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On 10/20/2011 5:02 AM, Martin Hollmichel wrote:
Hi,
Wether to stay with OpenOffice or LibreOffice or to migrate to
LibreOffice or to OpenOffce is a question in the recent past often
occurred, by users, by people doing business with OpenOffice, by the
press. The answer I would like to give is that this question is not
really that relevant because there is a roadmap in place and both
projects plan to stay close together.
I agree that the Apache OpenOffice podling here, via it's PPMC, does
need to publish a roadmap in an obvious (to users) place. Even one in
draft form would be helpful to users to get an idea of what's expected
to be happening (i.e. even some intelligent guesses would be better than
nothing).
Please note that it's up to TDF to publish a roadmap for LibreOffice
releases.
I suggest following actions:
* A call to LibreOffice contributors also to contribute their changes to
Apache as the ASF is the long desired independent foundation for
OpenOffice.org. On this basis a collaboration among the OpenOffice.org
Apache Project and TDF can be achieved and duplication of efforts get
avoided. As a result the question which project/product to choose is not
that important any more.
The Apache OpenOffice podling would love to get Apache-licensed code
contributions from TDF volunteers, as well as everyone else involved in
OOo related projects. We've mentioned this before, and certainly hope
we can share code (appropriately licensed) in both directions.
* Provide an OpenOffice.org 3.3.1 micro release showing the world that
OpenOffice.org continues to move (assuming that an production stable 3.4
release is not ready to get happen within the next months), this release
should include a prominent statement to show the upcoming roadmap with
the next releases. This 3.3.x release may not comply with the ASF
standards but is an ideal vehicle for doing communication and elaborate
on the transition from the old to the new environment.
This is an interesting idea. The three key questions are:
-- Are there sufficient volunteers in the Apache OpenOffice podling to
actually complete this work in a reasonable time, without impacting
(what I think is) the progress to a new Apache OpenOffice 3.4 release?
This is a vitally important question, because without sufficient
volunteers and committers working on this, it won't be possible to do.
-- How much does this idea rely on the existing Oracle-hosted
openoffice.org infrastructure? Many parts of that infrastructure will
be shut down soon (at Oracle's choice), so only the new Apache services
- subtly different I imagine - will be available soon.
-- Is there a credible way to produce a release that the ASF is willing
to host on it's servers?
Normally, I would say this is not possible, because the ASF only ships
software under the Apache License (or compatible), and I understand that
a significant amount of the existing OOo source code is under LGPL or
GPL licenses. Much like some FOSS volunteers really only like to use
GPL or related licenses, the ASF really only likes to use the Apache
license.
However, there is a somewhat related precedent in the Apache Subversion
project, which shipped code as a podling under it's previous license
before creating a fully ASF "blessed" release. As a widely used and
mature project before it came to the ASF, it made sense to allow the
podling to create a "bridge" release under similar but not identical
Apache policies, before they graduated and began producing releases
under all Apache policies.
Note that this is only somewhat related, because previous Subversion
builds used an earlier Apache license or similar, and not GPL style
licenses. So I'm not sure the precedent will apply, but it's something
we could consider asking if the PPMC is interested in pursuing this.
* Work on a model or agreement where user donations specific to the
project can be continued. This is not only a matter for the ASF (and
Team OOo), but for the overall community and we need to find ways to
include them (including TDF) into this discussion. It is required that
we have a clear communication on how donations will benefit the project
and to provide transparency on the execution. A donation model shall
give users a more direct possibility to influence the further
development of the product without the filtering by own interests of a
profit orientated organization.
Any such activity would need to happen outside of the ASF, and would
need to respect Apache marks.
Please remember that one of the top goals of the incubation process at
Apache is to ensure the PPMC governing that project is a healthy one
following the Apache Way. In particular, the graduation requirements
specifically list these points under Meritocracy / Community:
* Demonstrate an active and diverse development community
* The project is not highly dependent on any single contributor (there
are at least 3 legally independent committers and there is no single
company or entity that is vital to the success of the project)
These key points about the incubation process will help ensure that no
single "profit orientated organization" can control any newly graduated
Apache project. Thus I think the level of concern over Sun's / Oracle's
control over the past OpenOffice.org project is not really relevant to
the future Apache OpenOffice top level project (once it graduates).
We need to include the expertise of
people doing business with OpenOffice into this approach, so doing this
discussion also on [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>might makes sense. The employment of full
time developers sponsored and directed by the community is IHMO a very
good chance and would be examplary for the bigger opensource projects. I
think this model is already to be proven as working fine for small OS
projects and we now got that chance to introduce this also for
OpenOffice.org.
Please note that ooo-dev@ is currently discussing "[Proposal] Shutting
down legacy OOo mailing lists" on another thread, thus the [email protected]
mailing list is likely to be changed to an Apache list in another month
or so (as best I can tell so far from that Proposal).
Martin
PS: I intentionally leave out the Apache vs. GNU license paradigm in
these thoughts, assuming that this not the point for most users using
product and discussion about this topic are quite predictable.
I agree that the license is not an issue for the vast majority of OOo
related product users. However I get the impression that it is a
critical issue for a significant number of the existing developers who
have contributed to OOo related code.
- Shane
