Re: [dev] Some thoughts about our community
Hi Mathias, On Wed, 2007-10-10 at 10:47 +0200, Mathias Bauer wrote: I'm sure that he is not naive enough to believe that the rules of the project would be changed in a hurry just because he started his campaign. IMHO it's certainly worth changing the rules to meet contributors legitimate concerns. In a hurry ;-), probably not - but to effectively rule out any change before OO.o 3.0 (Summer 2008) by starting a duplication effort is unfortunate; and shows the likely outcome here. Nobody tries to sell anything. If people don't want to share the copyright with Sun, it's fine. Unfortunately, it's not that fine - since they can't get their code into OpenOffice.org, which totally sucks. Sun's StarOffice is not the reason for the JCA. We could make it even without it as do others with their own proprietary versions. What are the purposes for which the JCA is necessary then ? Which of these purposes are valuable enough to Sun, that a foundation cannot easily fulfil them ? and lets state here that adequate funding for a non-profit to defend the license, perform due diligence etc. should not be an issue. The foundation won't solve anything. It solves a serious transparency trust problem around ownership. But there's another problem. Novell never had any problems with the JCA for years but their contributions to OOo never came close to what you could expect from the number of people they claim to have assigned to OOo. We claim to have 15 people working on OO.o; their names are: Michael Meeks, Radek Doulik, Florian Reuter, Tor Lillqvist, Petr Mladek, Noel Power, Eric Ward, Fong, Jian-Hua, Hubert Figure, Fridrich Strba, Kohei Yoshida, Jon Prior, Zhang Yun (/contract people), Jan Nieuwenhuizen (starting soon), and JP Rosevear (mgmt). Perhaps some of them don't exist :-) to be sure, I've not met all of our Chinese hackers in person. As for not contributing close to what you expect, I am sorry to disappoint you. It is easy (for those who have tried external development on OO.o) to imagine many reasons why that could be. I'm personally pleased with our level of contribution, though as newer engineers slowly get more familiar with the code I expect the level to increase a little :-) And they still refuse to do anything else than hacking code what even more diminishes their contributions. Eric does QA; but yes - we think that focusing on fixing improving the code is a strength, not a weakness. RedHat, whose work we both appreciate, has AFAICS a similar focus on coding. I didn't criticize that nor did anybody else from Sun. But we expect that all people responsible for that move live with the consequences. Including Sun. To pretend that Sun has no choice here is just silly ;-) we both made a choice - I'm happy to defend mine; you seem to deny yours was a choice, though I can understand that it was not you that chose it :-) And I criticized that Kohei left out in his blog that it indeed was shown to Novell how this code could be contributed to OOo without a JCA. As Kohei explained in a comment to my blog, he wasn't aware of this option because those in his company who knew that didn't tell him. This is just silly :-) It is clear Sun that is refusing to include the code, and then doing this hostile duplication. We have all been aware of this plug-in idea, but if this is the answer: why does Sun not simply take the code and make it such a plugin: it should be fairly easy, Sun (or anyone else) is free to do that any time. We want to see our work included with OO.o by default, and ensure there is no demotivating wasteful duplication effort; the exact packaging mechanics: plug-in vs. component, vs. patch are completely irrelevant to my mind. All the best, Michael. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] , Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Some thoughts about our community
Michael Meeks wrote: We claim to have 15 people working on OO.o; their names are: Michael Meeks, Radek Doulik, Florian Reuter, Tor Lillqvist, Petr Mladek, Noel Power, Eric Ward, Fong, Jian-Hua, Hubert Figure, Fridrich Strba, Kohei Yoshida, Jon Prior, Zhang Yun (/contract people), Jan Nieuwenhuizen (starting soon), and JP Rosevear (mgmt). Actually that makes 16. And you left out kendy. But you know, I'm always glad to help :-) Kind regards, pl -- If you give someone a program, you will frustrate them for a day; if you teach them how to program, you will frustrate them for a lifetime. -- Author unknown - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Some thoughts about our community
On Thu, 2007-10-11 at 12:53 +0200, Philipp Lohmann wrote: Michael Meeks wrote: We claim to have 15 people working on OO.o; their names are: Michael Meeks, Radek Doulik, Florian Reuter, Tor Lillqvist, Petr Mladek, Noel Power, Eric Ward, Fong, Jian-Hua, Hubert Figure, Fridrich Strba, Kohei Yoshida, Jon Prior, Zhang Yun (/contract people), Jan Nieuwenhuizen (starting soon), and JP Rosevear (mgmt). Actually that makes 16. And you left out kendy. Good grief ! how could I omit Kendy ? (particularly since, as you see he has 2 names) - Jan Holesovsky and Kendy [ so I could have write him twice (which perhaps matches his large contribution) ]. You would be amazed at the fun that can be had on phone conferences with (now) 2 Jan's and a Jian (almost a homophone) ;-) But you're right, we round downish - since, it seems I spent a lot of time working on platform issues that affect OO.o, and JP is a part-time manager on OO.o etc. But you know, I'm always glad to help :-) Thanks, Michael. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] , Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Some thoughts about our community
Allen Pulsifer wrote: Hello Mathias, There is a lot of PR in this issue floating around the internet these days, most of it coming from Sun. Really? I think we have been very (too?) quite about this for quite some time. IMHO there are other people who have been much more verbose (and not always correct BTW). Its clear to me that the goal of this PR is to maintain the status quo, i.e., ensure that contributions to the project keep coming in, and that the contributors sign the JCA or its successor the SCA that assign copyrights to Sun. I think both Sun and the project are poorly served by both the JCA/SCA and the current PR campaign. This campaign was neither started by Sun employees nor do we think that the tone some people use in it is appropriate. For starters, I think the JCA/SCA discourages contributions. I myself would not sign the JCA/SCA assigning copyright for anything but the most trivial code, and as we have seen, neither will Kohei and I'm sure neither will many other developers. You also fell into the trap of this campaign. Kohei *has* signed the JCA. According to its own words it was Michael Meeks who persuaded him to deny it. And even this is no problem for us. The problem is the FUD Michael Meeks has created around it and what *he* did to Kohei's work. I'm sure that he is not naive enough to believe that the rules of the project would be changed in a hurry just because he started his campaign. So he knew from the beginning of this campaign that Kohei's work will not be integrated now and as we have promised this to our users (because Kohei first *had* signed the JCA!) we would be urged to develop an own solver. Nevertheless he persuaded Kohei to withdraw the JCA. So he took Kohei's work as a hostage in his crusade. I hope you are able to see the difference that the behavior of Novell and especially Michael Meeks makes for me. If Kohei had just denied the JCA without all the accompanying noise I doubt that you would have seen any public comment on this from any Sun employed member of the OOo community. Sun can try to spin it a different way or try to sell us on the JCA/SCA, but for many developers, you are not going to succeed. Nobody tries to sell anything. If people don't want to share the copyright with Sun, it's fine. There are many contributors that don't have a problem with it, individual as corporate ones. I myself to not begrudge Sun its efforts to maintain a commercial version of OOo. Again however, the same thing could be accomplished with code that is under