7 ms·

To be honest I never understood why Apache even started in the first place. By that time the LibreOffice fork was well underway.

Jasper_ 4y ago
IBM was shipping their own proprietary office suite based on OpenOffice, Lotus Symphony, and LibreOffice wasn't a good fit for that business model. IBM was the leading charge behind Apache OpenOffice, Oracle would have rather dumpstered it.
- usrusr 4y ago
  I'd be surprised if the walking dead state of Open separate from Libre wasn't caused by in-house tools somewhere that just never got ported to Libre, or that are somehow inherently incompatible with that fork. Symphony is certainly a prime suspect for the original "version some in-house stuff got built on". The question "do we really want to port yet another minor improvement/fix from Libre to Open instead of porting our own grown mess from Open to Libre?" can be answered with a short-sighted "yes, of course!" any number of times. And Open cannot be formerly declared dead as long as this form of contribution keeps happening.
  - Jasper_ 4y ago
    IBM discontinued Lotus Symphony nearly 10 years ago. OpenOffice continues because the Apache project chairs in place hate the GPL, and even worse, they hate admitting they lost. It's a moral/pride thing rather than a practical or business thing at this point. But IBM was the reason it exists in the first place.
    - usrusr 4y ago
      Judging from the simplified fork graph in the article (likely greatly simplified, I admit), I'd expect something depending on Symphony to be far more compatible with current Open than with current Libre. But sure, the licencing difference might very well be a part of that.
    - Taywee 4y ago
      > OpenOffice continues because the Apache project chairs in place hate the GPL LibreOffice isn't even GPL. It's Mozilla Public License (MPL). Still copyleft, but much more weakly so, because only MPL source files are required to stay MPL. You can mix MPL files with even proprietary source files, and you only have to distribute the changes to the original MPL files. Though I suppose that might conflict with the Apache foundation in general. Don't they require Apache license for all their software?
- stonogo 4y ago
  What "business model"? IBM didn't charge for Symphony, and if you wanted to pay for support it was fantastically inexpensive. Even cheaper than I remembered, https://www.computerworld.com/article/2535199/ https://www.computerworld.com/article/2535199/ reports 20k users for $25k/year. So what business model was libreoffice disrupting, exactly? Because IBM at the time was mostly driven by NIH syndrome rather than some 4d-chess anti-freedom scheming.
fhars 4y ago
"“What just happened here is that Oracle couldn’t resist giving the community the finger one more time,” https://www.linuxinsider.com/story/oracle-and-openoffice-the-final-insult-72590.html https://www.linuxinsider.com/story/oracle-and-openoffice-the... (2011)
- b112 4y ago
  Sounds like Oracle, with their behaviour with, well, everything all the time. The whole OOo, mysqL, OEL junket within a span of a few years, made sure I'd never use them, ever, for anything. These days, I think it's maybe in alignment with why nigerian style scam spam is always so poorly worded, and looks so obvious. They want the easy marks. They want those not easily fooled, to not reply. And so this is how I see Oracle, and their horrid, childish, terrible behaviour. The want to weed out anyone who senses the scam, be it licensing hell, or just horrid core/services. Sadly, big corp and governments are slow to get the message, and I suspect more easily fleeced. The amount of times I've heard of a CEO or CTO in big corp, buying a product without even talking to devs/IT? The scam lives on.
  - cogman10 4y ago
    Depends entirely on the project. Java (probably because oracle doesn't solely own it) has flourished primarily under their hand.
    - b112 4y ago
      And how many times did oracle java have regressions for timezone changes? I hate them for my 2am(1am?) emergency daylight savings calls. Oracle java flourished, but part of that has been suing everyone under the sun for using it. Look at android/google... More scam, more or the same from oracle.
      - cogman10 4y ago
        > And how many times did oracle java have regressions for timezone changes? Did other languages handle it better? Is this a Java problem or is this a "Governments changing timezone information all the time is hard" problem? > Oracle java flourished, but part of that has been suing everyone under the sun for using it. > Look at android/google... AFAIK, android/google is the ONLY ones they've sued. Do you have other examples?

