[tdf-discuss] Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal: Splitting^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HREUNITING the Community?

Hi Greg,

Greg Stein wrote on 2011-06-05 20.39:

> > so, why don't the ASF, the Mozilla Foundation, the Eclipse Foundation and
> > the GNOME Foundation unite? :-)
>
> Different goals.

that said, I think the goals of ASF - without knowing your statutes in 
detail yet - and TDF differ as well. Not that we want different things 
in general, but this goes back to what I said earlier about reinventing 
the wheel and doing efforts in parallel, which I would like to avoid.

TDF has been specifically set up to fit the needs of the community 
around OpenOffice.org and possible associated products, which is 
reflected (or confirmed, however you want to see it) by the fact that 
the vast majority moved over to TDF. They wouldn't have done so, IMHO, 
if we did a terrible job or they felt we were a badhome. We have shaped 
all the processes and things we came up with to be the best for that 
specific community, and I think we did a pretty well job so far.

Questions coming up on the incubator list, like infrastructure, 
buildbots, repositories and the like, we already *have* the solution in 
place, whereas here it at least needs to be discussed, or even implemented.

Of course, Apache is a good home for an open source project, but why 
does it make sense to set-up everything again, run through all the 
processes again and invest all the time and efforts again, while there 
*is* already a home that (IMHO) fits better.

So, I don't want to discuss this over and over again, but I hope with 
the background information I sent earlier, my points become a bit more 
obvious. :-)

> I wasn't trying to make that argument. Just a generic statement about
> open source groups thinking it is all cool to have their own
> foundation. It isn't. Far from it. Django... Drupal... this that and
> the other.

We definitely don't do it out of the reason just to have it. :-) It 
costs lots of time, and I am sure everyone who is involved in setting up 
or running the Apache foundation can confirm that. We have taken that 
step, because there was no real alternative. So, setting up our own 
entity was the only senseful idea.

And now, that we have everything up and running, moving over again - it 
does not make much sense. It just doubles the work, leads to confusion 
and irritation, if we set up projects in parallel.

Yes, I see the licensing topic and that there are different views on 
that. However, I don't know if that requires to set-up all community 
efforts a second time. Simon posted one possible creative solution. 
Setting up a parallel project IMHO is wrong.

Hope my point is clear now. :)

> > This might not affect other topics, but honestly, I think the perception of
> > what already is in existence is not clear enough for many parties on this
> > list. :-) Hope I could shed some light on it...
>
> You very much did. Thank you!

Thanks! If there are questions, feel free to ask them. I elaborated on 
that topic so much, as I fear that there are just false rumors spreading 
at the moment. It is definitely not right that TDF is unable to handle 
things that would be required due to Oracle's new step. We *are* able to 
handle things, not only from the community, but also from the legal 
perspective. If people doubt that, I am happy to discuss this in public 
as well, but we never have been asked these questions - it was simply 
presumed we weren't ready yet. Which is just wrong.

While I do not know much about the first days of the Apache foundation, 
let me still try to draw an analogy: When you had created everything 
needed, collected donations, had a vivid community, a product, a working 
governance, a legal backing, a user base and even large enterprise 
users, and just a few steps were missing for the legal "stamp" of being 
a foundation - when then a corporation donated a web server source code 
to another foundation, would you have said "Of course, let's do it there 
and re-invent everything again", or would you have said "Well, let's 
find ways to incorporate things under the already existing umbrella"?

Florian

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Florian Effenberger <floeff@documentfoundation.org>
Steering Committee and Founding Member of The Document Foundation
Tel: +49 8341 99660880 | Mobile: +49 151 14424108
Skype: floeff | Twitter/Identi.ca: @floeff

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