to change the fact the codebase is a clusterfsck that nobody wants to touch.

Re:Codebase

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll second that comment. I've done a number of smaller projects on my own but I was looking to get into something big that could benefit OSS. So OpenOffice popped into mind as it has potential to make Linux/BSD/et al a more viable alternative to Windows. Before too long I gave up, its comforting to know I'm not the only idiot who can't understand it.

Re:Codebase

[rcbutcher]

From my experience in multinationals, this is a sign of a mature codebase.. realworld functional code evolves, it's when people try to redesign it from scratch that serious money gets burned. All that spaghetti gets the job done and is there because it works.. the stuff that doesn't will eventually wither into an appendix that never gets executed. A good programmer with debug tools can work on spaghetti., and instinctively knows not to touch that "historical dna", because some of it may still do something. If the guys up top know what features and functionality are the way to go, they can be rammed into the codebase.

OO.org biggest problems

[Libor Vanek]

In my view OO.org biggest problem is not that SUN pays most engeneers but huge complexity of OO.org. I've heard even some rumors that OO.org contains ASSEMBLER language in some parts!!!

To make much more flexible whole project needs to become much more modular (which equals trash all existing codebase and start from scratch):
- file modules (input/output) - in ideal world OO.org would share this part with AbiWord, KOffice etc...
- "processing" module (document "managment", scripting etc.) - imagine running OO.org without GUI (some server document processing etc.)
- "GUI" module - native Qt, GTK, Windows, MacOS, etc..

But I'm 99% sure that this will not ever happen. More probable is that KOffice will become much more usable and supported on Windows/MacOS.

Re:OO.org biggest problems

[codepunk]

Might help if you knew what you where talking about...

OO can be run headless and I do so to generate multiple outputs from web
forms on a server, doc, word, pdf etc.

Re:OO.org biggest problems

[Lumpy]

Sounds good. take a nice clean project like AbiWord that is insanely fast and stable and build from there.

It blows my mind how fast and stable that works is overlooked by many developers for the bloated feature-fest of other projects.

Come up woth a companion spreadsheet for Abiword that works on windows,OSX, BSD and linux and you will utterly kill OO.o simply because of speed and the fact it works.

many people claim that users WANT the added fluff in MS office and OO.o has. yet 90% of the time I hear people bitch about how all that added crap only get's in the way like the autoformatting and autospellcorrection, etc... AS well as 60% of the users do not use the other cruft in there.

why cant the "features" be plug-in's? so if someone does not want them they do not have to have them?

I love OO.o but it's absolutely redicilous that I need a P4 1.8ghz machine to run a stupid word processor in a speedy manner. OO.o and MS office is 100% useless on a P-III 900 machine with a tiny 512 meg of ram. or a G3-600 with more ram.

that is completely redicilous and the developers should be ashamed of that.

Re:OO.org biggest problems

[generic-man]

Can you provide any resources or tips for running OO.o in a headless mode? What language do you use to invoke OpenOffice.org? I generate Excel reports on a daily basis using Perl and I'm always looking to try new and more full-featured tools.

Re:OO.org biggest problems

[Mancat]

Wtf? OO may be almost useless on the hardware you describe, but MS Office flies on it. My father's computer is a meager Celeron 633 /w 512MB mem. Office is insanely fast on it. OpenOffice? Haven't tried it, but by the way OO performs on my Athlon XP 2800, I'd say it would be pretty bad.

Re:OO.org biggest problems

[Libor Vanek]

Yes, I know that it's possible but it's not clean modular design. If so it'd be very easy to make native Qt port - but AFAIK it was done by "search GTK calls and replace them with Qt calls" so (but this is really just speculation!) you can't use both of them at once.

Another example of modular design advantages would be simple implementation of GUI in AJAX (with full OO.org features "behind" like best MSO compatibility in "free code world" etc.)

Re:OO.org biggest problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Really MSOffice 2003 flies on that?

or are you comparing a OLDER version trying to sound like you know what is going on.

OO.o recent release = Office2003 any other comparison is trying to skew it.

Office 97 screams like a raped ape on anything higher than a P-II 500.
Office 2000 is 2X faster than Office 2003.

so are you telling us that Office 2003 is fast?

Re:OO.org biggest problems

[Mancat]

Office XP, AKA Office 2002, though I doubt Office 2003 would be any worse.

Re:OO.org biggest problems

[Pantero Blanco]

The computer I'm on at the moment is a 750 Mhz Duron with 320 MB of RAM, and the Linux version of Open Office is running at a nice rate...even when it's sharing resources with Firefox, X-Chat, and Gaim.

I've tried it on a coppermine celeron similar to the one in your post, and it still runs at a usable rate.

Minority opinion maybe

[squoozer]

I don't really see much of a problem with OOo as it is. It seems to be developing at a fair pace and it is free (at least as in beer which is all I care about). Ok, so it uses Java, so what. I don't generally find Java slow but then I have a machine that is fairly up to date.

I think part of the problem here is that a good portion of the Linux community runs what most people would consider very old boxes. There is nothing wrong with that but I don't agree that we should hold back development to cater for it. I don't care if an application sucks 200MB of memory as long as it does what I want it to do. If I have a problem with it I'll stick in another GB of RAM to deal with it. There is a limit to this approach but we are no where near it yet.

Re:Minority opinion maybe

[Dave2 Wickham]

Sticking in another GB of RAM isn't hugely cheap (does the term hugely cheap even make sense?) - £50 for no-name PC3200 from Scan. Whilst that may be fine for many people, for people on lower incomes, or in developing countries, that is a lot of money just to run an office suite which should be less demanding.

Do also bear in mind 2 of the ways in which Linux/open source has been pushed: faster on older hardware (though not with GNOME, etc), and there are no licencing fee issues for those who cannot afford it. Granted, the price of the RAM is still lower than that of MS Office retail, but it's still likely to be higher than many can afford, and I can't comfortably run OOo on my 1GHz Celeron laptop with 256MB RAM. I can run MS Office (when booted into win32, obviously, which is rarely).

Also, you say that you like that it's free as in beer, but if you have to buy more RAM just to run it comfortably, surely that benefit goes out of the window?

Re:Minority opinion maybe

[LDoggg_]

It runs great here on my fedora/kde desktop with 512MB RAM and its not anywhere close to swapping.

You could always use Abiword, gnumeric, etc. if you have to run something on older hardware.
I really like the features they added to Open Office 2 and would hate for them to strip out the new stuff just to get it to run on really low end machines.

Re:Minority opinion maybe

[Dave2 Wickham]

I'm not suggesting that they strip out features - MS office does have a larger number of features, AFAIK, and that is far faster/less memory hungry than OOo (FWIW, I don't tend to do word processing on my laptop, but on my desktop). I was replying in particular to the suggestion that increased resource usage really doesn't matter - I'm sure there must be a lot of optimisation potential in OOo to speed it up, and many people just don't have the option of upgrading their hardware. And yes, there definitely are good projects such as Gnumeric and Abiword, which I would use on lower-end hardware.

