On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 00:50, John Jason Jordan wrote: > So if IBM buys Sun, can it then declare that OOo will no longer be free?
No. (Assuming you mean free qua libre,and not free qua gratis. Given the license, even if they declared it non-gratis, _The Pirate Bay_, amongst other sources, would be only too happy to make it available for gratis.) What IBM can do, is no longer support OOo. Their basic options to achieve that end are: * Drop everything at once; * Gradually decrease the number of programmers, website hosting support, etc; * Call in an arbitrary group, give them US$x, and say: "Here is some money. Here is some code. Now create a foundation, and support this program by yourselves". >I'm not saying they would, > I'm just curious about who has the rights to it. Sun owns the rights to OOo code, but inasmuch as the current code base is LGPL 2.0, all that ownerships means, is that OOo can be forked, when Sun's control becomes too obnoxious. If a name change is required, well so be it. John wrote: > Think of Via Voice and OS/2 and you will get the answer! a) One _major_ difference. Both of those programs were closed source proprietary software. OOo is open source, LGPL. As such, the code can be picked up, and worked on by other entities --- even if that means that it is only one guy working in his garage. b) You've forgotten about the existing OOo forks. If Sun disappeared tonight, taking all OOo source code with them, those forks would still be around. (Do any Linux distros use the official (Sun) OOo code base anymore?) * Windows users might limp along, until they discover the OxygenOffice binaries. * Mac users would fall back on NeoOffice. * I doubt that OS/2 users would lose their edition ---Sun never supported that platform; * PDA users? AFAIK, nobody has ported OOo to a PDA. The closest is the version of OOo that runs on Sugar; * LInux users would still use the no-go code base; c)There are some antitrust issues that will have to be addressed. jonathon --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
