Simon Brouwer wrote:
Are there any concrete reasons to believe that Oracle's strategy with
OpenOffice.org is going to be radically different than Sun's?
Yes.
a) Look at the change in both the cost, and minimum number of licenses
for the ODF extension Sun created for use with MSO;
b) The name from StarOffice to Oracle OpenOffice is one that will cause
confusion with OpenOffice.org. That is not what an organization that is
sincere about supporting a product will do.
c) R&D for software is expensive. FLOSS does not provide a business
model for generation revenue from either software development, or R&D.
The closest is from selling support contracts, which includes the
contractee paying for the development of bug fixes, feature requests,
and the like.
d) Oracles' abuse of, mistreatment of, and general disrespect towards
the OpenSolaris team is a good example of why Oracle can not be trusted
to be anything but malevolent, and as damaging to OOo and it would be by
Microsoft.
e) Consider Oracles' established policy and practice of buying FLOSS
projects, then effectively shutting them down if they compete with their
proprietary offerings, or take them proprietary if they do not compete
with their current offerings;
could decide that to continue the development and support of OpenOffice.org is
not anymore in its best interests.
If Oracle wanted to cut of the oxygen supply of Microsoft, it could do
so, by investing heavily in OOo, and distributing it gratis. Two options:
* When updating their existing product line, add code that makes it
interact better with OOo than with MSO;
* Write extensions for OOo that enable it (OOo) to function as if it was
an integral part of each of their existing products;
But, given their history with FLOSS, they are unlikely to do that,
because it wouldn't generate an immediate revenue stream.
But as it stands I believe it is disrespectful and foolish to cast unwarranted suspicions on Oracle.
Oracle's history with FLOSS has been extremely checkered. Their actions
this year have done nothing to install any confidence that they even kno
what the concept "libre" means, much less that they will actually
embrace FLOSS.
They are far more likely to turn off the OOo lights, without even
bothering to provide an after-the-fact announcement, much less advance
warning to that effect.
If anybody wants to continue to develop OOo after Oracle tries to kill
it, they should start taking daily backups of all of the code and
code-related repositories that Oracle currently allows OOo to use, now,
if they aren't currently doing so.
>if Oracle plans to continue these efforts, they should be praised for
that.
The operative word here is "if".
Look at how Oracle treated the OpenSolaris development team. Look at how
Oracle abused the Solaris development team. (Their actions might be
legal, but they are both immoral, and unethical. Nor is that is the only
time that they have engaged in actions that are legal, but neither
moral, nor ethical.)
jonathon
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