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Novell "Forking" OpenOffice.org
l2718 writes to mention that In the wake of their recent deal with Microsoft, Novell has announced a new version of OpenOffice.org which will support Microsoft's planned Office formal, Open XML. From the article: "The translators will be made available as plug-ins to Novell's OpenOffice.org product. Novell will release the code to integrate the Open XML format into its product as open source and submit it for inclusion in the OpenOffice.org project. As a result, end users will be able to more easily share files between Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org, as documents will better maintain consistent formats, formulas and style templates across the two office productivity suites."
Nice FUD, slashdot.
Does this look like Microsoft back to its old "embrace and extend" tricks to anyone else?
(rot13) rpbzbab@tznvy.pbz
When did "forking" come to mean "releasing plugins for a product"?
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
How does providing an additional translator module constitute a "fork"? Looks more like more Novell-trolling to me.
The OpenOffice.org architecture does not support dynamically loaded plugins. Perhaps future versions will include such support, but as it stands now, that just isn't the case.
To add functionality, one must add to or patch the existing code, and rebuild it from scratch. That's what Novell is doing in this case, from the sounds of it. It's unlikely that the OpenOffice.org team would accept any code contributed from Novell. There's now so much uncertainty swirling around whether or not code from them is safe, that's it's likely quicker, easier and safest just to ignore any contributions coming from them.
So if the OpenOffice.org team wisely rejects any patches and code from Novell's developers, Novell will in essence be forced into forking OpenOffice.org, in the traditional sense of the word.
I have been an OpenOffice.org supporter and evangelist for many years. It saddens me to see Novell do these things because they at once seem good for their business but place people on the road to vendor lock-in once more. The Microsoft formats are closed and incompatible. The sane approach would be to standardize ODF across the board.
Novell must protect its business as an obligation to its shareholders. In the process, though, they may alienate some of the open-source community supporters to the point where countermeasures may be executed. Forks like this mean that some open-source developers and organizations may ban or license their software in such a way that prevents Novell from sharing the goodies. This in turn results in fragmentation that benefits nobody but Microsoft and its offerings.
This is a master stroke from Microsoft's point of view because this way they may sneak OpenXML into organizations that had otherwise had the sanity to abandon MS-Office and forces them to move in that direction again. Novell gets stuck in the middle, with their leadership getting screwed from both ends (open-source developers and advocates in one corner, and Microsoft in the other) while thinking that they are doing something good. In the end nobody but Microsoft wins this one.
Just say "NO" to OpenXML in an OpenOffice.org fork. Make it an optional package download, and make it a non-default setting, but don't fork the code. In fact, I'd go one step further and make it a requirement for Microsoft Office (and Office Mac) to support ODF if they want OpenXML included in any open-source product. That would make this a two-way street. Are you listening, Novell?
Cheers,
E
http://eugeneciurana.com | http://ciurana.eu
This Novell bashing is absolutely not necessary. All Novell is doing is releasing several plugins for Open Office and MS Office. Red Hat could have done this too. And those plugins are all open source and hosted on sourceforge.
Couldn't this be done as an extension/plugin for OO? It would seem that would be more reasonable than a fork.
Does anyone know if this changes the license for the entire product? Would they then be able to package proprietary code with it? If so this might be an attempt to not only "embrace and extend" but to gain market share from a competitor using a competitors software. (Eg. It doesn't matter if there is a free alternative, if there is a free alternative which is under their control)
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But I thought the whole point of OSS and the like is that you could extend and modify as you like. If you can then make money on it that's fine, but okey-dokey as long as you comply with the license. At its core its Novell doing just that? Sure they're making themselves pariah's amongst the Linux crowd, but isn't that the kind of risk that OSS is supposed to allow?
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
It's also a limited-time agreement. The indemnity has a time limit. That means that they promise not to sue them now, but nothing is stopping them from suing them later - once they are known to possess offending products.
You know, kind of like Iraq. We knew they had WMDs at some point because we sold them the technology and much of the materials...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I've been a fence-sitter for a while, with respect to the accuracy of Groklaw, due mostly to the fact that I'm too lazy to research and confirm the accuracy of PJ's interpretations of the SCO/Linux legalese (which is almost everything I've ever read on Groklaw). This article, as well as many of the comments PJ made under the article, have lead me to the conclusion that Groklaw is not an objective and/or reliable source of information, and would be better regarded as a political activist site.
You have tried to support your argument with faulty reasoning! Go directly to jail; do not pass Go, do not collect $200!
People have been forking Firefox by making plug-ins for it.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
This is a big step in getting more businesses to accept OpenOffice.org. As you all know, it's one of the problems between the two camps with MS holding the biggest cards. By providing this plugin, it takes one more major obstacle away from businesses/governments using OpenOffice.org.
Novell SUSE is trying to set themselves up as the desktop Linux vendor, a market that Red Hat has abandoned. To do this they have to make sure that their distro plays nice with MS and other desktop offerings. It's not only a good thing, but necessary. In the medium term OpenOffice.org to be able to open and save in "OPEN" XML format. I'm self employed and if I couldn't communicate with my clients using doc format I would have to get MS Office, no way around it. I'm just happy I'll be able to stick with OpenOffice.org in the future as I'm not holding my breath of all my clients changing soon.
