On 22/12/2011 Pavel Janík wrote:
I think the core issue here is "responsibility to users",
"credibility of the product" and "bridging the gap between the last
OOo and the first AOOo".
Exactly. And it could be that it's Christmas and good sentiments
prevail, but I still see possible that this project and
TeamOpenOffice.org find a common understanding and fix the issues before
a stable version 3.3.1.
As shown by reactions to the (quite unfortunate) press release, Apache
OpenOffice and TeamOpenOffice.org can be either significantly useful to
each other or significantly harmful to each other. Their shared
interests are so many that they can't ignore each other. Let's try to be
mutually useful then.
TeamOpenOffice.org can bring a lot to the Apache OpenOffice project with
little effort:
- Turn the Pootle server back on and allow migration of data
- Use their Kenai roles (or just knowledge) to help us in completing the
infrastructure migration
- Find the much-needed TCM testcases so that, after checking with
Oracle, we can use them for QA activities
- Tell us all details about the Single-sign-on at openoffice.org
- A lot more...
And, once the issues related to trademarks and misleading communication
have been fixed, we could work towards OpenOffice.org 3.3.1 together.
I'm not saying that Apache OpenOffice should authorize
TeamOpenOffice.org to use the trademark for an external release, I'd
just prefer to use this (easy) release as an exercise for the Apache
OpenOffice 3.4 release: it wouldn't be a waste of time, since we
probably have several QA volunteers that need something to test before
becoming involved with the project and we need to develop some
lightweight QA processes, which could be faster if we have an actual
version to release.
In the end this would allow:
- Users to get an intermediate OpenOffice.org 3.3.1 with security fixes
and a transitional Apache branding (like "OpenOffice.org powered by
Apache OpenOffice"), and be confident that they can migrate successfully
to Apache OpenOffice 3.4 at due time.
- Apache OpenOffice to build a QA team and processes on the basis of
some actual work to do, and use the TeamOpenOffice.org expertise for the
many small tasks above.
- TeamOpenOffice.org to have a prominent role in this release and fix
their communication campaign.
Of course I'm ignoring a couple of significant problems (licensing and
hosting) which would need to be addressed, but the "starting fresh"
concept can't work for a product with such a large user base.
Regards,
Andrea.
