6 ms·

Oracle 'donates' OpenOffice.org to Apache foundation

162 points by rb01usa 15y ago

nextparadigms 15y ago
After they chased everyone away, now they just to just get rid of it and save themselves the hassle.They might as well donate all their Java patents to Google and save themselves another embarrassment.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  > They might as well donate all their Java patents to Google Are you kidding?! They could donate them to the FSF, ASF or any other non-profit entity dedicated to promote of free and open-source software. Donating them to Google would create a whole lot of temptations the folks in Mountain View really don't need.
  - Kaizyn 15y ago
    But they have "Don't be evil" as a motto. How could they possibly be tempted by that?
    - ascendant 15y ago
      Ok, we get it. Google is "evil". I'd pay $0.05 for every time someone wants to harp on this and DOESNT.
irrelative 15y ago
Why the quotes around "donates"? This doesn't seem like a white elephant, or a trojan horse. It's commendable that they gave it up rather than let it rot.
- codeup 15y ago
  "despite Oracle's talk of 'donation', a lengthy process precedes the ASF's acceptance of candidates"
  - nettdata 15y ago
    As with all of their projects. With a project of this size, scope, and adoption, I'd imagine the "acceptance" will be somewhat rubber stamped, and the process will focus on setting up the proper ASF development environment, review of existing code, etc. I think a lot of people are looking for drama where none exists; ASF is just following the same procedures that EVERY project would be forced to go through.
- stephen_g 15y ago
  With all the active OOo developers having created The Document Foundation and producing a new, active project that almost every Linux distro is now supporting, donating it to another organisation is unproductive and poses a threat of dividing the community. I think that it's too late to really damage LibreOffice though. They have got a lot of support so far.
codeup 15y ago
As expected Oracle didn't donate it to The Document Foundation. There will be more calls to merge the OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice projects now. That is really what needs to be done, both office suites are still almost identical. The Apache Software Foundation and The Document Foundation have to overcome their egos and do the right thing. Then we could credit TDF with 'liberating' OOO and ASF with closing the deal. If they don't merge OOO and LO this 'donation' could create a new division in the Open Source community.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  > That is really what needs to be done, both office suites are still almost identical. Except for licensing. LGPL prevents proprietary forks. IIRC Apache allows them. I wonder why Oracle would want to change the license (or not donate OOo directly to the Document Foundation)
  - jchrisa 15y ago
    grant to Apache Software Foundation usually means a grant of any patents covering the code, so that is a reason to be happy they went Apache.
    - rbanffy 15y ago
      Wouldn't moving to LGPLv3 be a more natural transition?
- Luyt 15y ago
  "a new division in the Open Source community" The open source community can't be divided. Or do you equate a 'division' with a fork, like emacs/xemacs, openbsd/netbsd, joomla/mambo?
- stephen_g 15y ago
  Not really... As far as I can tell, the licences are compatible in a way that LibreOffice can use the Apache licensed code in their LGPL licenced project, so it will continue to be the stronger fork. With distros having put their support behind LibreOffice, I don't think that there will be much competition. I think they will either continue to be very similar, or LibreOffice will steam ahead...
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
sciurus 15y ago
GNOME and LibreOffice developer Michael Meeks' summary: "Apparently this is a somewhat divisive attempt by an exiting Oracle, along with IBM to sideline the existing developer community, their governance, their aspirations, membership, licensing choice (explicitly adapted to meet IBM's needs incidentally), bylaws, and so on. All of this despite a profound, frequently stated open-ness to including new (particularly large) corporate contributors inside TDF, and taking their advice seriously." http://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2011-06-01.html http://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2011-06-01.html
- nodata 15y ago
  Have you got any more sources for the IBM part? I can't find much.
mbreese 15y ago
It sounds to me like Oracle realized that they didn't quite grok community driven open-source projects and are finally starting to donate them to good homes (Jenkins to Eclipse and OOo to Apache). All it took was for the projects to go through the hell of major forks before Oracle realized what was going on. It's probably too late to engender any kind of good will out to this though. They put both of those communities through hell. And neither of these products fall under an Oracle core-competency. But I wouldn't expect the same result with either Java or MySQL anytime soon. Those are both things that Oracle "gets" and knows how to extract profit from.
- naner 15y ago
  Honestly, it seems like they're just pragmatically dumping projects they don't want or can't make a profit off of.
  - carussell 15y ago
    Better this way than the way most projects go.
- mikey_p 15y ago
  Small nitpick, but Hudson was moved to Eclipse, not Jenkins. Jenkins is the community fork of Hudson.
cschep 15y ago
LibreOffice is such a bad name, hopefully if they merge back to OpenOffice and drop the stupid .org from their name. Is it the name of the project or their website? nobody knows!
- weavejester 15y ago
  I believe they only used OpenOffice.org because OpenOffice was already trademarked.
  - Tiomaidh 15y ago
    When they discovered that, it might've been a good time to think up a different name.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  > hopefully if they merge back to OpenOffice Sure, and ditch the LGPL license and adopt the Apache one...
fingerprinter 15y ago
This is one of those things that I can read as both good news and bad news. I'm really hopeful that the LibreOffice and OOo communities could now get together and work together and even collapse the code base to one codebase again, but I'm doubtful that will happen. It would be a huge shame to see split efforts continue as it would hurt both projects and, frankly, they are both still lacking FAR behind any of the proprietary competitors. Not to mention Calligra is rapidly gaining ground on both. If Calligra gets the same level of MS office compatibility, it would leapfrog both OOo and LibreOffice in my mind. This is going to be a test of the two communities and their ability to see the big picture as well as navigate a political situation. I really am wondering how they will both will fare.
- tobylane 15y ago
  MS office compatibility is a good point, but that's everyone's goal, even Apple's Pages isn't much good at it. From what I understand, someone just needs to make a dedicated browser for Office online.
jabo 15y ago
How about donating MySQL too!
- narad 15y ago
  That would make even bigger news. :-)
jnw2 15y ago
Is there a good argument against Oracle releasing ZFS under the GPL (so that it could be integrated into the Linux kernel)?
- koenigdavidmj 15y ago
  No more reason to buy Solaris licenses?
joeyh 15y ago
Bradley Kuhn's take on this is that "relicensing part of the codebase out from under LibreOffice may actually be the most insidious attack Oracle and IBM could make on the project" http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2011/06/01/open-office.html http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2011/06/01/open-office.html
ldng 15y ago
And when they mess up with OpenJDK they'll give it to the PHP community ? What about MySQL, which bureaucratic and loosely related community shall it be given in case thinks goes south in your opinion ?
Fice 15y ago
Apache will likely release OOo under their permissive license allowing the code to be incorporated into proprietary software. So why do Oracle want to make the OOo code available to Microsoft and IBM for use in their office suites? This may make it harder for OOo to compete with proprietary office software.
- fanf2 15y ago
  I think the Apache bureaucracy will kill that branch of the project and development will continue on the LibreOffice branch.

