On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 14:56, Jochen Wiedmann <jochen.wiedm...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 8:24 PM, <robert_w...@us.ibm.com> wrote: > >> We could have put a much longer list of IBM names on this list, developers >> familiar with the code base via their work on Lotus Symphony (which is our >> OpenOffice based project). But then we could have been criticized for the >> proposal being too dominated by IBM. It is clearly our intent to grow >> this project, both from our corporate developers, but also by recruiting >> new members to the project, including developers from related open source >> projects (see my previous note) > > And why couldn't IBM do quite the same with LibreOffice, or, even > better, with a remerged O/LOffice?
IBM has long seemed to favor the ALv2 when they build products on top of underlying OSS software. I imagine that building Lotus Symphony on top of an Apache codebase will be *much* easier for them [than the copyleft'd LibreOffice), since they won't have to carefully partition codebases and linking and stuff like that. I believe this is one area where the LibreOffice people don't have it quite right: the copyleft actually *prevents* corporations like IBM from contributing in many ways. It is true that many changes are returned to the codebase due to the copyleft, which may otherwise stay private, but I don't believe that is a long-term strategy. Companies building atop OSS projects generally have an incentive to return changes to keep their patchset small (or, at least, to create hook points for their changes). Some companies might not participate at all, due to the copyleft. (and I *am* glad that TDF does not require copyright assignment; that is horrible for building a community, though it certainly helps Apache today, with this proposal from Oracle) Cheers, -g --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
