On 09/03/2015 07:22 AM, Louis Suárez-Potts wrote: > >> On 03 Sep 15, at 09:54, Rich Bowen <rbo...@rcbowen.com> wrote: >> >> >> >> On 09/03/2015 08:33 AM, Fernando Cassia wrote: >>> "After LibreOffice came out, Oracle released one version of >>> Oracle Open Office before deciding that the project wasn’t worth >>> the effort >>> <http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2011/04/oracle-gives-up-on-ooo-after-community-forks-the-project/>. >>> >>> It laid off the programmers and gave the code and trademarks to the Apache >>> Software Foundation, under Apache’s liberal open source >>> license." >>> >>> That's one version of events. Another version of events is this. >>> http://pages.citebite.com/e7v0f3m9sder >>> >>> "Shuttleworth has a fairly serious disagreement with how the >>> OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice split came about. He said that Sun >>> made a $100 million "gift" to the community when it opened up the >>> OpenOffice code. But a "radical faction" made the lives of the >>> OpenOffice developers "hell" by refusing to contribute code under >>> the Sun agreement. That eventually led to the split, but >>> furthermore led Oracle to finally decide to stop OpenOffice >>> development and lay off 100 employees." >>> >>> That's different from "deciding it was not worth the effort". >>> >>> Why the FUD on a dev list, anyway? >> >> It's not FUD. It's a link to an article. >> >> What would be awesome is if someone would write a counterpoint, >> which is non-confrontational, non-rageful, non-hateful, and >> non-reactionary, but just calmly presenting the reasons why someone >> might want to stay on OpenOffice. > > Write to the Guardian? I would do it, would love to do it, and clear > up issues. But I’m one of the *last* people who could do it, as I was > so involved in the project, from its inception to … now.
I would think this would make you one of the best people to do it! > > Besides, Mark S is not entirely bending history. There was a > contingent, led by a very talented developer formerly employed by > Novell and still associated with LibreOffice, who *did* make the > lives of the Sun/Hamburg devs—or at least their boss, who was also > mine—at times unpleasant. And one of the bones of contention was > Sun’s widely criticised copyright assignment policy, which it did > modify over the years. But that policy did have real consequences, > despite Sun’s choosing to deprecate them. Whether the IP policy is > the primary cause of the ultimate split—that would be a > simplification and evaluating it would take more words than would > stun an ox, if printed. But the policy did little to warm the hearts > and soothe the nerves of those who felt that for all the license > asserted, OOo tested the limits of what constituted open source > development. (In contrast, AOO really is open source de jure and de > facto.) > > The history of the radical faction, btw is scripted online and > accessible via the Internet Archives, if one wishes to look for > Go-ooo and the blog entries of the primary developer working on > Go-ooo. >> >> Refuting the article on this list, where we all already know the >> story, is a good start, but if you could turn it into an article >> that's less political, more practical (features, community, >> timelines, and so on), that would actually help our cause. The >> person asking the original question doesn't care about politics, >> hurt feelings, and "radical factions", I guarantee. They want to >> know which product is better for them, now, and in the long term. > > Your last point is the interesting one. These ancient corporate > battles and community disputations have left a torn legacy that has > done exactly what any competitor of OOo would want: Divide and > Conquer. The user is left uncertain. If I were counselling any user, > would I point to AOO for its… what? support of users? UI? Templates? > updates? Please. We’ve sputtered on about an incremental release now > for over a year and meanwhile, LO is at 5.0.1, which I just > downloaded. Numbers are arbitrary tokens, they mean little, we all > know. But they look great. > > Louis > >> >> Thanks. >> >> -- Rich Bowen - rbo...@rcbowen.com - @rbowen http://apachecon.com/ >> - @apachecon >> >> --------------------------------------------------------------------- >> >> To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@openoffice.apache.org >> For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@openoffice.apache.org > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > > To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@openoffice.apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@openoffice.apache.org > -- -------------------------------------------- MzK “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” --Lao Tzu --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@openoffice.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@openoffice.apache.org
