The Contrarian

June 1, 2011

I notice that you and your friends at Oracle do not mention the existing community at all – instead you talk about outsiders of all shades who have never been involved in OpenOffice.org forming a new activity with our source code. There are lots of people in the community and in its two projects – OpenOffice and LibreOffice – who don’t fit Apache at all, either becuase they are not involved in the “core code” or becuase they believe in copyleft and software freedom. Why have you and Oracle etc made no mention of them whatsoever? Is it your intention to isolate them and create division? Seems that way.

12:59 pm

Rob

June 1, 2011

@Contrarian, Of course, anyone is welcome to join the project. Unlike LibreOffice, Apache does not have a membership committee to review and approve or reject developers. Anyone is welcome to join. But you need to agree with the project license. This is true of any open source project.

If you (or anyone) has a concrete proposal on how LibreOffice can or should related to Apache, I’d love to hear it. I think the time is now favorable for having that kind of discussion, more so now than it was when OpenOffice was run by Sun/Oracle with their CLA.

1:30 pm

André

June 1, 2011

I didn’t know the Document Foundation rejects membership applications.

The main difference is of course that the Apache Foundation is based in the United States/Delaware and has no European branch. For a project mostly driven by European stakeholders that seems a disadvantage. Furthermore I don’t trust American governance methods. A board which can decide upon its own compensation is unacceptable to me.

1:46 pm

J David Eisenberg

June 1, 2011

Echoing The Contrarian’s sentiments: So, what are The Document Foundation and LibreOffice? Chopped liver?

1:56 pm

Gervase Markham

[ http://www.gerv.net/ ]

June 1, 2011

It does seem that the post tiptoes around the elephant in the room (LibreOffice).

Saying “you need to agree with the project license” is begging the question, as that was only just decided. OpenOffice.org wasn’t under the Apache licence two days ago. Why Apache, do you think? Was IBM consulted on the licensing choice? What license did you suggest/propose? Did you encourage Oracle to make more efforts to reach out to the existing open source community surrounding this codebase? If you are right when you say that the stewardship of Sun/Oracle with their CLA wasn’t good, then surely you must recognise that the people who were working outside of that must be doing something right?

Gerv

2:04 pm

AlexH

June 1, 2011

Not sure LibreOffice requires any kind of membership, maybe you’re thinking of the Document Foundation – any hacker with a patch can submit it to the LibreOffice project.

In any event, I would have thought that the relevant question is how will this Apache project be related to LibreOffice? The codebase has moved on vastly, you just need to look at git – why would people want to move back to an older codebase? LO has already proved itself, Apache Office or whatever it will be called is a totally new project.

2:07 pm

JZA

[ http://jza.me/ ]

June 1, 2011

Great post rob, I guess the road ahead looks brighter to the OOo gloomy conversations. Now there is something to look forward to. With Apache running things hands off could also make a way to flatten the community which is more needed process. OpenOffice.org has certainly gained a lot of projects itself and hierarcy which has not as many technical expertise. Apache being more a technical culture refocus the project on what matter most, which is the code. Is my personal hope that we can guarantee a better quality project in the future.

2:10 pm

Miroslav Jovanovic

June 1, 2011

Hi Rob. I must agree with Contrarian as well. Dismissing the LibreOffice and the Document Foundation is a big issue at least for me (I’m not so ever and in any way related to LibreOffice nor to Document Foundation).

My humble opinion, after the bumpy start, and the early embrace of LibreOffice by all major Linux distribution and getting the advantages from Go-oo, now it looks too late to to move OpenOffice.org to Apache foundation. It might make some sense to IBM, but for me it doesn’t. Oracle missed the train with OpenOffice almost a year ago.

Why not simply joint with Document Foundation and LibreOffice, make strong community and support? Why can’t Oracle, IBM and all other willing to help and participate, contribute (and on the end benefit from it) through the already established Document Foundation? Why fragment it instead of make it stronger?

I’m 100% behind your vision of a free, high quality productivity suite, one based on open standards and open source, and all the rest that you have mentioned, but I also can’t envision it by not taking in consideration the already available community.

On the end, not to be taken wrongly, I do live the moment to have a real contender and competition to MS Office in the corporate world, and I think we can achieve this, all together, not apart.

2:10 pm

Jeremy Allison

June 1, 2011

Hi Rob,

This is indeed good news, but I think long term rather than trying to run the project at the Apache Software Foundation the code would be much better merged into LibreOffice and let them take the lead on this.

Given that there is already an existing community around this code, merging with it rather than trying to create another from scratch makes more sense IMHO.

Jeremy.

3:31 pm

Mario Lopez

June 1, 2011

You, Ed Brill and Bob Sutor avoided to mention the Document Foundation and its OpenOffice.org fork LibreOffice. You refused to mention that LibreOffice already has a developer community. That the Document Foundation already has legal recognition. That because of those two things it’s already more credible than this vaporware Apache project that’s at least a year away from becoming reality. That this announcement is doing nothing more throw confusing and uncertainty around a free/open source office suite that’s credible enough to face Microsoft Office.

That Oracle did the same thing with Hudson and a number of other projects. That Oracle required copyright assignment but Apache Foundation doesn’t. That OpenOffice.org uses a different license than Apache Foundation projects.

And a lot of other things that now fall into place: Oracle conflict with Apache Foundation about Apache Harmony; Oracle conflict with IBM about Apache Harmony but both are now “best friends for life”; Oracle conflict with Apache Foundation and Google about Android.

If you think your actions, IBM’s and Oracle’s contribute to create a credible alternative to Microsoft you’re leaving in a parallel universe. Denying reality to an extreme worthy of Microsoft’s brainwashing…

3:40 pm

Carey

June 1, 2011

What’s up with all the LibreOffice comments saying essentially the same thing? Okay guys, we get it. I fail to see how Oracle or OpenOffice or Apache owe anything to the LibreOffice guys–it was their decision to fork. Now they have to live with the consequences. To me these comments seem like a bit of sour grapes that OpenOffice may have a future. That said, both projects can survive and that may be better for all.