(Sorry, this was posted in a bit of a hurry, if it's not very coherent.)

Re:Minority opinion maybe

[marcosdumay]

" I don't care if an application sucks 200MB of memory as long as it does what I want it to do."

You'll probably change your mind when you have 5 or 6 applications sucking 200MB of memory at the same time.

Re:Minority opinion maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

To me, the bottom line is the price comparison: you save about $300 with OO because it's free, assuming your time is worth nothing. If the free software does everything you need it to, then why not use it? My experience has showed me that: 1.) OO documents often come up with password errors when I send them to MSOffice users, and 2.) OO is absolutely terrible if you have a need for DDE communications, (I work in process control, and use DDE for dropping data into a spreadsheet).

That said, OpenOffice is useless to me because it's simply not as good as MSOffice for my environment. I'd love to save by using freeware, but often the freeware doesn't cut it. A $300 application is certainly cheaper than me spending a week finding out the free one won't work anyway. Going back to price, however, it isn't really a $300 savings for any user who has to pay for hardware upgrades.

It seems to me that if a software is to compete with MSOffice, that it should be comparable to MSOffice. Not everyone can afford to throw money at their computer problems, and even those who can should wonder if it's truly worth the price of a hardware upgrade. Assuming the free alternative can meet their needs.

Re:Minority opinion maybe

[squoozer]

I ask myself this question: would I rather an application that was bloated and did everything I wanted or one that was super slim and only did 80% of what I wanted. I would go for the bloatware every single time because to me the extra $50 on ram isn't that great a cost especially if it saves me frustration and time everyday for a year because I don't have to keep switching between applications to get all the functionality I want. I would consider it was money very well spent.

I'm not saying for one minute that every piece of software should follow this rule but some, like OOo, should. Server applications like Apache should be optimized but they are working in a very different environment where making best use of all the resources is critical. Desktop applications though are generally living in an environment where only a tiny fraction of the resources the machine has to offer are actually being used.

Re:Minority opinion maybe

[squoozer]

Yeah maybe I would but I consider myself to be a user of seriously memory sucking applications on a daily basis. At the moment I have FF, NetBeans and OOo running that are consuming just shy of 900m between them. The thing is though their working sets are actually quite small so most of that is off on disk. It's just not really that much of an issue.

Re:Minority opinion maybe

[Dave2 Wickham]

But it's not an either/or situation: as I stated in an above reply, MS Word has a lot of functionality, but it's still faster and less demanding than OOo (and this is not at all due to hidden APIs or preloading at startup - MS Word in CXOffice is still faster/less demanding than OOo in my experience).

Re:Minority opinion maybe

[squoozer]

I realize that int eh long term it's not an either or but at the moment it could be argued it is because OOo doesn't have the resources for optimization.

Re:Minority opinion maybe

[pthisis]

At the moment I have FF, NetBeans and OOo running that are consuming just shy of 900m between them. The thing is though their working sets are actually quite small so most of that is off on disk. It's just not really that much of an issue.

It's a major issue for me.

I have to restart FF a couple times a day because the memory footprint gets huge, it slows down, and the whole machine becomes sluggish (to the point where switching virtual desktops takes 10+ seconds, typing in gaim windows is noticeably lagged, etc). Oddly, epiphany (which is hardly a lightweight, and uses the same Gecko rendering engine as Mozilla/FF) doesn't have this problem, so I've switched to that. I _think_ FF might be leaking memory when I open/close lots of tabs but I don't know; I do know I can easily have 10-15 tabs open, close them, open more, etc when it starts up, but after a few hours it bloats to 250MB or more and opening/closing tabs gets slow. By this point, just closing FF takes 15-20 seconds. All this with FF 1.5.0.1. Anyway, since epiphany has a more responsive UI and doesn't show that problem I'm happy.

OO has massive startup time and footprint, and running it alongside other big apps causes similar problems; if I just minimize it things are okay, but then the system swaps like mad when I go back to scroll around in whatever docs I had open. When possible, I go with AbiWord to avoid that, but for some complex apps I have to suck it up.

And I'm on a reasonably modern machine with 512MB of RAM--hardly a beast, but not some dinky POS either.

Sun

[idlake]

Sun would cut off the proverbial nose to spite their face. Their proprietary control of Java and their failure to standardize Java through an open process has hurt them big time. They missed the boat with NeWS as well by keeping it proprietary. And they're going to retain control of OpenOffice and annoy people until that, too, will have been replaced by something else.

Sun is cleverly attempting to drive themselves out of business, and they are doing it ever so gently, gradually, and persistently.

OOo needs a Firefox makeover

[idlake]

OOo is at the same stage as Mozilla was: a functional but bloated and messy codebase and system. Unfortunately, that's what big companies tend to produce (I think it's a consequence of having too many engineers, many of which are mediocre).

What needs to happen to it is what happened to Firefox: the thing needs to be split up, the GUI and cross platform toolkit need to be overhauled (or even replaced with Gtk+), and Java needs to be exorcised from it.

And, yes, severing the connection with Sun would be a good thing for OOo, and ultimately for Sun as well.

Re:OOo needs a Firefox makeover

[NekoXP]

(I think it's a consequence of having too many engineers, many of which are mediocre).

How do big companies tend to produce that, but you forgot all those huge, bloated, never-controlled-by-a-corporation projects like GCC, XFree86, and suchlike?

Too many cooks spoiling the broth IS what causes it, but why make the dig at big companies?

Re:OOo needs a Firefox makeover

[idlake]

Too many cooks spoiling the broth IS what causes it, but why make the dig at big companies?

Because those kinds of projects are commonplace at big companies, while they are the exception for open source projects: most open source projects simply don't have the resources to support lots of mediocre engineers that aren't really interested in the product.

However, I'm not even sure that gcc and XFree86 are good examples of FOSS development problems. The reason gcc and XFree86 have become so big and messy is precisly because they have had so much corporate support. And I think gcc has managed the complexity fairly well--doing a multi-language multi-target compiler completely in C is a really tough task. As for XFree86, its license notwithstanding, it had started to acquire corporate-like structures, and the X.org fork was the answer and the solution.

Re:OOo needs a Firefox makeover

[jilles]

Agreed. Except the changes that need to take place are probably much more like netscape 4 vs mozilla 1.0 than mozilla 1.x vs Firefox 1.0. Essentially firefox was only about the UI whereas mozilla was a complete rewrite of netscape 4.x.

Open office consists of close to 10 million lines of code. Much of it is star office legacy code that very few people understand. Because of this legacy, feature development happens at a snailpace and the UI looks like shit.

