Re: [tdf-discuss] Re: [Libreoffice] Proposal to join Apache OpenOffice

On Fri, Jun 17, 2011 at 6:55 AM, Jim Jagielski <jim@jagunet.com> wrote:

> On Jun 17, 2011, at 7:44 AM, Michael Meeks wrote:
> >       The overlap between TDF & ASF's goals for an office product (modulo
> > enabling 'mixed-source') is a pretty compelling proof of competition.
>
> I disagree... competition implies a "winner" and a "loser"...
> in FOSS, how do you measure that? Market Share? Feh. When
> you start looking at it that way, then what makes FOSS FOSS
> kinda gets overlooked.
>
> The intent of FOSS is not to take over but to instead provide
> freedom and choices to end-users. If having 2 "competing" implementations
> means that a larger set of end-users will enjoy those freedoms
> and choices than if there was only 1 implementation, then the
> "competition" is most valid.
>
> It's being complementary, not competitive.

I think it is a helpful exercise to have a starting position that forks are
bad. They might be necessary and useful sometimes, like war, but that
doesn't make them ideal.

This is not like KOffice because that codebase is so different and missing
lots of features. No one is arguing to get rid of KOffice here, or that a
merge would be possible or makes sense.This is only about very slightly
different versions of a 10M line codebase.

Another way to think about it: what features does Apache want that
LibreOffice does *not* want? Ubuntu forked Debian because they wanted
6-month release cycles, proprietary drivers, etc. I see no list. Even if you
had a list of features LibreOffice didn't want, you could include the code
in LibreOffice and turn it off by default. OpenOffice could be LibreOffice
with different defaults. I don't think there is anything like that either.

-Keith

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