the LGPL. In other words, a Foundation chartered to maintain the copyrights in OOo could insist that all contributions included in the official OOo build be licensed under the LGPL, and this would be sufficient to allow Sun to continue producing and distributing StarOffice. Sun's StarOffice is not the reason for the JCA. We could make it even without it as do others with their own proprietary versions. StarOffice will become more or less a brand of OOo and the remaining proprietary bits will become exchanged ASAP. This was announced by e.g. Simon Phipps already but it seems people don't listen carefully enough if news don't fit into their ideological puzzle. So talking about StarOffice as a reason for the JCA ist just a red herring. In my opinion, the best course of action for Sun is to set up a Foundation to hold joint copyrights from contributors. The foundation won't solve anything. The main problems we have are technical. These technical problems are scrutinized and there will be visible results soon. This is not new, in fact these efforts have been started some time ago and now are moved forward with larger pace. We had planned to meet about that in Barcelona but unfortunately the invitation made in a reply to a mail on the project leads list wasn't a clever idea. ;-) But there's another problem. Novell never had any problems with the JCA for years but their contributions to OOo never came close to what you could expect from the number of people they claim to have assigned to OOo. And they still refuse to do anything else than hacking code what even more diminishes their contributions. *This* is a problem and a foundation will not change this. In the meantime, I would like to make one comment. Kohei is the author of the solver code and owns the copyright. He has the absolute legal and moral right to determine the terms of his contribution. He has extremely generously offered this code to the world under the LGPL. The LGPL is a fine open source license. It allows virtually unrestricted use of the code, for free, while guaranteeing that any derivatives also remain free. It embodies some of the best aspects of the open source movement. I find it very admirable and commendable that Kohei has so generously offered to make his code available under the LGPL, and I find nothing to criticize in this decision. I didn't criticize that nor did anybody else from Sun. But we
Re: [dev] Some thoughts about our community
Hello Allen, Allen Pulsifer wrote: Hello Juergen, I deleted your message without reading it because I'm not willing to look at anything that starts with that tone. Please cool down. Jürgen didn't want to attack you. You should consider that he (as well as I) are not native english speakers and that some statements may sound more rude than they are meant to be. Ciao, Mathias -- Mathias Bauer (mba) - Project Lead OpenOffice.org Writer OpenOffice.org Engineering at Sun: http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS Please don't reply to [EMAIL PROTECTED]. I use it for the OOo lists and only rarely read other mails sent to it. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [dev] Some thoughts about our community
Hello Juergen, I deleted your message without reading it because I'm not willing to look at anything that starts with that tone. Best Regards, Allen - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Some thoughts about our community
Allen, please calm down. It is useless to end up conversations in that way. Can you please let us know what you feel the problem is? And sorry, but as a long time independent contributor of OOo, please be aware that not all of us here share your opinion on Sun, the JCA, etc. best, Charles. Allen Pulsifer a écrit : Hello Juergen, I deleted your message without reading it because I'm not willing to look at anything that starts with that tone. Best Regards, Allen - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Some thoughts about our community
Hi Allen, Allen Pulsifer wrote (9-10-2007 11:53) : I deleted your message without reading it because I'm not willing to look at anything that starts with that tone. I can imagine that the tone Juergen started with, wasn't the most tactical and that you didn't like it. It was probably coming from some tension or frustration, he talks about in the rest of his friendly and polite message ;-) A pity that you didn't read it. Regards, Cor -- Cor Nouws Arnhem - Netherlands nl.OpenOffice.org - marketing contact - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Some thoughts about our community
Hi Juergen, I wouldn't discuss about [2] and [3]. They are just examples and they have been discussing on other places. I would like to discuss about [1] and why we are almost the same people any year, why the number of participants doesn't grow and why large proportion of people comes from few companies. The problem is always the same. IMHO our project is likely definable as big companies project with an end-user community collaboration. What I would like to see is the project transformed in a really free software community project with companies collaboration, maybe with a sort of hybridization model. Even IMHO this is the main reason because our community doesn't grow as they should. I think is time to change some rules. The model is showing his limits. What are, at the moment, the proposals to solve such problem and open our project to external contributions also in term of management? A geological era ago (in 2001) someone proposed the creation of a foundation. http://www.openoffice.org/white_papers/OOo_project/openofficefoundation.html This argument has been discussed privately every year. Is it time maybe to rivive this discussion? Davide Juergen Schmidt wrote: Hi Davide, i think [3] is a special thing and we all agree that it is a sad story. We should exactly identify what the problems were and should start to work on them. Does they still exists? Or have some things already changed. [2] is more or less around the JCA where i don't see that a further discussion make sense. If you want to start a discussion around community and community work i would suggest that you should clearly communicate your concerns. List all your concerns in detail and ideally suggest ways how we can improve it. I am sure that we are all open to discuss these points with you. What i personally don't like to do is a general discussion on a level where we talk more about politics than about real community work on a great product. Well a lot of things can be improved and i think we are working already on it. Bring up your concrete concerns and let us discuss Juergen Davide Dozza wrote: Hi all, some days ago I launched a stone into the water. I posted some consideration [1] about the OOoCon and more in general about our community. It seems that things don't happen alone. After the Michael Meeks announce [2] following the Kohei [3] post I think there is something to discuss about our community and how they should evolve. In fact it seems clear to me that the actual community rules, and more in general about how the project is managed, are not anymore suitable to manage what the Community asks. I'm deliberating using two terms, community and Community, because I think there is a common misinterpretation about what a community is. Hoping this start a constructive discussion, Ciao Davide [1] http://robertogaloppini.net/2007/10/02/openofficeorg-conference-2007-some-thoughts/ [2] http://www.gnome.org/~michael/activity.html#2007-10-02 [3] http://kohei.us/2007/10/02/history-of-calc-solver/ - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Some thoughts about our community