162 points by rb01usa 15y ago

After they chased everyone away, now they just to just get rid of it and save themselves the hassle.They might as well donate all their Java patents to Google and save themselves another embarrassment.

rbanffy 15y ago
> They might as well donate all their Java patents to Google Are you kidding?! They could donate them to the FSF, ASF or any other non-profit entity dedicated to promote of free and open-source software. Donating them to Google would create a whole lot of temptations the folks in Mountain View really don't need.
- Kaizyn 15y ago
  But they have "Don't be evil" as a motto. How could they possibly be tempted by that?
  - ascendant 15y ago
    Ok, we get it. Google is "evil". I'd pay $0.05 for every time someone wants to harp on this and DOESNT.

irrelative 15y ago

Why the quotes around "donates"? This doesn't seem like a white elephant, or a trojan horse. It's commendable that they gave it up rather than let it rot.

codeup 15y ago
"despite Oracle's talk of 'donation', a lengthy process precedes the ASF's acceptance of candidates"
- nettdata 15y ago
  As with all of their projects. With a project of this size, scope, and adoption, I'd imagine the "acceptance" will be somewhat rubber stamped, and the process will focus on setting up the proper ASF development environment, review of existing code, etc. I think a lot of people are looking for drama where none exists; ASF is just following the same procedures that EVERY project would be forced to go through.
stephen_g 15y ago
With all the active OOo developers having created The Document Foundation and producing a new, active project that almost every Linux distro is now supporting, donating it to another organisation is unproductive and poses a threat of dividing the community. I think that it's too late to really damage LibreOffice though. They have got a lot of support so far.

codeup 15y ago

As expected Oracle didn't donate it to The Document Foundation. There will be more calls to merge the OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice projects now. That is really what needs to be done, both office suites are still almost identical. The Apache Software Foundation and The Document Foundation have to overcome their egos and do the right thing. Then we could credit TDF with 'liberating' OOO and ASF with closing the deal. If they don't merge OOO and LO this 'donation' could create a new division in the Open Source community.