A complete rewrite is not a realistic option for Sun. Doing so certainly killed Netscape and their product was a much smaller software product. A full rewrite would take the best part of this decade. A more realistic strategy would be to gradually replace the worst parts of the system. Identify the problematic components and fix or redesign them. Sure the UI sucks but it sort of works. The 2.0 development even made it look semi native on some platforms. Deoupling the components of the suit means that you can evolve them (or kill them off) seperately.

Re:OOo needs a Firefox makeover

[NekoXP]

The reason gcc and XFree86 have become so big and messy is precisly because they have had so much corporate support.

I think it's because they are BIG projects, not because they have BIG contributions from corporate sponsors. Who's sponsoring X these days? Did you see the Xgl stuff just released? Oh my GOD it must suck ass, because it's written on Novell's dime, right?

And I think gcc has managed the complexity fairly well--doing a multi-language multi-target compiler completely in C is a really tough task.

Microsoft, Intel, IBM, Codewarrior, plenty of other compiler vendors manage it just the same :)

There is no correlation whatsoever between "big bloaty crappy code" and "big corporations". Microsoft's development teams on Office, Windows etc. are intentionally kept small and in tight little groups (this is ironically why Office uses it's own toolbars and not the ones in MFC) in order to get around your "too many crappy engineers" notion. There is a lot more accountability in corporations (Microsoft, again, is a good example of accountability of checked-in code being directed at the head of the checker-in).

I think what spoils most major projects in Open Source is that there are way too many TRANSIENT engineers who do not contribute regularly to the code, maybe signing up to add a single feature or patch, and leaving the project for better things. Those developers that do it for a long time end up backing up these transients for the rest of the project lifetime. They don't have time to do this properly and are overstretched as it is.

It's not about talent (I assume everyone who contributes has some talent) but you have your lovely gourmet soup, and someone comes in and adds salt.. and another adds pepper.. and another adds salt.. and another adds pepper.. and another adds chili powder.. and another adds more carrots.. and another adds pepper.. and another adds chili powder.. once they're in, what you have is a bowl of spicy carrot water and not edible soup. The Chef looking after it was too busy tending to the other courses.

Re:OOo needs a Firefox makeover

[penguin-collective]

Did you see the Xgl stuff just released? Oh my GOD it must suck ass, because it's written on Novell's dime, right?

First of all, Novell runs its open source projects differently from Sun. Second, a strong correlation isn't the same as a logical implication. So, I reserve judgement on Xgl until I have seen it. I don't need to reserve judgement on OOo: it is in need of a serious overhaul.

Microsoft, Intel, IBM, Codewarrior, plenty of other compiler vendors manage it just the same :)

None of those vendors come even close in terms of platform, CPU, and language support to gcc. Furthermore, we're discussing source code quality and bloat here, not whether people "manage" to produce a product. I have seen some of those compilers, and the ones I've seen were worse in terms of source code quality and bloat than gcc.

I think it's because they are BIG projects, not because they have BIG contributions from corporate sponsors.

Of course it's because they are "BIG projects". Open source projects don't usually get that big because they usually don't have the resources; open source projects, by necessity, are split up into many small projects, and that itself improves the quality of the overall system greatly.

I think what spoils most major projects in Open Source is that there are way too many TRANSIENT engineers who do not contribute regularly to the code,

Yes, and that's a good thing. While "most" open source projects indeed die from that, the few that survive in that kind of environment are the ones that both work for end users and also are structured so that it is possible for "transient engineers" to hack them and not make a mess. Open source breeds good code through natural selection and market forces, while commercial software development tries to do it through central planning.

A software project where I can't go in and add a small piece of functionality or fix a bug within, say, 30 minutes, is a bad software project, and those kinds of projects are the norm in industry. If you think that kind of software can't be written, then you've been in commercial software development for too long.

It's not about talent (I assume everyone who contributes has some talent) but you have your lovely gourmet soup, and someone comes in and adds salt.. and another adds pepper.. and another adds salt.. and another adds pepper.. and another adds chili powder.. and another adds more carrots.. and another adds pepper.. and another adds chili powder.. once they're in, what you have is a bowl of spicy carrot water and not edible soup. The Chef looking after it was too busy tending to the other courses.

Actually, open source is more like a pot-luck dinner, where everybody brings their favorite food. In contrast, commercial software keeps promising us a gourmet dinner at McDonald's prices, and it predictably isn't working. Between a pot-luck dinner with friends and a discount gourmet dinner, I prefer the former.

OpenDocument Event in Los Angeles

[Anonymous Coward]

Peter Quinn, Susy Strubl (Sun), Doug Heintzman (IBM) and others will be speaking at a workshop on the use of OpenDocument Format in Government. The event will take place this Friday Feb 10th at the Los Angeles Airport Westin. Attendance is free. They just request you RSVP via e-mail.

Not only OpenOffice, Linux kernel too

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not only OpenOffice, Linux kernel development also should bring under a foundation and set an example for the open source community. The "Linux" trademark also should bring it under that foundation.

More gimme, gimme

[aCapitalist]

"In an ideal world open source should not be dependent on the capriciousness of any one corporation," OpenOffice.org project leader Louis Suarez-Potts told vnunet.com.

It's already not dependant. It's open source. Do with it as you please. IBM already has.

IBM used the OpenOffice source code last year to create a separate version of the suite as part of its Workplace offering, which is allowed under the application's licence.

Oops, IBM already forked it, so what is Louis talking about again?

A fork is considered inappropriate for open source projects, as it forces the developer community to spread its attention over multiple, yet similar, projects.

*cough*, bullshit.

"If OpenOffice did become independent we would be interested in talking to Sun about it, but it's not holding us back in any way," he wrote.

So IBM officially doesn't care one way or the other, so what are Louis' real motives. That's easy. It's all about corporate hatred and biting the hand that feeds you.

Re:More gimme, gimme

[idlake]

That's easy. It's all about corporate hatred and biting the hand that feeds you.

I think he is saying that OOo would actually benefit from a little less feeding because it is rather obese already.

And then there's this

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/1381903 5.htm
Might shed some light onto Sun's intentions?

Bull, plain and simple.

[aug24]

You sir, are a liar or a fool. The rewrite from scratch, binning the original Netscape code was complete over six years ago.

Oh look, you're an AC. Who'd have thought. (shill!?)

Also the mod that declared you insightful is a sucker.

Justin.

Evidence - from 1999!

[aug24]

Linky

Re:Evidence - from 1999!

[Anonymous Coward]

Netscape didn't even release their source code till March 1998.

Version 1.0 of Mozilla App Suite came out halfway through 2002.

What did they do for the 3 years you claim they'd had all of Netscape's code rewritten for by that stage? Other than not release anything.

Re:Evidence - from 1999!

[aug24]

Oh, go away little shill person. I've had a look at the (s)lyerfox site and it's a total shill site. It even hides it's registration details behind a third party. Don't waste any more of my time.

Justin.

The OO build system...

[Dystopian Rebel]

is ~exactly~ what has kept me from jumping in to fix bugs.

