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ASF Lays Out Its Plan For OpenOffice.org
Thinkcloud writes "In an open letter, the Apache Software Foundation has made its plans for OpenOffice clear, including an Apache-branded OpenOffice suite targeted at developers coming next year."
From The H: "The ASF says it does not want to force any vision on the ODF community noting that 'it is impossible to agree upon a single vision for all participants, Apache OpenOffice does not seek to define a single vision, nor does it seek to be the only player' in the large ODF ecosystem. Instead, it wishes to offer a neutral 'collaboration opportunity' and notes that its permissive licensing and development model are 'widely recognised as one of the best ways to ensure open standards, such as ODF, gain traction and adoption.'"
At this point is there really any reason why we need OpenOffice? Libreoffice, stupid name aside, seems to do everything that people want and more or less all the developers jumped ship for it a long time ago.
Does anyone still use OpenOffice.org? I was sure it imploded when LibreOffice was formed to get out from under Oracle's thumb? Plus, it doesn't have to have the stupid .org tacked onto it's name to avoid trademark issues.
If Apache is doing this right, they had better court the LibreOffice devs back into the fold.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Let it die.
http://www.libreoffice.org/
Is fantastic.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
The politics is to provide OpenOffice under more permissive license, as for some businesses this might be a deal-breaker, thus getting more traction for the ODF format. So people will have choice between Apache licensed OpenOffice, or GPLv3 licensed LibreOffice, whichever they go with — it's still compatible.
They could quite well turn it into a library, and let people write their software with it. They are publishing it with the APL, if you redistribute it you must fork (because of trademark issues), and most people did already migrate to forks.
It is a nice way to make everybody colaborate on making ODF better, put everybody in sync, and make more ODF editors available. You can't do that with GPLed software. For once Oracle created something good. Too bad they had to try to screw everybody before they give up and do the right thing.
Rethinking email
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And what would Open Office that is "target at developers" look like, in contrast to plain ol' vanilla Open Office?
Dark Reflection
The Apache license isn't the perfect "open" license, (I preferred GPL2), but I'm still good with the Apache License. Since Apache is a neutral player, they won't be imposing 'will' or 'vision'. Still, its connections with Oracle presses me to use LibreOffice instead, at least for the immediate future. The hazards of forking any project is that a once viable branch inevitably falls behind. However, whenever I look at the demise of a branch, I look at the reasons surrounding the fork (usually greed, or some kind of restriction where the license or code base is used to beat contributors over the head), at which point, the fork occurs. Usually there is remorse afterward, but once a project forks, it never goes back. Its happened a lot. The 'open' version of Java is now the default version of Java. XFree86 is now X.org. Before GTK, the license restrictions around mosaic were incredible. The people who started Mambo tried to turn 'Free' into 'Mine'. The fork became Joomla. Backpeddling ensued, but stick a fork in it, it was done. Hello LibreOffice.
My guess it that Apache just got this from Oracle and they wouldn't want to piss them off by just handing it on to LibreOffice, since clearly Oracle didn't get along with those guys. So they'll make their Apache version, keep the lights on and the project running and then one of them is going to fade away and eventually all that's useful will be merged into the other. I expect more of a xfree86 vs xorg situation here, once the split has already happened there's really not going to be much of a conflict, the developers will pretty soon gravitate towards the one that is best.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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Oracle realised that they had no hope of the control they wanted (as all the devs left for LibreOffice) so they just gave in.
Instead of just letting it stagnate and die, they handed it over to the Apache foundation so it could stagnate and die there without any need for Oracle to go to the hassle of ignoring support tickets.
If you want to embed or reuse a library then I would suggest that you would be better off by using the Office Engine from the Calligra Suite (http//www.calligra.org/). It is already used in many mobile and embedded places, e.g. the office viewer in the Nokia N9 smartphone. The engine -- and the apps themselves -- are all under LGPL which makes it usable even with non-free apps.
And what would Open Office that is "target at developers" look like, in contrast to plain ol' vanilla Open Office?
\LaTeX, of course.
Apache Software License 2.0 is GPL3 compatible. Which doesn't actually matter ; LibreOffice and OOo are actually released under the same license - LGPL3
The main license issue was that Sun / Oracle wouldn't accept patches without copyright attribution. This kept their options open - because they owned the copyrights of all the source, they could re-license it as they saw fit, including as a commercial product (StarOffice).
