16 ms·

Oracle gives up on OpenOffice after community forks the project

287 points by creativityhurts 16y ago

Andrex 16y ago
The writing was on the wall. Wonder what's next...
- 3dFlatLander 16y ago
  My fear (hope?) would be VirtualBox. Aside from Java, I use that the most.
  - ay 16y ago
    If you are using only the open source edition of VirtualBox, kvm can do a reasonable job. I run Windows 7 on it in headless mode with VNC - primarily I need it for the presentations, everything else I do from Linux. My perception was that it is a bit lighter than VirtualBox, and it worked very well so far for me. VBox had a couple of glitches when I was using it before.
    - ebiester 16y ago
      ...and if your host system is mac or windows? :)
      - ay 16y ago
        ...Then you install Linux and the problem becomes identical to the one we have just solved ;-) I am saying this semi-seriously: have been using Linux as my primary OS on the desktop for the past 9 years, with half-year deflections to MacOS X and, lately, to Windows 7. But the fluxbox with 0-pixel borders and "focus follows mouse" had always dragged me back. Also in my latest experience, the perception was that Win7 on bare metal ran somewhat slower than Win7 under kvm. With Windows, I used coLinux (http://colinux.org/ http://colinux.org/). The MacOS X that I used was PPC-based, it was circa 2005, so no reasonable experience there - so if you're for freebies, I suppose VirtualBox is the only option (I just found this: http://www.kju-app.org/ http://www.kju-app.org/ - but since I don't have Mac, no way to see what it does).
        ebiester 16y ago
        laughs -- As for myself, my (new) laptop dual boots currently, but linux has been a real drain on battery life as the current crop of sandy bridge laptops include two video cards, and I haven't figured out how to turn off the unused one yet.
        jwingy 16y ago
        Should be an option in the bios to turn off switchable graphics (like optimus). If you're lucky, your laptop also has a chip to switch to discrete or integrated only.
ThePinion 16y ago
Amazing! Now let's get MySQL back!
- poundy 16y ago
  Are there any forks yet? Is it harder or easier to fork a project like MySQL?
  - riffraff 16y ago
    it seems there are quite a few: percona's XtraDB, OurDelta, MariaDB, Drizzle are the first that come to mind, plus HailDB that is a fork of the single InnoDB
    - lawnchair_larry 16y ago
      Percona was not really a fork. That was a performance patch for InnoDB from long before the acquisition.
  - cookiecaper 16y ago
    I don't think there were any forks as a direct result of the Oracle acquisition, but that's probably because there are several other prominent forks already and many of the MySQL people were displeased with the state of affairs under Sun, let alone Oracle. So most of the exodus had already occurred. Check out MariaDB and Drizzle as starting points. :)
  - gaius 16y ago
    Heh, the thing is, MySQL was always open source, and Monty et al have all quit, so Sun really payed $1Bn of their shareholder's money that they couldn't really afford and the only actual asset they got was the domain name mysql.com. And people wonder why they were bought by Oracle...
    - bruce511 16y ago
      "...only actual asset they got was the domain name mysql.com" Not true. Apart from the domain, they also got the MySql brand name. More importantly though than that they got the ability to sell MySql licenses. But wait you say, MySql is free... Well, yes and no. It's free for a limited subset of cases, for the rest you need a license. Now the code can be forked forever, but only Sun (now Oracle) can sell commercial licenses. MySql is a big deal for Oracle because they are effectively the only ones that can change the licensing conditions for MySql. All MySql forks have to be licensed under the GPL.
Derbasti 16y ago
Oracle just gets this 'open' stuff!
rmorrison 16y ago
This seems like a dangerous precedent for Oracle to set for itself, especially when it's sitting on many other popular open source projects. Not that this comparison is 100% accurate, but they could learn from why the police don't give in to terrorist demands.
- redthrowaway 16y ago
  What's your suggestion? That they should have been more restrictive with the OOo community? Oracle screwed the pooch, not by "allowing" TDF to fork, but by driving them to do so in the first place. If there's a lesson to be learned here, it's that you need to consider community management a top priority if you're planning on relying on open source for a core business product. Sun managed to annoy the OOo community, but it took Oracle to drive them away.
  - ahi 16y ago
    I think the suggestion was that if you're going to be restrictive with the OOo community, you better be ready to pick up the slack when they fork. By waving the white flag, Oracle demonstrated that their demands of the open source community are likely bluffs. Oracle needs the community more than the community needs them.
