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Oracle Buy Renews Call To Spin Off OpenOffice.org

Posted by kdawson on from the now-to-tempt-all-liberty-procured dept.

ericatcw writes "Some OpenOffice.org insiders say Oracle's purchase of Sun is reinvigorating the long-stymied push to spin off the open-source project into a 100% independent foundation. Freeing itself from Sun's (and soon to be Oracle's) orbit will attract more developers and more vendor support, two perennial problems due to Sun's tight grip on the project, say supporters, who wonder which foundation model might work best: Mozilla, Apache or Linux. Others prefer to take their chances under Larry Ellison, saying Oracle's take-no-prisoners salesforce and grudge against Microsoft could benefit OpenOffice.org. Version 3.0 of the Microsoft Office competitor has garnered 50 million downloads in the last six months."

14 of 170 comments (clear)

  1. Same old song [shift 7] dance... by Smidge207 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Christ, kids, for the last time, OpenOffice is part of a patent cross-licensing deal between Sun and Microsoft that resulted from all the anti-trust cases that Sun won. If OO is detached from Sun, it loses that umbrella patent protection and would likely be targeted by Microsoft. Looking at the big picture it would take a tiny amount of Oracle's R&D budget to improve OO. The first thing would be to support macros. A bi-directional translator would be acceptable. A more viable OO could do nothing but help Oracle in its epic battle with MSFT. So piss off.

    =Smidge=

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    Is it just my observation, or is eldavojohn an idiot?
    1. Re:Same old song [shift 7] dance... by rackserverdeals · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Are you sure? I thought it was StarOffice that was protected, but Sun was indemnifying Open Office users as well?

      In any case, the agreement was back in 2004 and nothing has happened since then.

      I had a thought in the past about house Sun could improve their OpenOffice development to include more outside contributors. It would be true for any of their open source projects.

      One of the big issues with big companies dealing with open source projects is that they aren't required to use the public colaboration tools. In fact it's harder for them to do so.

      Instead of Sally asking a question or presenting an idea to Joe on the mailing list, where everyone can see it, Sally might run into Joe in the hallway or walk up to his desk. So all these ideas that Sally and Joe are exchanging are "closed".

      It may be ore productive, but it doesn't include the community.

      It might be better for the community if employees working on open source projects mostly worked from home to encourage them to use the community collaboration tools.

      I think Sun might understand this. The disadvantage of meeting someone in the hallway is something I heard in a presentation from a Sun employee. That might be why they have been working on the Wonderland project.

      With Wonderland, you can get all the developers in one virtual conference room without having to really see or smell them which can be a very good thing. I've had my share of marathon coding sessions.

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      Dual Opteron < $600
    2. Re:Same old song [shift 7] dance... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Patent deal?!?! where's the proof?

    3. Re:Same old song [shift 7] dance... by rackserverdeals · · Score: 5, Interesting

      That's a very good point.

      When Sun was buying MySQL, there was a lot of FUD how it was going to ruin it, but looking at MySQL job trends it seems as if MySQL adoption has increased.

      Even after the acquisition, people try to paint Sun in a bad light over what's been going on with MySQL. For example, when it was announced that MySQL was going to come out with some features that would only be available in the closed source, enterprise version, the decision was attributed to Sun, when it seemed like it was really Mickos' decision. He was the former CEO of MySQL AB.

      When Sun reversed the decision, the news was the MySQL made the change.

      Even recently, what's been going on with Monty Widenus leaving Sun has been used to make Sun sound like it was hurting MySQL, but if you read Monty's blog about why he left Sun, it sounds more like he was unhappy with MySQL management, and not Sun.

      I get the impression that Monty wasn't all that happy with MySQL AB even before they were bought by Sun. When Sun bought them, he was hoping for things to improve but that never happened.

      Unfortunately, even a company like Sun is not the same as a startup before VC money and board members come in. It seems it's not as stifling as other companies though, but not what Monty was expecting.

      People like Monty probably aren't meant for that type of atmosphere. Probably why people like Andy Bechtolstein come and go frequently.

      --
      Dual Opteron < $600
    4. Re:Same old song [shift 7] dance... by rackserverdeals · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Yep, there was definitely a jump in postgresql around that time too, but the slope for MySQL appears to have gone up. There wasn't any sort of mass exodus from MySQL to PostgreSQL.

      Maybe some of that was people afraid of what would happen to MySQL as a result of Sun's acquisition but it could also be a result of Sun providing support for PostgreSQL and including it in Solaris 10. Around June 2007 there was a big spike and that was when Sun came out with the first industry standard benchmark Sun put out with PostgreSQL, Sun Java App Server on a T2000 UltraSPARC T1 server.

      I could really care less what happens to MySQL, I'm more concerned what happens with Sun's future contributions to PostgreSQL.

      --
      Dual Opteron < $600
  2. I for one... by damn_registrars · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Wouldn't mind seeing a "retail" version of open office on the shelves at the local best buy or walmart, and the open office group would likely need a large corporation to launch such an effort. If open office was sitting on the retail shelf for, say $50 in a nice box with all the open office apps, next to MS office at $300 with all the apps, we could see its acceptance really start to soar.