Since then I am not aware of The Document Foundation demanding copyright attribution. There was basically no point doing so - the copyrights were still owned by Oracle, so it's not as if they could ever re-license the code as anything other than the license they acquired it under. The positive effect this has is that patches are easier to get into the code because contributors don't have to enter into a legal agreement with the foundation (which they may or may not be permitted to do, depending on their employment conditions, age, etc).
Because the licenses continue to be LGPL3, LibreOffice can continue to merge patches from OOo at their leisure. Apache may only merge patches from LibreOffice if they have abandoned the practice of demanding copyright attribution (as of right now, the relevant page still demands that you sign the Oracle Contributor Agreement).
So until Apache makes it very clear what their position on copyright attribution is, they remain the less Free of the two projects, and LibreOffice definitely has a purpose, and continues to have a technical advantage, despite being somewhat overshadowed by the brand capital that the OpenOffice.org name has accrued.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, and again yes to all of your questions!
LibreOffice has not only merged countless improvements that OO.o cannot merge (because of license issues), but has cleaned up a lot of code, removed dead code, fixed known problems, improved work flow, removed limitations, improved compatibility with other software, upgraded to ODF 1.2, and made the program better in countless respects. They're also providing explicit release schedules for major and minor versions (e.g. 3.5.0 is due Feb 8, and 3.5.1 is due in the first week of March, then 3.5.2 is due in the first week of April, etc.), and are properly open about the coming features, the road map, funding, etc.
Sure, you can certainly get plenty of mileage out of existing installations of OO.o today, but if you have no compelling reason to stay with OO.o you should definitely consider upgrading to LibreOffice. I'd wager that you'll be very glad to have done it.
Bottom line, OO.o is dead and gone in all but name. I really don't see much point in continuing to spend energy on OO.o these days.
The core difference between browsing the web and working with documents is the persistence of data and how predictable (consistent) your data is presented. Nobody in their right mind expects web pages to look the same, regardless whether you use Opera, Firefox, Chrome, MSIE, or Lynx. But when it comes to documents, people get upset if a word wraps earlier in one product than another, their carefully crafted one page document suddenly overflows by two words onto a second line, their embedded images aren't properly aligned, etc. Sometimes these are legitimate concerns, sometimes it's just a matter of mismatched expectations, but overall it's a different ball game.
So if you want to play in the office/document playground, you can't afford to alienate too many people before you start stepping out of line, and improving on the old and trusted formula that so many people take for granted.
--Udo.
Unless a lot of things about this project change it is pretty much doomed. (Well, doomed to be ignored by everybody outside of IBM; they can finance their own Symphony devs, but nothing else will come of this unless things change.)
If you glance at the Apache openoffice mailing lists, a few things become clear:
I really wanted to see Apache OpenOffice succeed and become the main branch; I think that for a project like OO, having either a permissive license or copyright assignment to a well-governed nonprofit (as with GNU software) is a really wise idea. But I can't see them making much progress as things stand.
RMS himself says the goal of GPL is to destroy non free software and RMS makes it clear he WANTS GPL to be "viral" and cause businesses to be forced to open up their code, as his whole goal is to destroy non free software.
Maybe... however the post by RMS you linked says otherwise: "writing non-free software is not an ethically legitimate activity, so if people who do this run into trouble, that's good! All businesses based on non-free software ought to fail, and the sooner the better", which means that RMS thinks that non-free software is bound to fail and that's a good thing in his opinion. GPL or not.
So yes having a more permissive license is of the good, it means that companies that might need a document engine or spreadsheet engine can easily use OO.o as a base without worrying of running afoul of the GPL. Remember that like it or not RMS IS a militant, always has been, and with each version of GPL he tries his damnedest to close any and all possible loopholes that would allow a non free company to use it.
This is exactly the FUD I was talking about. If a company wants to use parts of a GPL program as a base for its own program without distributing the source code, it can. The GPL (version 1,2,3...) says that the aforementioned company has to distribute the source code alongside the compiled binaries, however if it does not distribute them to third parties, it is not bound to release the source code. Obviously if it intends to sell the program (in a way or the other), there's a price, like for everything I could add, and that price is the release of the source code.
As for RMS willing to destroy non-free companies, I've got the impression that the feeling is reciprocal and that's not just because RMS is used to talking over the top, but because GNU and Linux (and not BSD) are a threat to the revenues of some companies. Even the mighty Apache web server owes a big part of its success to all those Linux servers.