    - redthrowaway 16y ago
      I think that's a fair reading of their post, and I agree with the sentiment. The "don't negotiate with terrorists" line is a pretty inflammatory one to use in this context, however.
  - masklinn 16y ago
    > That they should have been more restrictive with the OOo community? That they should learn to engage and nurture their OSS projects/communities (or, alternatively, drop them outright/give them out early to their communities). Right now, they're fucking up on all front: they're creating enmity by locking down projects and behaving as if the project communities were their enemies, and they're still losing the projects to forks.
Vlasta 16y ago
What bothers me is the trademark issue. Why should Oracle keep OpenOffice and the fork has to use another name? Trademarks exist to protect the public. Which of the projects is more true to the original one?
- bruce511 16y ago
  Trademarks are a legal thing - they are in effect "owned by someone". While the _code_ is open-source, that doesn't mean other people can come along and just use your trademark. Nor does it mean that a project originator should just have to "give up" the trademark to anyone who comes calling. If you want the trademark to be owned by a neutral body, then by all means create a body to hold the trademark. That's a choice for the project originator (who usually holds the trademark). In this case there's no dispute that Oracle "owns" the trademark. Leaving aside the legal implications of a trademark for the moment, your hypothesis is flawed at a social level. Who, after all, is "the community". Let's take an imaginary product - which was created by Fred and is now being developed by a "community" of 10 developers. There are say 200 users of the product. Now 3 of Fred's developers decide to go and work on a fork. Does Fred give them rights to use his product name? What then does he call his product? How do customers differentiate between the two products with the same name? Since anyone can fork at any time, should we have 25 projects with the same name in the same product space? Ok, 3 seems a little low - what about 6? What if 3 of those developers joined the project in the last month? Does their leaving count as more or less? What about if 9 developers leave? How best then to determine which is best for the community of users? Who determines which project is "more true" to the original project? what criteria do we use to measure"trueness"? Does the language dictate trueness? Does the location of the original project lead? In other words, your point is completely moot. Oracle gets to keep the name because they own it. period. (Although it seems they might now be prepared to give it up.) People have the right to fork the code at any time they like, but it's not in our interest to allow them to use the same name. The public is best served, and protected, by changing the name of forked projects. Anything else is just worse.
  - Vlasta 16y ago
    It is not that easy - that's why I added the comment - to start the discussion about open source and trademarks. From wikipedia (sorry): "Trademark law is designed to fulfill the public policy objective of consumer protection, by preventing the public from being misled as to the origin or quality of a product or service. By identifying the commercial source of products and services, trademarks facilitate identification of products and services which meet the expectations of consumers as to quality and other characteristics." Trademarks exist to protect consumers, not the "owning" companies. In case of open source projects, this does not work so well and there are problems you have mentioned in your reply.
gregschlom 16y ago
It seems that Oracle doesn't understand that the main asset of an Open Source project is it's community, not the code base. And this is not something that you can control at will. Also, let's not forget that it's not only Open Office. This exact same story is happening to Hudson CI right now. The community has already switched to Jenkins, and I bet it's a matter of time before Oracle announces they discontinue Hudson, too.
- michael_dorfman 16y ago
  I think that Oracle doesn't view Open Source projects as assets, full stop. They're cost centers, not profit centers. I don't think Open Office factored into Oracle's analysis of the Sun acquisition at all, and I doubt they'd notice if it disappeared. They've got other things on their minds.
  - keypusher 16y ago
    Actually, they were working on a Google Docs competitor called Cloud Office that was going to be powered by Open Office. Project appears to have been canceled now and all pages are 404.
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      Ballmer must have called telling how unfortunate would it be if Oracle software were continuously broken by every new security update of Windows Server.
      - neworbit 16y ago
        Larry isn't exactly shying away from a fight with MS :)
        rbanffy 16y ago
