Hi Keith, I put you in cc because you are not subscribed
On 8/28/13 6:45 AM, Keith Curtis wrote: > One of the points I would like some clarification on is in the article > defending ASF by Andrew C. Oliver: http://www.infoworld.com/print/225555 > > In it, he wrote: "Nearly all of the very active Apache OpenOffice > developers work for IBM directly or indirectly." > > Can someone explain more about this? For example, is there a table showing > who everyone works for? From that, one could make a chart showing how many > of the code changes in AOO were made by various companies. LibreOffice > publishes such charts: > http://documentfoundation.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/developers6.jpg From > my research, I'd guess AOO 4 was at least 80% IBM, but I've not been able > to find out information on several people so it is an estimate. > > In addition to regularly posting information about the number of user > downloads, it would be great to regularly post a chart that shows the > diversity of the code contributors. Everyone who is a volunteer is allowed > to choose which community they'd like to join and this would give them > important information. I know there are IBM employees all over the place > working on release management, QA, and other areas, but just knowing > diversity about code changes would be useful. > > If it were 90+% IBM, they could end the fork very quickly. The remaining > 10% would probably move, but even if they didn't, it would still be much > better. Ending this fork is one of the best things that could happen to > free software today. As a former Microsoft Office programmer, I can state > that this fork benefits them immensely, helping both Office and Windows. I > realize that no one here wants to help Microsoft, but it is an "unintended > consequence." If I still rooted for Microsoft, I would be laughing at the > incompetence because it indirectly gives them billions of dollars. As I > root for Linux now, I find it sad because it is a lot more work to build > two communities and brands: http://keithcu.com/wordpress/?p=3163 > thanks for sharing your view and insights. And I totally agree reunifying both projects would be the best to ensure a powerful and free office productivity suite in the future and focus together on the challenges of the future which is not really the desktop. I believe it doesn't really matter how much code contributions come from IBM. More important is the fact that IBM stops the Symphony fork and joined Apache OpenOffice to work together with the community (and indirect with other companies) on one common goal and one open source office productivity suite. And contributed the source of Symphony as well to Apache OpenOffice. Oracle decided where the project should continue and granted the code, the copyright, the brand etc. to Apache. The Apache license is a good one and has proven that it works well for open source projects. Android as a very prominent example! Apache OpenOffice will continue and we are open for everybody who is interested to join the project and help to bring it forward. A really flat structure where all project members are more or less equal. Decision are made on the public developer list and not in the PMC for example. > 65 million downloads in 1 year and that are only the officially counted downloads. Many more on other not counted download servers. Any individual developer should decide in which code base a bugfix or feature should go to benefit the majority of office users. LibreOffice is taking our code which is fine but we have still more users and the cherry picking of fixes or other improvements will become more difficult. Take for example the sidebar, I don't want to know how much time they have spent to integrate it and it is less stable. Anyway we know the underlying framework because we have implement it from scratch and the sidebar was not only a simple merge as some people try to explain where the code comes from. All the migrated panels were reworked to fit in our new framework. I hope you have send the same or a similar message to the TDF or the LO project ;-) We are here to continue the power and success of OpenOffice and again everybody is invited to join. We can't promise any position because we don't have them and we have only a flat hierarchy with one project chair. But the chair has not more control in the project as any other contributor. But it's a good pace for anybody who simply want to drive the project and want help to bring it forward. Juergen --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@openoffice.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@openoffice.apache.org