5:38 pm

Mario Lopez

June 1, 2011

It’s clear now that this whole process is nothing more than an attempt to sabotage LibreOffice’s future. Signs that this is only a code dump. No commitment by Oracle, and only a few very timid commitment by IBM to add “some developers” that were attach to IBM’s proprietary fork Lotus Symphony.

This is a very nice piece of revisionism by Rob Weir on the Apache mailing list about the Document Foundation and LibreOffice:

“My understanding is that the Linux distros never really included the core
OpenOffice.org. They included the Novell Edition of OpenOffice, since
Novell (and some volunteers) did the leg work to get the code into a form
suitable for the distros to consume (packaging, catalog metadata, etc.)
When LibreOffice was announced, Novell pulled their OpenOffice Novell
Edition and put the same engineers on LibreOffice. The distros could
simply continue working with the same engineers they had worked with
previously. This was not necessarily some ideological switch by the
distros. From their perspective LibreOffice was more a rebranding of
Novell Edition of OpenOffice. They include LibreOffice because it was
packaged, ready for their consumption.”

My question is: Why is the Apache Foundation helping 2 companies, IBM and Oracle, sabotage an healthy open source project, LibreOffice?

Oracle already did this with Hudson

6:12 pm

Rob

June 1, 2011

Some readers are offended that I did not mention LibreOffice in this post. I certainly did not intend any offense. Today’s announcement has nothing directly to do with LibreOffice. Of course, the announcement does have an impact on the larger market, and that will effect not only the future of LibreOffice, but also Symphony, EuropOffice, BrOffice, NeoOffice, RedOffice and others. I hope it will also impact, in some way, the market around Microsoft Office. To cover my bases I hereby apologize to all of them as well as anyone else who feels neglected by me not acknowledging their existence or their right to exist or whatever other hate crime I’ve supposedly committed.

But there is one big irony there that should be noted. IBM has been a long-time member of OpenOffice.org. We’ve contributed code. We’ve sponsored OpenOffice.org conferences. And of course, we’ve distribute OpenOffice in the form of Symphony. We never joined LibreOffice. So last September, when LibreOffice categorically announced that the OpenOffice community had moved to a new project, that wasn’t quite truthful was it? Certainly some moved. But IBM in particular did not. Now we could have raised a fuss, complained, said that were insulted for not being mentioned in the TDF inaugural press releases. But we didn’t. It would have been silly to have been insulted, since the TDF press release was obviously about those who did move, not those who did not.

Do you see the irony yet?

So flash forward 6 months, and now that same OpenOffice.org member (IBM) that was so insignificant that it was not mentioned in the TDF press release about the OpenOffice “community”, has now decided to go in another direction. And guess what? Now TDF members are irate because they were not mentioned in the IBM press release. Well, go figure!

@André, I refer to you to The Document Foundation Community Bylaws [ http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/CommunityBylaws#Membership ]:

“Every membership application is reviewed by the Membership Committee, which approves or declines it”

I cannot say for a fact that they have rejected applications. I’m not aware of their records being open. But there is a committee, appointed by the self-appointed “Steering Committee” that has the job of reviewing and approving or rejecting membership applications. Apache does not have that. If a developer wants to join, they join. Of course, their code contributions may be rejected, after review. But we don’t reject the person.

@J David, I hope you don’t get the impression that they are “chopped liver” [I'll translate that as "a lesser cut of meat" for non-English natives]. Neither are RedOffice, NeoOffice, BrOffice, etc. Ditto for AbiWord, Calligra Office, Gnumeric, etc. This announcement was specifically about OpenOffice.org and where that project is moving. LibreOffice members are welcome to ignore the move, join the move or just complain about the move, as they wish. It is a free country.

@Gerv, good question. There are a variety of possible destinations for this code. This included established, well-known open source foundations, including Apache, but also other familiar names. The open source license is one issue, but not the only one. Other criteria include governance, track record/organizational stability,technical infrastructure, diversity, strategic alignment, name recognition/brand value, etc. Of course, other individuals may have other priorities for their criteria and would make different choices. They have that right. In the end, Oracle made a choice of Apache, and I think that is a fine choice.

It isn’t clear to me that every LibreOffice member has exactly the same priorities or that their priorities are 100% aligned with the self-appointed, unelected Steering Committee. It would be quote remarkable if that were the case, wouldn’t it? I bet that for some, the copyleft license is their #1 priority. For others, running their own foundation was a priority. And for others, they simply went where the momentum seemed to be going at the time. It seems to be that now LibreOffice members have choices to pick from. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing.

@Alex, See above on the membership question. I think what I said was accurate.

To your second question, I agree that we need to figure out how OpenOffice and LibreOffice relate. But it is more than that. We also need to look at Symphony, RedOffice, BrOffice, EuroOffice, NeoOffice, etc., including other new customized distributions that will certainly now proliferate now that we are freed from the restrictions of the copyleft license. This conversation is already underway at Apache. I invite interested parties to join and help define the answer to that.

@JZA, I think the “focus” will come from the priorities of those who join and participate. That is the nature of a meritocracy. Those who “do” decide.

@Miroslav, as mentioned above, there are many open source foundations out there that could handle a project like this. The Document Foundation/LibreOffice is just one. Oracle picked Apache. I think that was the right choice.

@Jeremy, I’d be absolutely giddy with joy if LibreOffice developers would come over to Apache and run their project under the Apache 2.0 license under the Apache process. I’d even be open to calling it “LibreOffice”. But this is much more an issue of organizational capabilities than it is the rather narrow gulf between the current OpenOffice and LibreOffice source codes. I want an organization that will last, not something that could fall over in the next storm.

@Mario, The Document Foundation has no “Foundation” yet. I understand that paperwork for this has been worked on for several months now, but I’m not sure what “legal recognition” you ascribe to it. A post office box?

@Carey, the voice of reason. Who let you in? Thanks ;-)

@Mario, have you seen the recent interview [ http://lwn.net/Articles/442782/ ] with Mark Shuttleworth:

Shuttleworth has a fairly serious disagreement with how the OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice split came about. He said that Sun made a $100 million “gift” to the community when it opened up the OpenOffice code. But a “radical faction” made the lives of the OpenOffice developers “hell” by refusing to contribute code under the Sun agreement. That eventually led to the split, but furthermore led Oracle to finally decide to stop OpenOffice development and lay off 100 employees. He contends that the pace of development for LibreOffice is not keeping up with what OpenOffice was able to achieve and wonders if OpenOffice would have been better off if the “factionalists” hadn’t won.

