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33 Developers Leave OpenOffice.org

Posted by Soulskill on from the onward-and-upward dept.

dkd903 writes "We all knew it would come to this, and it has finally happened — 33 developers have left OpenOffice.org to join The Document Foundation, with more expected to leave in the next few days. After Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems, OpenOffice.org fell into the hands of Oracle, as did a lot of other products. So, last month a few very prominent members of the OpenOffice.org community decided to form The Document Foundation and fork OpenOffice.org as LibreOffice, possibly fearing that it could go the OpenSolaris way."

11 of 500 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Unstable by MBGMorden · · Score: 3, Informative

    Can't really happen at this point. Only the original copyright owners can "sell-out". OpenOffice was originally StarOffice - a closed source office suite. When Sun bought it, they GPL'd it. Then Orcale bought it from Sun. In that case, they had the original copyright, and the right to change the license at will if they wished.

    The GPL licensing bit allows a third-party group to fork it and continue work under the GPL, but that's the only thing they can do. Since they don't have the copyright to the original code, then undless Oracle donates it to them (fat chance), they don't have any rights to it to sell.

    Short translation: only the original project can sell-out. Forks can't.

    --
    "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
  2. Re:LibreOffice will join the ranks of Linux... by Anarke_Incarnate · · Score: 3, Informative

    AHEM...._ From the SUSE crowd. They are not red-hat based, FYI.

  3. Re:what now by MBGMorden · · Score: 4, Informative

    LibreOffice pretty much IS OpenOffice at this point. The Oracle-copyrighted artwork is just gone. They have binaries for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.

    You'll only see the two grow apart as future versions are released. In short, they won't really be "dropping support" for OpenOffice anytime soon. They have an exact replica that will now evolve differently.

    --
    "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
  4. Article title is misleading... by Mongoose+Disciple · · Score: 4, Informative

    This is 33 members of the OpenOffice project leaving.

    They're not all developers. It sounds like about 2 developers and a whole bunch of tech support and documentation people.

  5. so the oss hater fud-monkey works for oracle by rubycodez · · Score: 4, Informative

    Ubuntu, the failed fork of Debian...oh wait
    Mint, the failed fork of Ubuntu....oh wait
    FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD, the failed forks of 4.3USC BSD....oh wait
    egcs, the failed fork of gcc...oh wait, it became the official gcc
    apache, Brian Behlendorf's failed NCSA httpd fork

    forking is bad, everyone should run Oracle's closed source overpriced bloated crap that can't be forked, eh?

    1. Re:so the oss hater fud-monkey works for oracle by stagg · · Score: 4, Informative

      What's more, it might actually be MORE consolidated. "We want The Document Foundation to be open to code contributions from as many people as possible. We are delighted to announce that the enhancements produced by RedHat and the Go-OOo team will be merged into LibreOffice, effective immediately. We hope that others will follow suit. "

  6. Re:Sure, just like what happened when XFree86 fork by jeremyp · · Score: 4, Informative

    What?

    Are you thinking of egcs? That fork was made somewhere around 2.7 and merged back in to gcc (or rather gcc was merged into it) at 2.95.

    There hasn't been a fork since then.

    --
    All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
  7. Re:LibreOffice - please remove Java by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you removed the Java, then you would need to write the interface code for each platform you support.

    The UI of OpenOffice is not written in Java it's basically a homebrewed widget kit written in C++. The parts he is talking about are the wizards that are written in Java.

  8. Re:LibreOffice will join the ranks of Linux... by Sedated2000 · · Score: 3, Informative

    The FAQ on LibreOffice actually states that their hope is for Oracle to donate the OpenOffice name back to them once the legal issues are resolved.

  9. Re:Google should step in by Enderandrew · · Score: 3, Informative

    They already play nice together. OOo/LibreOffice already has extensions that allow you to save, sync, export, and import to Google Docs. So you can have the full OOo fat-client, but keep your documents in the cloud and have them wherever you go.

    You can also edit ODF files in Google Docs, and then take them right back to OOo/LibreOffice later.

    Google could help clean up the OOo/LibreOffice interface, etc.

    --
    http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
  10. Re:Well... by d0nster · · Score: 5, Informative

    According to their supporters list, the Document Foundation has backing from Canonical, Google, Novell, and Redhat, along with many smaller names. Novell already has their own version of Open Office, called go-oo, with some extra stuff added for MS Office compatibility, so they for certain have paid developers working on this. I imagine the other three have developers working on this as well. With these heavy hitters behind it, I imagine Libre Office will succeed and Open Office will be forgotten.