        Larry would never admit it, but he is a pragmatist. He will fight Microsoft when it favors Oracle and shy away when it doesn't. Larry must think Microsoft has enough enemies to keep it in check without Oracle having to devote resources to that.
jrockway 16y ago
Now we just need to take care of Solaris, VirualBox, MySQL, and Java, and we can finally stop caring about Oracle.
- cultureulterior 16y ago
  And get btrfs done
  - RexRollman 16y ago
    Has there been any change in btrfs development since the purchase of Sun? I was concerned that Oracle might abandon it now that they own ZFS.
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      It seems to be progressing. I am using it on a couple volumes and I am quite happy with it.
- omh 16y ago
  This only works for projects that Oracle can't see a profiy in. VirtualBox should be fine, maybe even MySQL, but Solaris and Java might be a bit tougher...
  - regularfry 16y ago
    VirtualBox is significantly less useful (to me, at least) without the guest additions, and they're closed source. I don't know how much effort it would be to clean-room them.
    - dspillett 16y ago
      I expect it wouldn't be difficult for the right people. There would be three problems though: 1. Getting enough "right" people who have enough time on there hands and care enough together to work on it 2. Lots and lots and lots and lots of testing in many different environments to make sure the replacement code is at least as stable and correct as the closed stuff 3. The possibility of patent and other IP related problems 3 may not be an issue (other virtualisation options like KVM and Xen have not been attacked this way (yet)). 1 is an issue right now but would probably stop being so if Oracle starting being a problem in this area (in which case the right people would be affected and either want to work on this for their own needs or would just jump ship to another solution). 2 would be the biggie though. Given how core the code is it would take quite some effort to prove to its potential users (including the people working on it!) that it is at least as safe as that which it replaces.
flomo 16y ago
This doesn't surprise me as OpenOffice / StarOffice never really made sense as a business to begin with. Sun invested in it because it allowed them to "eat their own dogfood" (not use Windows) and arguably out of McNealy's obsession with taking down Microsoft. It will be interesting if the community does anything with it. My guess is that it will be mostly small feature enhancements and integration changes. None of the corporate supporters seem to really want to be in the Office business, so my guess is that any major new release is probably years away, if at all.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- pbhjpbhj 16y ago
  So will/are Oracle using MS Office, OpenOffice.org or Libre Office?
RexRollman 16y ago
I have to admit to detesting Oracle but I am glad to see they have seen the light of day regarding OO.
jordan0day 16y ago
On a related-to-the-article-but-not-the-content note, did anyone else think the image choice was absolutely perfect?
- sp332 16y ago
  The creative director, "aurich", has been completely spoiling Ars readers. He's been around for a while, but I swear he keeps getting better. e.g. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/04/major-online-poker-sites-seized-charged-with-money-laundering.ars http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/04/major-online... and http://arstechnica.com/business/guides/2011/04/physical-to-virtual-conversion-in-the-enterprise.ars http://arstechnica.com/business/guides/2011/04/physical-to-v... and http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2011/04/npd-physical-media-may-be-declining-but-consumers-still-prefer-it.ars http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2011/04/npd-physical-media... and those are just from the front page right now.
ilikejam 16y ago
Is this really a surprise to anyone? Oracle have been pretty clear that they're only going for high-end infrastructure deployments, so they're probably glad that OpenOffice has been taken off their hands. They're likely waiting for someone to take MySQL off them in a convincing way as well to get the EU off their back. Oracle are only interested in turn-key hardware-OS-DB-middleware stacks, and you better believe they don't give a flying toss about anything Sun owned that doesn't fit in that vertical. It wouldn't surprise me if they end up refusing to support anything that isn't mounted in an Sun/Oracle 19" rack (to be honest, that might not be a bad thing - Sun/Oracle racks are pretty nice). To be completely clear: Oracle really, genuinely, absolutely, does not care about anything which doesn't fit into their model. I've been on the receiving end of a number of Oracle support (re)negotiations, and it never works out well for anyone that doesn't have a red O on their business card. Buy Oracle shares if you have the cash, but stay the hell away from their products if at all possible.