Maybe I’m not reading deeply enough, but this sure does not sound like someone who is ideologically aligned with the LibreOffice vision.

8:02 pm

Jeremy Allison

[ http://samba.org/~jra ]

June 1, 2011

Rob wrote :

“@Jeremy, I’d be absolutely giddy with joy if LibreOffice developers would come over to Apache and run their project under the Apache 2.0 license under the Apache process”

That’s funny, I’d be giddy with joy if it happened the other way around :-). This is about copyleft vs. non-copyleft licensing IMHO. I personally believe the the LGPLv3 copyleft license is a better choice for this codebase, rather than the Apache one. The reasons for this are too complex to go into in this short post, but based around my own experiences on Samba, where copyleft is one of the only ways to break into a monopoly-dominated market.

The good news is that the Apache license is compatible with the LGPLv3 LibreOffice license, so they can take the OpenOffice code and merge any useful changes into their codebase. I don’t think this can happen the other way around. The reason I would like Apache OO developers (including those from IBM) to throw in their lot with LibreOffice is that otherwise you end up re-running the same experiment of Linux vs. FreeBSD. Unless you consider Apple a FreeBSD success (not sure I do, at least from the FreeBSD point of view :-) then that experiment didn’t go well for FreeBSD. But maybe you want to be Apple, in which case good luck (but remember in the best tradition of ‘Highlander’ – “There can be only one” :-).

Jeremy.

8:30 pm

Alexandre Oliva

[ http://fsfla.org/~lxoliva/ ]

June 1, 2011

Good to know that Apache was glad with the recognition and support from the FSF.

Maybe Apache would enjoy more recognition and support should it welcome the existing LibreOffice community, under the licensing terms that OpenOffice.org *used* to have as well, returning the favor and recognizing that FSF’s licensing practices are also good.

Clearly Apache isn’t opposed to copyleft, since it has worked along with the FSF to make ensure compatibility, so perhaps the following is an option that can’t be entirely ruled out: considering that the alternative is to keep a divide, with the community and most commercial supporters on one side, and a couple of commercial supporters left behind on the other, perhaps Apache should consider the possiblity of keeping this project under copyleft and seeing how that goes, instead of moving right away in a direction that might lead to negative press for the foundation and negative consequences for the software project itself.

11:41 pm

Rob

June 1, 2011

@Alexandre, Is that a threat?

11:53 pm

Alexandre Oliva

June 2, 2011

Yeah, of course it’s a threat! ’cause I’m *that* powerful :-D

Doh! It’s just a fact that the community and most commercial vendors moved on, and a couple of commercial supporters were left behind. It’s to counter that that you guys are trying to move to a permissive license. I hope Apache will see through that move against the community and take the right stand. If you regard that a threat, well… what can I say? :-)

1:44 am

Zoltan Reizinger

June 2, 2011

Rob,
You not mentioned what could happen with the ongoing user support forums, now sitting on Oracle sponsored servers. As a Hungarian forum admin I manage this forum more than a three year. You see any possibilities to continue this work, similar way, somebody give a server and bandwidth. or we needs fast solution to organize it.
The user forums is good place to get user views and pick bugs in OpenOffice.
I don’t know how Apache works on these type not development efforts.
What will happen with OOo wiki page etc. and other documentation efforts.
Zoltan

2:28 am

Cor Nouws

June 2, 2011

Of course IBM was consulted, contacted before the start of TDF. Their name could have been in the very first announcement. But, though a sort of positive, IBM never wanted to join. Their choice. But did IBM, Oracle consult TDF on a possible move to the ASF.. ?

I am very pragmatic: if the ASF is the best home for the open source office community, it’s OK for me. But before I see the wider non-corporate community join a possible openoffice.apache.org, I think they want to be very sure that both 8 months code improvement will not get lost and that the growing (developer-)community will find itself comfortable there too. And of course that’s not as simple as saying those people: just change your mind and do it our way.
Then for the code contribution from IBM to OpenOffice.org in the past. Year after year on OOo Conferences the contributions were announced. After years, only little came. Still a lot is not there. So – to say it politely – using that argument too me is a bit embarrassing. That attitude alas does not add trust to the possible factual contribution from IBM in a possible Apache project. I am afraid that too is not simple to change.
So, how much as long time active OpenOffice.org community member I look forward to a large reunion, I don’t think that this route with the ASF will be an easy go.

5:24 am

AlexH

June 2, 2011

Rob, I think you’re being disingenuous at best. Look at http://www.documentfoundation.org/develop/ : there is no requirement to be a TDF member or sign any paperwork to submit a patch, it just needs the right license. It is therefore obviously inaccurate to portray the TDF mechanisms as “approving or rejecting *developers*”.

But back to the matter at hand. LibreOffice is here, right now. Apache OpenOffice.org is still off in the future somewhere. What are prospective contributors to do? Wait around and see what the results of the incubation process are going to be? Hope that in a year or whatever the nascent OpenOffice.org project is judged to be sufficiently hardy that it will stick around?

Whatever you think about the manner in which LibreOffice was set up, at least it’s here *now* and allowing people to progress the project at a rate faster than most would have hoped for. It’s jam today, not tomorrow, allows people to JFDI rather than waiting for these various committees and proposals to work through the machine. The bureaucracy is/was stifling and LibreOffice killed it. Painting LibreOffice as “just another fork” might be a convenient message, but it’s not accurate.

5:49 am

Italo Vignoli

June 2, 2011

Hi Rob,

I would refrain from commenting many of your statements about TDF, which I understand come out of a very superficial knowledge of the organization (and I would leave to your wisdom to comment when you don’t know enough about a topic: it’s something that I usually refrain from doing, but I recognize that other people behave in a different way).

Anyway, I just wanted to comment on one of your statements: “Now TDF members are irate because they were not mentioned in the IBM press release”.