Hi Juergen, I wouldn't discuss about [2] and [3]. They are just examples and they have been discussing on other places. I would like to discuss about [1] and why we are almost the same people any year, why the number of participants doesn't grow and why large proportion of people comes from few companies. The problem is always the same. IMHO our project is likely definable as big companies project with an end-user community collaboration. What I would like to see is the project transformed in a really free software community project with companies collaboration, maybe with a sort of hybridization model. Even IMHO this is the main reason because our community doesn't grow as they should. I think is time to change some rules. The model is showing his limits. What are, at the moment, the proposals to solve such problem and open our project to external contributions also in term of management? A geological era ago (in 2001) someone proposed the creation of a foundation. http://www.openoffice.org/white_papers/OOo_project/openofficefoundation.html This argument has been discussed privately every year. Is it time maybe to rivive this discussion? Davide Juergen Schmidt wrote: Hi Davide, i think [3] is a special thing and we all agree that it is a sad story. We should exactly identify what the problems were and should start to work on them. Does they still exists? Or have some things already changed. [2] is more or less around the JCA where i don't see that a further discussion make sense. If you want to start a discussion around community and community work i would suggest that you should clearly communicate your concerns. List all your concerns in detail and ideally suggest ways how we can improve it. I am sure that we are all open to discuss these points with you. What i personally don't like to do is a general discussion on a level where we talk more about politics than about real community work on a great product. Well a lot of things can be improved and i think we are working already on it. Bring up your concrete concerns and let us discuss Juergen Davide Dozza wrote: Hi all, some days ago I launched a stone into the water. I posted some consideration [1] about the OOoCon and more in general about our community. It seems that things don't happen alone. After the Michael Meeks announce [2] following the Kohei [3] post I think there is something to discuss about our community and how they should evolve. In fact it seems clear to me that the actual community rules, and more in general about how the project is managed, are not anymore suitable to manage what the Community asks. I'm deliberating using two terms, community and Community, because I think there is a common misinterpretation about what a community is. Hoping this start a constructive discussion, Ciao Davide [1] http://robertogaloppini.net/2007/10/02/openofficeorg-conference-2007-some-thoughts/ [2] http://www.gnome.org/~michael/activity.html#2007-10-02 [3] http://kohei.us/2007/10/02/history-of-calc-solver/ - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [dev] Some thoughts about our community
Hello Mathias, There is a lot of PR in this issue floating around the internet these days, most of it coming from Sun. Its clear to me that the goal of this PR is to maintain the status quo, i.e., ensure that contributions to the project keep coming in, and that the contributors sign the JCA or its successor the SCA that assign copyrights to Sun. I think both Sun and the project are poorly served by both the JCA/SCA and the current PR campaign. For starters, I think the JCA/SCA discourages contributions. I myself would not sign the JCA/SCA assigning copyright for anything but the most trivial code, and as we have seen, neither will Kohei and I'm sure neither will many other developers. Sun can try to spin it a different way or try to sell us on the JCA/SCA, but for many developers, you are not going to succeed. I have carefully read all of the rationale for the JCA/SCA, including the most recent blog post from Simon Phipps at http://blogs.sun.com/webmink/entry/sca_r_office. In my opinion, none of these rational hold water. The same things could be accomplished by asking contributors to assign joint copyright to a non-profit foundation rather than to Sun. The one rational Simon offers that is a little bit different than the usual is the following: In many cases (including some very well-known open source projects) [the JCA] also allows the original donor to offer commercial offerings, thus ensuring the project continues to have engagement funded by its major participants. I myself to not begrudge Sun its efforts to maintain a commercial version of OOo. Again however, the same thing could be accomplished with code that is under the LGPL. In other words, a Foundation chartered to maintain the copyrights in OOo could insist that all contributions included in the official OOo build be licensed under the LGPL, and this would be sufficient to allow Sun to continue producing and distributing StarOffice. The alternatives I see here are just what I mentioned in my prior post. If Sun continues to insist that all copyrights be assigned to it, then alternative methods of contributing will be created. These alternative methods might include alternate distributions or forks that accept pure LGPL code, or possibly even GPL code or code under other licenses. This I think is inevitable. In my opinion, the best course of action for Sun is to set up a Foundation to hold joint copyrights from contributors. That at least gives Sun a chance to negotiate for all contributions to be licensed under the LGPL. If Sun does not do that, you might find some future contributions are offered only under the GPL, and Sun would not be able to use these in StarOffice. The much better arrangement for Sun, I think, is to try to keep all contributions under the LGPL. I offer this suggestion as something to think about. In the meantime, I would like to make one comment. Kohei is the author of the solver code and owns the copyright. He has the absolute legal and moral right to determine the terms of his contribution. He has extremely generously offered this code to the world under the LGPL. The LGPL is a fine open source license. It allows virtually unrestricted use of the code, for free, while guaranteeing that any derivatives also remain free. It embodies some of the best aspects of the open source movement. I find it very admirable and commendable that Kohei has so generously offered to make his code available under the LGPL, and I find nothing to criticize in this decision. Recently however I have read some rather disturbing comments on the internet that Kohei is somehow a bad person for offering his code under the LGPL, and furthermore, the only way for him to become a good person is to sign a legal document that assigns copyright to Sun Microsystems. This I believe is unprecedented in the open source movement. Is that what we have come to, that a person who offers code under the LGPL is subject to criticism? That if he refuses to sign over his copyright to a proprietary product then he is somehow a bad person. I am quite frankly, amazed, stupefied, flabbergasted--at a total loss for words--by the recent comments I have read. In the part of the world where I come from, it is very common for code to be offered under dual licenses. An open source license such as the GPL is offered for free, and a standard commercial license is offered for a fee to companies who want to use the code in a closed-source commercial product. Companies that want to use the code under the commercial license simply pay the fee, and then they have that right. Specifically with respect to Kohei's solver code, Sun has stated that it will have to be completely rewritten by someone else, with copyright held by Sun, in order to be included in OpenOffice.org. Taking that statement at face value, it appears then that Sun is willing to spend $50,000 plus in engineering time just to have a solver that it holds the copyright for, as
Re: [dev] Some thoughts about our community
Hi Allen, please apology my beginning, it seems that it was the wrong beginning because you haven't read the whole message ;-). But if you would know me you would also know that i always say or write what i am thinking. I am always very direct and sometimes people feel uncomfortable with that but on the other hand i don't beat around the bush. So if you are interested to read the whole message, send me an email and i will forward the original message to you directly. Juergen Allen Pulsifer wrote: Hello Juergen, I deleted your message without reading it because I'm not willing to look at anything that starts with that tone. Best Regards, Allen - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Some thoughts about our community