That, and the fact that it takes several hours to compile the product.

Re:The OO build system...

[kimvette]

Not to mention the code's being extremely disorganized. I looked into some of the I/O performance issues and the code is so darn convoluted I didn't spend more than a couple of hours investigating. Also it's worth mentioning that the issues I encountered have been reported scores of times, and the developers mark them down with the reason being that "addressing performance issues is not as interesting as adding new features"

Uh, last time I checked, it's easier to extend a clean, well-architected application. What they're doing is like trying to build an oil tanker out of duck tape.

I really like the OOo suite from a user perspective, performance issues aside, however it is not a project I'd want to be associated with.

Is it about the product or prestige ?

[Anonymous Coward]

In my opinion this is utter nonsense.

Its like saying that Linus should give up on the kernel and move all the decisions about its development in a seperate group. Wake up call: that is not going to work since it will only slow down development. I know its but a movie, but to give the geeks something they can relate to: The endless debates in the senate (Star Wars - first trilogy) are actually based on real-life politics. If the system works, don't change it.. Second puzzle: is it these people to do about the product or prestige and more important: when will they be satisfied?

Sun buys StarOffice. People are dissapointed and some protest because it was free. Sun gives in and branches OpenOffice, the free alternative, while keeping their finger on it. Everyone was happy. And now, shortly after the release of 2.0 and when its picking up some momentum (cooperation with Google comes to mind) people suddenly want it to become more open?

This is just my idea but I think some people hold a double agenda.

Do we really need another foundaton?

[Can]

Is it really necessary to start yet another foundation for a single project (along with all of the overhead involved in maintaining that foundation)? Isn't there an existing foundation that the code could be released to and reap the benefits of one fundraising arm, one set of lawyers, one (well, however many) web server, etc. Fedora foundation might be the best fit for the code, but would likely make Sun cringe. But why not the Mozilla Foundation? I'm sure there are other out there that I'm not thinking of.

Re:Do we really need another foundaton?

[hackstraw]

Regarding this URL:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=16724&cid=1955 084

I would like to contact you regarding these types of systems. Can you provide some form of contact information so I can contact you?

I would greatly appreciate it.

Why is IBM listed here???

[mrjatsun]

This always makes me angry when I see IBM listed with companies like RedHat. When IBM opens up some of their proprietary applications (e.g. Lotus Notes), then they can start be included in conversations like this.. Why do people always give them a free ride? They are still the proprietary, lock in as a strategy, company. They spens a lot more money on proprietary software than open source software..

disclaimer, I work for Sun (but I have always felt this way. no, really :-))

Re:Why is IBM listed here???

[Anonymous Coward]

If Notes were to be opened would anyone really care? It's not like it's hugely effective at anything it does. Not entirely useless; but reasonably close.

Re:Why is IBM listed here???

[Dutchmang]

Hmm, why? I dunno, Eclipse, Cloudscape (Derby)... Not to mention all the contributions to individual projects and general support for OSS. Understand a concern about a corporation trying to find a middle path, but give credit for the leadership and consistency.

A cynic might argue that IBM actually makes software people find worth paying for...

Re:Why is IBM listed here???

[Anonymous Coward]

I assumed that it was because of the wonder that is Eclipse.

Re:Why is IBM listed here???

[mrjatsun]

You compare apples to oranges. IBM is complaining about Sun and OpenOffice. Sun has opened sourced a lot of S/W and continues to do so. I don't think Eclipse and Cloudscape make IBM an open source hero. IMO, Eclipse, while very nice, original intent by IBM, was to try and wrestle control of Java from Sun. I do envy the IBM marketing team though :-) Did you know they spent over $1B dollars on Linux development!

That all being said, IBM does contribute a lot to open software. But them complaining about openoffice is a joke. I find it hipacriticle that IBM complains about openoffice, but then keeps it's S/W (related to the subject) closed and proprietary. Close file formats, close prototcols. Lock in the customer..

I've stated my conflict, how about you state yours (an obvious lotus notes fan from your previous posts :-) )

Microsoft's not dying

[James_Aguilar]

Key difference between Sun and Microsoft: Microsoft on the up and up, has total market dominance, and won't be dead at any point in the near future. I once read somewhere (But don't ask me to substantiate this remark because I can't!) that Microsoft has enough cash on hand that it could stop selling all of its products and keep going for five years without firing anyone. So I don't see how Microsoft could possibly learn the lesson, "Open up or die," when staying closed is doing pretty well for it so far.

In other news, here is the thing about Sun. I agree that it would be good if they opened up on OpenOffice. However, if I were them, I would feel pretty crappy about doing all that work on OpenOffice for everyone, then everyone turning around and telling me that I couldn't keep control of it. I guess a company can't really feel crappy, but if it were a person, I bet that's how it would feel.

Re:Microsoft's not dying

[AusIV]

I seriously doubt Microsoft has enough cash on hand to keep paying its employees for the next five years without any income. They might have enough cash from investors, but if they completely stopped selling products, the investors would back out, and then they'd be in trouble.

I agree that Microsoft has no inkling that they have to "open up or die," but I think investors are a large part of the reason they feel the should stay closed.

Re:Microsoft's not dying

[mysticgoat]

I once read somewhere (But don't ask me to substantiate this remark because I can't!) that Microsoft has enough cash on hand that it could stop selling all of its products and keep going for five years without firing anyone.

Assuming that this is true or nearly true (and I believer that is the case), it is in fact an indicator of Microsoft management's failure to make the transition from a small time entrepreneural shop to a major international corporation. Microsoft high level management Just Doesn't Get It when it comes to big business, and th company's growth trajectory is ballistic-- with a durned sudden stop at the end. In any major company with a vision of the future, those billions in short term assets would have been moved to long term investments or returned to stockholders by now.

Bill Gates seems to understand this on some level, which I think is part of his motivation for distancing himself from Microsoft Corporation and becoming increasingly involved with his Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation work. That will be very satisfying to his ego no matter how big a crater MS Corp makes when it completes its trajectory.

As further corroborating evidence, I offer for your amusement the antics of the world's only foul mouthed, chair throwing, monkey dancing, Executive Officer of a Multibillion Dollar Enterprise. There is a reason why you don't hear of this kind of behavior from heads of Mitsubishi, Ford Motor Company, or the Bank of England: a certain maturity of emotional control and mature behavior is generally considered necessary to properly manage huge assets.

Re:Microsoft's not dying

[j-pimp]

of the world's only foul mouthed, chair throwing, monkey dancing, Executive Officer of a Multibillion Dollar Enterprise. There is a reason why you don't hear of this kind of behavior from heads of Mitsubishi, Ford Motor Company, or the Bank of England: a certain maturity of emotional control and mature behavior is generally considered necessary to properly manage huge assets.

Also, because very few large corporations attract the same kind of love them or hate them reaction from their industry. I think these things happen at other corporations, it just goes unreported.

