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View Full Version : Oracle Kicks Out the Founders of The Document Foundation/LO.



AlphaMack
October 17th, 2010, 09:59 AM
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Community_Council_Log_20101014

Covered on Slashdot here:
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/10/10/17/0210209/Oracle-Asks-OpenOffice-Community-Members-To-Leave

Well, things just got even more interesting. :popcorn:

Giant Speck
October 17th, 2010, 10:06 AM
I find it not only oddly hilarious, but absolutely not surprising at all.

fatality_uk
October 17th, 2010, 10:06 AM
Hmm. Strokes beard!!

AlphaMack
October 17th, 2010, 10:09 AM
I find it not only oddly hilarious, but absolutely not surprising at all.

Cutting off their nose to spite their face?

Giant Speck
October 17th, 2010, 10:15 AM
Cutting off their nose to spite their face?
Absolutely.

slackthumbz
October 17th, 2010, 11:04 AM
Oracle really don't 'get' OSS. Fedora, Ubuntu and openSUSE have all announced that they will be switching top libreoffice, I have little doubt that other distros will follow suit. OpenOffice as developed by Oracle will fade into irrelevance.

http://www.techdrivein.com/2010/09/future-ubuntu-releases-will-be-shipped.html

bruno9779
October 17th, 2010, 12:30 PM
In a way I am happy for those devs that got the sack.

Now they have plenty of time to work on libreoffice and have probably been paid off nicely.

Oracle has left OO stagnating on the last couple of years, this transition is very much needed.

koenn
October 17th, 2010, 02:10 PM
Oracle has left OO stagnating on the last couple of years, this transition is very much needed.

hm,
Oracle didn't own OOo until a few months ago (January 2010 or so ?), so they can hardly be blamed for stagnation, if any, in the last couple of years

kaldor
October 17th, 2010, 03:58 PM
I don't get Oracle.

nlsthzn
October 17th, 2010, 04:11 PM
Well... they were asked to leave the OpenOffice.org Community Council... what ever that is...?

toupeiro
October 17th, 2010, 05:17 PM
This is what happens when closed source mentality and business practice tries to drive and influence open source.

I can somewhat accept the COI statements, because I've done business with Oracle for years through different companies and I have a good idea about how they are looking at this situation, but I think it is not NEAR as big of a deal as people are making them out to be. They are both open source projects of the SAME FRAMEWORK. It completely behoves both projects to have people that have visibility and influence in both to see what works and implement respectively where it's applicable. OOo and LO are not, say, MySQL and PostGRESQL. They are NOT in competition. They are brother/sister projects (Maybe parent/child, but not sure yet), not the weird neighbor project that you want your kids to stay off their lawn. I hope they can get over their petty political squabbles.

chessnerd
October 17th, 2010, 05:33 PM
Let me see if I understand this:

1. The Document Foundation announced LibreOffice
2. Some of the Document Foundation members work for Oracle on OOo development
3. Oracle is feeling threatened by LibreOffice
4. Oracle tells their developers "we don't want you here, go work somewhere else"
5. Developers leave to focus on other projects they are interested in
6. LibreOffice is another project they are interested in

Oh, so that's what shooting yourself in the foot looks like... ;)

beetleman64
October 17th, 2010, 06:53 PM
It was always coming, wasn't it? The one thing that I wish LibreOffice had was a better name. The name looks and sounds a wee bit daft. I know the significance of the name, as do Red Hat and Canonical, as do the users on the forum, but you average MS Office user probably doesn't. I'm not saying that OpenOffice was much better, but it was a well established brand which will probably now being superseded.

MJWitter
October 17th, 2010, 07:25 PM
Let me see if I understand this:

1. The Document Foundation announced LibreOffice
2. Some of the Document Foundation members work for Oracle on OOo development
3. Oracle is feeling threatened by LibreOffice
4. Oracle tells their developers "we don't want you here, go work somewhere else"
5. Developers leave to focus on other projects they are interested in
6. LibreOffice is another project they are interested in

Oh, so that's what shooting yourself in the foot looks like... ;)

I may be interpreting the information in the links incorrectly, but to me it looks like:

1. The Document Foundation announced LibreOffice
2. Some of the Document Foundation members are on the "community" council that steer OpenOffice development.
3. Oracle believes this to be a conflict of interest as those members are on the council of two competing products (OpenOffice and LibreOffice) and is thus asking them to resign from the OpenOffice council.

This seems perfectly reasonable to me, much like one would not want the CEO of a competitor to be on your company's board of directors as one cannot trust them to act in your company's best interests above their own.