Caolan McNamara wrote: On Mon, 2007-10-08 at 12:48 -0400, Allen Pulsifer wrote: The one rational Simon offers that is a little bit different than the usual is the following: In many cases (including some very well-known open source projects) [the JCA] also allows the original donor to offer commercial offerings, thus ensuring the project continues to have engagement funded by its major participants. What might be concerning Sun is that a foundation owning the copyright to OOo code, even one that has an explicit mechanism to allow major contributors to continue to make commercial closed source versions of OOo, would probably remove the ability of Sun to unilaterally sub-licence StarOffice under a proprietary license to other co-operations either for profit or as a major bargaining chip for the promotion of other products. well making some profit with OpenOffice.org or a product based on OpenOffice.org is really helpful to pay all the developers on the project ;-) I don't know the details, i assume Sun spend more money on the project than they make profit with StarOffice. It's better that i don't know the details otherwise i would might be looking for a new job because i couldn't be sure that my job is safe. Ok i am joking i know that Sun does not simply claim that they are believe in open source and that they are committed to the OpenOffice.org project and other open source projects as well. Anyway but Sun is not the only company that is making profit (or not) with a product based on OpenOffice.org. Sun does it with StarOffice where everybody can see the 1:1 relation between both products. There are other products/brands like Oxygenoffice or EuroOffice where the office might be free but the brand is used to bring it in relation to companies that want to sell some services/extensions around the product. That's fine but should be taken into account. RedFlag has it's own brand in China - again a clear 1:1 relation. Novell makes profit with there Desktop product and oh wonder the main application that make the whole product interesting is what? *OpenOffice.org* correct. I agree that it is no 1:1 relation and maybe that is the reason why i always and only hear Sun is making money with StarOffice. A further example is IBM with LotusNotes or Symphony where you also can't see a 1:1 relation as well. I am not sure how often RedHat Linux is used and sold on the Desktop. But again OpenOffice.org is probably a key selling point for Desktop users. There are probably more and that's fine because every brand helps to promote the office suite and of course our OpenDocument format. The second point you have mentioned is the promotion of other products. I assume that you mean the Google bundling of StarOffice with their Google desktop (or something else?). Google had probably there reasons why they wanted StarOffice and not OpenOffice.org. Anyway it's not so important from my point of view. Important and really cool is that we can reach a lot of potential new users of StarOffice. And as i mentioned before, every StarOffice user helps to promote OpenDocument or at least come in touch with it and see that alternatives to MS exists. From my point of view it's cool when products can benefit from each other. And i personally would like to see more of these collaborations independent of they are based on StarOffice or OpenOffice.org or another brand. No that is not 100% correct, i would like to see more based on OpenOffice.org because it's the most popular brand ;-) Juergen C. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Some thoughts about our community
On Tue, 2007-10-09 at 16:26 +0200, Juergen Schmidt wrote: Caolan McNamara wrote: On Mon, 2007-10-08 at 12:48 -0400, Allen Pulsifer wrote: The one rational Simon offers that is a little bit different than the usual is the following: In many cases (including some very well-known open source projects) [the JCA] also allows the original donor to offer commercial offerings, thus ensuring the project continues to have engagement funded by its major participants. What might be concerning Sun is that a foundation owning the copyright to OOo code, even one that has an explicit mechanism to allow major contributors to continue to make commercial closed source versions of OOo, would probably remove the ability of Sun to unilaterally sub-licence StarOffice under a proprietary license to other co-operations either for profit or as a major bargaining chip for the promotion of other products. well making some profit with OpenOffice.org or a product based on OpenOffice.org is really helpful to pay all the developers on the project ;-) I don't know the details, i assume Sun spend more money on the project than they make profit with StarOffice. Anyway but Sun is not the only company that is making profit (or not) with a product based on OpenOffice.org. Sun does it with StarOffice where everybody can see the 1:1 relation between both products. There are other products/brands like Oxygenoffice or EuroOffice ... Novell makes profit with their Desktop product and oh wonder the main application that make the whole product interesting is what? *OpenOffice.org* correct. ... A further example is IBM with LotusNotes or Symphony where you also can't see a 1:1 relation as well. Sure, and there is no issue with branded versions of OOo, or with making a profit out of OOo, all the companies represented here attempt to make a profit out of it. My point is simply that Sun is the only one of these groups that can re-licence the OOo code-base to third parties outside of provisions of the LGPL, and that's a possible important factor in requiring that ownership of OOo copyright be shared between the author and Sun, rather that between the author and some independent foundation, even if that foundation had an opt-out for e.g. Sun to link non-LGPL code into OOo to create StarOffice. From my point of view it's cool when products can benefit from each other. And i personally would like to see more of these collaborations independent of they are based on StarOffice or OpenOffice.org or another brand. And so do I, and I have no problem with StarOffice itself, Sun has contributed gigantically to OOo, and if they feel a need to link some non-LGPL compatible code into OOo, e.g. due to no suitable replacement or other reasons, in an effort to make a better final product then that's a prerogative I can accept that Sun has earned. My point isn't really around StarOffice. It's that I would feel hard-done by as a contributor to OOo to find my work extended in some *other* third-party applications without that enhancement available back to the community. And Sun can facilitate this by deciding to re-licence it to a third-party in a way that allows them to avoid the LGPL and extend their version of OOo in a proprietary fashion. I could even imagine accepting giving another group an opt-out from the provisions of the LGPL if it was for the greater good of OOo and there was some representative body for OOo which agreed to it, but the current governance does allow Sun to make that decision all on their own, and to reap benefits from doing so which could be totally unrelated to the good of OOo. C. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Some thoughts about our community
