Re: [tdf-discuss] Re: Oracle contributes OOo Code to Apache Software Foundation'sIncubator

Hi Ian,

Ian Lynch wrote (03-06-11 15:47)
> I just signed up as a committer on the Apache incubator this morning. Why?
>
> Am I against LO and TDF - no, at heart I'm a copyleft person, however, there
> are also practical realities to consider too sometimes. What is the worst
> case? OOo code and trademark go with Apache and then little is done. LO and

Indeed, this is not purely hypothetical.
There has a really lot to be done before a possible OOo Apache project 
is more or less ready. Lots of Licence incompatible stuff has to be 
replaced, all infra and procedures etc has to be set up. People need to 
join and find their way. Will costs months.
In the mean time LibreOffice, with already 8 month of code clean up, 
build improvements etc grows on. So there will be an pretty large gap 
for OOo-Apache to bridge.
A pity also for LibreOffice, since that will make it much harder to 
profit from work done in OOo-Apache.

> TDF can carry on business as usual. Best case scenario (depending on what
> you view as good or bad :-) ) IBM and others put in engineering effort and
> the OOo code base improves. TDF take and improve that code and release it
> with a copyleft license. TDF engineers cooperate with OOo engineers to
> ensure that as far as possible both sets of code remain manageable. Ok,
> there is a threat that developers from the TDF camp migrate to the OOo camp.
> But really there is not much choice than to take that risk. It will depend
> on how many really want only to work on copyleft code.
>
> The not possible scenario which we might have liked better is Oracle donate
> everything to TDF - but they didn't and they won't so it's a case of "if my
> aunt had balls she would be my uncle". She hasn't so she isn't.  :-)
>
> One thing that is very clear is that if TDF had not been formed Oracle would
> not transferred things to Apache, at least not this soon. So brilliant you
> guys, you took a risk and it has at least mostly worked if not perfectly.
>   Better now to look for the opportunities rather than the threats when
> really there is not much that can be done about them. Pack out the
> committers list on Apache and make sure you have a say in the governance of
> OOo as well as TDF and LO.

It would be my strategy not to put too much energy in it from the start. 
As pointed out above, there is a massive gap to bridge. And much to do 
on LibreOffice. So not block it, but be careful with your precious time 
and energy.
And - looking at IBM's past promised contributions to OOo and what came 
out of it - it is safe and reasonable to first see how they really make 
OOo-Apache work. If that turns out positive, I think it is OK and fair 
to put much more energy in it.

Best,
Cor


--
 - http://nl.libreoffice.org
 - giving openoffice.org its foundation :: The Document Foundation -


--
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+help@documentfoundation.org
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted