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It was immediately obvious at the time, I remember it as such. The devs jumped ship to LibreOffice. All Oracle was left with was a brand and a moribund codebase

It was immediately obvious at the time, I remember it as such. The devs jumped ship to LibreOffice. All Oracle was left with was a brand and a moribund codebase, and for some reason Apache accepted it. Why didn't Oracle give it to LibreOffice? Because they were sore at being bypassed, it looked like. The correct thing for Apache to do would have been to say, nope mate, we don't want to be part of your childish feud, keep it, trash it, or give it to the people who are actually doing the work.

rincebrain 10y ago
It's not impossible that the terms Apache got it under prohibited them divesting themselves of it for some length of time. I don't recall thinking at the time this landed that it was so cut-and-dry who would end up the superior solution. In the worst case, though, would it be better for Apache to have refused holding the OOo branding, given that there was no chance it would have otherwise made it out into someone like TDF or otherwise's hands?
- nl 10y ago
  The terms are all on the mailing list.
  - JulianMorrison 10y ago
    "On the mailing list" is like "in China". It may be accurate but it hardly narrows the search.
    - fluidcruft 10y ago
      It's also not offlist in some backroom fogged with cigar smoke and whiskey aromatics.
jimjag 10y ago
If Apache had not accepted it, Oracle was NOT going to donate it to TDF. Instead, Oracle would simply have shuttered it, or sold it to IBM. There was no workable plan ever that would have resulted in the OO code going to TDF. Even if AOO had never done a single release, LO still benefited enormously from OO going to Apache, since once at Apache, there was known and public IP provenance, AND the code was relicensed to ALv2. This allowed LO to inherit that provenance, relicense their stuff on AOO as needed, and close what had been a possible nasty IP hole.
- sveredov 10y ago
  The Apache Foundation could simply have accepted the OpenOffice.org codebase+trademarks from Oracle, then donate to LibreOffice. But they did not do so. The Apache Foundation does not have experience with software that end-users use. They have experience with server software. That was their undoing.
  - rectang 10y ago
    At the time of the donation, The Document Foundation had an (understandably) antagonistic relationship with Oracle and legal foundations which were firming up but not yet solid. The assets were not going to TDF from Oracle directly. In accepting the proposal for a new Apache OpenOffice project, the ASF accepted not only the assets from Oracle but also a community, distinct from the LibreOffice community, that wanted to work with those assets. That community had to be given a chance. Without all those things, the deal could not have been completed.
    - ISV_Damocles 10y ago
      What community? The only community around OpenOffice.org were the Sun/Oracle devs + the Go-OO devs getting it to work on Linux. The Go-OO devs forked it into LibreOffice and then Oracle shuttered their own work and reassigned their devs to other projects. Only a tiny handful of devs not part of Go-OO remained, and they had not been instrumental in actually maintaining the codebase as these other two groups had. There was no community around Apache OpenOffice.
      - rectang 10y ago
        There were enough people on the "Initial Committers" list here to persuade the Apache Incubator PMC to adopt the project: http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/OpenOfficeProposal http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/OpenOfficeProposal Subsequently, there were enough people to vet and prepare multiple releases over the next couple years after that.
      - davidgerard 10y ago
mindcrime 10y ago
Just getting the code-base released under the ALv2 was a win for the world at large. Even if we never pushed out a single release, at least the code is out there now, under a permissive license, where anybody can use it. That alone makes the whole exercise worthwhile, no matter what happens next.

rincebrain 10y ago

It's not impossible that the terms Apache got it under prohibited them divesting themselves of it for some length of time. I don't recall thinking at the time this landed that it was so cut-and-dry who would end up the superior solution. In the worst case, though, would it be better for Apache to have refused holding the OOo branding, given that there was no chance it would have otherwise made it out into someone like TDF or otherwise's hands?

nl 10y ago
The terms are all on the mailing list.
- JulianMorrison 10y ago
  "On the mailing list" is like "in China". It may be accurate but it hardly narrows the search.
  - fluidcruft 10y ago
    It's also not offlist in some backroom fogged with cigar smoke and whiskey aromatics.

jimjag 10y ago

If Apache had not accepted it, Oracle was NOT going to donate it to TDF. Instead, Oracle would simply have shuttered it, or sold it to IBM. There was no workable plan ever that would have resulted in the OO code going to TDF. Even if AOO had never done a single release, LO still benefited enormously from OO going to Apache, since once at Apache, there was known and public IP provenance, AND the code was relicensed to ALv2. This allowed LO to inherit that provenance, relicense their stuff on AOO as needed, and close what had been a possible nasty IP hole.

sveredov 10y ago
The Apache Foundation could simply have accepted the OpenOffice.org codebase+trademarks from Oracle, then donate to LibreOffice. But they did not do so. The Apache Foundation does not have experience with software that end-users use. They have experience with server software. That was their undoing.
- rectang 10y ago
  At the time of the donation, The Document Foundation had an (understandably) antagonistic relationship with Oracle and legal foundations which were firming up but not yet solid. The assets were not going to TDF from Oracle directly. In accepting the proposal for a new Apache OpenOffice project, the ASF accepted not only the assets from Oracle but also a community, distinct from the LibreOffice community, that wanted to work with those assets. That community had to be given a chance. Without all those things, the deal could not have been completed.
  - ISV_Damocles 10y ago
    What community? The only community around OpenOffice.org were the Sun/Oracle devs + the Go-OO devs getting it to work on Linux. The Go-OO devs forked it into LibreOffice and then Oracle shuttered their own work and reassigned their devs to other projects. Only a tiny handful of devs not part of Go-OO remained, and they had not been instrumental in actually maintaining the codebase as these other two groups had. There was no community around Apache OpenOffice.
    - rectang 10y ago
      There were enough people on the "Initial Committers" list here to persuade the Apache Incubator PMC to adopt the project: http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/OpenOfficeProposal http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/OpenOfficeProposal Subsequently, there were enough people to vet and prepare multiple releases over the next couple years after that.
    - davidgerard 10y ago

mindcrime 10y ago

Just getting the code-base released under the ALv2 was a win for the world at large. Even if we never pushed out a single release, at least the code is out there now, under a permissive license, where anybody can use it. That alone makes the whole exercise worthwhile, no matter what happens next.