$185,000 is the initial charge they quoted but also with an ongoing predicted charge of a further $100,000 p.a. which, if anything, will increase over time.
No, your second paragraph is a misunderstanding of the situation...while one might argue, and with good reason, that LO is the better product the licensing is different so if the fork (as in Lotus Symphony...IBM) were wishing to be closed source it would have to be a fork of OO.o not LO as the LGPL licensing of LO would prevent the fork from remaining closed source. This seems to be the reason for IBM backing the Oracle choice of Apache, and its licensing model, as the recipients of the OO.o code.
At one time De Icaza was a board member of the FSF and as such he was asked by the rest of the board to make the minimal distribution you mentioned...he agreed to do so and gave this agreement as a firm commitment to the rest of the board...he then reneged on this undertaking and that fact played a very large part in his removal from the board. Following on from this the FSF has encouraged the MONO developers to do the work necessary to produce this minimal distribution but to no avail.
Strange as it may seem it appears to have an odd quirk when put into practice in the UK...we have landed up with meters and millimetres as legal units but not centimetres. When I was studying for my "A" levels (many, many years ago) we were warned that use of centimetres might cause an adjudicator to drop us some marks in exams so it stuck in my mind rather well. Maybe the system was too hard for the legislators to grasp?
On the face of it (and IANAL) I would have to wonder if a defence under the "safe harbour" provisions of the DMCA might apply (these same provisions allow YouTube et al to host content without being liable for copyright infringement so long as they abide by the requirements of the DMCA with respect to "take down notices" as and when any that are of a legal form and correctness are sent to them.) If CNET were to be sent such a notice and to refuse to comply with it there would also be the question of the legality of the notice to consider...if the plaintiff had the right to issue the notice. I can see that lawyers are going to make a lot of money...yet again.
Oracle (and Sun before them) were, prior to the fork that created LibreOffice, able to prevent the additional features that were in their commercial Ooo derivative from being added to Ooo itself and thus had a product that they could monetise. Novel sponsored GoOo and that then offered code Sun (and then Oracle) would not allow into Ooo (mostly to "protect" those additional, commercial derivative only, features) and this was what first put the skids on Oracle's continuing support of Ooo. Once LibreOffice merged the GoOo code into their Ooo fork there was no real point in Oracle attempting to sustain hope for their commercial derivative...it has simply taken them a while to acknowledge its demise.
As there's now no money in it for them their "handing to the community" of Ooo means little and may well come with the existing bylaws of Ooo that will preclude a merger with the Libreoffice fork. Out of spite alone (WaaaaaI If I can't play with my ball I'll take it away so nobody can play with it.) I can't see them making a merger of the two into a possibility.
My late mother had "restless legs" and, for her, it led to many sleepless nights. We have a very good local doctor, of the "old school" type, who didn't prescribe any prescription medicine but, instead, advised a drink of soda water before going to bed. The soda water in question was to be of the ginger type and thus to contain a small quantity of quinine...not enough to cause any problems but more than enough to end her "restless legs" problem.
I love such simple solutions...side effects zero (unless you're an old timer who might need to get up and have yet one more pee during the night I suppose.)
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$185,000 is the initial charge they quoted but also with an ongoing predicted charge of a further $100,000 p.a. which, if anything, will increase over time.
No, your second paragraph is a misunderstanding of the situation...while one might argue, and with good reason, that LO is the better product the licensing is different so if the fork (as in Lotus Symphony...IBM) were wishing to be closed source it would have to be a fork of OO.o not LO as the LGPL licensing of LO would prevent the fork from remaining closed source. This seems to be the reason for IBM backing the Oracle choice of Apache, and its licensing model, as the recipients of the OO.o code.
At one time De Icaza was a board member of the FSF and as such he was asked by the rest of the board to make the minimal distribution you mentioned...he agreed to do so and gave this agreement as a firm commitment to the rest of the board...he then reneged on this undertaking and that fact played a very large part in his removal from the board. Following on from this the FSF has encouraged the MONO developers to do the work necessary to produce this minimal distribution but to no avail.
Strange as it may seem it appears to have an odd quirk when put into practice in the UK...we have landed up with meters and millimetres as legal units but not centimetres. When I was studying for my "A" levels (many, many years ago) we were warned that use of centimetres might cause an adjudicator to drop us some marks in exams so it stuck in my mind rather well. Maybe the system was too hard for the legislators to grasp?
On the face of it (and IANAL) I would have to wonder if a defence under the "safe harbour" provisions of the DMCA might apply (these same provisions allow YouTube et al to host content without being liable for copyright infringement so long as they abide by the requirements of the DMCA with respect to "take down notices" as and when any that are of a legal form and correctness are sent to them.) If CNET were to be sent such a notice and to refuse to comply with it there would also be the question of the legality of the notice to consider...if the plaintiff had the right to issue the notice. I can see that lawyers are going to make a lot of money...yet again.
Oracle (and Sun before them) were, prior to the fork that created LibreOffice, able to prevent the additional features that were in their commercial Ooo derivative from being added to Ooo itself and thus had a product that they could monetise. Novel sponsored GoOo and that then offered code Sun (and then Oracle) would not allow into Ooo (mostly to "protect" those additional, commercial derivative only, features) and this was what first put the skids on Oracle's continuing support of Ooo. Once LibreOffice merged the GoOo code into their Ooo fork there was no real point in Oracle attempting to sustain hope for their commercial derivative...it has simply taken them a while to acknowledge its demise. As there's now no money in it for them their "handing to the community" of Ooo means little and may well come with the existing bylaws of Ooo that will preclude a merger with the Libreoffice fork. Out of spite alone (WaaaaaI If I can't play with my ball I'll take it away so nobody can play with it.) I can't see them making a merger of the two into a possibility.
My late mother had "restless legs" and, for her, it led to many sleepless nights. We have a very good local doctor, of the "old school" type, who didn't prescribe any prescription medicine but, instead, advised a drink of soda water before going to bed. The soda water in question was to be of the ginger type and thus to contain a small quantity of quinine...not enough to cause any problems but more than enough to end her "restless legs" problem. I love such simple solutions...side effects zero (unless you're an old timer who might need to get up and have yet one more pee during the night I suppose.)