I must state here that we were happy about not being mentioned in IBM press release, and I don’t really see why we should have been mentioned here.

You know, donating the OOo code to ASF should have been an Oracle announcement, while here we have one short and dry Oracle statement against an IBM press release plus 3 IBM blog post (linking to each other) in less that 30 minutes after the Oracle announcement.

It looks like you were eagerly awaiting the announcement, and have been carefully preparing it for days. You managed your declaration of support as if this this was an IBM announcement.

Unfortunately, for ASF, and I’m really speaking out of my specific communication competence and my total development incompetence, the outside perception is that IBM is in the driver’s seat here.

It looks like we were having one community with two projects and we will be ending up with two communities (sorry, but I don’t think I would like to cooperate in a project where you – bashing TDF – are one of the committers: so, either you calm down for a while and improve your understanding of TDF, and start to behave in a mature way, or I’ll withdraw from the discussion as of now).

6:02 am

Bas

June 2, 2011

@Rob

Rob wrote :
« @Jeremy, I’d be absolutely giddy with joy if LibreOffice developers would come over to Apache and run their project under the Apache 2.0 license under the Apache process »

Well who wouldn’t be « giddy with joy » because of free labor that this new project is obviously hoping to attract. It seems that the hope is that through it’s support of this Apache project, IBM is banking on it’s mere weight and corporate status, that developers will be attracted over from the LibreOffice community. It also looks like the strategy to get this type of movement is by trying to make the LibreOffice project and SC look bad.
But maybe I am wrong, maybe there is plan to hire developers ??? No one has said much about that as far as I have seen.
So, as I said, it seems like the goal here in your (oddly defensive) comments is to make the LO SC look bad, by saying things such as the following :

Rob wrote :

« But there is a committee, appointed by the self-appointed “Steering Committee” that has the job of »…

… « the self-appointed, unelected Steering Committee. »

… « then who is to blame: me, or your own unelected, self-appointed Steering Committee ? »

Several times, Rob, it looks almost like fear mongering against the steering committee of The Document Foundation. It literally sounds like you are trying to make people think that they are illegitimate drivers of the community. This is sad to me really, because granted they may not be elected, but they are the ones who TOOK ALL THE RISK, and stuck their necks out to fork the OpenOffice project away from the death grip of Oracle, when everyone else was too afraid to move a little finger, everyone else trying to hold on to their status quo. So because they took the initiative that makes them what?…dangerous? That is what you make it sound like. Somebody had to do something. But I guess it’s hard to understand that coming from a corporate point of view where you are forced to sit on the fence and wait to see what the legions lawyers say every time an opportunity presents itself. No risk taking, means slow, VERY slow progress.
The steering committee of LibreOffice took huge risks because (excuse my language) they had the balls to do so. Don’t rag on them for that for pete’s sake!!!

Anyway, you contradict that point in your own comments :

Rob wrote :

« @JZA, I think the “focus” will come from the priorities of those who join and participate. That is the nature of a meritocracy. Those who “do” decide. »

The Document Foundation is a meritocracy. Those who « did » are the members of the The Document Foundation steering committee.

‘Nuff said.

Oh PS : TDF bylaws state : « The Steering Committee will end it’s existence 1 year the latest after public announcement, or earlier, if the Document Foundation has been established and a new steering body is operational. » So the current steering committee is acting for the establishment of the foundation, and elections will take place… So really the emphasis on « un-elected » in your comments is disingenuous.

6:19 am

ericb

[ http://blog.educoo.org/ ]

June 2, 2011

Some key points, who will make or not the success of this story :

- the quality (first) and (second) the number of developpers
- the companies like IBM or other behavior : will they truly play the game and share the code (e.g. Symphony mess)?
- the Copyright Assignment

P.S. : please don’t forget to mention OOo4Kids -> http://wiki.ooo4kids.org and OOoLight ( http://wiki.ooolight.org) as forks too.

6:56 am

The Contrarian

June 2, 2011

One talks to an open source community on public mailing lists, Rob. Show me the invitation to Apache on any public OOo list of your choice.

So from all this hostility towards TDF (which you assume I’m part of – you know there’s also a bunch of people still at OpenOffice.org who aren’t silenced Oracle employees, right? You’re aware this community you are scared to mention is enormous, right?) it seems safe to assume you do not support Oracle and ASF when they say in the proposal:

“Both Oracle and ASF agree that the OpenOffice.org development community, previously fragmented, would re-unite under ASF to ensure a stable and long term future for OpenOffice.org.”

since you have no respect whatever for members of that community?

7:07 am

Ole Laursen

[ http://people.iola.dk/olau/ ]

June 2, 2011

Hi!

Just wondering when I read your comment on how you evaluated the different possible places to go – did you consider community momentum? It seems to me as an outsider that LibreOffice won that one, and for an unpaid community member that’s probably more important than anything else. Maybe you see that differently, or maybe that criterium is less important for you?

7:39 am

Russell Ossenndryver

June 2, 2011

Hi Rob

I asked Mr. Sutor this question also. Many of us are trying to unite the LO community and what is left of the OOo community. Please let me have you thoughts on how a dipository of code at the Apache foundation will help accomplish this.

Best
Russ

10:15 am

Bradley M. Kuhn

[ http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog ]

June 2, 2011

There’s one additional point that I’d like to make, which @Alexandre hints at but doesn’t point out explicitly. Rob is quoting the FSF completely out of context in the main post here. Specifically, he leaves out this part of FSF’s post on the Apache 2.0 license:

When you contribute to an existing project, you should usually release your modified versions under the same license as the original work. It’s good to cooperate with the project’s maintainers, and using a different license for your modifications often makes that cooperation very difficult. You should only do that when there is a strong reason to justify it.