Hello Juergen, Davide, Allen, all, Juergen Schmidt a écrit : Hi Davide, Davide Dozza wrote: Hi Juergen, I wouldn't discuss about [2] and [3]. They are just examples and they have been discussing on other places. I would like to discuss about [1] and why we are almost the same people any year, why the number of participants doesn't grow and why large proportion of people comes from few companies. i think that is obvious because these companies invest a lot of money in the project in form of developer resources. The work has to be done and it is good that some companies pay full time developers for their work. Otherwise we wouldn't be there where we are today. Each individual contributor can help a little bit and that is fantastic. Every little contribution is important. See for example localization, it is an area where our community works great because it is much easier to extract this piece of work from the normal development process. It is more difficult in other areas but it is not impossible and of course i claim that things become better and better. And we do of course can do a lot of more things to improve and simplify it. And of course i would say it is the same as for other open source projects as well, isn't it. I think Linux is driven in the same way. Huge amount of work is done by full time developers of companies and additionally to that tons of smaller contributions from individuals. I think this analysis goes without speaking here Jürgen. And that should never be seen as an issue. i think not, what would it really change? Ask yourself if you would change anything for your own work on the project. And if yes what does you really prevent form doing it today? Nothing prevents Davide from contributing if you see this issue just in terms of processes. But what could repel Davide and others is the feeling (and perhaps a justified feeling) that individuals are nothing but large companies everything. You may notice that this is not an issue confined within OOo :-) ... More seriously, part of the attraction of FOSS is that there is a degree of appropriation of the software/project in the psyche of any contributor. If governance shows the exact evidence of the contrary, you have unhappy contributors, and one day, you'll end up having no more individual contributors. The demand here is thus to strike a (much difficult to evaluate) balance between major corps and individual/small org contributors. Why? To please Davide or myself? No. Because you know Jürgen, just like many others than this part of the community (the independent contributors matters a lot, both in terms of code contribution than in terms of usage expansion, QA, etc.). So that's the crux of the issue according to me. How do we address this feeling? How do we strike a balance between the different stakeholders? These are the questions we must answer. best, Charles. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Some thoughts about our community
Allen Pulsifer wrote: Speaking as a community participant... When I first became involved in OOo, I was not completely comfortable with the license arrangement, but thought Sun should be given the benefit of the doubt based on all of their contributions. However, let's look at this objectively. Here are some facts. 1. Sun makes many contributions to the code. 2. Sun manages the build process and dominates the decisions on what gets included in the official OOo distribution. The second part of your sentence is not true. What gets into the official OOo distribution is not controlled by people or a company but by some rules: code must be submitted under JCA, features must be specified, the code must run on all relevant platforms, QA must approve the work and some things more. There is no hidden agenda that anyone uses to block certain contributions. In fact the Sun developers invest a considerable amount of time to bring in code of others that asked for help. Admittedly it took some time to bring us there that finally we this is where we are now. If that looks as if Sun dominates the process this is a result of two things: - Sun has created most of the rules in the first place - Sun does most of the work that is necessary to check if everything is done in agreement with the rules In both points we have been open (and still are) to let others participate and in fact e.g. the NL projects have done a lot in the QA area and so effectively participate in the control of what gets into the official releases. Open Source is a meritocracy: there is no co-determination without actually doing something. 3. One of Sun's conditions for any code to be included in the official OOo distribution is that the copyright for the code must be assigned to Sun. Please write it more exactly: that the copyright must be shared with Sun. 4. Sun takes those contributions and releases them in their proprietary product StarOffice. ... as do a lot of other software vendors that contribute much less or even nothing to OOo. This is important to see. Sun at least earns this right by doing a lot for the project. 5. There is dissatisfaction in the community over items 2 and 3. This dissatisfaction results in some companies and individuals not being willing to contribute code or participate in the community. There will always be companies or individuals that won't contribute to a project for whatever reason. I still think that the JCA in the current form is not unfair and without any JCA the project would become unmanageable. 6. This dissatisfaction has already resulted in several forks. Some forks have completely diverged, like NeoOffice and Lotus Symphony, while some for now are just patch sets or enhancements to the official build, like OxygenOffice and Novell's distribution. Lotus Symphony isn't a fork in that sense, it's a commercial brand in the same way as StarOffice. Ciao, Mathias -- Mathias Bauer (mba) - Project Lead OpenOffice.org Writer OpenOffice.org Engineering at Sun: http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS Please don't reply to [EMAIL PROTECTED]. I use it for the OOo lists and only rarely read other mails sent to it. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Some thoughts about our community
On 10/8/07, Mathias Bauer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Please write it more exactly: that the copyright must be shared with Sun. For my understanding, a generic question: If a piece of software has: Copyright (C) 2007 Peter Janssens, Jan Peeters or Copyright (C) 2007 Peter Janssens Copyright (C) 2007 Jan Peeters Is that an AND or an OR relationship ? Can both seperately, individually, without agreement from the other, give away licenses on the code (Peter OR Jan can give a license) or must both jointly, in agreeement, together agree to give a license on the code (Peter AND Jan must agree to give a license). Thanks, Peter - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [dev] Some thoughts about our community
Hello Mathias, There is a lot of PR in this issue floating around the internet these days, most of it coming from Sun. Its clear to me that the goal of this PR is to maintain the status quo, i.e., ensure that contributions to the project keep coming in, and that the contributors sign the JCA or its successor the SCA that assign copyrights to Sun. I think both Sun and the project are poorly served by both the JCA/SCA and the current PR campaign. For starters, I think the JCA/SCA discourages contributions. I myself would not sign the JCA/SCA assigning copyright for anything but the most trivial code, and as we have seen, neither will Kohei and I'm sure neither will many other developers. Sun can try to spin it a different way or try to sell us on the JCA/SCA, but for many developers, you are not going to succeed. I have carefully read all of the rationale for the JCA/SCA, including the most recent blog post from Simon Phipps at http://blogs.sun.com/webmink/entry/sca_r_office. In my opinion, none of these rational hold water. The same things could be accomplished by asking contributors to assign joint copyright to a non-profit foundation rather than to Sun. The one rational Simon offers that is a little bit different than the usual is the following: In many cases (including some very well-known open source projects) [the JCA] also allows the original donor to offer commercial offerings, thus ensuring the project continues to have engagement funded by its major participants. I myself to not begrudge Sun its efforts to maintain a commercial version of OOo. Again however, the same thing could be accomplished with code that is under the LGPL. In other words, a Foundation chartered to maintain the copyrights in OOo could insist that all contributions included in the official OOo build be licensed under the LGPL, and this would be sufficient to allow Sun to continue producing and distributing StarOffice. The alternatives I see here are just what I mentioned in my prior post. If Sun continues to insist that all copyrights be assigned to it, then alternative methods of contributing will be created. These alternative methods might include alternate distributions