Hello. There's seems to be another issue and is that ASF seems it has been obsessed with Java in an extreme way. They preferred to code their projects in that computer language and has been quite friendly with SUN and IBM, but it seems the relationship got a bit broken in 2010 as they abandoned JCP (Java Community Process) and Apache Harmony (their Java runtime) seems abandoned. I'm not sure if they will glue Java even more on "Apache Office" or not, but that can be an issue if it happens.
Despite the corporate-like ASF PR, there seems to be indicatives of their relationship with IBM and Oracle getting more broken in certain ways (the Apache Harmony were part of the issue). And those were some of their most important promoters in certain ways, so they are weaker than ever. I just hope LibreOffice code gets streamlined without losing functionality, so the project can be lightweight enough to run on low computer processing power platforms (embedded devices and outdated computers). This would mark the difference with most of the competition: rich and robust features on lots of platforms (as most lightweight projects unfortunately are unable mix both in a successful way). About the license way, this is an "old" war in the Open Source world. This is more complex than it seems, but the results are quite simple. I divide them in two , as this world is "binary": - BSD/MIT type licenses benefit private software. Any Open Source license with copyright assignment benefit private software too (with notable exceptions like GPL and FSF), despite being copyleft or not. Examples on the last one is CUPS from Apple. I think lots of corps consider this as the "cheap labor" way, so they promote it proactively in all possible ways. - Copyleft licenses without copyright assignment benefit the Free Software ecosystem, they promote sharing and modifing without bureaucratic stuff while feeling you don't own your work. Corps needs to adapt their internal cultures to this, or feel friendly externally and do all kind of nasty stuff internally (like Google, until recent Android 3.0 controversy). I consider the license fragmentation even in the copyleft world is a serious problem these days, I think in a large future the patent and copyrights should be abolished or heavily modified to promote knowledge instead of limiting it, but that's a different topic. There's an issue, as both FSF and ASF consider all versions of the Apache License to be only compatible with GPLv3 but incompatible with GPL v1 and v2. I wonder if the Apache License is compatible with LGPLv3, the license of the LO source code. Subversion was quite used as a replacement of CVS in software development, but these days it's getting deprecated by superior technologies known as "distributed version control systems" or DVCS. Two very successful examples are Git and Mercurial (the first one getting more popular, as being user by giant projects in terms of development complexity like the Linux kernel), getting a very massive adoption not only in the Open Source development but private too. SpamAssassin is a known email spam filter. Competitors include ASSP, DSPAM, Bogofilter and others. This software was quite popular for spam filtering, but competitors have risen lately too. Despite Apache being a Foundation, they work like a standard corporation. Tons of PR stunt, tons of comittees with acronyms, bureaucracy and buzzwords everywhere. They are the few ones that make other non-foss corps very happy, as their ways are very friendly to them (code that can be used in non-open source software, for example). They seem too focused on showing the quantity of projects managed by them constantly, getting proud of it in every press release they publish. Even if their products are quite friendly to private code companies, that's not the big issue here in a pragmatical way. Their products are focused to business and mostly as a framework or foundation to develop final products or solutions (mostly targeted at website and software development) in most of them developed under the Java programing language, so they have ZERO experience on developing end user product solutions and they will need to create the necessary infrastructure from scratch if they want to make it work. Regards. On Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 6:34 PM, webmaster for Kracked Press Productions <[email protected]> wrote: > > The big thing about "The Apache Way" is they want to own the code our > volunteers have worked on for the past year. > > I wonder how many of these people are willing to hand over their copyrights? > > Also, since there is a move to replace Java coding with Python coding as the > code base is cleaned out of unneeded and "bad" coding. Does that mean that > Apache's OOo project will not be able to us the code LO people create, even > if they will allow the code owners to keep their copyrights? > > What happens to all the open-source code that was part of OOo before it was > converted to The Apache Way? Since they seems to say that all that code no > longer is owned by those who wrote it, but now are the propriety of Apache? > Will it be still allowed for LO to use that code base, until we modify it > with the Python and other new coding standards LO are working towards? I do > not like the idea that a company could take open-source copyrighted code by > others, and state that they now owe the code and the copyrights to it. > > The software listed in the linked article, that are Apache products touted > to be successful with The Apache Way, are once I never heard of. I use to > look for every free software out there for Windows users. I still do some > times. I never heard of these in all my searches, so their success is > something that I cannot agree with. You search for free software and LO > comes up many places. Those I never found. > > On 10/17/2011 11:17 AM, Charles-H. Schulz wrote: >> >> Glyn was invited in Paris at the Libreoffice conference, and here's his >> article: >> >> http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2011/10/libreoffice-openofficeorg-and-open-standard-office-suites/index.htm >> >> Best, >> >> Charles. >> > > > -- > Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to [email protected] > Problems? > http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ > Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette > List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/marketing/ > All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be > deleted > > -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to [email protected] Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/marketing/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
