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Sun Refuses LGPL for OpenOffice; Novell forks
TRS-80 writes "Kohei Yoshida wrote a long post on the history of Calc Solver, an optimization solver module for the Calc component of OpenOffice.org. After three years of jumping through Sun's hoops on his own time, Sun says it will duplicate the work because Kohei doesn't want to sign over ownership of the code. Adding insult to injury, Sun then invites him join this duplication. Because of Sun's refusal to accept LPGL extensions in the upstream code, Michael Meeks (who recently talked about Sun's OO.o community failings, and ODF and OOXML) has announced ooo-build (previously just for build fixes) is now a formal fork of OpenOffice to be located at http://go-oo.org/. "
to Michael Jackson and Weird Al Yankovich:
They told him, we don't your code around here
Don't wanna see your source, make it disappear
The license they don't like, and they made that clear
So fork it, Just fork it.
You better take your code, better do what you can
Don't wanna see it die, 'cause Sun wanna be da man!
You wanna own your code, better do what you can
So fork it, but you don't wanna be mad
Just fork it, fork it, fork it, fork it
No wants this to get too heated
Show 'em the way to free code that's right
It doesn't matter how the code comes to light
Just fork it, Fork it
Just fork it, Fork it
Just fork it, Fork it
Just fork it, Fork it
They won't take your code, best to leave while you can
Don't wanna fight with Sun, you wanna be da man
You wau wanna keep the code alive, just do what you can
So fork it, Just fork it,
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This is not an official "fork" of OpenOffice.org. This is simply a way for Windows user's to get a nice "Development version" of the office suite similar to what is deployed on most GNU/Linux Distributions. Of course if you don't want to use a "Development Version" on your workstations, you can get a stable version of the OOO-Build service with Novell's version of OpenOffice.org for Windows (which is what I prefer).
There is just as much or more license squabbling in the OSS world as there is the other world.
Yeah, but in the OSS world we still have access to all the software that's in dispute...
The OOo community, or, that is, both developers not working for Sun ;), have been talking about a fork for a while, well before the whole MS/Novell thing. Sun won't take any code from anyone not willing to assign the copyright to them, which pisses a lot of people off. They also won't take code that deviates from the strategic direction Sun wants to follow. Development proceeds at Sun's pace, which as some say -- giant land tortoises move faster. The OOo community needs to fork OOo for the good of the project.
My blog
I submitted a story about this a week or two ago. I think it's also worthy to note that IBM seems to have done the same thing.
What was the story I submitted tagged as? 'fudfudfud'
I wonder how many forks we'll see? I also wonder if anyone's going to actually make this real open source or if each company is going to fork their own copy and call all the shots on it? I hope someone learns that to be the OpenOffice you have to be open to community ideas, wants & needs as well as truly governed by the community.
My work here is dung.
While I agree with you that forking generally isn't good, at times it can possibly be a good thing. Take a look at XFree86/Xorg. Since the fork Xorg has had massive improvements, finally getting X to a modern state. Hopefully this fork will work on improving OOo, specifically in the GUI and speed areas (Novell, please at least copy Lotus Symphony's GUI or MS Office 2004 (OS X) but implement in native controls making use of system settings (it should follow my icon theme and font settings at least)). While I use OOo, it really doesn't seem as if Sun has much of a goal for it. The GUI isn't very intuitive, it still is horribly bloated, and overall it doesn't integrate with the system and looks hideous. Each new release doesn't seem to have any noticeable improvements over the previous. It just feels really stagnant. Hopefully this fork will have some direction and actually have a goal of competing with MS Office.
They really need a goal like this.
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
There is not relicensing involved. You don't understand. OOo is licensed under LGPL. But Sun want to *own* the code (which basically allow them to not comply with LGPL, therefore sublicensing). Kohei is just a developer that does not want his code (he wrote on his free time) to become non-Free. By keeping the copyright he prevent this to happen.
Hub
Same reason FSF demands that ownership is signed over
Je ne parle pas francais.
That's actually the nice thing about the OASIS format, it's already documented and standardized. Other office suites, such as Koffice; already use OASIS so the standard already has more weight than any office suite. In the end I would think that the fork will probably go nowhere, but if it does gain momentum then we can probably only benefit from the competition. A lot of people like to bitch any time effort is duplicated and any fork (or competition) is a waste of time, but those people only need to look at XFree86 (remember those guys?) vs Xorg. From what I understand, Sun drives away a considerable amount of support by wanting to be in total control instead of a steward of the project, so maybe a fork will produce results.
When you contribute open source code on your own time, it is an implicit admission that your code is worth little, and so don't be surprised to see someone else take the same view and duplicate it! The value is the fun in writing it, thus there will be some handful of people on the planet that share the same sense of fun, and will duplicate the work. I've seen lots of my stuff duplicated. And I've duplicated other projects. That is how people have fun and learn.