rbanffy 15y ago
> That is really what needs to be done, both office suites are still almost identical. Except for licensing. LGPL prevents proprietary forks. IIRC Apache allows them. I wonder why Oracle would want to change the license (or not donate OOo directly to the Document Foundation)
- jchrisa 15y ago
  grant to Apache Software Foundation usually means a grant of any patents covering the code, so that is a reason to be happy they went Apache.
  - rbanffy 15y ago
    Wouldn't moving to LGPLv3 be a more natural transition?
Luyt 15y ago
"a new division in the Open Source community" The open source community can't be divided. Or do you equate a 'division' with a fork, like emacs/xemacs, openbsd/netbsd, joomla/mambo?
stephen_g 15y ago
Not really... As far as I can tell, the licences are compatible in a way that LibreOffice can use the Apache licensed code in their LGPL licenced project, so it will continue to be the stronger fork. With distros having put their support behind LibreOffice, I don't think that there will be much competition. I think they will either continue to be very similar, or LibreOffice will steam ahead...

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

sciurus 15y ago

GNOME and LibreOffice developer Michael Meeks' summary: "Apparently this is a somewhat divisive attempt by an exiting Oracle, along with IBM to sideline the existing developer community, their governance, their aspirations, membership, licensing choice (explicitly adapted to meet IBM's needs incidentally), bylaws, and so on. All of this despite a profound, frequently stated open-ness to including new (particularly large) corporate contributors inside TDF, and taking their advice seriously." http://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2011-06-01.html http://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2011-06-01.html

nodata 15y ago
Have you got any more sources for the IBM part? I can't find much.

mbreese 15y ago

It sounds to me like Oracle realized that they didn't quite grok community driven open-source projects and are finally starting to donate them to good homes (Jenkins to Eclipse and OOo to Apache). All it took was for the projects to go through the hell of major forks before Oracle realized what was going on. It's probably too late to engender any kind of good will out to this though. They put both of those communities through hell. And neither of these products fall under an Oracle core-competency. But I wouldn't expect the same result with either Java or MySQL anytime soon. Those are both things that Oracle "gets" and knows how to extract profit from.

naner 15y ago
Honestly, it seems like they're just pragmatically dumping projects they don't want or can't make a profit off of.
- carussell 15y ago
  Better this way than the way most projects go.
mikey_p 15y ago
Small nitpick, but Hudson was moved to Eclipse, not Jenkins. Jenkins is the community fork of Hudson.

cschep 15y ago

LibreOffice is such a bad name, hopefully if they merge back to OpenOffice and drop the stupid .org from their name. Is it the name of the project or their website? nobody knows!

weavejester 15y ago
I believe they only used OpenOffice.org because OpenOffice was already trademarked.
- Tiomaidh 15y ago
  When they discovered that, it might've been a good time to think up a different name.
rbanffy 15y ago
> hopefully if they merge back to OpenOffice Sure, and ditch the LGPL license and adopt the Apache one...

fingerprinter 15y ago

This is one of those things that I can read as both good news and bad news. I'm really hopeful that the LibreOffice and OOo communities could now get together and work together and even collapse the code base to one codebase again, but I'm doubtful that will happen. It would be a huge shame to see split efforts continue as it would hurt both projects and, frankly, they are both still lacking FAR behind any of the proprietary competitors. Not to mention Calligra is rapidly gaining ground on both. If Calligra gets the same level of MS office compatibility, it would leapfrog both OOo and LibreOffice in my mind. This is going to be a test of the two communities and their ability to see the big picture as well as navigate a political situation. I really am wondering how they will both will fare.

tobylane 15y ago
MS office compatibility is a good point, but that's everyone's goal, even Apple's Pages isn't much good at it. From what I understand, someone just needs to make a dedicated browser for Office online.

jabo 15y ago

How about donating MySQL too!

narad 15y ago
That would make even bigger news. :-)

jnw2 15y ago

Is there a good argument against Oracle releasing ZFS under the GPL (so that it could be integrated into the Linux kernel)?

koenigdavidmj 15y ago
No more reason to buy Solaris licenses?

joeyh 15y ago

Bradley Kuhn's take on this is that "relicensing part of the codebase out from under LibreOffice may actually be the most insidious attack Oracle and IBM could make on the project" http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2011/06/01/open-office.html http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2011/06/01/open-office.html

ldng 15y ago

And when they mess up with OpenJDK they'll give it to the PHP community ? What about MySQL, which bureaucratic and loosely related community shall it be given in case thinks goes south in your opinion ?

Fice 15y ago

Apache will likely release OOo under their permissive license allowing the code to be incorporated into proprietary software. So why do Oracle want to make the OOo code available to Microsoft and IBM for use in their office suites? This may make it harder for OOo to compete with proprietary office software.

fanf2 15y ago
I think the Apache bureaucracy will kill that branch of the project and development will continue on the LibreOffice branch.