Re: [tdf-discuss] Basic question about Oracle asking OOo community members to leave

On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 5:25 PM, BRM <bm_witness@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Again, I'm just trying to point out that there may be another aspect in how TDF
> was put together that may be making Oracle feel shunned even though they were
> invited.
>
> It's kind of like forking Android, inviting Google to join, and then saying
> well, the developers can join but Google can only contribute, versus having an
> organization like Open Handset Alliance.
>
> That said, I do like TDF (so please do not get me wrong) and hope this all works
> out, and am looking forward to hopefully contributing code at some point in the
> future.

Well the most important part about TDF and LibreOffice is how it will
build the community and contribute.

When I heard about TDF, I was happy to hear that it was happening, for
the reason that OOO seemed to be in a limbo state.

I have been following StarOffice and the StarVision framework since
the 90s! http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Division

I think that any movement in the project is good, if some positive
result occurs from it, again contributions.

Well of course, if you don't have a share-alike license, then branches
and forks are not as welcome, but even if there were 20 small branches
each with some feature.

All of these discussions about "what if" don't mean too much, there
are only a few questions to answer now :
1. Will the TDF produce contributions and build a community or not.
2. Will Oracle and IBM do the same and at what speed or will they use
legal weapons against TDF to stop it.


In the end, competition might be a good thing to get this project
moving faster, and I can say that I think that there is alot of things
that could be done to make OOO more up to date, it has alot of things
that are leftovers from the 90s and if the project was started today
would be done differently.

On that note, has there been any discussion to move LibreOffice into a
share-like copyleft license and to encourage branches? I think that
OOO is still in the mozilla-seamonkey cocoon phase and is waiting for
its firefox rebirth or hatching, maybe that can happen now.

Things that I would personally welcome are :
1. licensing under a share-alike to prevent close source translations and forks.
2. setting up a git repository and encouraging branches
3. removing as much of the code as possible and making a slim down
system with minimal dependancies
4. using a standard gettext system for translation strings
5. Aligning the project with AbiWord and GNUMeric for translation
strings and modules. Maybe the better idea would be to refactor the
code from OOO to include missing features into ABIWord.

all the best,
mike
-- 
James Michael DuPont
Member of Free Libre Open Source Software Kosova and Albania
flossk.org flossal.org

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