Personally, I'd go as far as saying I'd prefer in a way to work for someone that throws chairs across a room because at least that person is passionate about his work. They may be passionate about making money, but I can't There are other ways to express that passion, but its better to hasve the passion and need to learn to more constructively channel it. Passion itself is much harder to teach. I do think Gates and Balmer are very passionate individuals, just passionate about different things than me. Their view of "great software" is also different than mine. Open source people can be just as passionate about their beliefs, and usually are. I tend to believe in there philosophical views more, which is why I tend to support open source more.

Re:Microsoft's not dying

[PFI_Optix]

Not too long ago, MS released several billion (I think) dollars to their stockholders.

I'm not convinced that hoarding some cash is a bad idea for a business. Clearly MS isn't sticking every penny they make into the bank, but if they were to take all of that cash and reinvest it in a venture that goes nowhere they're in a worse spot than before. By having a large amount of money readily available, it makes the company more stable on the long-term because they remove their sensitivity to market fluctuations.

Microsoft could have several very bad years before they had to start trimming their organization. Compare that to other companies that start laying people off during six-month slumps and you see where it's beneficial.

Re:Microsoft's not dying

[Anonymous Coward]

>> I seriously doubt Microsoft has enough cash on hand to keep paying its employees for the next five years without any income

Well, you're seriously misinformed then.

MS could pay all its staff for the next 50 years (with bonuses) without any income!

Re:Microsoft's not dying

[Anonymous Coward]

>>Bill Gates seems to understand this on some level, which I think is part of his motivation for distancing himself from Microsoft Corporation and becoming increasingly involved with his Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation work. That will be very satisfying to his ego

Oh FFS! The man is "satisfying his ego" by giving away his wealth and helping people with TB and AIDS.

What are you doing to help Mr 'Mystic Goat'?

Have you helped to improve the world today (other than by posting your fucking asinine whining here on slashdot)?

Ugh - you make me sick.

Re:Microsoft's not dying

[AusIV]

Where does this assertion come from? I find it extremely hard to believe that Microsoft has that much cash lying around that investors have no control over. You hear about Bill Gates and his extremely high net worth, but a huge portion of that is in Microsoft stock. If Microsoft decided to just stop being profitable, the stock would be rapidly devalued, and Bill Gates himself would take a serious financial hit.

I'm not completely ruling out the possibility, but until I see some financial records of microsoft, I'm not going to believe this.

Re:Microsoft's not dying

[Bing Tsher E]

It probably isn't a strong point of your arguement to use an example like Ford Motor Company as a company with good business practices. They've squandered their entire company on exceptions and loopholes to vehicle emissions and safety standards (i.e. building SUVs and basically letting their passenger line wilt to near death.) Ford is an ill-managed failing company. The only thing that keeps them operating is the sheer mass of the company.

Re:Microsoft's not dying

[Anonymous Coward]

He's joking.

Re:Microsoft's not dying

[_damnit_]

From an interview on Forbes.com with John Connors, CFO of Microsoft after the announcement that they were issuing a one-time dividend of 30 billion (yes with a B) dollars:

John Connors: The first thing was to keep enough cash on hand to give us flexibility to manage things like a severe short-term economic dislocation or investment opportunities. We haven't publicly said how much cash that will be, but it's probably fair to assume that, after the upcoming distribution, we will still have around $25 billion to $40 billion on hand.

and here's another quote from the same article:

We have a relatively unique model, in that our business is not capital-intensive. What drove our approach is that Bill [Gates] and Steve [Ballmer] and the board are pretty conservative. We don't want to be in the position where we have to make decisions because of the balance sheet. And while we don't anticipate that we would ever have a year with expenses but no revenue, we'll probably keep at least one year of operating expenses and cost of goods sold in cash on hand--that's around $20 billion in cash and short-term investments.

Now if you like you can also look at their SEC filings if you want to argue with people. AFTER the $30,000,000,000 dividend, they'll have AT LEAST $25-40 billion dollars. That means they have on hand $55-70 billion dollars cash or liquid assets. Your last statement that shareholders would have "no control" over this money is just dumb. Shareholders have final control over everything. That's why they have yearly votes.

This myth has been confirmed.

Microsoft Annual Report 2005

Problems with OO.o

[ajs318]

OpenOffice.org began life as StarOffice, a closed-source product. The closed-source heritage becomes obvious when you study the code: there are things in there that whoever wrote them, was evidently banking on nobody ever seeing them. OO.o 1.x would not even compile at all on 64-bit, and even on 32-bit the make output is riddled with warnings.

What's really required is for somebody to sit down and start afresh in reimplementing the whole of OpenOffice.org from scratch. Whilst it's nice to talk of code reusability, the reality in this case is that the nice, reusable bits are buried too deeply in nasty, gicky stuff to be retrievable. I say ditch the bathwater, the baby and all; go back to square one, and do it properly this time.

{And if the new OpenOffice.org doesn't contain significant amounts of old OO.o code, then it won't be a derivative work, but a new work in its own right; and so can be placed under a different licence. BSD if the team are prepared to fight tooth and nail against proprietary forks, GPL if they aren't.}

Re:Problems with OO.o

[Anonymous Coward]

What's really required is for somebody to sit down and start afresh in reimplementing the whole of OpenOffice.org from scratch.

There's no need to start a new project, since we already have GNOME Office and KOffice.

In other news..

[saboola]

Moon urged to give up tidal control. Moon will not be available to fully comment until FEB. 13 at 4:44.

Guilty is not Java, or Sun.

[ahmetaa]

i am always buffled with the ignorance of the people who thinks Java is causing the problems with the OpenOffice project.
- Java is used in a small amount of the OpenOffice (database and some less known seperate components). i wish it would be used more. Especially in the GUI part, check NeoOffice if you want.
- Bloat is caused by the C++ side of the application. And not Sun's fault it was already rotten when Sun bought the company.
- Complexity is caused by the C++ side of the application. it would be hell if they tried to use C++ for all the database part.
- People thinks everybody will rush to participate code if it would e an organization are dreaming. if Sun does not pay, it will be in the hands of one or two stinky hacker. coding C++ code is no feast especially for this magnitude of the project. Firefox has a bunch of core developers and one million people who just rub the developers back, thay are suffering grately. Eclipse is lucky on that side because they use a better and easier programming language (Java).

