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33 Developers Leave OpenOffice.org
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."
and its open source roots
You mean except for the fact that its roots are the proprietary StarOffice suite?
You can blame your employer for this one. The open source community is just making sure an important project isn't shelved by Oracle.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
... to X.org. Oh wait, that DIDN'T HAPPEN AT ALL.
When was the last time you installed XFree86? When was the last time you heard of any X aside from X.org?
Did you think it was just re-named? Heck no! Basically this exact same process occurred.
This happens in the OSS world all the time. The firm backing a popular open source project gets bought, does not support the open source project, the other developers behind the project all leave, the new project is adopted by every major distribution and has huge success, while the original project dies a slow long death.
Although that can be true for many OSS projects, I'd say this case in question is far from "someone not being too happy", we are talking about 22 developers right now going to the same project, along with the ones that already were there.
Up to now I see no hints at LibreOffice going the crazy branching path. I would not rule it out, but for now I'll be testing LibreOffice, if I find it's as useful as OpenOffice then I'll be removing OO from my computers.
Linux might have 300+ variations (probably more), but around 5 of them really matter. Heck when it really, really comes down to it, only 1 types matter for desktop usage: Debian-based or Redhat based. If you're not on one of those you're probably adept enough to make something besides your typical pre-packaged stuff work anyways.
The same is true for almost any app. You're trying to twist a strength into a weakness. Many GOOD applications and operating systems have died over the years because the people running them were too stupid and/or stubborn to adapt. Open source gives the USERS the ability to take things in the direction they want if they disagree with the current controlling body.
The fork from Xfree86 into xorg is the PERFECT example of a good fork. XFree86 wasn't doing much of anything, despite being one of, if not THE most important software product in the open source world. They split it, EVERYONE went to the fork, and life continued on quite happily.
Would you prefer that we still be screaming at the Xfree86 guys to do something, praying that don't silently ignore us? If not, why is OpenOffice any different?
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
I don't mean to be ignorant or trollish, but isn't this a good thing for Oracle?
Oracle wouldn't make any money out of Open Office and now ( or soon ) they will not have the burden of it.
Yep, and that's exactly what Oracle thinks about everything they bought from Sun (aside from the patents they plan to use to sue Google). It just sucks for all of us peons is all.
How, exactly, have you been left high and dry? Do you not understand how open source works? Nobody can sell out. They can try, but this is what happens. The sell out has absolutely no power to coerce anyone else into selling out, and no power to block them from moving forward without him. For example, see, uh, this very story.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
its not so bads - sure, things get forked all the time... but that's nearly always because of issues with the original organisation. Once forked, one thrives and the other withers away (usually the original, but then, you could say that was going to happen anyway - or the inpetus for the fork would never have ben there in the first place).
Sometimes, the fork occurs for more political reasons than anything, but the forkers fail. Often that's becuase they had grand ideas that the original knew better than to implement, those overblown ideas being the reason the fork fails.
So, really.. this is all a good thing,. The openness that allows forks simply offers a means for 'ownership' to continue with a group that will nurture the product.
Right, given Oracle ownership I'd say starting a fork is the safest option to keep the project alive at this point. But maybe Oracle will surprise us all and do the right thing. I doubt it.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Thanks for the disclaimer. What you're missing is that these people also want to use something that works *forever* (eg. no matter what Oracle chooses to do their contributions cannot be taken from them).
With Oracle suing Google over 'Java' (actually Android, so Oracle don't have an open and shut case here) they are not really winnng the hearts and minds of the rest of the tech world.
Oracle is currently damaging its own reputation in the eyes of the tech community. These people have long memories - look at how long the flaming of Microsoft endures no matter how many things Microsoft does to repair the damage. I'm afraid no amount of future PR budget will make up for Oracle's current attitude to the OS and Java ecosystem. Given that I am very fond of the platform independence of Java this is a great shame. I hope Oracle wakes up before they really ruin things both for themselves and for all the Javaphiles out there.
You make it sound like tech support and documentation people are not essential roles. I'd fire you right now for such a statement.
