On 23/02/15 15:55, Dennis E. Hamilton wrote: > so it is odd to have a revision in hand while we are still deliberating on > what direction to take.
The discussion popped up about three weeks ago, with Andrea volunteering to rewrite the page, but saying he needed the weekend to do so. It took him longer than a weekend to consider what, and how it could be changed, to include what was on that page, but project The Apache Way. > 1. The OpenOffice Mission The specific page was a very subtle put-down of LibO, EO, NO, KOo, and three or four other office suites that had their roots in StarOffice. It does a raise a valid point, in that the different licenses do have different criteria for compliance, and the resulting cost of compliance. > 2. The Purpose of the Page There were half a dozen or so CYA pages from when Sun and Oracle ran OOo. (I've forgotten their names. I've seen at least one on the AOo site.) This is one of those CYA pages, most useful when lawyers want to sue someone, because their client didn't understand something, and wants somebody else to pay for their self-inflicted damage. I don't know if this specific page was a rewrite of a specific page from when either Sun or Oracle ran OOo, or if it was written after The Apache Foundation acquired OOo. Some of the wording implies that it was created specifically for AOo. Some of the wording is in SUN's house style, when dealing with "awkward" topics. If the page does not mention other licenses, then it can be advocacy page, explaining why Apache 2.0, and consequently AOo is an appropriate choice for an organization to use. > Apache OpenOffice is not a pure ALv2 release. > ********************************************* Which is just one of the reasons why compliance costs are not going to be zero, when using AOo. ### Addressing various issues mentioned in other emails. > The page under discussion identifies some worst-case situations that are not representative of what happens, FWIW, as far as SBA compliance is concerned, it does not cover worst case scenarios, but rather, average to _best_ case scenarios. (IOW, if anything, it understates what happens, if the SBA targets your business. Also, contrary to SBA claims, they individuals are also targetted.) As far as FSF compliance is concerned, their formal policy is to work with organizations, and _not_ go to court. Even in court, they are willing to settle at any point during the trial, up to, and including seconds before the judge issues the official verdict.(IOW, if you are in court for a GPL violation filed by FSF, it is either because your attorney is incredibly incompetent, or you are incredibly stubborn.) In both instances, there won't be much, if anything, in the court records. The SBA takes, without going to court, and the FSF simply insists on making changes in the organization's operations, so that it fully complies with _all_ software licenses, not just the FLOSS licenses. What one can find, is FSF and SBA press releases, that describe what happens when they do find violations. > I submit that a software producer could distribute binaries under per-seat licenses that were based on software completely under a permissive license and dispute violations of the terms under which those binaries were made available to a customer. Whether or not said producer gets anywhere legally, depends upon the specific license of the binary: * With GNU GPL 2.0, odds are the producer qua plaintiff, gets to pay defendant's court costs; * With BSD, odds are the defendant loses the lawsuit, because they did violate the license; There were a few firms that distributed OOo under a per seat license. They all appear to be out of business. There were, and are some firms that provide LibO & AOo support, on a per seat basis. They appear to have an informal policy of allowing a percentage of understatement of seats, whilst providing full support for all seats. jonathon * English - detected * English * English <javascript:void(0);>
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