Jasper_ 4y ago

IBM was shipping their own proprietary office suite based on OpenOffice, Lotus Symphony, and LibreOffice wasn't a good fit for that business model. IBM was the leading charge behind Apache OpenOffice, Oracle would have rather dumpstered it.

usrusr 4y ago
I'd be surprised if the walking dead state of Open separate from Libre wasn't caused by in-house tools somewhere that just never got ported to Libre, or that are somehow inherently incompatible with that fork. Symphony is certainly a prime suspect for the original "version some in-house stuff got built on". The question "do we really want to port yet another minor improvement/fix from Libre to Open instead of porting our own grown mess from Open to Libre?" can be answered with a short-sighted "yes, of course!" any number of times. And Open cannot be formerly declared dead as long as this form of contribution keeps happening.
- Jasper_ 4y ago
  IBM discontinued Lotus Symphony nearly 10 years ago. OpenOffice continues because the Apache project chairs in place hate the GPL, and even worse, they hate admitting they lost. It's a moral/pride thing rather than a practical or business thing at this point. But IBM was the reason it exists in the first place.
  - usrusr 4y ago
    Judging from the simplified fork graph in the article (likely greatly simplified, I admit), I'd expect something depending on Symphony to be far more compatible with current Open than with current Libre. But sure, the licencing difference might very well be a part of that.
  - Taywee 4y ago
    > OpenOffice continues because the Apache project chairs in place hate the GPL LibreOffice isn't even GPL. It's Mozilla Public License (MPL). Still copyleft, but much more weakly so, because only MPL source files are required to stay MPL. You can mix MPL files with even proprietary source files, and you only have to distribute the changes to the original MPL files. Though I suppose that might conflict with the Apache foundation in general. Don't they require Apache license for all their software?
stonogo 4y ago
What "business model"? IBM didn't charge for Symphony, and if you wanted to pay for support it was fantastically inexpensive. Even cheaper than I remembered, https://www.computerworld.com/article/2535199/ https://www.computerworld.com/article/2535199/ reports 20k users for $25k/year. So what business model was libreoffice disrupting, exactly? Because IBM at the time was mostly driven by NIH syndrome rather than some 4d-chess anti-freedom scheming.

fhars 4y ago

"“What just happened here is that Oracle couldn’t resist giving the community the finger one more time,” https://www.linuxinsider.com/story/oracle-and-openoffice-the-final-insult-72590.html https://www.linuxinsider.com/story/oracle-and-openoffice-the... (2011)

b112 4y ago
Sounds like Oracle, with their behaviour with, well, everything all the time. The whole OOo, mysqL, OEL junket within a span of a few years, made sure I'd never use them, ever, for anything. These days, I think it's maybe in alignment with why nigerian style scam spam is always so poorly worded, and looks so obvious. They want the easy marks. They want those not easily fooled, to not reply. And so this is how I see Oracle, and their horrid, childish, terrible behaviour. The want to weed out anyone who senses the scam, be it licensing hell, or just horrid core/services. Sadly, big corp and governments are slow to get the message, and I suspect more easily fleeced. The amount of times I've heard of a CEO or CTO in big corp, buying a product without even talking to devs/IT? The scam lives on.
- cogman10 4y ago
  Depends entirely on the project. Java (probably because oracle doesn't solely own it) has flourished primarily under their hand.
  - b112 4y ago
    And how many times did oracle java have regressions for timezone changes? I hate them for my 2am(1am?) emergency daylight savings calls. Oracle java flourished, but part of that has been suing everyone under the sun for using it. Look at android/google... More scam, more or the same from oracle.
    - cogman10 4y ago
      > And how many times did oracle java have regressions for timezone changes? Did other languages handle it better? Is this a Java problem or is this a "Governments changing timezone information all the time is hard" problem? > Oracle java flourished, but part of that has been suing everyone under the sun for using it. > Look at android/google... AFAIK, android/google is the ONLY ones they've sued. Do you have other examples?