10:59 am

 Italo Vignoli

[ http://www.documentfoundation.org/ ]

June 2, 2011

@Greg Stein
I really do hope that IBM is not in the driver seat, because having someone like Rob Weir there would be frightening for everyone.
The problem is that the way IBM handled the announcement, which should have been primarily an Oracle announcement and then an ASF announcement, raised the perception that IBM is in the driver’s seat. I’m not talking about myself here, but about the journalists – several of them – that have expressed this perception.
If Apache is happy, then I’m happy as well. It looks like, from what I’ve read so far, that I won’t contribute to the project (definitely not as a developer, but also as a community member).
I have founded TDF to be independent from corporations, and I don’t want to participate in a project where there is a clear influence of a single large corporation (although I understand that membership is managed on a individual basis, and I fully appreciate this, but I am also almost 60 and for the last 35 I’ve been in the IT market, and this has made me just a little bit suspicious about that corporation and his behavior in the market).

7:16 pm

Alexandre Oliva

[ http://fsfla.org/~lxoliva/ ]

June 2, 2011

@Greg well, then, that still leaves open the possibility of ASF to accept the donation and, instead of releasing the code under ALv2, passing it on to some other organization that does maintain projects under copyleft licenses, such as TDF, FSF, FSC, or even Mozilla.

But, heck, I’m sure Oracle’s and IBM’s lawyers thought of that in advance, and the terms of the code donation prohibit this sort of community-oriented behavior. And even if they didn’t, I suppose Oracle could still preemptively release the code under ALv2 before the transfer. So…

TDF has an active community of developers, strong community support and a headstart of several months with copyleft contributions. We’ll see where that leads us all. Best wishes for ASF to seek success of the project rather than alienate its original community. Oracle and IBM took a bold anti-community bet, now it is upon us, the community, to avoid being manipulated and used, regardless of support or sabotage by the ASF.

7:18 pm

Mike

June 2, 2011

Hi Rob,

I was wondering how this incubator project at ASF works?, Is there any time frame where we can see OOo development starting again after it graduates from the ASF incubator project?

Thanks.

7:28 pm

another André

June 2, 2011

As I commented on another IBM blog, I’m glad to see Openoffice.org on the way to becoming truly free for contribution.
Being a longtime Openoffice user, I moved to Libreoffice when it started, as it allows truly free contribution. And I have be very satisfied with Libreoffice’s progress. As for sponsor membership of the TDF which hosts Libreoffice, I don’t care. I’m interested in contributing to the development of Libreoffice itself, something I couldn’t easily do to Openoffice.

However, unlike many others in the Libreoffice community, I see a truly free Openoffice as positive. Undoubtedly, the interface will diverge somewhat, but we will have 2 well-known fully open office suites which are fully (and natively) compatible with the open ODF file formats. Which will, in the long run, be good for everyone. ODF becoming the major office formats will have benefits for all office suite users, even those who use neither office suite.
No more lock-in, formats accessible in perpetuety, a means of exchange available to all.
BTW, I still expect Libreoffice to be much more popular.

10:37 pm

amber

June 2, 2011

IBM might have contributed code, but more than five years ago they promised to include speech to text code in OOo. A promise that has yet to be realized. Breaking promises when it comes to those with accessibility requirements is IBM’s standard modus operandi.

11:35 pm

Rob

June 3, 2011

Hello everyone. Obviously I can’t respond to all of you in depth, but trust me, I’ve read all of your comments.

@Zoltan, we’re discussing this topic at Apache. Oracle will give Apache the domain name for openoffice.org. The plan is to preserve all active projects and perhaps archive the inactive ones. Send me an email if you want more information. But we’re not planning on losing anything that is active.

@Cor, when Oracle announced several weeks ago that they were looking to move OpenOffice to a community lead project, we talked to TDF Steering Committee members. We also talked to Oracle. And I’m told that TDF talked to Oracle as well. We all had talks and exchanged emails. Did we continue talking with TDF after it became clear that they were not willing to consider moving to any non-copyleft foundation? No, of course not. But be honest with me. If we had asked you, to join Apache, and we asked you before the announcement, would that have changed your mind? Or would that just have given you more time to prepare blog posts, and contact the press and plan a media campaign to oppose the announcement. Be honest now. Aha!

@AlexH, If someone wants to contribute to Apache OpenOffice, they can join and do so, even during incubation. In fact, this is encouraged. Incubation is more about giving the “podling” (what they call the project under incubation) extra help and attention with regard to Apache infrastructure and procedures. But the development work occurs via the normal consensus process. In fact, showing that you are doing active development is necessary to “graduate” from incubation.

But certainly, there will be a stage in incubation where it is mainly server admin, web site deisgn, build repository work, etc. And not everyone is interested in that.

But all said, this is not something that takes a year. I hearing more like 3 months.

@Italo, It is probably a good thing to separate two things: 1) the contribution of the OpenOffice code, trademark, logo and domain name to Apache, and 2) the announcement of a new Apache OpenOffice project. The first is entirely Oracle’s work. Of course they issued a press release on it. For the project announcement, of course companies planning on joining the project are going to blog about. Does that make more sense?

@Bas, the self-appointed, unelected TDF Steering Committee remains self-appointed and unelected even if they have self-authored bylaws, unapproved by the general membership that say that they might have an election after a year. Maybe call then the “acting steering committee” or “provisional steering committee” or something like that?

When you say that they, “TOOK ALL THE RISK, and stuck their necks out”, what exactly did they risk? Their lives? Their jobs? Their reputations? It doesn’t seem like ranting about a large American software company is really risking anything. But I’m sure it is fun. The LO fork was more the culmination of a multi-year fight between Novell and Sun/Oracle than anything else.

@ericb, we’re putting together a list of things we want to contribute from Symphony. But we’ll need to have a discussion with the new project first to determine the priorities.

@Contrarian, I know OOo was contacted because we saw several OOo members join the Apache project today. I understand an email also went to TDF, But from what I’ve read, they are being told (by Meeks) “I would strongly prefer to see either all of us as initial committers [in Apache], or none at all, and that is a decision we need to make collectively”

@Ole, I see how one could look at momentum of an existing project, but I don’t see how you could do a “what if?” and estimate and compare it across other foundation options. Past performance is no indication of future results, etc.

@Russell, go back a few years, when Sun was running OpenOffice. Core work was done in OpenOffice.org. Others took that code and customized it. Novell Edition, NeoOffice, Symphony, RedOffice, OOo4Kids, etc. We had one big community, with distinguished roles and we got together and partied at an annual conference. Of course, the world was not all roses. There was the CLA to Sun, that many did not like. Sun as the corporate gatekeeper was something that that many, especially Novell, did not like. I’d like to restore what was good in that picture, while removing what was bad. So Apache instead of Sun, no copyright assignment, no gatekeeper. But also no fork. Separate packaging and customization, yes, of course. But core work on editors all done in Apache.

