On 6/3/2011 10:20 AM, Florian Effenberger wrote: > > I on purpose leave out the discussion about (re-)licensing here, as others > can comment > much better about the impact of the various licenses, and how they play > together, and what > ASF could to with the software grant they received, may it be with or without > other > entities. I'd love to focus much more on the community and project side of > things, and > this is the part of my initial message that I still feel is unreplied: Why do > we need a > second project? From all those who propose the project at ASF, I have not > heard much > feedback on why this should happen, or otherwise said, on why TDF would be > the wrong place > to do it.
I don't believe these two issues above can be separated. I'd also remind that the communities have been split, and the time to have initially reached a compromise was before the fork, so there were obviously some irreconcilable points as the TDF drew its fundamental lines in the sand. > So, as I feel my question in the first mail has not been answered yet, I'd > like to repeat > it, and extend it on one further question, to everyone who supports the > incubator proposal: > > - What is wrong about the TDF that is better at ASF, for being the home of a > free office > suite? I don't think anyone questions the value of a "Free" office suite at TDF, and in fact all here sort of expect one to persist at TDF with enhancements and community around Free/Libre Software supporters and platforms. In fact, all of the conversation in this thread suggests that there will remain a healthy ecosystem of various packing, training, and other services around this code base, as there has been for half a decade. > - Why didn't those who propose this project talk to TDF about the issues that > mattered to > them and tried to change it? Because there is an ecosystem of BSD, OS/X and commercial vendors who do not so much leverage the "Free" aspect of "Open" Source. For this reason, some number of Sun/Oracle customers licensed the open code from them. IBM is one of these. The previous (singular) community supported both paid-commercial-closed works and free-libre-copyleft works with their contributions and their collaboration. Certainly even the paid-commercial-closed side of that world gave back much to the commons to improve the collaborative work, through direct contribution, or subsidizing Sun/Oracle contributions through their licensing fees, or both. Experience with Free/Libre Open Source Communities and Projects shows that such communities will not be flexible on licensing. Neither will the ASF Open Source Community be flexible. It seems this was a binary decision... It would appear that Oracle's OOo contribution to the ASF is meant to extend the freedom for developers to choose to open or close fork the code without the payment of royalties to Oracle. This puts every consumer in the same position as only the elite enjoyed previously, freedom to choose between an open or closed fork, and freedom to choose between contributing back or not. I am now convinced this is entirely a licensing decision, so I'll ask you, what was the probability for Oracle to convince TDF to maintain an Apache Licensed project consisting of their copyrighted code base? I'd politely suggest they believed there was no realistic chance they could persuade TDF to be the custodian of a BSD or Apache Licensed work. As custodian/sub-licensor of the donated code, the ASF (or TDF, if that were the case) retains the ability to modify the license. Clearly much of the interesting commercial activity surrounds online document services. As the case is today, the LGPL and MPL of the TDF's works offers no copyleft facilities for services, this would require an AGPL license. So given the choice between choosing a copyleft or permissive open source custodian, I can appreciate Oracle's decision for what it was, and really don't believe that conversations with TDF could have changed that outcome. This suggests no criticism of the TDF, it's mission or purpose, or the fruits of its labors, and if the ASF votes to adopt this new podling, I'm wishing the best of success to both efforts. I was initially sympathetic to the option that Oracle might be trying to un-copyleft their codebase, against the desires of a broader community. Personally I would have voted -1 as I would perceive this as violation of the spirit of our own mission, effectively the pawn in corporate shenanigans. But the fact that this was never copyleft, as pointed out to me initially by Sam, leads me to conclude that the ASF is, in fact, a good home to launch such an effort, and allows any actor from the general public to have the same advantages and privileges which were once reserved for the elite and most profitable consumers of this code. Just want to close this observation by pointing out that IBM has been a strongly reciprocal participant at a number of ASF projects, and I expect nothing else. I'm pretty certain we can conclude that Oracle will inhibit Oracle employees from participating in a longer term way. I also have great confidence that IBM and other AL consumers will choose to contribute back to an ASF based OOo for the long term, to the benefit of this shared code base, and hope that other LibreOffice contributors also choose to do so. So in spite of the concerns about the eventual number and diversity of core contributors, about how the project would mesh with external projects, and about precisely how much of the code is 'unusable' due to CC-AND licensing or patents, I'm now prepared to support this incubation proposal and let that podling work some of these more detailed questions out amongst themselves. I hope some individuals from LibreOffice also choose to become part of this incubation effort and guide the effort in a positive direction for all of the consumers. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
