Graham makes excellent points. I certainly did not mean to disregard the amazing things OOo achieved with respect to community. However, I believe that when my observation remains valid when it is read in the context of the specific point I was replying to. I was responding to the the claimed success of the previous "business models".
I was not referring to the health of the community, I was referring to the health of previous business models. Ross On 15 December 2011 22:44, Graham Lauder <[email protected]> wrote: > On Wednesday 14 Dec 2011 06:25:50 Ross Gardler wrote: >> On 13 December 2011 16:16, Louis Suárez-Potts <[email protected]> wrote: > >> >> > This and others are actually viable business models, and we showed as >> > much with OOo's long tenure. The issue that we had to deal with was that >> > the owning companies pretty much clipped our wings and prevented us from >> > becoming what we could. >> >> Historically that may or may not be true. From where I stand as a >> complete newcomer I see the results of the OOo "long tenure" as far >> from a glowing success. We have a significant fork, burned out >> relationships and a really unhealthy dose of mistrust as a result. All >> this seems to be attributable to what you call "the issue that we had >> to deal with". The Apache process removes that issue. It focuses on >> creating a level playing field. > > If that's what you see then I would respectfully suggest that you're not > looking in the right place. > > You say Apache is about building Communities, I would suggest that OOo was > very good at building communities > > OOo had a community of thousands with over a hundred Native language > communities. People all round the globe working on multiple parts of the OOo > universe, from hackers to QA to translators to artists to marketing folk. > > Then if you count the community of users, OOo is Second in the marketplace > only to the most dominant proprietary Software company in the world and their > billion dollar marketing budgets. > > By these measures no other OSS project has built a community the size of OOo, > save perhaps Mozilla. > > This "unsuccessful" community served up downloads of just shy of 300,000 an > hour average for around 6 months between the launch of 3.0 and 3.1. and onward > to 3.2 and that only counts those served off the download site, not the ones > for instance sold by community distributors or simply copied and passed on by > our community of users or distributed by magazines. > Sure we had ownership and control issues with the corporate partner, but the > community continued. The "significant fork," just proved the strength of that > community and it should also be remembered that LO wasn't the first, IBM > forked it way back in the 1.1.x days. > > As far as the "unhealthy" distrust goes, you would perhaps like us to be > malleable and totally accepting of everything without question given that we > in the community were thrust into the Apache deal without any sort of > consultation. OK that is perhaps a symptom of what Louis was talking about and > like the other issues we just deal with it. > > IBM forked OOo back in the days when it had a dual license that included a > permissive license: SISSL. They used that as a basis of Symphony and never > contributed back to the community or became part of the community. So from > where I stood as a complete newcomer to Apache, it seemed back room deals had > been done, not to benefit the OOo community, but, given IBM staffers high > profile in the new podling, simply to benefit IBM, who under the Apache > license would have unfettered access to the code they had desired since the > permissive SISSL license was dropped with OOo 2.0. > I can therefore vouch for the health of my distrust. :) > > The question therefore that needs be answered for the OOo community, (or maybe > just me, it wouldn't be the first time i've occupied a lonely outpost on my > own) Does the the move to Apache benefit the community and especially the end > users. In the first instance I was cautiously optimistic, with some small > reservations. Some reservations became larger However as you say, the > corporate partner issue has been removed, although right now the playing field > still doesn't feel that level. > > There has been a consistent "dissing" of the old project since we got here as > though it was a huge failure, nothing that we did was ever right, it was > totally dysfunctional. Naturally this doesn't serve inspire confidence in > those of us who have been with OOo for a long time. > > The evidence actually reveals the complete opposite. A vast vibrant community > with all the tension and foibles that brings with it, that produced, marketed > and distributed a well featured and reliable Office suite to a community of > probably tens of millions of users. Could we have done some things better, of > course, nothing is ever perfect but it was never as bad as you and others have > been painting it. > > > Cheers > GL > -- Ross Gardler (@rgardler) Programme Leader (Open Development) OpenDirective http://opendirective.com