Imagine if you'd gotten money from Sun for your code. Would you care (as much) if they ignored the code? They'd have the right by having purchased it. But having spent money on it, they'd probably be less likely to discard it, and to start from scratch. Money makes a difference.
Jeez, this post is the typical complaint seen in charity work: "Oh, they didn't value my work, and I have no sense of self-worth, so now I'm all upset!" "The people running the charity are all in a clique and don't pay attention to the contributions of the other charity workers. They're destroying the spirit of the organization. Lets go create another organization that cares!" And then the cycle continues. The basic mistake is in thinking that other people have to value your work. They don't. Only you do.
Yes it is. Listen to your parent, didn't they teach you to respect your parent?
1: The "non-starter" speed. Even with the quickstarter, OpenOffice.org does not start that fast enough for me.
2: Absence of a full email client. I suggest they grab Mozilla's Thunderbird. I have no trouble with it at all.
3: Beauty. Heck, the [ugly and huge] icons on Linux can be made better looking.
4: Make its database offering comparable to Microsoft's Access. Right now, a lot of work has to be done.
Those are my US$0.02.
Did you know the the Canadian Dollar is now worth more than the US dollar? I just found out this morning!
I agree, it would make sense to have GPL or LGPL OOO without this copyright assignment thing.
Note that this alternative OOO would be able to use any code from Sun and offer developers an added incentive: they don't have to assign ownership to Sun or anybody. And that can be a big incentive these days after a few projects having closed their source (remember sourceforge, that was not pretty... And more recently CUPS was bought by Apple. Which is not bad per se but I could understand that people who spent a few months of their own time working on it might be unhappy that they did not get a cut of the sale price...)
Of course Sun contributed the main code base and you could see the contributions as a reward to them. But it only works if the new contributions from others are small compared to Sun's. When they become big, you can understand that the contributors might want a more democratic way of handling things.
That's why the FSF says you should assign the copyright to them. But recently they showed that they could use that to make everything GPL3, which is hardly a consensual proposal.
So I guess that the Linux way is pretty good: get code from people who prove they own it and make it GPL. Distribute everything under GPL and count on the absence of a single copyright owner to make sure the initial contract (the GPL version X) will be maintained forever.
How is Sun's policy any different than the FSF's policy for GNU projects they manage?
Copyright assignment to those in control of the project is a good thing. It consolidates interest, makes it possible to make licensing decisions and changes in the future, and allows the project to be defended legally.
It is also probably time for an OO fork. Forking is not evil or bad, forking is powerful and must be used with caution but it is the ultimate power the community has. I'm not especially surprised that Sun spent all that time previously talking about the evils of forks, it is only fitting since Sun intends to control anything they contribute with an iron fist. The project is stagnant, not because people don't contribute but because Sun doesn't accept changes or only wants certain features in StarOffice.
There should probably be a fork if we want to see something useful arise from OO but it shouldn't be run by Novell or Sun or IBM or any other corporation. A fork should be run by the community, for the community. A community run foundation or non-profit should be at its head with a no sale of the codebase clause in its charter. If Novell wants to donate the bandwidth then so be it.
Disclaimer: I am a founder of the NeoOffice project.
ooo-build has long been much more than build fixes. For many years it has been the public face of the work Ximian and Novell have poured into the OpenOffice.org source base. It has a long history of features that Ximian/Novell have helped develop, including (but not limited to):
ooo-build is about functionality and features. Despite the name, it has never been about "build fixes" as indicated in the article. The additional functionality is so awesome that, at NeoOffice, we have been using ooo-build in NeoOffice since March and have been donating back bug fixes and Mac-specific support patches to the ooo-build project. Years ago the Ximian work on OOo 1.0.3 was so promising that I put together a Mac OS X port back in 2003 which folks used for a long time. OxygenOffice also is based off of the ooo-build project (although I do not know if the OOOP team coordinates with ooo-build).
The ooo-build team has done amazing work. It is sad to see their work go unrecognized by so many and be outright rejected or stalled by Sun. NeoOffice users have loved having the functionality ooo-build brings currently and continues to bring in the future, and much of the work pioneered by ooo-build is critical to maintaining the Mac platform as a viable office solution (read VBA). Sun's lack of acknowledgement and incorporation of ooo-build features does nothing but hurt users. Having received a "you're welcome to join us" response similar to Kohei, I am glad I do not consider myself part of OOo any longer. The freedom of forking has allowed NeoOffice to incorporate all good code without all of these politics and marketing games. Forking has allowed NeoOffice to deliver to Mac users the features they wanted yesterday regardless of where those features came from. Sun has a history of a "not invented here" syndrome at times when it comes to code within their "open" source projects.
I'm glad to see that ooo-build is getting some recognition. I hope more users start seeing some of the great functionality they can get today on Windows and Linux, and once again I thank ooo-build, Ximian, and Novell for their continued dedication to improving OOo.
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