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.

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]

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!'

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.

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

[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.

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: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.

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.

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.

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: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: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.

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.

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

[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: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.

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.}

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. :-(

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.