Also, how many is that? 1%, 5%, 50% of the entire project??
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
I disagree.
Java is great for cross platform GUI apps. I can write a Java app and as long as I use Swing, I'm sure that the app will run on a different platform. You're blaming Java for Open Office's design decision to use "wizards". Wizards are not exclusively tied to Java. Sure Sun made a Swing library to make creating wizards easier, but so did Qt, and WxWidget.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
The really important thing here is not how many OO.o forks there are, it's that they all handle the same document formats properly. If that much is granted, then having many competing versions is a good thing. Not only will some of that competition result in improvements on all sides, but the variations will suit a larger set of users.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
will the free fork progress more than the Oracle fork?
Yes, just as X.org eclipsed XFree86.org
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
I've been trying to figure out if this is a strategy by Oracle, or a side-effect they don't really care about.
It's a side-effect. Oracle isn't in the application software business. They wanted Sun because their OS and hardware are a good platform for their database, which is where their money comes from.
Now, we know they want Java because they've invested a lot in it.
They want Java because their primary commercial competitor, IBM, is heavily invested in Java, so it gives them a solid inroad to luring IBM's customers away and breaking compatibility with IBM's Java solutions. They just wanted MySQL just to kill it.
There's nothing mysterious about Oracle's actions if you remember that they are here to sell their database software and associated services. That's how they made their billions, and that's how they plan to continue making more billions. Microsoft tries to compete with everyone on everything; Oracle is just aiming to absolutely dominate the database space. Everything else is useful or not in terms of that single-minded goal. OO.o and its development team are a total non-issue to Oracle. They're not in the office suite business, and it's entirely irrelevant to the database.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Well, Sun purchased StarOffice because:
"The number one reason why Sun bought StarDivision in 1999 was because, at the time, Sun had something approaching forty-two thousand employees. Pretty much every one of them had to have both a Unix workstation and a Windows laptop. And it was cheaper to go buy a company that could make a Solaris and Linux desktop productivity suite than it was to buy forty-two thousand licenses from Microsoft. (Simon Phipps, Sun, LUGradio podcast.)"
And they wanted Solaris to be a more complete product as well. They chose the open-source license for OpenOffice because it best served their purposes. Buying something and open-sourcing it should be considered just as legitimate an "open-source root" as building it from scratch.
They are very essential roles (especially in the Open Source community, which is stereotypically bad at documentation), but the title says developers, and those roles are not developers.
I think the question is - How much money is behind the fork? What status do the 33 that left have within the project? Are they smaller contributors or core devs?
If most of those that are left are volunteer developers with little financial backing, it might not go as well as X.org did.
In the case of X.org, it was founded by a number of core developers, many of whom had financial backing (primarily from distribution vendors), and it was a very short period of time before other distribution vendors and other companies depending on X "jumped in" and started pumping money in.
The thing is that OO is not quite as core of a component as the X server is, so - will distro vendors and others pump as much financial backing into the project? Is as much financial backing needed?
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Maybe, but not necessarily. A free office suite is strategically important to many players in the industry, including Google with its piles of cash. Remember, MS is the enemy to many companies, and anything they can do to unseat MS from its de facto monopoly status on the desktop will be good for them. Without MS Office being a de facto standard, many corporate customers could switch their employees to Linux desktops with OO/LO and save a fortune. This would mean lots of new business for distro vendors like Red Hat, Novell, and Canonical. MS and Google are always at odds too, so Google would be happy to help push MS off its throne.
Strangely enough, Oracle has never been a big friend of MS either, and much more of an enemy (their database competes with SQL Server), and I've heard Larry Ellison has a lot of animosity towards MS. However, it seems that they're so greedy and shortsighted that they simply can't figure out how to use their newfound assets to battle MS and improve their own revenue. I wonder how much of this is simply from their horrible corporate culture. That Java guy that quit a couple months ago mainly cited their corporate culture as his reason for leaving, and perhaps that's why these 33 guys left too. Heck, I myself just left a job a couple months ago because I couldn't stand the corporate culture and work environment I was in, not because the work was uninteresting.