Take note, take note, O world,
To be direct and honest is not safe.
How exactly did they "fork up" Linux?
:)
- By opening up the Ximian connector for Exchange?
- By refining KDE and making it a pleasant environment>?
- By making SuSE a distro which requires very little (since 10.1 NO) tweaking to get to real work in a heterogeneous environment?
- By making the installation process so easy it's actually enjoyable?
- By submitting many, many valuable patches to the kernel?
- By submitting many, many valuable patches to OpenOffice.org?
- By making ReiserFS journaling actually work?
If this is "forking up" Linux, I sincerely hope that they continue to do so. I've been running SuSE 10.2 off and on and it's shaping up to be a wonderful distribution. The first thing I'm turning off is the Novell-style K-menu, then installing beryl (a great fork of XGL), but aside from those 10.2 is great in what I've tried so far. I still like it more than I like kubuntu (and kubuntu is great).
Novell, keep forking up Linux!
Now, what will 10.3 or 11 bring? That's a different question. Up to now Novell has made wonderful contributions to Linux as a whole, gained a lot of exposure for the environment, and as many people believe (true or not) any publicity is good publicity. Their "covenant" with Microsoft is catching the attention of many PHBs, and are more likely to seriously consider choosing something other than Microsoft thanks in part to Novell's actions. From what I see here only reactionists and zealots are attacking Novell over this rather than taking a wait-and-see approach. I'm somewhat doubtful that Microsoft will seriously try to kill Linux, but use their partnership with Novell as a learning exercise to improve the Windows platform, since if they try to break interoperability, "taint" linux, or exercise obvious patents such as the oh-so "innovative" double-click that the DoJ will be all over them, and the EU will be coming down on them very hard. Being a monopoly which was convicted of abusing their monopoly status, Microsoft still has to be very careful in how they tread where agreements such as this are concerned.
Wait and see. If next summer's release proves to be incompatible with the GPL, then it will certainly be time to jump ship.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
No. The same security update would also break Office's compatibility with itself.
And interoperability does just make "it easier to migrate FROM Microsoft's standards".
First of all, note that this is not a fork of the code. Novell is developing a plugin to read the OpenXML format, a Microsoft format.
.doc format, or that there aren't any patent violations in the Linux kernel or OO.o already.
Let me repeat, They are not forking OpenOffice.
Hell, the sourceforge project is called "odf-converter", not "Novell's evil plan for OO.o".
Further, the only way that I could read the press release from Novell in order to interpret it as "Novell is forking OpenOffice.org" is by the sentence which refers to the current OpenOffice.org product as "Novell's OpenOffice.org". That sounds more like a marketing intern not understanding how OOo and open source works out, not a secret decision on Novell's part.
Finally, I really hate the attitude that many of those contributing to Slashdot has taken toward Novell's current projects. It's fairly one-sided. They are not violating the law. They are not violating the GPL. They are not violating the spirit of the GPL.
The point of the GPL is that anyone can take your code, change it, and redistribute it, as long as they follow the rules. You can't make a distinction between people redistributing your software who you like and those who you don't like.
There's a lot of you who are sounding like Bush-style Republicans who want free speech for themselves, but not for those saying things they don't agree with. I bet a lot of you beating up on Novell today for taking advantage of the GPL are the same who beat up on Newt Gingrich the other day when he wanted to restrict free speech on the Internet. Hypocrites.
If you don't like Novell's contributions, don't accept them; if you think Novell is trying to get OpenXML into OO.o so MS can sue RedHat for patent infringement, think again. I doubt OpenXML is any more patent-ridden than the
In other words, Novell can't paint any bigger target on Linux's back than there already is. MS and IBM have so many ambiguous patents that they can sue any Linux user for the indefinite future.
Believe it or not, Novell may just be trying to differentiate its product so people would buy it over their competitor's product. You know, effectively compete in the business world. That sort of thing.
Groklaw used to be a place where I could get a detailed analysis of legal issues I didn't understand. Now, it seems to have disintegrated into blind zealotry. Maybe they were trying to be funny in the article, and I just didn't get the joke...
If my theory holds, somebody with an itchy pen-finger wouldn't even have to wait for a Microsoft patent suit to sue the pair -- although I'd probably wait for the resolution of IBM's copyright countersuit against SCO for a possibly useful precedent.
There's usually more than one way to cat a file.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Read up on the DR-DOS and Windows 3.0 beta issue.
It is trivial to test for specific cases and force "incompatibility" in all others.
And no, if you're implementing Microsoft's standards on a different platform, Microsoft still controls those standards and can keep changing them whenever they want to.
That doesn't even bring up any patents that Microsoft has on their formats.
Again, the focus should be on implementing Open/Free standards, not proprietary ones.