Andrex 16y ago

The writing was on the wall. Wonder what's next...

3dFlatLander 16y ago
My fear (hope?) would be VirtualBox. Aside from Java, I use that the most.
- ay 16y ago
  If you are using only the open source edition of VirtualBox, kvm can do a reasonable job. I run Windows 7 on it in headless mode with VNC - primarily I need it for the presentations, everything else I do from Linux. My perception was that it is a bit lighter than VirtualBox, and it worked very well so far for me. VBox had a couple of glitches when I was using it before.
  - ebiester 16y ago
    ...and if your host system is mac or windows? :)
    - ay 16y ago
      ...Then you install Linux and the problem becomes identical to the one we have just solved ;-) I am saying this semi-seriously: have been using Linux as my primary OS on the desktop for the past 9 years, with half-year deflections to MacOS X and, lately, to Windows 7. But the fluxbox with 0-pixel borders and "focus follows mouse" had always dragged me back. Also in my latest experience, the perception was that Win7 on bare metal ran somewhat slower than Win7 under kvm. With Windows, I used coLinux (http://colinux.org/ http://colinux.org/). The MacOS X that I used was PPC-based, it was circa 2005, so no reasonable experience there - so if you're for freebies, I suppose VirtualBox is the only option (I just found this: http://www.kju-app.org/ http://www.kju-app.org/ - but since I don't have Mac, no way to see what it does).
      - ebiester 16y ago
        laughs -- As for myself, my (new) laptop dual boots currently, but linux has been a real drain on battery life as the current crop of sandy bridge laptops include two video cards, and I haven't figured out how to turn off the unused one yet.
        jwingy 16y ago
        Should be an option in the bios to turn off switchable graphics (like optimus). If you're lucky, your laptop also has a chip to switch to discrete or integrated only.

ThePinion 16y ago

Amazing! Now let's get MySQL back!

poundy 16y ago
Are there any forks yet? Is it harder or easier to fork a project like MySQL?
- riffraff 16y ago
  it seems there are quite a few: percona's XtraDB, OurDelta, MariaDB, Drizzle are the first that come to mind, plus HailDB that is a fork of the single InnoDB
  - lawnchair_larry 16y ago
    Percona was not really a fork. That was a performance patch for InnoDB from long before the acquisition.
- cookiecaper 16y ago
  I don't think there were any forks as a direct result of the Oracle acquisition, but that's probably because there are several other prominent forks already and many of the MySQL people were displeased with the state of affairs under Sun, let alone Oracle. So most of the exodus had already occurred. Check out MariaDB and Drizzle as starting points. :)
- gaius 16y ago
  Heh, the thing is, MySQL was always open source, and Monty et al have all quit, so Sun really payed $1Bn of their shareholder's money that they couldn't really afford and the only actual asset they got was the domain name mysql.com. And people wonder why they were bought by Oracle...
  - bruce511 16y ago
    "...only actual asset they got was the domain name mysql.com" Not true. Apart from the domain, they also got the MySql brand name. More importantly though than that they got the ability to sell MySql licenses. But wait you say, MySql is free... Well, yes and no. It's free for a limited subset of cases, for the rest you need a license. Now the code can be forked forever, but only Sun (now Oracle) can sell commercial licenses. MySql is a big deal for Oracle because they are effectively the only ones that can change the licensing conditions for MySql. All MySql forks have to be licensed under the GPL.

Derbasti 16y ago

Oracle just gets this 'open' stuff!

rmorrison 16y ago

This seems like a dangerous precedent for Oracle to set for itself, especially when it's sitting on many other popular open source projects. Not that this comparison is 100% accurate, but they could learn from why the police don't give in to terrorist demands.

