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Hi Andreas,

On 2022-06-24 17:51, Andreas Mantke wrote:

Hi Laszlo, all,

I'm not sure, if you as a former Collabora staff member don't any
potential CoI in the whole topic.

I'd prefer if only community members without potential CoI share their
opinion on this topic.
I'm not only a former Collabora contractor (near 3 years until 2017), but a former LOOL developer, too, and still like the term "LibreOffice Online". But now as a fresh TDF director ȧnd almost fresh full-time LibreOffice developer, I would like 
to continue on my 20-year contribution, based on my experience (see the
case of my corporate client with LOOL mentioned in my previous letter).



I also have no idea why it's not possible to work on a common ground of
LOOL (LibreOffice Online) and why it is/was instead necessary to fork
the code away from the LibreOffice community and rename it.
If I look over the fence into another OSS community there is no such
behavior. Maybe because the license is GPL and there is a contributor
assignment for the foundation in place (or there is more common spirit
in the project and the professional contributors are more divers).
I'm sorry about the change, too. I don't know the details, maybe LOOL was never a core LibreOffice development, but it seems, there was no choice for 
Collabora Productivity, only forking. Likely the reason is known for the
former TDF board, and Michael Meeks wrote about it, too, see "Why is
Collabora Online its own project?" in
https://collaboraonline.github.io/post/faq/.
Forking is possible for everyone, but only with renaming. So it was very unfair to write about that renaming is some evil thing, while that was likely a mandatory trade mark issue for Collabora Productivity, too. 

The good thing, that CODE/Collabora Online are still "LibreOffice
Technology (TM)" (see https://www.collaboraoffice.com/community-lot/),
so we have the common ground. We must continue to recommend CODE/Collabora 
Online, as the best way to use LOOL code base: CODE is the only actively
developed fork of LOOL, and this is the only maintained fork which
associated with active LibreOffice development, while other forks left
alone not only LOOL, but LibreOffice, too.

Best regards,
László



Regards,
Andreas

Am 24.06.22 um 17:27 schrieb laszlo.nemeth@documentfoundation.org:

Hi,

On 2022-06-23 17:09, Paolo Vecchi wrote:

Hi Andreas,

thank you for letting us know that you are working on it.

Ideally it would be great to have a few developers working on it,
especially to fix known security issues, and sufficient activity to
make it viable.

It is true that LOOL has been in a kind of limbo. The repository has
been frozen "temporarily" but it kind of became a permanent situation. 

In your opinion, would reopening the repository for 12 months provide
enough time for a community to form around it?

It would require warnings until all the security bugs have been fixed
and that it might not be well maintained until we see constant and
sufficient activity but it could be an option to make it up for the
longer than expected temporary freeze of the repository.


We need not only a security warning, but clear information that the
recommended versions of LOOL are still CODE and Collabora Online
(LibreOffice Technology (TM)).

A few months ago my corporate client wasted time and money because
they didn't notice on the
TDF site that LOOL is not actively developed. Thanks to the
helpfulness of employees of
Collabora Productivity, now they can test its fork with an up-to-date
LibreOffice in their intranet, and
started to contribute back to CODE (they have already been one of the
biggest contributors
of LibreOffice Desktop).

Why do we need to emphasize that CODE/Collabora Online are the
recommended versions (by TDF, too:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/LibreOffice_Online#Current_Status)?

Not only because LOOL was the idea and for the most part, product of
Collabora Productivity,
but because the original core LOOL developers still work for Collabora
in the spirit of the
free software: CODE is the only actively developed version of LOOL,
and this is the only maintained
version which contributes back to LibreOffice actively.

More information: https://collaboraonline.github.io/post/faq/ (by the
way, Collabora's description
mentions other maintained versions, like OSSII and Zimbra Docs).
If after 12 months we don't see much activity then we could be certain 
that the community is not really interested in working on LOOL.

It would be great to know if others have other
takes/options/alternatives on this subject.


I'm sure, the potential corporate contributors will prefer
CODE/Collabora Online, so it's really important to inform them (and
every LibreOffice users) correctly, like in
https://collaboraonline.github.io/post/faq/.

As CODE/Collabora Online are LibreOffice Technology (TM), and for the
healthy long-term LibreOffice development, I would like to see more
contribution with Collabora Productivity. In my opinion, as LOOL was,
CODE is still the key for the survival of LibreOffice. In the spirit
of a successful free software contribution, respecting the decision of
Collabora Productivity, TDF must help CODE development, as much as
possible, for the sake of LibreOffice! As a first step, we shouldn't
hijack future CODE users and as described above, future (and recent)
LibreOffice users and contributors with false hopes and misleading
information.

Best regards,
László



Ciao

Paolo

On 21/06/2022 21:14, Andreas Mantke wrote:

Hi all,
only a short info that I'm currently working on an update of the LOOL 
source code with the latest patches. Because I have an issue with my
newly bought hardware I had to migrate my environment (etc.) to another hardware (will need some hours of spare time). Thus I was not able to 
finish my work during this week.

If someone wants to join me, feel free to send me an email.
Once the necessary bits are done, I'll come back and try to make a
proposal for the further process to get LOOL back under the TDF
umbrella.

Regards,
Andreas


Am 21.06.22 um 14:15 schrieb Paolo Vecchi:

Hi all,

just a heads up in case the community would like to come up with
proposals in regards to LibreOffice On-Line.

As you might be aware LOOL's repository has been frozen since the
major code contributor decided to move it to GitHub and not contribute 
back to TDF's repository.

At the time there has been a debate about it but then nothing
actionable seems to have been proposed by the community since then.
Recently an ex-member of the ESC proposed to the ESC to archive LOOL 
[0] and during the following ESC meeting no concerns were expressed
for doing so [1].

The "Attic Policy" [2], that has been written to archive obsolete
projects, states that the Board will need to vote on the archival
process to confirm ESC's choice.

It is likely that the board will need to vote on it soon so if the
community would like to do something with LOOL there might be a small window of opportunity to have your preferences on what to do with it 
heard.
If nobody comes along proposing to look after it and update if so that 
it could be brought back into an usable form for the community then
the board might have to vote for having LOOL archived.

Ciao

Paolo



[0]
https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-June/088982.html

[1]
https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-June/089018.html

[2] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Policies/Attic



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