7 ms·

OpenOffice.org Council members resign

46 points by esponapule 16y ago

markkat 16y ago
Can anyone give some background on this? I just switched from Windows to Ubuntu, and have just started to familiarize myself with OpenOffice.
- gaius 16y ago
  1. Star Division wrote StarOffice 2. Sun bought Star Division and forked, StarOffice commercial and OpenOffice free 3. Oracle bought Sun 4. OpenOffice devs decide to fork OpenOffice again, to spite Oracle 5. Oracle says fine, but we're keeping the name 6. OpenOffice devs throw toys out of pram, Oracle asks them politely to go home 7. OpenOffice devs "resign"
  - davidw 16y ago
    Do you know anything about what has actually gone on between those developers and Oracle to be so condescending?
  - viraptor 16y ago
    I don't really agree with point 6. If a number of developers left, because of the new company, that would be throwing toys out of the pram... If 3 project leads hand in resignation and some of them join the forked project... that's a beginning / end of something. We'll have to see how it all ends. Also, it's not just the devs that forked the project. There's support from outside entities to keep that project going and make it as formal as possible.
  - jaen 16y ago
    That's one side of the story... the other side is that OpenOffice was stagnating, in terms of commits and added developers, the current developers were not happy with how the community was managed by Sun/Oracle, and eventually decided to take matters into their own hands. Historical data: http://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/ooo-commit-stats-2008.html http://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/ooo-commit-stats-2008....
  - mdda 16y ago
    If you're talking kids and toys : Oracle is the new kid who is sitting in the corner writing his name in marker all over 'his toys'. The Libre kids just want to share toys, and think the new kid is a bully. Maybe one day they'll all play together. But it'll probably take the new kid realizing that the kids that share each get to play with shiny new toys.
    - gaius 16y ago
      Forking the code is absolutely fine. Wanting the name too to pretend that the shareholders who underwrote all this development aren't part of it is just plain rude.
      - davidw 16y ago
        Do you think the Oracle shareholders really care much one way or the other about the OpenOffice name? I think if anything, the more profit-minded amongst them would simply be happy to cut loose a project that is probably not bringing in any direct revenues. The argument for keeping it might be to develop it as "Project Stick It To Microsoft", and attempt to undercut the office revenues. Even that, though, doesn't really gain anything for Oracle in the short term.
        gaius 16y ago
        Yes. It is an asset that Sun paid cash money for, and Oracle paid cash money for in turn. So of course they care. My personal opinion is that eventually we'll see OO Calc getting the same integration with Oracle that Excel has with MSAS/SQL Server, and possibly OO Writer will form the core of a report writing engine.
        davidw 16y ago
        > Yes. It is an asset that Sun paid cash money for, and Oracle paid cash money for in turn. So of course they care. "Paid cash for" is a sunk cost. They care about what it's going to do for them now and in the future. How much revenue did it bring in for Sun? Maybe they can hack at it to make what you describe, but at that point do you think Oracle will care much about what it's called? I think it'd have a new name, myself. Oracle something, most likely. I just don't see Oracle caring that much about it one way or the other. They wanted the server stuff, supposedly, and Java, most certainly. I can't see OO having figured much one way or the other, really.
- camiller 16y ago
  The high level summary is that once Oracle acquired Sun some folks became concerned about Oracle since even though OpenOffice was open sourced Sun and now Oracle still own the trademark on "openoffice.org". Right now the two project are probably pretty close in functionality and the file formats are standardized. In the future functionality of the project will likely diverge somewhat but probably not a lot. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1735052 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1735052 http://www.documentfoundation.org/faq/ http://www.documentfoundation.org/faq/
  - markkat 16y ago
    Thanks. That's pretty much my interest. I'm not really concerned about the politics of it. :)
- known 16y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org#Governance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org#Governance
- esponapule 16y ago
  OpenOffice was acquired by Oracle recently when they bought Sun Microsystesm and have not embraced the open source philosophy in the opinion of the greater open office community. So, since the code is open source, several in the non-Oracle community decided to "rescue" the project from the same fate as Opensolaris. Libre Office is based on OO code 3.3 and GO-OO. http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20014478-264.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20014478-264.html
- Jach 16y ago
  If you're worried about misplaced time investment, I'd recommend Abiword and Gnumeric for your Word and Excel replacements; they're blazing fast and Gnumeric supports a lot more than either Excel or OO's offering.
  - ebiester 16y ago
    I haven't tried it recently. How hard is it to put a gnumeric spreadsheet in an abiword document? Can you update the gnumeric spreadsheet and see it in abiword? How well does abiword read and write complex word docs?
roadnottaken 16y ago
Does anyone know what this means to the future of the project?
- viraptor 16y ago
  Some of the people already joined LibreOffice as far as I understand, so it means that OOo is basically dead. LibreOffice can be thought of as a natural continuation if they do the development (so far it's been only an organisation, without code releases, but those should come soon).
  - esponapule 16y ago
    OO will serve as a test bed for Oracle Office but it will not be innovative and free, OO will just be free. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Office http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Office
    - viraptor 16y ago
      This is the plan, yes. But it depends on how many devs quit. It enough people shift to LibreOffice, that plan might fail and OO will be either scrapped, or only available to paying customers.
  - jessriedel 16y ago
    Is there any reason to think that LibreOffice, now without any support from Sun/Oracle, is going to cross the threshold of "professional usability" that OpenOffice is just too buggy to reach?
    - viraptor 16y ago
      The reason is Canonical's, Redhat's and Novel's support at least. They should be able to solve it even between only 3 of them... Whether they will be able to, is another question. We'll have to wait and see. Especially since Canonical wants to make it the default suite and they're going for userfriendly image these days.
linuxaddict 16y ago
So a bunch of non-important people quit? Big deal.
- esponapule 16y ago
  the deal is the steering committee is now made up of all Oracle employees, no one from the community, a BIG deal for FOSS
  - ahi 16y ago
    Probably also a big deal for all the Oracle (Sun) employees who used to be working on a vital community project. Morale matters.
- sp4rki 16y ago
  So a bunch of project leads are not important? You do realize it is more common for software projects to be defined by the quality of their leads?
jgrahamc 16y ago
Am I alone in thinking that the right solution to the OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice mess (by which I mean the software itself) is to start all over again?
- arkitaip 16y ago
  Joel disagrees: rewriting stuff from scratch is often a very bad idea http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html
  - rimantas 16y ago
    The key word is "often". OpenOffice needs it's own "Firefox moment".
  - gryan 16y ago
    Fortunately, Joel is not the first or last word on any subject.
- esponapule 16y ago
  in theory yes, but in practice no. developing such a complex piece of software is very hard to do. the pieces are there, they just need refine it.
  - gaius 16y ago
    Indeed. Which is why the lion's share was done by corporations Star Division and then Sun, not by "the community".
va_coder 16y ago
This reminds me of how Stallman's open source ideas have really shook up the software industry. I wonder what he thinks about all the recent turf battles with Java, Android, OpenOffice etc.
- 27182818284 16y ago
  He talked a little bit about Android and iPhone in his interview for Reddit recently. If you haven't seen it yet, it is worth a read. http://blog.reddit.com/2010/07/rms-ama.html http://blog.reddit.com/2010/07/rms-ama.html