Couldn't happen soon enough

[john-da-luthrun]

Let's face it, OOo is pretty lame. I hate to say it, but it's true. The user interface is simply atrocious (ever tried using outline numbering? Or perhaps you could try outline numbering instead? Yup, two different features with the same name. Neither of which works properly.) For complex documents (eg legal agreements) I'm reduced to accessing my firm's Word 2000 installation under Citrix. :-(

Re:Couldn't happen soon enough

[managementboy]

Strange, I have been using OO Writer since it was StarWriter 5.0 for DOS and the outline numbering has worked for all legal documents I have made. I have also used it on a doctorate paper and countless technical documentations. I will grant you one thing, the dialog that allows you to use this feature shoud get a mayor rewrite. As you have singled out one feature you hate in OO I will do the same for Word 2000: File format! While this is not truly open (free and documented) its just a data grave where each version makes the next impossible to use... Switch to KWrite if you will, but if you need full feature support and openness stick to OO.org

Re:Couldn't happen soon enough

[john-da-luthrun]

I agree but it's out of my hands. My firm uses .DOC exclusively and doesn't seem to care that every single one of the thousands of .DOC files we create every day only increases MS's power and control over our business.

Re:Couldn't happen soon enough

[kocsonya]

> Strange, I have been using OO Writer since it was StarWriter 5.0 for DOS and
> the outline numbering has worked for all legal documents I have made. I have
> also used it on a doctorate paper and countless technical documentations.

OK, let's assume that you are in chapter 2, subchapter 4 sub-subchapter 3.
Chapters are using roman numerals, subchapters arabic numerals and sub-sub chapters letters,
so in OO's usual notation we are at II.4.c

Now try to create any of the following outline number formats:

II.4(c) (often used in legal)
II.4/c (ditto)
II 4c or II-4-c or just II 4 c
Or maybe you want a different order, say "4c of II"?

Alas, OO's outline numbering can't do that. The numbers can only be in the natural order (i.e. chapter, sub, sub-sub and so on) and there can not be anything but a single period between them. I avoid MS like the plague, but Word can easily do all the above. The above problem was reported several times since SO6 times (by me, others may have reported it earlier) and nothing is done.

Now the next tricky issue with outline numbering that it is strictly one style to one level. If you have a Heading1 style for your chapters (outline numbering level 1) and then you want to create appendices, you have to create the whole new header hierarchy for the appendix, because you can't tell OO's otline numbering system that it
- should change the numbering style from this point
- should reset the counter at this point

These features were all available in ApplixWare way back in the late nineties (it's a shame that it died), plus a lot more.

Also, OO's Chart is just a toy. It's so bad that it is literary unusable for any scientific or engineering purpose. It was stated that the Chart module was to be rewritten for SO7/OO1.x then SO8/OO2.x and now I guess SO9/OO3.x.

So, OO is very far from perfect. The user interface, numbering and charts in ApplixWare some seven years ago were lightyears ahead of OO's current offering. Even Word can do a few things that OO can't. Try to build complex documents with master document templates and such.

Don't get me wrong, I use OO day by day. The old one, actually, because 2.x didn't fix the things that were broken in the old one (but broke, for example, the presentation if you don't run KDE or Gnome) and the new look and feel is just not worth it. I'm sure that it's more than adequete for most people. However, from my niche it's just not that crash hot. I couldn't care less if I can rotate 3D objects using OpenGL (although it looks very impressive) but I do care that I can't create a chart where two X-Y datasets have different X values or where the X data is
in a column and the Y in a row (don't even think about a data series that is spatially not continuous - although, of course, ApplixWare did that happily). I also care about the user interface giving me modal windows and interface elements that pop up and disappear depending on the cursor position in the text. In ApplixWare, of course, there were no modal windows (apart from error messages and file requesters) and the various settings windows did not disappear (they just greyed themselves out fully or partially if they were not applicable to the context) so all your windows always were where you had put them, you didn't have to close them and when they were applicable, they also gave you immediate info about the context, as if someone was thinking about user interface design before coding.

In short, I think OO is very, very feature-rich but sometimes functionally challenged.

Zoltan

Not the issue

[Anonymous Coward]

The theory (and admittedly, it IS a theory at this stage) is that if Sun *didn't* get copyright of all contributions, other companies like IBM might contribute. In that case, it could be that 80% of the code is contributed by other than Sun.

The fact of 80% currently contributed by Sun is possibly die to the fact that nobody else wants to *really* give up their code and let Sun make money off it when they cannot.

OpenOffice dosen't matter - ODF does

[antonallan]

A lot of the people here have high hopes for OpenOffice to be the killer app that could bring enterprise users to Linux. Hence the many suggestions and ideas about what Sun should do with it.

But to me, the key is not OpenOffice but OpenDocument. With the widespread adaptation of an open document format, in a few years people will stop caring what Office suite you are running - just like I don't care about your brand of email client, I just assume you can read the emails I send you.

For that reason, Suns ownership of OpenOffice has been all for the good - they could probably not have justified the expense to their shareholders if they had just given it all up to a foundation - and we should all be very grateful. Now we have ODF, we have a working implementation (OO.o), and all FOSS developers can choose to work on their Office software of choice, as long as they are ODF-compliant, which will in the end lead to real choice for all of us that are mostly users.

As for Sun keeping OpenOffice or giving it to a foundation - who cares?

Re:OpenOffice dosen't matter - ODF does

[Anonymous Coward]

But to me, the key is not OpenOffice but OpenDocument. With the widespread adaptation of an open document format, in a few years people will stop caring what Office suite you are running - just like I don't care about your brand of email client, I just assume you can read the emails I send you.

Nice point! And that's the idea behind the O3 project:

"While the majority of the software industry is gathering around this new standard, the notable exception has been Microsoft and its industry-dominating Microsoft Office suite of products. Whether this is due to lack of demand, technical difficulty or specific intent does not matter."

"The import and export filters built into the OpenOffice.org suite are not only a way to get files of other types in and out of OpenOffice.org. They represent a collection of mature, well maintained, and continuously improving document format converters.

All that needs to be done is to take existing functionality from OpenOffice.org, and inject it into Microsoft Office in reverse, but without having to spend a lot of development time, or making it hard for Office users to install."

http://o3.phase-n.com/

Who cares?

[xander26]

It seems to me that there is a double agenda here. This is what I hate the most about the open source community. They think all software should be open, regardless of what the developer of the code actually wants. Mr. Torvalds (I applauded btw, when he stuck with GPL v2) can release the Linux kernel under what ever license he wants to, since he's the one who developed it. Likewise, OOo is Sun's baby, and they should be able to do with it what they want. Now, before you all think I'm a troll I like open source. I like the fact that I can go into the code and figure out how it works. I even run Linux as my main desktop OS at home, and I use it to run my home-built media center and firewall. However, it should be up to who ever owns the code...and in this case, it's Sun. This is a free society right?

Re:Who cares?

[robertjw]

However, it should be up to who ever owns the code...and in this case, it's Sun. This is a free society right?

Absolutely, but it's also free to ask them to give up those rights. No one is forcing them or infringing on their rights, the developers that work on the project are 'urging' Sun to create a foundation. OpenOffice is a good product, it would be a shame to fork it so other big companies would feel more comfortable increasing thier contributions. The best thing for the community as a whole would be to separate OOo from Sun, of course this may not be the best thing for Sun and they get to make the decision.

