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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."
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?
The next logical step - should have been done allready. I can't really se OO go very much further unless they go this way.
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!
May the Maths Be with you!
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.
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.
Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
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.
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.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
- All of the existing code including the code they bought from Star Division, and
- 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!'I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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)
It's official. Most of you are morons.
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.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
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
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.
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.
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.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
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.
"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.
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).
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?
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.
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.
- sigs are for wimps.