Ctrl-Alt-F1
October 17th, 2010, 07:36 PM
It was always coming, wasn't it? The one thing that I wish LibreOffice had was a better name. The name looks and sounds a wee bit daft. I know the significance of the name, as do Red Hat and Canonical, as do the users on the forum, but you average MS Office user probably doesn't. I'm not saying that OpenOffice was much better, but it was a well established brand which will probably now being superseded.

Agreed. I hope LibreOffice excels, but I also wonder if it will with such a lame name.

phrostbyte
October 17th, 2010, 07:54 PM
I actually read the IRC log. It wasn't an enjoyable read. It was pretty hard to read because it was the same back and forth like 20 times. It started out friendly but got pretty unfriendly close to the end. They didn't actually kick them out, but forcibly asked them to resign. :mad:

chessnerd
October 17th, 2010, 08:13 PM
This seems perfectly reasonable to me, much like one would not want the CEO of a competitor to be on your company's board of directors as one cannot trust them to act in your company's best interests above their own.

It's perfectly reasonable and I completely understand why Oracle would do that, but it seems like it would be in Oracle's best interest to have them to continue to work on OpenOffice until they actually do something questionable. At this point, it looks like they are having a French Revolution-style "if you aren't for us you're against us" attitude.

From what I have read about the Document Foundation they want to work with Oracle in a similar way to how the Illumos Foundation wants to: they want to work with Oracle, but maintain their independence from any corporation. The Document Foundation's website FAQ states that they are not a breakaway project. It seems that Oracle simply isn't willing to work with open-source groups.

Austin25
October 17th, 2010, 09:25 PM
Does this mean Microsoft was right (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1596849) for once?
It was always coming, wasn't it? The one thing that I wish LibreOffice had was a better name. The name looks and sounds a wee bit daft. I know the significance of the name, as do Red Hat and Canonical, as do the users on the forum, but you average MS Office user probably doesn't. I'm not saying that OpenOffice was much better, but it was a well established brand which will probably now being superseded.
Anything that is supported by Ubuntu/Canonical will excel at least within the open source community.

Dr. C
October 17th, 2010, 10:18 PM
Does this mean Microsoft was right (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1596849) for once?
Anything that is supported by Ubuntu/Canonical will excel at least within the open source community.

Microsoft did make some out right misrepresentations (such as the difficulty of obtaining paid or unpaid support for OpenOffice.org), and the implication that students need to pay license fees to Microsoft in order to improve their grades is just deplorable; however the video does make some very valid points about OpenOffice.org in particular when it comes to compatibility with the Microsoft Office 2007/2010 extensions, macros etc.

The first thing to keep in mind here is that the typical Ubuntu user is not running OpenOffice.org 3.1, they are in fact running the go-oo.org version that does a much better job with compatibility with Microsoft office formats.

The trouble with OpenOffice.org is the copyright assignment to Sun and later Oracle which effectively made corporate contributions from competitors of Sun and later Oracle very problematic. This lies at the heart of why there are so few contributions outside of SUN / Oracle, and why the project has stagnated. LibreOffice addresses this problem by following the very successful model of Linux, and will consequently attract contributors.

What Oracle has accomplished with their mismanagement of OpenOffice.org is to turn what was at best an annoyance to Microsoft's dominance of the Office software market into a serious threat, by provoking the creation of the Document Foundation and LibreOffice.

MooPi
October 17th, 2010, 10:24 PM
Honeymoon is over boys and girls so look out for flying debris and lousy insults next.:)

rafe.kettler
October 17th, 2010, 10:33 PM
Wow. This isn't good for free productivity suites. I use openoffice.org now in both Windows and Ubuntu and I like it. But the Oracle logo at startup hurts me.

I had this conspiracy theory that Oracle bought openoffice to build it up, make it better than MS Office, and then start selling it and screw up the old free versions. Not so sure how they can execute their brilliant master plan without the OSS community's backing, though.

I've never used libreoffice but I suppose if Ubuntu et al. are looking to switch to it I'll start.

AlphaMack
October 18th, 2010, 02:13 AM
They didn't actually kick them out, but forcibly asked them to resign. :mad:



(22:10:40) louis_to: but the issue is of importance, and I do not want actual or possible confusion to obtain here
(22:10:49) louis_to: the point is quite clear
(22:11:10) louis_to: if the TDF members do not disassociate themselves from the Doc. found. then they must resign
(22:11:14) louis_to: by Tuesday
(22:11:27) louis_to: I doubt we can have consensus on that point
(22:11:38) louis_to: however, the situation here is extraordinary
(22:12:07) erAck: So, we now know (or not) Cor's opinion about conflict of interest. How about Christoph and Olivier?
(22:12:15) louis_to: We are giving the TDF members the time to understand the weight of their action and to act gracefully


Ultimatum...forced resignation...getting kicked out...same thing.