46 points by esponapule 16y ago

Can anyone give some background on this? I just switched from Windows to Ubuntu, and have just started to familiarize myself with OpenOffice.

gaius 16y ago
1. Star Division wrote StarOffice 2. Sun bought Star Division and forked, StarOffice commercial and OpenOffice free 3. Oracle bought Sun 4. OpenOffice devs decide to fork OpenOffice again, to spite Oracle 5. Oracle says fine, but we're keeping the name 6. OpenOffice devs throw toys out of pram, Oracle asks them politely to go home 7. OpenOffice devs "resign"
- davidw 16y ago
  Do you know anything about what has actually gone on between those developers and Oracle to be so condescending?
- viraptor 16y ago
  I don't really agree with point 6. If a number of developers left, because of the new company, that would be throwing toys out of the pram... If 3 project leads hand in resignation and some of them join the forked project... that's a beginning / end of something. We'll have to see how it all ends. Also, it's not just the devs that forked the project. There's support from outside entities to keep that project going and make it as formal as possible.
- jaen 16y ago
  That's one side of the story... the other side is that OpenOffice was stagnating, in terms of commits and added developers, the current developers were not happy with how the community was managed by Sun/Oracle, and eventually decided to take matters into their own hands. Historical data: http://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/ooo-commit-stats-2008.html http://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/ooo-commit-stats-2008....
- mdda 16y ago
  If you're talking kids and toys : Oracle is the new kid who is sitting in the corner writing his name in marker all over 'his toys'. The Libre kids just want to share toys, and think the new kid is a bully. Maybe one day they'll all play together. But it'll probably take the new kid realizing that the kids that share each get to play with shiny new toys.
  - gaius 16y ago
    Forking the code is absolutely fine. Wanting the name too to pretend that the shareholders who underwrote all this development aren't part of it is just plain rude.
    - davidw 16y ago
      Do you think the Oracle shareholders really care much one way or the other about the OpenOffice name? I think if anything, the more profit-minded amongst them would simply be happy to cut loose a project that is probably not bringing in any direct revenues. The argument for keeping it might be to develop it as "Project Stick It To Microsoft", and attempt to undercut the office revenues. Even that, though, doesn't really gain anything for Oracle in the short term.
      - gaius 16y ago
        Yes. It is an asset that Sun paid cash money for, and Oracle paid cash money for in turn. So of course they care. My personal opinion is that eventually we'll see OO Calc getting the same integration with Oracle that Excel has with MSAS/SQL Server, and possibly OO Writer will form the core of a report writing engine.
        davidw 16y ago
        > Yes. It is an asset that Sun paid cash money for, and Oracle paid cash money for in turn. So of course they care. "Paid cash for" is a sunk cost. They care about what it's going to do for them now and in the future. How much revenue did it bring in for Sun? Maybe they can hack at it to make what you describe, but at that point do you think Oracle will care much about what it's called? I think it'd have a new name, myself. Oracle something, most likely. I just don't see Oracle caring that much about it one way or the other. They wanted the server stuff, supposedly, and Java, most certainly. I can't see OO having figured much one way or the other, really.
camiller 16y ago
The high level summary is that once Oracle acquired Sun some folks became concerned about Oracle since even though OpenOffice was open sourced Sun and now Oracle still own the trademark on "openoffice.org". Right now the two project are probably pretty close in functionality and the file formats are standardized. In the future functionality of the project will likely diverge somewhat but probably not a lot. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1735052 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1735052 http://www.documentfoundation.org/faq/ http://www.documentfoundation.org/faq/
- markkat 16y ago
  Thanks. That's pretty much my interest. I'm not really concerned about the politics of it. :)
known 16y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org#Governance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org#Governance
esponapule 16y ago
OpenOffice was acquired by Oracle recently when they bought Sun Microsystesm and have not embraced the open source philosophy in the opinion of the greater open office community. So, since the code is open source, several in the non-Oracle community decided to "rescue" the project from the same fate as Opensolaris. Libre Office is based on OO code 3.3 and GO-OO. http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20014478-264.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20014478-264.html
Jach 16y ago
If you're worried about misplaced time investment, I'd recommend Abiword and Gnumeric for your Word and Excel replacements; they're blazing fast and Gnumeric supports a lot more than either Excel or OO's offering.
- ebiester 16y ago
  I haven't tried it recently. How hard is it to put a gnumeric spreadsheet in an abiword document? Can you update the gnumeric spreadsheet and see it in abiword? How well does abiword read and write complex word docs?

