Hi Niclas,
Niclas Hedhman wrote on 2011-06-06 18.12:
I was on a long flight and came back to an immense number of mails
here and elsewhere on this topic, so please bear with me if this has
been brought up before, by someone else.
hope you had a safte trip, and I can feel with you - I had several
hundred mails just over the weekend. :-)
I vaguely recall the fork of OOo into LibreOffice, and if memory
serves me right it was due to escape Oracle's governance/influence, or
something to that extent.
I tried to sum-up the situation yesterday in these mails and associated
links - hope that helps for some inside view:
http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss@documentfoundation.org/msg06607.html
http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss@documentfoundation.org/msg06575.html
http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss@documentfoundation.org/msg06579.html
http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss@documentfoundation.org/msg06585.html
Was it already at that time known that Oracle was going with a liberal
license, and the fork was then a choice based in the ideological
differences in licensing?
Very briefly, the TDF was, among other things, created because Oracle
didn't say *anything*. The move to another license was a surprise to us
as well, so our decision has not been based on license ideology, but
rather as we wanted to provide a good home for our community. Oracle
wasn't responsive at all on so many questions.
If it was not, how would the people who forked then have reacted if
Oracle did then (pre-fork) what they are doing now?
It is for sure hard to say, but I (personally) am sure things would have
happened different. Having OOo with a foundation is part of the
project's mission statement since day one, since the announcement in
June 2000 (!).
It's hard to say if the community had instanly agreed to a move to ASF.
But, again, TDF has not been created out of licensing issues, but rather
as wanted to have a safe and stable home for the community. Based on the
lack of feedback from Oracle on so many important questions, there was
no other choice left.
And now, that we created everything, Oracle acts - something we had
wished for much earlier, ideally before September 28th, 2010.
But shall we now join the ASF proposal, re-creating everything we
already did twice (once at OOo, then at TDF) just because Oracle finally
made it, or doesn't it make more sense to work in the environment we
created specifically for the needs of our community?
I posted it in another message, but it's important, so I repeat: The TDF
was created with support of *ALL* community council members who have
been not employed by Oracle, and most co-leads and project leads joined
us. I think this speaks for itself.
Finally, do you (TDF) thinks it is better that Oracle gives the
codebase, trademarks and other IP-rights to IBM than to Apache? The
way I read the situation, that is the alternative available most
likely to happen in that case, possibly as a fully internal project.
Giving OOo to TDF is something Oracle simply can't do, there is likely
a promise to IBM...
My personal point was not so much about the software grant. If I
understood this right, it exists independent from the incubation process
or result. My point was that it is a waste of time and energy and split
efforts, when there is a second project set-up.
So, easily spoken:
If ASF accepts the software grant, that's better than if it doesn't
accept it. :)
However, does this really need a project where people have to come up
with infrastructure, marketing, QA etc., or wouldn't it make sense to
join forces?
Florian
--
Florian Effenberger <flo...@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
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
