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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?
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!
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.
Put identity in the browser.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
Put identity in the browser.
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.
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.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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.