roadnottaken 16y ago

Does anyone know what this means to the future of the project?

viraptor 16y ago
Some of the people already joined LibreOffice as far as I understand, so it means that OOo is basically dead. LibreOffice can be thought of as a natural continuation if they do the development (so far it's been only an organisation, without code releases, but those should come soon).
- esponapule 16y ago
  OO will serve as a test bed for Oracle Office but it will not be innovative and free, OO will just be free. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Office http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Office
  - viraptor 16y ago
    This is the plan, yes. But it depends on how many devs quit. It enough people shift to LibreOffice, that plan might fail and OO will be either scrapped, or only available to paying customers.
- jessriedel 16y ago
  Is there any reason to think that LibreOffice, now without any support from Sun/Oracle, is going to cross the threshold of "professional usability" that OpenOffice is just too buggy to reach?
  - viraptor 16y ago
    The reason is Canonical's, Redhat's and Novel's support at least. They should be able to solve it even between only 3 of them... Whether they will be able to, is another question. We'll have to wait and see. Especially since Canonical wants to make it the default suite and they're going for userfriendly image these days.

linuxaddict 16y ago

So a bunch of non-important people quit? Big deal.

esponapule 16y ago
the deal is the steering committee is now made up of all Oracle employees, no one from the community, a BIG deal for FOSS
- ahi 16y ago
  Probably also a big deal for all the Oracle (Sun) employees who used to be working on a vital community project. Morale matters.
sp4rki 16y ago
So a bunch of project leads are not important? You do realize it is more common for software projects to be defined by the quality of their leads?

jgrahamc 16y ago

Am I alone in thinking that the right solution to the OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice mess (by which I mean the software itself) is to start all over again?

arkitaip 16y ago
Joel disagrees: rewriting stuff from scratch is often a very bad idea http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html
- rimantas 16y ago
  The key word is "often". OpenOffice needs it's own "Firefox moment".
- gryan 16y ago
  Fortunately, Joel is not the first or last word on any subject.
esponapule 16y ago
in theory yes, but in practice no. developing such a complex piece of software is very hard to do. the pieces are there, they just need refine it.
- gaius 16y ago
  Indeed. Which is why the lion's share was done by corporations Star Division and then Sun, not by "the community".

va_coder 16y ago

This reminds me of how Stallman's open source ideas have really shook up the software industry. I wonder what he thinks about all the recent turf battles with Java, Android, OpenOffice etc.

27182818284 16y ago
He talked a little bit about Android and iPhone in his interview for Reddit recently. If you haven't seen it yet, it is worth a read. http://blog.reddit.com/2010/07/rms-ama.html http://blog.reddit.com/2010/07/rms-ama.html