@Bradley, thank you for your moral tutelage. I’ll do ten Hail Mary’s.

@Italo, again, you are confusing the contribution announcement with the project announcement blog posts. Two different things. As for project diversity, Apache has a requirement that for a project to graduate from incubation, it must have an “open and diverse community”. The guidelines state one aspect of this requirement as, “there is no single company or entity that is vital to the success of the project “. It is rules like this that make Apache a valuable place to host a project for the long term. They are thinking about what is needed for success and stability. Something to consider, is whether LO can match that same level of diversity.

@Alexandre, the OOo code has not been sent to Apache yet. It is in two stages. First the signed grant paperwork, then the proposal is reviewed and approved and if approved the code is transferred over and the headers updated.

@Mike, Apache incubation is result driven, not time driven. When we meet the criteria for graduation and are approved then we graduate. There are quarterly reviews and after each review we’re rated as continue, cancel or graduate. My guess is we’ll take 1 or 2 quarters. Much will depend on whether we want to make a release during incubation. Or wait until after for our first release. In other words, is our priority to get a release out quickly, or to graduate quickly.

@Andre, thanks for the comment.

@Amber, actually we did contribute the accessibility work,. But it sat in a CWS and Sun never pushed it. That is one advantage of moving to Apache. We will make feature decisions among in the project, by consensus, with no corporate gatekeeper. And we’ll get that accessibility work finally into the release!

2:15 am

Bradley M. Kuhn

[ http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog ]

June 5, 2011

@Bradley, you thought my response *seemed* dismissive? I apologize for the ambiguity.

5:05 pm

Rob

June 5, 2011

@Bradley, I’m not intending to be rude, but just dismissing your ideas as irrelevant. I assume you would do the same if I commented on your blog telling you whether or not you should eat meat, wear red on Tuesdays, or cross the path of a black cat. Your moral views are of no significance to me. The fact is, Oracle has clean title to the copyright of this code. Or at least no one disputes this. It is primarily the product of their employees. The remainder was from 3rd parties who signed over the right to re-license it. No one was coerced to do anything. Oracle is free to contribute it to Apache, contribute it to LibreOffice, contribute it to the Committee to Reelect Barack Obama or to print it out and burn it in the parking lot. We’re all entitled to our opinions on this. But when you start talking about your opinion as being the “moral” choice, then yes, I dismiss you.

6:06 pm

Alexandre Oliva

[ http://fsfla.org/~lxoliva/ ]

June 5, 2011

Rob, if the notion of morals is so unimportant to you, to IBM and to Oracle, it means that we humans are failing, because our *only* way to keep corporations in check and bring benefit to humans rather than exploiting us, is to ensure companies behave in ways that are compatible with ethics and morals. We can do that through laws, in true democracies, and through citizen and consumer activism (voting with our acts and our wallets). I hope enough people realize we have that power, and we can choose not to be manipulated, exploited and used, so that companies that choose to dismiss issues that are important to humans because they don’t regard them as valuable to their business find out the hard way that we people are relevant after all.

8:02 pm

Jeffrey

June 5, 2011

“But when you start talking about your opinion as being the “moral” choice, then yes, I dismiss you.”

You seem to be of the opinion that there is no moral implications but regardless of the legal agreements, there is. If IBM fails to recognize this, then it is IBM’s big failure in this PR disaster

9:45 pm

Rob

June 5, 2011

@Alexandre/@Jeffrey, I never said morals are not important. But if we’ve learned anything from the last 30 centuries is that nothing good comes from attempting to impose your morals on others.

Personally, my value system is based on freedom, including the freedom of association, the freedom to own property, the freedom to enter into uncoerced contracts regarding that property. A man should be free to do pretty much whatever he wants so long as it does not interfere with someone else’s freedom. Oracle donating the code it owns to Apache, aside from being generous of its own right, takes away no one else’s freedom.

That’s my personal view, but I have no interest in pushing this on any one else as moral obligation.

10:26 pm

Alexandre Oliva

[ http://fsfla.org/~lxoliva/ ]

June 6, 2011

Rob, that is true, what Oracle is doing with OpenOffice.org code doesn’t take away anyone’s freedom. It is what IBM wants to do with it, that makes a non-copyleft license so important, that will. That’s why I’m writing about this here. That’s why a non-copyleft license is a poor choice: although it doesn’t take away any freedom from anyone, it does offer power to take away others’ freedoms. That is the key difference between copyleft licenses and non-copyleft licenses. Please don’t conflate one’s freedom with power over others. Copyleft vs non-copyleft has to do with the latter, not the former, so your bringing up freedom is an attempt to confuse (assuming you’re smart enough to not be confused about these issues yourself; if you are, I apologize for not giving you the benefit of the doubt on this one, and I’m truly sorry for your naïvette :-).

1:28 am

Rahul Sundaram

June 6, 2011

You talk about imposition and coercion. It is not about that. Contributors to Openoffice.org including competing vendors like Red Hat and Novell but also many volunteers did so in good faith that Sun would setup a foundation in the near future as it had promised and continue to license code under a copyleft license. Sun and its commercial agreement with IBM which allows IBM to sell Symphony as a proprietary fork of Openoffice.org changed the dynamics of how Openoffice.org as a open source ecosystem worked. Oracle is now unilaterally relicensing the code under a non-copyleft license. While Sun might have been granted the legal right to do so which has been inherited by Oracle now, doing so breaks the inherent trust of the contributors which is beneficial to IBM since IBM can continue to derive benefit from taking all the Apache code contributed by anyone else and building a proprietary product however it isn’t of benefit to a community build around a LGPL licensed codebase. This does present some moral questions and also the question of trust which is important when mixing commercial vendors with volunteer contributors in a critical project. I think Oracle and IBM are off to a bad start here and you don’t seem to appreciate the importance of it and without taking the issues into consideration, I don’t see a possibility of reconciliation with the LibreOffice community which you seem to detest very much. Whatever works for you.