My worry here is that the add-on itself would be closed-source, and the GPL code would simply be a compatibility layer necessary to run and use the add-on. With that in place the two companies could concievably set up a situation where the mainline OpenOffice sources are playing catch-up with add-on updates that require new pieces of source code to actually use in the standard .Org offering, especially if that compatibility code becomes tangled up in some other feature that OOo is unwilling or unable (due to more obvious and legit patent issues) to make a part of the "real" releases. In other words, it's all legal and GPL-OK, but there's little hope for any OpenOffice other than Novell's actually being able to open the latest version at any point in time.
That's the point where embrace/extend comes into play. Once everyone on open-source is using NOO instead of OOo, Microsoft and Novell can start adding a tweak here, an improvement there, maybe the occasional formatting bug...
Eh, maybe it's farfetched but I can't help but think about it.
(rot13) rpbzbab@tznvy.pbz
First off Novell is not part of the agreement, the customers are. So if the mod is covered by MS technology, Novell is in violation for releasing it.
Lets say for arguments sake that the mod is covered my MS patents and Novell is excluded from liability. If MS agrees to allow Novell to release said technology under the terms of the GPL, they agree to accept those terms. This means that if OO.o adopts the patch, there is nothing MS can do about it as per the GPL.
Lastly, with all the trouble the EU is putting MS through with documenting their office formats, do you honestly believe MS would get away with dragging OO.o into court for supporting them? Your post is only proof that bias trumps logic.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
If I am a small/medium sized company interested in selecting OpenOffice over MS Office/Word (tm) then I should be quite happy with this news. At the moment OpenOffice happily opens most/nearly all documents without any problems, it even does Asian/etc scripts without a hitch (long the bane of open source, it seems most programmers never left ASCII country). Now, Office 2007 is on the horizon, and surprise, with it comes a NEW FILE FORMAT.
What is one to do -- just tell your suppliers (lots of clueless typing pool secretaries here) to get stuffed ; or fork out #of desktops * $(Microsoft Levy) = $lots of cash for a completely unwanted / unnecessary upgrade? Because, honestely, what is there new in Office 2007 that isn't already covered in all of the previous versions? For 99.5% of all communications you just need a glorified typewriter.
So an import filter -- without a hefty price tag -- would work.
Now back to our usual patent war (tm) discussion...
> There was a comment about PJ spreading FUD, to which she replied that she was guessing because the details of the MS-Novell agreement aren't public so she has to guess. That's all fine and dandy, but then an editorial opinion shouldn't be reported as a fact.
Hey now, you work for Novell, disagree with her take on the Novell/MS deal, and now accuse her of bias because of that? I don't think that's very fair at all.
Anyhow, as someone who has read Groklaw for a few years now (and submitted enough stories from there to Slashdot to prove it), I feel inclined to comment that what she posted on the Microsoft/Novell deal was based on what she does know about the deal. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that a non-public deal with Microsoft at this time seems, well, underhanded at best. True, Novell did let Eben Moglen inspect the deal, but they more or less had to given that Eben is in a position to sue them for breach of the GPL. The FSF has also said that the GPL v3 will not allow any deals like the Microsoft/Novell deal, so even from that we know that it may well comply with the letter of the GPL v2, but it doesn't comply with the spirit of it because it helps Microsoft keep alive the FUD of the threat of patent litigation Microsoft cultivated so clearly with the SCO dealings. And we have statements, under oath, from the people who bankrolled SCO about Microsoft's involvement.
So how to you get off saying she's writing what she did because she doesn't know the whole deal (and who's fault is that that everyone can't see the secret provisions)? Do you not think it's monumentally stupid to have secret dealings with Microsoft after just how quickly they screw over "partners"? Go read that testimony again about how Microsoft left SCO's bankrollers out to try when things turned bad.
Frankly, from everything we know about the Novell deal, Novell was stupid: stupid to allow Microsoft to use them for FUD of a patent threat, stupid to make a deal that goes against the spirit (if not the letter) of the GPL, and stupid to think that we'd all just go along with this. And that's why Novell will need a forked version: because if they don't keep these things under GPL v2, they won't be able to keep that agreement with Microsoft.
Don't misunderstand, I can see what's in it for Novell--a fat sack of cash, an opportunity to be the Microsoft-blessed Linux company, and a bit of FUD to both help Microsoft hurt Linux adoption while driving anyone who won't go to Microsoft over to Novell. But I don't see why anyone should go along with it, and I don't see ANY reason to think that the non-public parts of the agreement would change one iota of this analysis.
Then again, you work for Novell. Care to tell me what private parts of the contract I'm not taking into consideration? Just what clause is in there that makes their agreement something other than a sell-out of the Linux community? What part of it wasn't intended to be used by Microsoft for software patent FUD? Even if it doesn't violate the GPL v2, what about it makes it a good idea?
The point of OpenXML is to raise the entry barriers for competitors. It is a huge complicated spec, that only an organization the size of MS will be able to fully implement. In addition, users will be encouraged to save their data in a format that is itself open, but which incorporates large elements that are not open, and which are not available for other platforms than Windows.
However, the problem is not that Novell has decided to support it. The problem is that the standards bodies accepted it as a standard.
Save your documents in something else. Doesn't matter what - pdf or odf will be fine. Not this.