Politically, I wonder what is so wrong with JCA. Apache software foundation mandates a similar action too.
Technically, Oo.o 3 starts faster than go-oo. I cannot comment on Excel formulae. But I doubt whether switching would really provide any benefit to Ubuntu, which is worth the effort involved. On Tue, Dec 30, 2008 at 7:21 AM, John Moser <john.r.mo...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Mon, Dec 29, 2008 at 7:29 PM, Andrew Sayers > <andrew-ubuntu-de...@pileofstuff.org> wrote: > > Speaking as someone with a strictly armchair interest in this topic, I'd > > like to make a few observations here - > > > > The way (non-Sun) people talk about OO.o reminds me of the way people > > used to talk about the pre-Firefox Mozilla project - worthy and > > important, but with low developer morale due to an ugly, hostile > > codebase. A certain amount of mud will always get slung at a project of > > OO.o's size, and Sun often have valid excuses for the mud that gets > > thrown their way, but I've never heard a community member stand up and > > defend Sun's behaviour, or give examples of how Sun went the extra mile > > to help them out. That silence speaks more to me than the noise on the > > other side. > > Political argument. > > On that field, are you suggesting +1 for sun's side "This has happened > before, it's not a disaster, it'll iron itself out;" or -1 for sun's > side "this happens, but they are handling it particularly bad and > digging their own grave"? > > > Developing a good vocabulary of actions will be important in order to > > improve the development process without suffering the upheaval that > > would come from an x.org-style fork. > > If it's going the way of X, the better action once it's clear that > this either can't be reversed or would take far too much effort to do > so, would be to fork, and (from the sidelines) to encourage or "push" > a fork. It's entirely up to each distribution how they decide to play > politics in this case (see Debian/Iceweasel vs Ubuntu/Firefox, neither > is "correct" in how they're handling it, it's just the distro > maintainers' opinions), but they do have that weight and their visible > actions cause those kinds of shifts. > > Up until that point, obviously, we either A) expect that things will > get better; or B) expect such a shift will be more damaging (to > reputations, to development of the new fork, to the community, etc) > than helpful right now. > > > > > Towards the subtle end of the scale, Go-oo makes it possible to start > > referring to the Sun codebase as "Sun's tree" rather than "upstream", > > forcing Sun to earn their reputation as the "true" version of OO.o. > > Towards the drastic end of the scale, Go-oo could request that Sun pull > > the patches they're interested in, rather than getting patches pushed at > > them with whatever extra paperwork they request, putting the cost of > > Sun's bureaucracy back on Sun's balance sheet. > > Interesting strategy; however Sun has shown either A) they don't care > enough to integrate feature X; or B) they do, but since you won't > dual-license it and sign an agreement transferring copyright to them, > they'll just expend their resources writing their own. Forcing Sun to > pull would, in essence, be an attempt to force them to abandon their > practice of having contributors sign a JCA, as anyone dissenting > against this can contribute to the fork (Go-OO), effectively forcing > most developers away and creating a bigger community draw to the fork, > stagnating OOo or forcing them (as I said) to simply abandon the core > goals of the JCA and pull, pull, pull... > > In other words, the "Pull" strategy WILL hurt Sun, and WILL take OOo > out of their hands; the workload to reproduce significant features > submitted to Go-OO would pile up too fast, and the project will become > more and more feature-complete over time. With the ability to pull > from Sun's tree without consequence, Sun simply can't catch up to > this, and can only shut down open source OOo development. Eliminating > their JCA would prevent them from shipping Star Office as-is, > presumably; although Go-OO is LGPL and Sun could get away with using > modules without LGPL-ing their code if they integrated such code. > > That, of course, would be the action of Go-OO or such a fork (though > Go-OO is probably the largest; OxygenOffice and a few others are based > on it). If it does happen, be very worried for Sun's continued > control over OOo, as it'll be in jeopardy as soon as that fork gains > momentum. > > > > > So what does this mean for Ubuntu? Mainly that we need to weigh our > > actions not only in terms of what produces the best short-term results > > for users, but also whether the message it sends will improve the > > process in the long-term. > > True. Again, my interest is in understanding the current situation > and figuring out what'll happen in the long term; although I wouldn't > mind getting there faster... > > > As Joe said, publicly ditching the upstream > > OO.o would send far too negative a message right now. > > Depends on what message you want to send. Again with > Debian/IceWeasel, if Shuttleworth and friends want to send the > message, "Abandon ship, Sun sucks," and try to force an X fork, this > would be the strategy to use; maybe now, maybe later. If that is NOT > what Ubuntu wants to do (I'm pretty sure it's not), then they need to > simply be quiet. > > On an aside, the drama would be academically amusing. I think Sun > would actually shit bricks. Maybe I'll make a Demotivation poster > satirizing this... > > > If Sun continues > > to drag its heels, the next move might be to start talking about how > > Ubuntu adds value over the "basic" OO.o, putting some gentle corporate > > pressure on Sun to get their act together. > > > > Talking yourself up is just that--Ubuntu ships everything with patches > that improve it, every distro does. We're a little ahead of the curve > here, good for us, install our software! It still says "OOo" and > people aren't going to say to their Windows-using friends, "Install > OOo Ubuntu Edition, it's better;" nor will Fedora start using Ubuntu's > OOo. This would just talk up Ubuntu, and the net impact would be the > same: people would use OOo on Ubuntu and install it on their > non-Ubuntu machines too. > > I had a relationship with a company that did security consulting once. > We had a partnership with another product-based company that made > very poor software. The software had to be configured basically to > handle multiple sites if your site was too big-- not a licensing > restriction, but rather a technical problem with scalability. It was > also fairly unintuitive and prone to misbehave anyway. Our > relationship was rather interesting: we could supply Product X, but > also point out how we could relieve your frustration with Product X by > helping to configure/improve it. This is the same sort of > relationship with pushing OpenOffice.org and advertising that you ship > some "Improvements": our business resulted in more sales and > increased popularity for Product X, and lessened corporate pressure > because we handled the mess they made by alleviating their clients' > frustrations with our expertise. > > It's kind of all-or-nothing; "pressure" comes in the form of arguing > with someone, or publicly criticizing them. Hints don't work. > Stepping into that arena makes things rough, because you can't > maintain good faith; and once you put your foot down on the "it's time > to fork" or "this fork is simply better than the source" line, you > can't backpedal, because the whole atmosphere changes. > > It kind of sucks, actually. > > > - Andrew > > > > -- > > Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list > > Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com > > Modify settings or unsubscribe at: > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss > > > > -- > Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list > Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com > Modify settings or unsubscribe at: > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss > -- Chandra Sekar.S Blog: http://tuxychandru.blogspot.com/
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