10:15 pm

Inge Wallin

June 7, 2011

I have a vision of a free, high quality productivity suite, one based on open standards and open source, one that doesn’t treat the web and mobile and tablet form factors as a design afterthought, one that has a strong extensibility and programmability model that makes it the preferred platform for innovation, one that has a dedicated community of supporters. I’ll need your help to get there.

Haha, Rob, you are describing the Calligra Suite perfectly. Was that the intention? :-)

7:36 am

Bradley M. Kuhn

[ http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog ]

June 6, 2011

@Rob, you continue to ignore the fact that I raised two issues with you. I raised the question of morality of the relicensing action, and I raised the fact that you’d quoted the FSF out of context in the primary post above. In your responses, you’ve consistently over-focused on the former, presumably to avoid the latter. That’s keen debating on your part, but it does indicate that you probably have no remorse for misrepresenting the FSF’s positions for your own political gain.

10:35 am

Rob

June 7, 2011

@Alexandre, I fail to see what “power over another” that Apache 2.0 would give that they would not already have via their copyright as the author of a creative work. Remember, copyleft is just a license. It only works legally because of copyright law. You cannot have GPL without respect for copyright. So copyleft only works because of the power the author has over users of that work, e.g., the power to sue them if they do not respect the copyleft license, the power to deny them use of the work. So I don’t see any less use of power over others with GPL. It is just in a different form. I could just as well write a license that says “You can use my code so long as you volunteer at a hospital for one hour” That would also give me, as the original author, power over you, if you wanted to use my work. I could also have a license that says, “You can use my code in exchange for $1000″. That is another form of power over you. Ditto for any other form of license. What makes Apache 2.0 so nice, is that it gives almost no conditions on what the receiver does with the code. It is much closer to a true commons.

@Rahul, Apache OpenOffice would very much benefit the LGPL LibreOffice since they would be able to take any of our Apache 2.0 code and reuse it in LibreOffice. The licenses are compatible in that direction.

@Inge, good point! I think certainly in the mobile/web space, Calligra Suite is far ahead of OpenOffice.org.

@Bradley, the excerpt I gave was from Brett Smith’s blog post. The passage that you gave is from an entirely different web page. I didn’t quote anything out of context. But perhaps Brett did? But I did give the link to Brett’s post and via the magic of hypertext, the reader can read it all. Ultimately, “context” is subjective.

In any case, if you want to get into the “How to choose a license” text, then I think you are guilty of cherry picking what paragraph you choose to invoke. I find that this part is much more applicable to OpenOffice.org:

There are only a couple of kinds of projects that we think should not have any copyleft at all. The first is very small projects.
.
.
.
The second is projects that implement free standards that are competing against proprietary standards, such as Ogg Vorbis (which competes against MP3 audio) and WebM (which competes against MPEG-4 video). For these projects, widespread use of the code is vital for advancing the cause of free software, and does more good than a copyleft on the project’s code would do.

11:12 pm

Alexandre Oliva

June 8, 2011

[ http://fsfla.org/~lxoliva/ ]

Rob, this FSF recommendation you cite would indeed support releasing the bits that read and write ODF under a permissive license, for broader adoption of the format in other programs. But arguing that this small portion should imply that the entire suite, with all filters for various different formats, user interface and applications should, by association, get the same treatment is fallacious at best.

I’ll address your misunderstanding of power vs freedom in a separate, longer post.

4:30 pm

Alexandre Oliva

June 8, 2011

[ http://fsfla.org/~lxoliva/ ]

Rob, WRT freedom vs power, I just wrote what follows down, and posted it also on my blog:
http://fsfla.org/blogs/lxo/pub/freedom-vs-power

Some definitions and premises:

* freedom is the ability to make decisions about yourself and your own
future, and to carry them out

* power is the ability to make decisions about others and their
future, and to carry them out

* one’s freedom ends where the neighbors’s freedoms begin

* software users and developers deserve freedom over each program they
use to carry out their computations, specifically:

** the freedom to run the program for any purpose

** the freedom to study the source code of the program, to learn from
it and to verify that it behaves as intended, and to adapt the
program so that it does what the user wishes

** the freedom to make copies of the program, and to distribute them

** the freedom to improve the software, and to distribute the
improvements

* rights are freedoms recognized and defended by social institutions

* privileges are power granted and enforced by social institutions

* copyright is the power to prohibit others from copying, modifying,
distributing and/or publicly performing a work of authorship

* copyleft is a technique, first developed to defend software users’
freedoms, by curtailing power while respecting freedoms

So you see, copyright is a misnomer, for it is does not amount to a
right to copy. It is rather a privilege, that empowers its grantee to
stop others from copying (and more). Therefore, copying is not a
right, for it is not defended (it is rather attacked) by social
institutions, and copyright is a privilege, but not a right, for it is
power (decision over others), not freedom (decision over oneself).

Copyleft was first implemented through copyright licenses, using the
restrictive power of copyright to permit the distribution of software
only in forms that respect recipients’ freedoms. The conditions set
forth in copyleft licenses do not prevent anyone from running,
studying, adapting, copying, improving or distributing the software or
improvements over it, so they don’t interfere with freedoms. The
conditions rather refrain from granting recipients a privilege: the
power to deprive other recipients’ of their freedoms.

The effects of copyleft do not depend on copyright; that’s confusing
specification with implementation. Although GPL, AGPL, LGPL, MPL,
EPL, etc implement copyleft through copyright license, similar effects
could be attained in the absence of copyright through distribution
only under contractual commitments, through consumer-protection laws
(empowering consumers to demand respect for their freedoms), or
through preservation of freedom of expressions.
http://fsfla.org/blogs/lxo/pub/manifesto-livre-express

Now, per copyright laws worldwide, authors of works of authorship are
granted a privilege, the legal power to exclude others from various
uses of the works. Recipients, without permission from the authors of
a work covered by copyright, cannot distribute the work to third
parties, so as to exert power through selective (e.g. sourceless)
distribution, nor can they, without permission, become co-authors, by
modifying the work, and then distributing modified copies to third
parties, so as to exert copyright powers.