Give them a break...

[benmhall]

Wow. They release the best office suite for Linux/Unix, not to mention the only truly cross-platform office suite, under the LGPL and it still isn't enough. No, they have to set up a foundation.

Come on.

The only reason for the Mozilla Foundation was because AOL/Netscape wanted to stop bleeding money into a project that was giving them nothing. Sure, it's been a good move for Mozilla projects, but Sun's ongoing commitment to OpenOffice/StarOffice just shows how strongly they believe in the project. If OpenOffice was languishing, then it might be time to ask them to step aside and establish a Foundation. This is clearly not the case. Moreover, OpenOffice's license is very cut and dried. You can easily fork the project (as has been done with Workplace and, to a lesser extent, with NeoOffice.) Heck, you can even fork it and setup a foundation. Good luck replacing those Sun engineers, though.

OpenOffice is hugely important to Linux, Unix and Open Source in general. For the most part, I think that Sun has been doing an outstanding job with the code. Why ask them to further distance themselves from the project now? It's not like they're doing it a disservice. (As was arguably the case with Netscape/Mozilla.)

And another thing, people taking potshots at OOo 2's use of Java in Base should realize that this was yet another significant contribution to the project from Sun. Base, even with it's faults, works very well. In fact, it has already allowed me to use MySQL/OOo in place of Access at work. Sure it uses Java, but this was done for legitimate reasons with an eye on compatibility. The proof of this being that Red Hat et al. were so quickly able to port Base to the gjc. I highly doubt that the relative ease of this task was a coincidence.

Really, that this has come up at all is a true shame. I fear that it shows that even if Sun were to open source Java, people would still find some way to complain. Sun certainly does some strange things, but their contributions to OpenOffice have been nothing short of fantastic. They should be commended for Giving Microsoft their first real competition in years.

Re:Give them a break...

[hritcu]

Sun's contribution to open source is extremely valuable, and so it's IBM's. I really hate to see the two undermining each other's efforts. They should know better.

As for the slashdotters ... they will always find something to pick on, no matter what the subject is.

You lost the memo: insightful == funny

[hummassa]

Someone decided that, as the Funny moderation does not award the poster karma points, when you have mod points and think a post is funny, you should mod as Insightful, that benefit the poster. So, doing it became fashinonable here on /.

People who do that and encounter me as a meta-mod stay a lot of time without mod points... :-)

Re:You lost the memo: insightful == funny

[Bing Tsher E]

Anybody who wastes their +1 posting privledge to post a comment that is more than 50% focused on 'moderation' should never again be allowed to moderate or 'meta' moderate. Better yet would be for such a person to permanently lose their +1 posting privledges, but some would say that goes too far.

Java

[Bizzeh]

if sun give up OOo to a free foundation, does that mean they can FINALY get rid of the last of the java in OOo?

Re:Java

[LDoggg_]

What do you mean finally?

Java is being used for OpenOffice Base(MS Access competitor).
This is new with 2.0 and it works just fine. Its not like there's some old java legacy code that needs to be replaced.

Open Projects

[Doc Ruby]

If Sun releases control over the project, that will make it more likely that an independent project will split OO.o into a server and AJAX clients. And that another project will cluster the OO.o server. Then Web forms and GUIs can finally have the kinds of editing control we deserve in the 21st Century. Like automatic version control. Or anything that beats these slate-like TEXTAREAs.

WordPro Filters!

[trygstad]

I just want the OpneOffice.org folks to do whatever it will take to get IBM/Lotus to contribute import filters for all of the SmartSuite apps, but especially WordPro, which I have been using since it was AmiPro 1.1. Then I can finally give up WordPro (much as I love it) so I can have commonality on my PC, Mac, and Linux boxes! If this is what it takes, I'm for it.

Great way to discourage companies from OS

[Augusto]

I thought the goal was to get more companies to open source products?

Sun has spent a lot of money on this product, and now people are demanding that they give this up too? I don't get it. Wouldn't this discourage people from opening up their projects to OS?

You can already fork this and do your own thing right? There's no incentive for Sun to "give up" more control over this, unless they want to fire a bunch of developers Sun pays for to lower their costs.

The LGPL is to stop them

[Anonymous Coward]

Sun could close down the OpenOffice project tomorrow, and a fork would be created instantly. This is legal under the LGPL. See, Sun can't just revoke the LGPL because they feel like it. Once the code is made free, it's free forever. It can't be made un-free after that, not by ANYONE. That's the whole point of the license!!

This hypothetical project that forks the code would be forced to use the LGPL for all eternity, as they do not own the copyright. But it could exist just fine. Consider that the Linux kernel is in the same situation.

Re:The LGPL is to stop them

[sbrown123]

See, Sun can't just revoke the LGPL because they feel like it.

Why not? To change the license of a project it would require all contributors to agree to the change. That's pretty tough work. I've seen it done in stages where a project has multiple licenses. A good example of a license migration would be Mozillas move to rid itself of outdated Netscape licences. But Sun doesn't have to worry about that since, like I said early, according to the JCA the original contributor gives Sun full rights to make any and all decisions about the code. Fork the code after they change the license and they can hunt you down like the idiots who were peddling Microsoft's Window source code.

Re:The LGPL is to stop them

[despisethesun]

No, they can't. You received the app and its code while it was under the LGPL, you have permission to continue using and distributing it under the LGPL. They can release new versions under a closed license and give you shit for distributing those, but the terms of the FSF's licenses prevent them from taking away rights to the software you already have. There is nothing in there that says the terms of the license are subject to change with or without notice. Other projects have gone from GPL to proprietary and the existing code was still fair game. Cut with the FUD.

bah

[jeriqo]

"Both Mozilla and Eclipse managed to attract an increasing number of developers after the projects were moved over to an independent foundation."

Okey.. that's 2 good examples.... out of.... thousands of projects ?

Companies make better products. Period.

At least it's the developers seeking a foundation

[Shutter_BC]

Better than the other way around. The Mambo / Joomla ( http://www.joomla.org/ ) split comes to mind, where Miro wanted to start a foundation but didn't include most of the core development team on that foundation. In that case, the foundation seemed to serve the purpose of bringing an open source product BACK in control of the company that set it free as OSS in the past.

Re:WordPro Filters! Approach Interface!!

[davidsyes]

Well, I for one PREFER to keep SmartSuite around. SO & OO.o could USE a good number of the features that SmartSuite has had since 1995, particularly the:

-LWP tabbed interface for dealing with multiple/compound/master documents
-non-modal, compact Properties Dialog (WHY does OO.o have supersized/larger-than-necessary boxes?) Maybe it could be called "Writer Pro"...