Regardless, this will not end well for OOo, especially since Canonical, Novell, Redhat, and others are on board with LO.

BigCityCat
October 18th, 2010, 02:14 AM
I may be interpreting the information in the links incorrectly, but to me it looks like:

1. The Document Foundation announced LibreOffice
2. Some of the Document Foundation members are on the "community" council that steer OpenOffice development.
3. Oracle believes this to be a conflict of interest as those members are on the council of two competing products (OpenOffice and LibreOffice) and is thus asking them to resign from the OpenOffice council.

This seems perfectly reasonable to me, much like one would not want the CEO of a competitor to be on your company's board of directors as one cannot trust them to act in your company's best interests above their own.

Except their free and open so what are they competing for? Unless Oracle is looking to make a profit and possably close their contibutions to the code after taking it far enough to improve it but leaving the community with the code the way it is now 4 years down the road (if they close source their contributions). Oracles actions now prove to me that the developers fears to fork the project were justified.

If Oracle plans to continue the project, keep it open, keep it free. Then why not collaborate?

AlphaMack
October 18th, 2010, 02:21 AM
Except their free and open so what are they competing for? Unless Oracle is looking to make a profit and possably close their contibutions to the code after taking it far enough to improve it but leaving the community with the code the way it is now 4 years down the road (if they close source their contributions). Oracles actions now prove to me that the developers fears to fork the project were justified.

If Oracle plans to continue the project, keep it open, keep it free. Then why not collaborate?

+1

The writing was on the wall the moment Oracle decided to start charging for the MSO ODF plugin after Sun gave it away for free.

Shining Arcanine
October 18th, 2010, 04:10 AM
Let me see if I understand this:

1. The Document Foundation announced LibreOffice
2. Some of the Document Foundation members work for Oracle on OOo development
3. Oracle is feeling threatened by LibreOffice
4. Oracle tells their developers "we don't want you here, go work somewhere else"
5. Developers leave to focus on other projects they are interested in
6. LibreOffice is another project they are interested in

Oh, so that's what shooting yourself in the foot looks like... ;)

LibreOffice is a fork of OpenOffice with no real changes aside from the branding at the moment. Until they diverge, working on Open Office requires you to work on LibreOffice and vice-versa. The code is the same after all.

Khakilang
October 18th, 2010, 05:40 AM
I don't mind the brand name as long as my document survive another change. LibreOffice may sound lame to others but I'll hope it take off successfully. Why don't we suggest a name to the developer?

AlphaMack
October 18th, 2010, 11:10 PM
I don't mind the brand name as long as my document survive another change.

The only way your documents might change is with a newer implementation of ODF. You shouldn't lose sleep over that possibility unless you need backwards compatibility with older ODF-based office suites.

bruno9779
October 20th, 2010, 06:37 PM
If the whole Linux community is behind LO, then OO will stay for Win&Mac only (almost).

I wouldn't be surprised if Oracle dropped Linux support and got full .docx and .xlsx support in a foreseeable future.

alexan
October 20th, 2010, 07:02 PM
So, let me understand this better.


The people who forked away a project.. where still in the council of OpenOffice?
The ones who remained in the original project has to ask them to leave?


Apply some logic?

whiskeylover
October 20th, 2010, 07:09 PM
Except their free and open so what are they competing for? Unless Oracle is looking to make a profit and possably close their contibutions to the code after taking it far enough to improve it but leaving the community with the code the way it is now 4 years down the road (if they close source their contributions). Oracles actions now prove to me that the developers fears to fork the project were justified.

If Oracle plans to continue the project, keep it open, keep it free. Then why not collaborate?

There might not be profit now, but they might be hoping at something in the future. Also, its perfectly understandable for them to not let their employees work on a competing product. In fact, if they let their employees work on competing products, they might have had some explaining to do in front of the board.

Most companies have a policy of prohibiting their employees to work for competitors (even for a few months after they quit.) Its called a Non Compete clause.

Grenage
October 20th, 2010, 07:22 PM
Conflict of interests; seems pretty clear to me.

alexan
October 20th, 2010, 07:30 PM
also "to keep a foot in both camps" seems working pretty fine too!