Copyright law grants to each (co-)author of a work the power to veto
others’ freedoms as to the work, and the power to extend (or not) the
privilege to potential co-authors of derived works. Copyleft uses
neither power: it grants permissions so as to respect freedoms, and it
refrains from extending the privilege to co-authors, so that they
don’t get to veto others’ freedoms. Permissive licenses, such as the
X11 license, variants of the BSD licenses, and the Apache licenses,
don’t use the power to veto others’ freedoms, but they do extend to
others this power to veto.

Therefore, for recipients, the difference between copyleft licenses
and permissive licenses is not in the freedoms, but rather in the
power to not respect others’ freedoms. Now, given that one’s freedom
ends where the neighbors’s freedoms begin, this is an illegitimate
privilege. For uses grounded on legitimate rights and freedoms,
copyleft and permissive licenses make little or no difference. Thus,
permissive licenses don’t respect more freedom than copyleft licenses;
they rather enable illegitimate power over others.

Of course, ethical recipients won’t abuse this illegitimate power, but
why take the risk of granting this power to recipients in the first
place, if you can avoid the tragedy of the commons through a credible
commitment that keeps unethical recipients honest, such as copyleft?
http://fsfla.org/~lxoliva/papers/free-software/BMind.pdf

7:07 pm

Rob June 9, 2011

@Alexandre, that fact remains that copyright is the law and is considered a form of property. That fact that you think this form of property is unjust or merely a social convention is irrelevant. We can point to societies that considered real property to be unjust and eliminated private ownership of land. We’ve also seen societies where even the most basic ownership of “self” was denied. The general correlation has been that where property rights are denied, that this comes at the same time as denial of civil liberties as well. Economic freedoms and social freedoms are connected.

It scares me that the same arguments that you make against the social institution of copyright can also be used to deny me my house and my belongings. You could just as well say that the exclusive control I exert over my house and my bed is a privilege granted by society and that this represents power over others, by denying them entry, and that my lock on the door vetoes their right to enter.

In any case I fail to see the problem with Oracle taking that code that they own and releasing it as open source under the Apache 2.0 license. If any person or group of persons feels strongly about having a copyleft version then they are free to take that code and modify it and put it into a GPL fork. No one denies them this freedom. And those who use the code under that license are of course obligated to follow the terms of that license, since that license is what gives them rights to use the copyrighted work.

Maybe the confusion is that you think that Oracle has somehow licensed itself the code under LPGL and is somehow obligated under LGPL? That would be ridiculous. Oracle owns of the code. They control the copyright. They are not under terms of any copyleft license for OpenOffice. They have freedom to do what they want with this code.

12:23 pm

Alexandre Oliva

[ http://fsfla.org/~lxoliva/ ]

June 9, 2011

Copyright was not regarded as a form of property for almost 90% of the time in which it existed. That’s a very recent attempt to reframe it. That copyright can be used to exclude others from doing whatever they like with copies of a work in their possession has nothing whatsoever to do with your ability to exclude others from your tangible property in your possession. This kind of faulty reasoning of yours is just one of the reasons that show how nonsensical it is to try to fit copyright in the property framework. Property doesn’t expire into the public domain, nor does it apply to copies of an object.

Again, my issue is not with the freedoms Oracle respects of others, it is rather with what others (such as IBM) will do with the powers that Oracle is going to give them. I’ve already written than, and you don’t show good faith trying to pretend that the issue is a different one.

I’m fully aware Oracle, as sole copyright holder, is the licensor, not a licensee, so the provisions of the LGPL for licensees don’t apply to them, no matter how much lured-in contributors may have expected Sun to retain those licensing terms. It’s a perfect lesson on why volunteer contributors should stick to respecting freedoms, rather than giving more power to profit-driven corporations. Fortunately LibreOffice doesn’t seem inclined to make this mistake.

11:51 pm

Rob

June 11, 2011

@Alexandre, Let’s look again at the FSF statement on licensing recommendations. Their guidance is to use a permissive license for “projects that implement free standards that are competing against proprietary standards”. But then you suggest that this applies only to the “bits that read and write ODF”.

I think you confuse what the ODF standard actually is. The ODF standard specifies more than just the serialized format of the document. It also runtime requirement, such as how spreadsheet formulas are calculated. etc. The ODF standard “specifies the characteristics of an XML-based application-independent and platform-independent digital document file format, as
well as the characteristics of software applications which read, write and process such documents.”

So an ODF is more than just reading and writing. It is the “processing” as well. So in a spreadsheet. the display of charts, the calculation for formulas, the styling of text, the formatting of numbers and dates, as well as the reading and writing of the document, are all things specified by ODF.

6:08 pm

Alexandre Oliva

[ http://fsfla.org/~lxoliva/ ]

June 11, 2011

Rob, even if your argument holds any water as to the extent of ODF, the FSF has made its position regarding OpenOffice under a permissive license pretty clear, so they evidently don’t agree with your too-broad interpretation of their own recommendations.
http://www.fsf.org/news/openoffice-apache-libreoffice

6:38 pm

Rob

June 11, 2011

@Alexandre: Sorry, I didn’t mean to suggest that logic or consistency is necessary to the FSF’s position. They can say whatever they want. I’m just saying that their position, and your argument, would be more persuasive if it were based on facts, including facts concerning what the ODF standard actually defines.

But please, don’t let the facts get in the way of your propaganda. I’m told the fear of Apache OpenOffice has caused TDF’s donations to triple. Maybe your scare tactics will increase donations to FSF, to save the world from the big bad Apache 2.0 license? I wish you greater luck in your future endeavors. But this one does not seem to be going your way.

6:49 pm

Alexandre Oliva

[ http://fsfla.org/~lxoliva/ ]

June 13, 2011

I just hope you meant it when you wrote you were for freedom, and that you didn’t mean for power over others, and that you practice what you claim to be for, even when the time comes to make decisions regarding OpenOffice and its release under a license that permits abuse, and when the company you work for proceeds to use that permission to deny freedom to its customers. If you’re for freedom as you wrote, it would seem that this path isn’t quite going your way either.

5:51 am

Copyright 2011