or forks that accept pure LGPL code, or possibly even GPL code or code under other licenses. This I think is inevitable. In my opinion, the best course of action for Sun is to set up a Foundation to hold joint copyrights from contributors. That at least gives Sun a chance to negotiate for all contributions to be licensed under the LGPL. If Sun does not do that, you might find some future contributions are offered only under the GPL, and Sun would not be able to use these in StarOffice. The much better arrangement for Sun, I think, is to try to keep all contributions under the LGPL. I offer this suggestion as something to think about. In the meantime, I would like to make one comment. Kohei is the author of the solver code and owns the copyright. He has the absolute legal and moral right to determine the terms of his contribution. He has extremely generously offered this code to the world under the LGPL. The LGPL is a fine open source license. It allows virtually unrestricted use of the code, for free, while guaranteeing that any derivatives also remain free. It embodies some of the best aspects of the open source movement. I find it very admirable and commendable that Kohei has so generously offered to make his code available under the LGPL, and I find nothing to criticize in this decision. Recently however I have read some rather disturbing comments on the internet that Kohei is somehow a bad person for offering his code under the LGPL, and furthermore, the only way for him to become a good person is to sign a legal document that assigns copyright to Sun Microsystems. This I believe is unprecedented in the open source movement. Is that what we have come to, that a person who offers code under the LGPL is subject to criticism? That if he refuses to sign over his copyright to a proprietary product then he is somehow a bad person. I am quite frankly, amazed, stupefied, flabbergasted--at a total loss for words--by the recent comments I have read. In the part of the world where I come from, it is very common for code to be offered under dual licenses. An open source license such as the GPL is offered for free, and a standard commercial license is offered for a fee to companies who want to use the code in a closed-source commercial product. Companies that want to use the code under the commercial license simply pay the fee, and then they have that right. Specifically with respect to Kohei's solver code, Sun has stated that it will have to be completely rewritten by someone else, with copyright held by Sun, in order to be included in OpenOffice.org. Taking that statement at face value, it appears then that Sun is willing to spend $50,000 plus in engineering time just to have a solver that it holds the copyright for, as
RE: [dev] Some thoughts about our community
On Mon, 2007-10-08 at 12:48 -0400, Allen Pulsifer wrote: The one rational Simon offers that is a little bit different than the usual is the following: In many cases (including some very well-known open source projects) [the JCA] also allows the original donor to offer commercial offerings, thus ensuring the project continues to have engagement funded by its major participants. What might be concerning Sun is that a foundation owning the copyright to OOo code, even one that has an explicit mechanism to allow major contributors to continue to make commercial closed source versions of OOo, would probably remove the ability of Sun to unilaterally sub-licence StarOffice under a proprietary license to other co-operations either for profit or as a major bargaining chip for the promotion of other products. C. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Some thoughts about our community
Hi Allen, i don't know who you are neither do i know what your contributions to OpenOffice.org are. Probably you would say that you never have thought about any contribution because of the JCA and of course it's your personal right. But on the other hand we don't know what we have missed by your potential contributions ... Anyway it seems that you don't have read all the blogs, comments etc. carefully. And that you again use the example of Kohei to blame against Sun and i would say not only Sun but against the whole project. The project has rules at the moment, like it or not but they exists and they were known to everyone. Even Kohei knew them and have accepted them in the past. The whole story around the solver isn't really motivating because a sad story is misused to talk about something else. I won't repeat all the comments around this story because i know that you all know them and that you all have your own personal opinion of it. There is no Sun PR compaign, there are simply comments from people inside Sun to correct or better to provide a second view to the whole story. Believe me a lot of my colleagues are in the same way frustrated of the whole story as me. Because we feel as part of the community and not as the bad aliens from Sun. We got paid from Sun to work on a great project and if you blame Sun you blame in the same way a huge group of effective code contributing developers. A lot of people like to work on the project and that is great and i like to work with everyone and will support everyone. Well i have my bad days as well and wasn't probably really helpful at these days ;-) and probably won't be in the future on such days. But that is me an individual contributor (paid by Sun) and not Sun at all. My personal opinion of this is that one company has chosen a really bad style to address a specific topic. I don't know why, maybe because they couldn't argue with huge contributions. On the other hand and that is completely independent of this story i saw with the growing success of OpenOffice.org that more and more parasites came up and want to benefit from this success. They talk a lot but they do nothing with or without JCA. Anyway please don't blame Sun for the last comment but only me because it is my own opinion. Juergen Allen Pulsifer wrote: Hello Mathias, There is a lot of PR in this issue floating around the internet these days, most of it coming from Sun. Its clear to me that the goal of this PR is to maintain the status quo, i.e., ensure that contributions to the project keep coming in, and that the contributors sign the JCA or its successor the SCA that assign copyrights to Sun. I think both Sun and the project are poorly served by both the JCA/SCA and the current PR campaign. For starters, I think the JCA/SCA discourages contributions. I myself would not sign the JCA/SCA assigning copyright for anything but the most trivial code, and as we have seen, neither will Kohei and I'm sure neither will many other developers. Sun can try to spin it a different way or try to sell us on the JCA/SCA, but for many developers, you are not going to succeed. I have carefully read all of the rationale for the JCA/SCA, including the most recent blog post from Simon Phipps at http://blogs.sun.com/webmink/entry/sca_r_office. In my opinion, none of these rational hold water. The same things could be accomplished by asking contributors to assign joint copyright to a non-profit foundation rather than to Sun. The one rational Simon offers that is a little bit different than the usual is the following: In many cases (including some very well-known open source projects) [the JCA] also allows the original donor to offer commercial offerings, thus ensuring the project continues to have engagement funded by its major participants. I myself to not begrudge Sun its efforts to maintain a commercial version of OOo. Again however, the same thing could be accomplished with code that is under the LGPL. In other words, a Foundation chartered to maintain the copyrights in OOo could insist that all contributions included in the official OOo build be licensed under the LGPL, and this would be sufficient to allow Sun to continue producing and distributing StarOffice. The alternatives I see here are just what I mentioned in my prior post. If Sun continues to insist that all copyrights be assigned to it, then alternative methods of contributing will be created. These alternative methods might include alternate distributions or forks that accept pure LGPL code, or possibly even GPL code or code under other licenses. This I think is inevitable. In my opinion, the best course of action for Sun is to set up a Foundation to hold joint copyrights from contributors. That at least gives Sun a chance to negotiate for all contributions to be licensed under the LGPL. If Sun does not do that, you might find some future contributions are offered only under the GPL, and
