On 2013-09-26, at 03:37 , Herbert Duerr <[email protected]> wrote:

> On 25.09.2013 20:31, Louis Suárez-Potts wrote:
>> NeoOffice, based on LibreOffice and licensed GPL, is being sold on Apple's 
>> App Store for 9.99 USD. This is not a problem; the GPL permits that. The 
>> source is also freely available and can be compiled; support, too, is 
>> available.
> 
> I find it interesting that in this case Apple acts as the redistributor of 
> GPL material as the GPL has some redistribution clauses that other companies 
> with significant intellectual property portfolios would be much more cautious 
> about.
> 
>> I tried compiling it and discovered I'd done something wrong. Shrug. So I 
>> bought the binaries and tested it. It seemed pretty much like it had been 
>> before, quite nice and also stable. I have not discovered bugs yet, but I've 
>> also not tested it sufficiently.
>> 
>> I'd be curious to hear of others' opinions on it. NeoOffice has two very 
>> talented developers, one Ed Peterlin, was part of the great team that 
>> reinitiated the Mac OS X port for OOo, back in 2003-5, taking over from 
>> Sun's abandoned effort. (Sun then took it up, after some pressure.)
> 
> They'd be very welcome to join the Apache OpenOffice project. As they 
> currently can take all of AOO's and LO's stuff and then focus on the Mac 
> aspects they can explore territory that the other projects haven't invested 
> enough resources in yet.
> 
Agreed, they'd be welcome—but I honestly doubt that Ed or Patrick would be 
particularly interested. As far as I know, they like the kind of freedom that 
Planamesa (the company they formed to do NeoOffice) provides. Note, I've known 
them both a long time and used to be friends with Ed; Patrick, who is by all 
accounts a brilliant Java developer, was once with Sun, so I'd guess some in 
AOO's dev space know him or recall him from years past. I would rather not be 
the one to approach them.


> Herbert

Best,
louis



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