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StarOffice Boss Says He Chose Sun License over GPL for Good Reasons
pointwood writes "StarOffice founder Marco Boerries states that he actually could have made StarOffice available under the GPL, but gives a number of reasons to why he thinks Sun's community License was a better choice" The Register has the story . Interesting thoughts on "free" software licensing from a business perspective.Meanwhile, a LinuxPlanet opinion piece claims a GPLed StarOffice would be better for Sun. What's your take?
Lots of companies pledge their support of open source software but no-one's actually put money on the table. You don't ask for a Linux job at IBM. SGI laid off 3000 Linux candidates. Sun made a pledge and how much of Sun's engineering are you using on your Linux box? Sun is building instant access to their portal into StarOffice. No features are being improved. No bugs are being fixed. StarOffice is still incompatible with libc2.1 a year after libc2 was obsoleted and they're not ever going to port it. Sun wants to get hits, not make a better word processor.
This guy just got to the top of the computer industry VP surf, and he is already spitting out a bigger load of sh*t and crap than his MS counterparts.
... well, let's see.
;-), remember you can express your opinion and change the World, Linus did, why can't you?
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Presenting this baseless attack of the GPL as an excuse to their decision is just disgusting, and me thinks that for them it will be spitting upwards.
I just feel sorry for the great people at Sun, since all this corporate crap (as opposed to real involvement like SGI) will only tarnish the image of Sun under the "new" recently raised microscopes. Of course, they think that a lot of computer users/whatever do not think (or for that matter know what it is) that GPL based OSS is great, and that they can get away with it
kudos to the smart open thinking people at Sun reading this
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> The next version of gcc, or any other software
> which has had its copyrights transfered to the
> FSF, could be released under fee-licensing
> only.
That happens not to be the case, unless the FSF rewrote all contributed code. When you contribute code to the FSF, you get in return a signed contract, which basically states that the FSF must only use the code in free software. If the FSF releases a gcc under a fee-license only, they would be breaking hundreds of such contracts.
Sun's stated goal is to challenge MSOffice on the desktop now and to remove Windows latter. ( Star Portal ). However with the cards stacked as they are ( MSOffice on the vast majority of desktops and most users thinking *.doc is a standard file format ) no single Office suite can ever hope to put a serious dent in that position.
They way to make an impact is to put the Import/Export filters under a BSD stile license and hope that a community grows around them. In other words reduce *.doc and *.xls to mear commodities ( Like *.html and *.txt ).
Too bad they are as big on control as MS is and as such can never gain the foothold MS has now. Think back to 198x. Do you think IBM could have pushed it's PCs all over Commodore, Apple and everybody else without help from Compaq and the rest of cloners ?
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
1. The argument is that [with SCSL] the [open source] community makes Sun rich. Well, the community makes Red Hat rich -- no community member has really joined in that.
- The argument isn't that the community makes sun rich, the argument is that the community makes sun rich without getting something back other than bugfixes or features sun should have delivered anyway, and with no guarantee how long the developer will be able to see the source in the future. In contrast redhat has in no way total influence to the linux kernel or other gpl'ed software they put on their dist, so when redhats future plans differ from the communities regarding the software, redhat looses. And redhat (and suse and others) activly contribute code under the same license back to the community. To summarize, redhat and suse etc. help the community without drawbacks while sun does not.
2. Sun, as a commercial company whose products include intellectual property licensed from multiple sources, needs that control, because it's completely impossible to give away the whole lot without the agreement of everybody who actually owns it.- Just showing the source code has this problems too, this point is void. In addition, everybody (at least I) would understand sun holding back portions of the source which they don't own or even just don't want to license under (l)gpl, as long as it doesn't violate the free license. Look at the interview with John Carmack, sun.
3. "One big problem with GPL is that it's hard to give the customer indemnification and product warranties." So long as open source software really is open source then this oughtn't to be much of a problem, but where are the guarantees that it is? "You can submit source that's been stolen," he says.- huh? I can contribute stolen code under the SCSL too, can't I. The only way to prevent this is not to accept source from the outside, so better stay closed, sun. And wouldn't letting the copyright in the hands of the contributor assure his liability of said code? IANAL, but wouldn't it be possible to use the GPL and force a contributer to sign a kind of guarantee for the code's legality if this code is included in the "offical" star office distribution?
4. So long as it isn't possible to sure about all of the ownership of the code, it's foolhardy for suppliers to give customers guarantees and indemnities about it.- This is completly bogus, IMO. Thanks to today's patent chaos, no one can be really sure to buy a software or hardware which is completly safe from coming under fire by an patent imfringement lawsuit. How many gif creation tools are out there, and I bet there are many commercial closed source products, whose use for gif creation is illegal. If I remember correctly, apple sued microsoft for windows copiing MACos, nvidia had some lawsuits, netscape and so on.
I for one would be thankfull if someone from sun would have the guts to tell us: "If we use the GPL now and want to change our mind (and our license) in a year or two, we are screwed cause people could just fork off the latest gpl'ed version and compete with us."Basically, what he writes about the freedom of the StarOffice source code, is just an analogy of the arguments used against freedom everywhere for as long as it has been debated. People attacking freedom always bring up the lack of security, assurance, and control.
So, of course he has a point. Or, at least he has a point that strikes a chord with people. And in the short run of course Sun has a lot to gain by keeping its code under the artificial reins offered by our screwed up legal system.
But in the long run, well, compare the progress of the (psuedo-) free world with the non-free nations.
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is here
This doesn't seem to add much of anything to the SCSL/GPL debate.
Just more excuses about product warranties being threatened when the hoi polloi get their dirty hands on the code. What if *stolen* code ends up in the product! That is more likely under GPL than SCSL for some reason?
They can't give away StarOffice because it's too hard to track down all the IP owners? Didn't they just buy it? Doesn't that require tracking down the owners too?
If Sun doesn't want to be an open source player it's fine with me. But I wish they'd quit wasting time trying to justify the SCSL license as an improvement over existing open source licenses. Show me some SCSL project successes first, please.