Re: [dev] Some thoughts about our community
Peter Vandenabeele wrote: On 10/8/07, Mathias Bauer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Please write it more exactly: that the copyright must be shared with Sun. For my understanding, a generic question: If a piece of software has: Copyright (C) 2007 Peter Janssens, Jan Peeters or Copyright (C) 2007 Peter Janssens Copyright (C) 2007 Jan Peeters Is that an AND or an OR relationship ? Can both seperately, individually, without agreement from the other, give away licenses on the code (Peter OR Jan can give a license) or must both jointly, in agreeement, together agree to give a license on the code (Peter AND Jan must agree to give a license). IANAL, so I have to apply human logic, though this rarely is compatible to legal considerations. ;-) The copyright owner of a particular source file can relicence this file under any licence he wants. In case of a joint copyright this applies to both partners, independently from each other. So if Sun e.g. wanted to change OOo's licence to LGPLv3 or GPLv3 this is possible without formal agreement of all partners that have the joined copyright of at least a part of the source code. OTOH if a contributor wanted to licence his contributed code to someone else with e.g. a BSD licence he is free to do so without asking Sun or any other party that owns the copyright of a part of the OOo code base. But of course this does not influence all the other code in OOo whose copyright he not jointly owns. This procedure was used by Sun when the SISSL was dropped some time ago and it used by contributors that additionally to the LGPL licence required by OOo also licence their code under GPL. Ciao, Mathias -- Mathias Bauer (mba) - Project Lead OpenOffice.org Writer OpenOffice.org Engineering at Sun: http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS Please don't reply to [EMAIL PROTECTED]. I use it for the OOo lists and only rarely read other mails sent to it. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Some thoughts about our community
Hi Davide, i think [3] is a special thing and we all agree that it is a sad story. We should exactly identify what the problems were and should start to work on them. Does they still exists? Or have some things already changed. [2] is more or less around the JCA where i don't see that a further discussion make sense. If you want to start a discussion around community and community work i would suggest that you should clearly communicate your concerns. List all your concerns in detail and ideally suggest ways how we can improve it. I am sure that we are all open to discuss these points with you. What i personally don't like to do is a general discussion on a level where we talk more about politics than about real community work on a great product. Well a lot of things can be improved and i think we are working already on it. Bring up your concrete concerns and let us discuss Juergen Davide Dozza wrote: Hi all, some days ago I launched a stone into the water. I posted some consideration [1] about the OOoCon and more in general about our community. It seems that things don't happen alone. After the Michael Meeks announce [2] following the Kohei [3] post I think there is something to discuss about our community and how they should evolve. In fact it seems clear to me that the actual community rules, and more in general about how the project is managed, are not anymore suitable to manage what the Community asks. I'm deliberating using two terms, community and Community, because I think there is a common misinterpretation about what a community is. Hoping this start a constructive discussion, Ciao Davide [1] http://robertogaloppini.net/2007/10/02/openofficeorg-conference-2007-some-thoughts/ [2] http://www.gnome.org/~michael/activity.html#2007-10-02 [3] http://kohei.us/2007/10/02/history-of-calc-solver/ - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Some thoughts about our community
Davide, might be worth to listen about that (at least at the beginning): http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/04/open_season_four_shuttleworth/ Best, Charles. Davide Dozza a écrit : Hi all, some days ago I launched a stone into the water. I posted some consideration [1] about the OOoCon and more in general about our community. It seems that things don't happen alone. After the Michael Meeks announce [2] following the Kohei [3] post I think there is something to discuss about our community and how they should evolve. In fact it seems clear to me that the actual community rules, and more in general about how the project is managed, are not anymore suitable to manage what the Community asks. I'm deliberating using two terms, community and Community, because I think there is a common misinterpretation about what a community is. Hoping this start a constructive discussion, Ciao Davide [1] http://robertogaloppini.net/2007/10/02/openofficeorg-conference-2007-some-thoughts/ [2] http://www.gnome.org/~michael/activity.html#2007-10-02 [3] http://kohei.us/2007/10/02/history-of-calc-solver/ - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [dev] Some thoughts about our community
Hi Juergen, I wouldn't discuss about [2] and [3]. They are just examples and they have been discussing on other places. I would like to discuss about [1] and why we are almost the same people any year, why the number of participants doesn't grow and why large proportion of people comes from few companies. The problem is always the same. IMHO our project is likely definable as big companies project with an end-user community collaboration. What I would like to see is the project transformed in a really free software community project with companies collaboration, maybe with a sort of hybridization model. Even IMHO this is the main reason because our community doesn't grow as they should. I think is time to change some rules. The model is showing his limits. What are, at the moment, the proposals to solve such problem and open our project to external contributions also in term of management? A geological era ago (in 2001) someone proposed the creation of a foundation. http://www.openoffice.org/white_papers/OOo_project/openofficefoundation.html This argument has been discussed privately every year. Is it time maybe to rivive this discussion? Davide Juergen Schmidt wrote: Hi Davide, i think [3] is a special thing and we all agree that it is a sad story. We should exactly identify what the problems were and should start to work on them. Does they still exists? Or have some things already changed. [2] is more or less around the JCA where i don't see that a further discussion make sense. If you want to start a discussion around community and community work i would suggest that you should clearly communicate your concerns. List all your concerns in detail and ideally suggest ways how we can improve it. I am sure that we are all open to discuss these points with you. What i personally don't like to do is a general discussion on a level where we talk more about politics than about real community work on a great product. Well a lot of things can be improved and i think we are working already on it. Bring up your concrete concerns and let us discuss Juergen Davide Dozza wrote: Hi all, some days ago I launched a stone into the water. I posted some consideration [1] about the OOoCon and more in general about our community. It seems that things don't happen alone. After the Michael Meeks announce [2] following the Kohei [3] post I think there is something to discuss about our community and how they should evolve. In fact it seems clear to me that the actual community rules, and more in general about how the project is managed, are not anymore suitable to manage what the Community asks. I'm deliberating using two terms, community and Community, because I think there is a common misinterpretation about what a community is. Hoping this start a constructive discussion, Ciao Davide [1] http://robertogaloppini.net/2007/10/02/openofficeorg-conference-2007-some-thoughts/ [2] http://www.gnome.org/~michael/activity.html#2007-10-02 [3] http://kohei.us/2007/10/02/history-of-calc-solver/ - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [dev] Some thoughts about our community