    Granted, I would still download it for free, because I'm cheap. But I would suspect plenty of people would be willing to dish out $50 or so for it, and being in a full retail box with a jewel case and printed manual adds "legitimacy" in the eyes of many consumers.

    And I suspect Oracle could help bankroll such a push much better than the open office foundation themselves could.

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    Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
    1. Re:I for one... by FudRucker · · Score: 2, Interesting

      not everybody wants to throw down 300 bucks for ms-office and with the economy in the toilet even more so. there are lots of people that just need to print a decent looking document, or use a generic spreadsheet for some basic accounting, i use openoffice's spreadsheets to do checkbook balancing since i have a debt card and no more checkbook with built in register so i save my receipts and when i get home i fire up OO.org and update the withdrawals and balance (would be nice if there was a template to automate some of it)...

      --
      Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
  3. Does Canonical support it? by Nerdposeur · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Considering that part of the argument for "Linux is great" is "look, you get an office suite for free," Canonical should be Oo's biggest supporter.

    Personally, I use Oo in Linux and Windows, but I think it's got a long way to go to compete with MS Office. I hope it catches up.

    (And before you ask, I have neither the skills nor the time to contribute to the code myself.)

  4. Re:Doesn't IBM use OOo as a product core? by davidsyes · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "Symphony" should have been an extension of SmartSuite especially since SmartSuite has:

    - A multi-award-winning end-user-friendly relational database (Approach) that trounces the hell out of Base
    - A spreadsheed (1-2-3) that has STILL got some superior chart editing features that Calc hasn't got
    - A word processor (WordPro) that has true WYSIWYG facilities that Write hasn't got
    - A planner (Organizer)
    - A presentation application (Freelance)

    The first 3 alone are worth the $300 IBM asks for, but REALLY wish that IBM didn't use the name "Symphony" (a previous Lotus product that, IIRC, was pretty much like a 3-D database/spread sheet before even ms came out with Excel) until SmartSuite was overshadowed by a decent release candidate replacement, which Symphony currently is NNOTTTT.

    In all the SmartSuite apps, however, non-modal properties pallets are available so you can modify font and other properties without having to play stupid-ass do-it-the-ms-and-other-lazy-develpers'-way of "edit-jump-out-change-edit-change-..." until you get fed up and just live with what is on screen.

    WordPro has a much better visual editor interface for viewing multiple sheets of a same or different documents. I've for YEARS been begging the OO.o devs to just "take a look" at SmartSuite., and they persist with the NIH (Not-Invented-Here) attitude. It's obvious, since their idea of sections and divisions (which i might have inspired, but they copied in name only) is woefully dismal an attempt to create a flexible interface.

    Too bad IBM keeps saying it bought a patent-mired Lotus SmartSuite, which is their excuse for not releasing SmartSuite into Open Source, which could enable devs to fall in love with it and rebuilt and unencumber the patent-minefield parts.

    --
    Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
  5. Re:Doesn't IBM use OOo as a product core? by Enderandrew · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Lotus Symphony, which you refer to, is based off of OOo 1, because that was the last version that IBM could fork a closed-source app off of.

    I think Oracle should partner with IBM to allow Symphony to be based off the latest OOo 3 base.

    IBM should be able to sell a top-notch threat to MS Office, while OOo could benefit greatly from an improved UI that Symphony offers.

    --
    http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
  6. Re:Standards and the futility of OO.org by artemis67 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    With the advent of web-based office solutions, does OO really matter that much any more?

    More and more I find myself working with Word documents in Google Docs. Granted, Google Docs has a long, long way to go to be considered a serious contender, but in terms of convenience, it's second to none. I work with very basic documents, so once I open them they are stored on Google's servers, and I can access them wherever I am -- home, office, yacht club, city morgue, etc.

  7. Re:Standards and the futility of OO.org by deemen · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Hate to say it, but I think Microsoft Office is a flat out better product than OpenOffice.org. It starts up faster, it has the whole macro system, it's just a lot more powerful.

    What makes you think there isn't free-market competition right now? OpenOffice.org users can open MS files and save to the format as well. There are a few bugs, but those are true among Microsoft products too (open the same document in Word 97 or Word 2000 or Word 2003 and they look different). Open standards are great, but I highly doubt it will make a dent in Microsoft's hold of the office software market.

  8. Re:Standards and the futility of OO.org by rackserverdeals · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What I think OpenOffice.org really needs is an integration with something like Google Docs but open so others can implement it.

    Basically, Google Docs serves as a content revision system and OpenOffice.org is the fat client to it, but you can also connect and edit in Google Docs as well.

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  9. Re:Doesn't IBM use OOo as a product core? by davidsyes · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Here are my various comments over the years:

    http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=171938&cid=14319700

    http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=300993&cid=20659515

    This one is my comment about how IBM could get around the patented stuff, but they have not yet seemed to show any desire to do so:

    http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=302369&cid=20670579

    --
    Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"