redthrowaway 16y ago
What's your suggestion? That they should have been more restrictive with the OOo community? Oracle screwed the pooch, not by "allowing" TDF to fork, but by driving them to do so in the first place. If there's a lesson to be learned here, it's that you need to consider community management a top priority if you're planning on relying on open source for a core business product. Sun managed to annoy the OOo community, but it took Oracle to drive them away.
- ahi 16y ago
  I think the suggestion was that if you're going to be restrictive with the OOo community, you better be ready to pick up the slack when they fork. By waving the white flag, Oracle demonstrated that their demands of the open source community are likely bluffs. Oracle needs the community more than the community needs them.
  - redthrowaway 16y ago
    I think that's a fair reading of their post, and I agree with the sentiment. The "don't negotiate with terrorists" line is a pretty inflammatory one to use in this context, however.
- masklinn 16y ago
  > That they should have been more restrictive with the OOo community? That they should learn to engage and nurture their OSS projects/communities (or, alternatively, drop them outright/give them out early to their communities). Right now, they're fucking up on all front: they're creating enmity by locking down projects and behaving as if the project communities were their enemies, and they're still losing the projects to forks.

Vlasta 16y ago

What bothers me is the trademark issue. Why should Oracle keep OpenOffice and the fork has to use another name? Trademarks exist to protect the public. Which of the projects is more true to the original one?

bruce511 16y ago
Trademarks are a legal thing - they are in effect "owned by someone". While the _code_ is open-source, that doesn't mean other people can come along and just use your trademark. Nor does it mean that a project originator should just have to "give up" the trademark to anyone who comes calling. If you want the trademark to be owned by a neutral body, then by all means create a body to hold the trademark. That's a choice for the project originator (who usually holds the trademark). In this case there's no dispute that Oracle "owns" the trademark. Leaving aside the legal implications of a trademark for the moment, your hypothesis is flawed at a social level. Who, after all, is "the community". Let's take an imaginary product - which was created by Fred and is now being developed by a "community" of 10 developers. There are say 200 users of the product. Now 3 of Fred's developers decide to go and work on a fork. Does Fred give them rights to use his product name? What then does he call his product? How do customers differentiate between the two products with the same name? Since anyone can fork at any time, should we have 25 projects with the same name in the same product space? Ok, 3 seems a little low - what about 6? What if 3 of those developers joined the project in the last month? Does their leaving count as more or less? What about if 9 developers leave? How best then to determine which is best for the community of users? Who determines which project is "more true" to the original project? what criteria do we use to measure"trueness"? Does the language dictate trueness? Does the location of the original project lead? In other words, your point is completely moot. Oracle gets to keep the name because they own it. period. (Although it seems they might now be prepared to give it up.) People have the right to fork the code at any time they like, but it's not in our interest to allow them to use the same name. The public is best served, and protected, by changing the name of forked projects. Anything else is just worse.
- Vlasta 16y ago
  It is not that easy - that's why I added the comment - to start the discussion about open source and trademarks. From wikipedia (sorry): "Trademark law is designed to fulfill the public policy objective of consumer protection, by preventing the public from being misled as to the origin or quality of a product or service. By identifying the commercial source of products and services, trademarks facilitate identification of products and services which meet the expectations of consumers as to quality and other characteristics." Trademarks exist to protect consumers, not the "owning" companies. In case of open source projects, this does not work so well and there are problems you have mentioned in your reply.

gregschlom 16y ago

It seems that Oracle doesn't understand that the main asset of an Open Source project is it's community, not the code base. And this is not something that you can control at will. Also, let's not forget that it's not only Open Office. This exact same story is happening to Hudson CI right now. The community has already switched to Jenkins, and I bet it's a matter of time before Oracle announces they discontinue Hudson, too.

michael_dorfman 16y ago
I think that Oracle doesn't view Open Source projects as assets, full stop. They're cost centers, not profit centers. I don't think Open Office factored into Oracle's analysis of the Sun acquisition at all, and I doubt they'd notice if it disappeared. They've got other things on their minds.
- keypusher 16y ago
  Actually, they were working on a Google Docs competitor called Cloud Office that was going to be powered by Open Office. Project appears to have been canceled now and all pages are 404.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    Ballmer must have called telling how unfortunate would it be if Oracle software were continuously broken by every new security update of Windows Server.
    - neworbit 16y ago
      Larry isn't exactly shying away from a fight with MS :)
      - rbanffy 16y ago
        Larry would never admit it, but he is a pragmatist. He will fight Microsoft when it favors Oracle and shy away when it doesn't. Larry must think Microsoft has enough enemies to keep it in check without Oracle having to devote resources to that.