-Approach database interface, which puts to shame the inch-along-by-the-release interface in base, which has taken way too long to arrive. Approach could replace base. Maybe call it "BaseApproach"

If any of the SO/OO.o team actually LOOKED at SmartSuite instead of ignoring the LWP filters and user interface, SO.o and OO.o would probably have TWICE the amount of uptake-- assuming Sun and IBM/Lotus could work together. It's damned annoying to see OO.o forging ahead in oblivion, rejecting award-winning user interface aspects that should NOT be ignored in a nascent (or, potentially nascent) Open Source project.

Since IBM/Lotus are reticent to Open Source the parts of SmartSuite they own, then I am sure that if OO.o were to take on some prized aspects of SmartSuite but the code offered back to IBM/Lotus, then maybe, just MAYbe, IBM/Lotus would try to breathe life back into that product-- and possibly be willing to more publically admit to some interest in springboarding OO.o ahead.

Sounds like the latest news ...

[hritcu]

... from the IBM P.R. department with the title: "IBM urges Sun to give up OpenOffice control"

The truth is that if a high enough percentage of the OpenOffice.org people wanted to break up with Sun nobody could stop them - they could just FORK. But wait ... more than half of the OpenOffice.org developers are Sun EMPLOYEES! So how could _OpenOffice.org_ want "Sun Microsystems to give up control over the OpenOffice productivity suite, and donate the intellectual property to an independent not-for-profit foundation" (quote from the article)? And what developer would consciously use a term like intellectual property in the first place?

Remove java

[mnmn]

I think Sun is really being urged to remove Java from OO. Its the main reason why OO is always slower than MS Office 2000. We dont enjoy java being shoved down our throats, and just a clean C/C++ interface with GUI wrappers that will work with any GUI will do.

OO is a great project, but it doesnt quite smack of freedom as does gcc.

Re:Remove java

[LDoggg_]

OO is a great project, but it doesnt quite smack of freedom as does gcc.

How so? Just becuase the copyright holder is Sun instead of the FSF?
You're free to download it. You're free to redistribute it. You're free modify it. You're free to fork it. You're free to get your own developers to help you out with it. Your free to use a non proprietary JRE with it.

Re:Remove java

[mnmn]

Am I free to go through the source code of Java on which it depends?

Its like BMW opensourcing their mercedes line, except the engine.

Re:Remove java

[LDoggg_]

Am I free to go through the source code of Java on which it depends?

Not Sun's implementation, of course. But are most definetly free to got through the source of the FSF's implementation.
I'm using open office base on fedora with gcj/gij and it works great.

Its like BMW opensourcing their mercedes line, except the engine.

No. That is a bad analogy. It is nothing like that.
Open Office 2 on fedora does not depend on a single piece of proprietary close sourced code.

Just Fork It! (TM)

[Anonymous Coward]

If Sun isn't doing a good job, just fork it! (OpenOffice.org is open, isn't it?)

Companies are chomping at the bit...

[CarpetShark]

If you listened to the Massachussettss talks, you'll have heard the big companies basically chomping at the bit to take back some of Microsoft's Office market. I think they'd gladly work together, given sufficient incentive. What's more, it'd be good for users, and not just them.

I don't want another Mambo

[PurpleMonkeyKing]

This would make sense if a majority of developers are complaining about who holds copyright. I know Mambo was eventually handed off to the Mambo Foundation, but developers did not stop there. They wanted all revenues generated by Mambo to go to the foundation, also. I just hope that developers don't abandon OO.o due to monetary issues. Seeing this sort of bickering between people leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

I don't know if you're attacking me, buddy...

[hummassa]

But I was just answering the (offtopic, I know) doubt about the moderation that the grandparent post expressed. But, as I am justifying myself to you, I "waste" my "+1" karma bonus a lot, because I don't post as AC -- ever -- and because of that I forget sometimes to check the other checkbox.

Properly "No Karma Bonused",
yours friendly,
massas. .umbertos.

don't bite the hand that feed's you

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not normally one to take the side of the corporations but considering 80% of OO.o developers are employed by sun it seems like asking them to completely relinquish control of OO.o is a bit like biting the hand that feeds you.

Sun always gets hammered on

[typical]

Sun always gets griped at every time it does anything nice for the open source world.

It's not just OO. Take Java.

I don't have a problem with Sun merely making the Java spec open and freely available. If open source is the panacea that ESR claims it is, then it could produce a good JVM. Instead, I kept hearing him attacking Sun for not also giving up their Java *implementation*.

Same thing with OpenOffice.

If it's really in Sun's interest to back off, then Sun can probably figure that out.

My take is that OO and Java are both slow, RAM-hungry things that I can happily do without, so I may be more than a little biased -- my life is not badly impacted by either not being maximally free. However, if I was an exec at Sun, I'd be getting awfully annoyed with the constant begging for free software.

Frankly, I've got a much more convincing reason why people don't hack on OO -- it's a big project. It's a pain to drop in and do a little work on a large codebase unless it's heavily modularized (a la emacs). It's the same reason that Netscape had to do most of the work on Mozilla and why XFree86 doesn't get tons of volunteers writing code. They're overwhelming enough that you can't just drop in, add a little feature, and leave.

On the other hand, there are scads of CPAN modules, because each module is a little kingdom unto itself.

The more modular the software, the better it works with OSS. Break out the spellchecker and let people who like trying out spellchecker algorithms play with it. Break out the font rendering engine. Break out everything possible. ...enough rambling for one night...

evidence this works

[Stu Charlton]

The Eclipse project is good evidence that it make sense to let go of a project. IBM creating the foundation was arguably when it really took off, particularly in terms of making competitors comfortable with using that platform for their dev environments.

oo needs a big overhaul

[Anonymous Coward]

I use OpenOffice on a regular basis. Its clear me that it needs a huge overhaul, in much the same way that FireFox was to Mozilla. Open office is bloatware. It consumes far too much memory, takes too long to load, and worst of all it contains Java. Java is a great language - but it is only useful on the server side. Eclipse is about the only successful client-side Java application I know... and Eclipse is extremely heavy on memory requirements. Sun must face the fact that Java has its limitations and will only serve to jeopardise the OO project.

Aside from the Java issue, the OO code needs to be refactored, slimmed down and performance tuned. Large sections of the functionality need to be ripped out and packaged as plugins/modules.

Another important point is that Open Office is still not 100% compatible with Microsoft Word/Excel/Powerpoint. It will only achieve widespread use when it attains this. I would go so far as to say that it should default to the Word document format, until it obtain enough market share to shift the market onto its side.

Somebody should tell that to Red Hat

[Anonymous Coward]

From the Red Hat Subscription Agreement:

"IF CUSTOMER DOES NOT ACCEPT THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT, THEN IT MUST NOT USE OR PURCHASE RED HAT PRODUCTS AND SERVICES."

In other words, if you want to use RH for free, its Fedora or CentOS. If you want to contribute code, and it ends up in RHEL, Red Hat will sell it to you.

Also, regarding OpenOffice, IBM SELLS its OpenOffice-forked Workplace product.