Hi Davide, Davide Dozza wrote: Hi Juergen, I wouldn't discuss about [2] and [3]. They are just examples and they have been discussing on other places. I would like to discuss about [1] and why we are almost the same people any year, why the number of participants doesn't grow and why large proportion of people comes from few companies. i think that is obvious because these companies invest a lot of money in the project in form of developer resources. The work has to be done and it is good that some companies pay full time developers for their work. Otherwise we wouldn't be there where we are today. Each individual contributor can help a little bit and that is fantastic. Every little contribution is important. See for example localization, it is an area where our community works great because it is much easier to extract this piece of work from the normal development process. It is more difficult in other areas but it is not impossible and of course i claim that things become better and better. And we do of course can do a lot of more things to improve and simplify it. And of course i would say it is the same as for other open source projects as well, isn't it. I think Linux is driven in the same way. Huge amount of work is done by full time developers of companies and additionally to that tons of smaller contributions from individuals. The problem is always the same. IMHO our project is likely definable as big companies project with an end-user community collaboration. i don't think so. But isn't it more that people who do most of the work can control more. Or let us say you need some kind of reputation to get accepted in a community. I wouldn't say that Sun control everything automatically but Sun does a lot and of course with the right quality. So it is natural that Sun or better developers paid from Sun drive things forward. From my point of view it is often quite simply as it is. If you want something and it fits in the project rules simply start to do it. Don't expect that others do the work for you. When you the right things and the quality is good you get your reputation over time and more and more people will listen to you. It is not enough to discuss only and of course it is not enough to make too much noise with only minor contributions. Sun hasn't make too much noise about their contributions in the past and that is maybe the reason why others are put in the wrong light. What I would like to see is the project transformed in a really free software community project with companies collaboration, maybe with a sort of hybridization model. i am not sure if i understand what you mean but i think we already have that or better had it in the past. I am not sure how the collaboration with Novell for example should work in the future. Even IMHO this is the main reason because our community doesn't grow as they should. are you sure? I think is time to change some rules. The model is showing his limits. what exactly do you mean? What are, at the moment, the proposals to solve such problem and open our project to external contributions also in term of management? A geological era ago (in 2001) someone proposed the creation of a foundation. http://www.openoffice.org/white_papers/OOo_project/openofficefoundation.html This argument has been discussed privately every year. Is it time maybe to rivive this discussion? i think not, what would it really change? Ask yourself if you would change anything for your own work on the project. And if yes what does you really prevent form doing it today? Juergen Davide Juergen Schmidt wrote: Hi Davide, i think [3] is a special thing and we all agree that it is a sad story. We should exactly identify what the problems were and should start to work on them. Does they still exists? Or have some things already changed. [2] is more or less around the JCA where i don't see that a further discussion make sense. If you want to start a discussion around community and community work i would suggest that you should clearly communicate your concerns. List all your concerns in detail and ideally suggest ways how we can improve it. I am sure that we are all open to discuss these points with you. What i personally don't like to do is a general discussion on a level where we talk more about politics than about real community work on a great product. Well a lot of things can be improved and i think we are working already on it. Bring up your concrete concerns and let us discuss Juergen Davide Dozza wrote: Hi all, some days ago I launched a stone into the water. I posted some consideration [1] about the OOoCon and more in general about our community. It seems that things don't happen alone. After the Michael Meeks announce [2] following the Kohei [3] post I think there is something to discuss about our community and how they should evolve. In fact it seems clear to me that the actual community rules, and
RE: [dev] Some thoughts about our community
Speaking as a community participant... When I first became involved in OOo, I was not completely comfortable with the license arrangement, but thought Sun should be given the benefit of the doubt based on all of their contributions. However, let's look at this objectively. Here are some facts. 1. Sun makes many contributions to the code. 2. Sun manages the build process and dominates the decisions on what gets included in the official OOo distribution. 3. One of Sun's conditions for any code to be included in the official OOo distribution is that the copyright for the code must be assigned to Sun. 4. Sun takes those contributions and releases them in their proprietary product StarOffice. 5. There is dissatisfaction in the community over items 2 and 3. This dissatisfaction results in some companies and individuals not being willing to contribute code or participate in the community. 6. This dissatisfaction has already resulted in several forks. Some forks have completely diverged, like NeoOffice and Lotus Symphony, while some for now are just patch sets or enhancements to the official build, like OxygenOffice and Novell's distribution. Now for some predictions: - If things in the community stay the same, I think a fork (or continued growth of the existing forks) is inevitable. This fork might just be patch sets in the official build, or it might be a split that looks more like the various BSD's that port each other's code all the time. This fork (or forks) will include code that has not been assigned to Sun under the JCA. - Its possible that Sun could stop distributing its code changes as open source, although I think that is very unlikely. It is perhaps more likely that Sun may re-license all or a portion of its code under the GPL, preventing it from being used in other commercial projects. - The forked project may decide to release its changes under the GPL (to the extent possible), making it impossible for Sun to include them in its proprietary product, StarOffice. - In my opinion, a fork will be a good thing for the project and code base by increasing developer interest and enthusiasm. The competition will also be good for both projects. - One of the big question is: where will the bulk of the community go to. Will they stay with the Sun-dominated process? Will they move to the fork? If they move to the fork, will they be able to bring the OpenOffice.org name with them, or does Sun effectively control that name as well? If not, what will the new name be? (OpenOffice.net?) The bottom line is that Sun released StarOffice under the LGPL for its own reasons, the community contributes to this project for its own reasons. It is what it is, as they say. The big question is what this portends for the future. Those are my thoughts. Allen - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