jrockway 16y ago

Now we just need to take care of Solaris, VirualBox, MySQL, and Java, and we can finally stop caring about Oracle.

cultureulterior 16y ago
And get btrfs done
- RexRollman 16y ago
  Has there been any change in btrfs development since the purchase of Sun? I was concerned that Oracle might abandon it now that they own ZFS.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    It seems to be progressing. I am using it on a couple volumes and I am quite happy with it.
omh 16y ago
This only works for projects that Oracle can't see a profiy in. VirtualBox should be fine, maybe even MySQL, but Solaris and Java might be a bit tougher...
- regularfry 16y ago
  VirtualBox is significantly less useful (to me, at least) without the guest additions, and they're closed source. I don't know how much effort it would be to clean-room them.
  - dspillett 16y ago
    I expect it wouldn't be difficult for the right people. There would be three problems though: 1. Getting enough "right" people who have enough time on there hands and care enough together to work on it 2. Lots and lots and lots and lots of testing in many different environments to make sure the replacement code is at least as stable and correct as the closed stuff 3. The possibility of patent and other IP related problems 3 may not be an issue (other virtualisation options like KVM and Xen have not been attacked this way (yet)). 1 is an issue right now but would probably stop being so if Oracle starting being a problem in this area (in which case the right people would be affected and either want to work on this for their own needs or would just jump ship to another solution). 2 would be the biggie though. Given how core the code is it would take quite some effort to prove to its potential users (including the people working on it!) that it is at least as safe as that which it replaces.

flomo 16y ago

This doesn't surprise me as OpenOffice / StarOffice never really made sense as a business to begin with. Sun invested in it because it allowed them to "eat their own dogfood" (not use Windows) and arguably out of McNealy's obsession with taking down Microsoft. It will be interesting if the community does anything with it. My guess is that it will be mostly small feature enhancements and integration changes. None of the corporate supporters seem to really want to be in the Office business, so my guess is that any major new release is probably years away, if at all.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
pbhjpbhj 16y ago
So will/are Oracle using MS Office, OpenOffice.org or Libre Office?

RexRollman 16y ago

I have to admit to detesting Oracle but I am glad to see they have seen the light of day regarding OO.

jordan0day 16y ago

On a related-to-the-article-but-not-the-content note, did anyone else think the image choice was absolutely perfect?

sp332 16y ago
The creative director, "aurich", has been completely spoiling Ars readers. He's been around for a while, but I swear he keeps getting better. e.g. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/04/major-online-poker-sites-seized-charged-with-money-laundering.ars http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/04/major-online... and http://arstechnica.com/business/guides/2011/04/physical-to-virtual-conversion-in-the-enterprise.ars http://arstechnica.com/business/guides/2011/04/physical-to-v... and http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2011/04/npd-physical-media-may-be-declining-but-consumers-still-prefer-it.ars http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2011/04/npd-physical-media... and those are just from the front page right now.

ilikejam 16y ago

Is this really a surprise to anyone? Oracle have been pretty clear that they're only going for high-end infrastructure deployments, so they're probably glad that OpenOffice has been taken off their hands. They're likely waiting for someone to take MySQL off them in a convincing way as well to get the EU off their back. Oracle are only interested in turn-key hardware-OS-DB-middleware stacks, and you better believe they don't give a flying toss about anything Sun owned that doesn't fit in that vertical. It wouldn't surprise me if they end up refusing to support anything that isn't mounted in an Sun/Oracle 19" rack (to be honest, that might not be a bad thing - Sun/Oracle racks are pretty nice). To be completely clear: Oracle really, genuinely, absolutely, does not care about anything which doesn't fit into their model. I've been on the receiving end of a number of Oracle support (re)negotiations, and it never works out well for anyone that doesn't have a red O on their business card. Buy Oracle shares if you have the cash, but stay the hell away from their products if at all possible.