Oracle 'donates' OpenOffice.org to Apache foundation | Hacker News Reader

Oracle 'donates' OpenOffice.org to Apache foundation

zdnet.co.uk

162 pointsrb01usa34 comments

As expected Oracle didn't donate it to The Document Foundation. There will be more calls to merge the OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice projects now. That is really what needs to be done, both office suites are still almost identical.

The Apache Software Foundation and The Document Foundation have to overcome their egos and do the right thing. Then we could credit TDF with 'liberating' OOO and ASF with closing the deal.

If they don't merge OOO and LO this 'donation' could create a new division in the Open Source community.

> That is really what needs to be done, both office suites are still almost identical.

Except for licensing. LGPL prevents proprietary forks. IIRC Apache allows them. I wonder why Oracle would want to change the license (or not donate OOo directly to the Document Foundation)

grant to Apache Software Foundation usually means a grant of any patents covering the code, so that is a reason to be happy they went Apache.

Wouldn't moving to LGPLv3 be a more natural transition?

"a new division in the Open Source community"

The open source community can't be divided. Or do you equate a 'division' with a fork, like emacs/xemacs, openbsd/netbsd, joomla/mambo?

Not really... As far as I can tell, the licences are compatible in a way that LibreOffice can use the Apache licensed code in their LGPL licenced project, so it will continue to be the stronger fork.

With distros having put their support behind LibreOffice, I don't think that there will be much competition. I think they will either continue to be very similar, or LibreOffice will steam ahead...

GNOME and LibreOffice developer Michael Meeks' summary:

"Apparently this is a somewhat divisive attempt by an exiting Oracle, along with IBM to sideline the existing developer community, their governance, their aspirations, membership, licensing choice (explicitly adapted to meet IBM's needs incidentally), bylaws, and so on. All of this despite a profound, frequently stated open-ness to including new (particularly large) corporate contributors inside TDF, and taking their advice seriously."

http://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2011-06-01.html

Have you got any more sources for the IBM part? I can't find much.

It sounds to me like Oracle realized that they didn't quite grok community driven open-source projects and are finally starting to donate them to good homes (Jenkins to Eclipse and OOo to Apache). All it took was for the projects to go through the hell of major forks before Oracle realized what was going on.

It's probably too late to engender any kind of good will out to this though. They put both of those communities through hell. And neither of these products fall under an Oracle core-competency.

But I wouldn't expect the same result with either Java or MySQL anytime soon. Those are both things that Oracle "gets" and knows how to extract profit from.

Honestly, it seems like they're just pragmatically dumping projects they don't want or can't make a profit off of.

Better this way than the way most projects go.

Small nitpick, but Hudson was moved to Eclipse, not Jenkins. Jenkins is the community fork of Hudson.

This is one of those things that I can read as both good news and bad news.

I'm really hopeful that the LibreOffice and OOo communities could now get together and work together and even collapse the code base to one codebase again, but I'm doubtful that will happen. It would be a huge shame to see split efforts continue as it would hurt both projects and, frankly, they are both still lacking FAR behind any of the proprietary competitors.

Not to mention Calligra is rapidly gaining ground on both. If Calligra gets the same level of MS office compatibility, it would leapfrog both OOo and LibreOffice in my mind.

This is going to be a test of the two communities and their ability to see the big picture as well as navigate a political situation. I really am wondering how they will both will fare.

MS office compatibility is a good point, but that's everyone's goal, even Apple's Pages isn't much good at it.

From what I understand, someone just needs to make a dedicated browser for Office online.

LibreOffice is such a bad name, hopefully if they merge back to OpenOffice and drop the stupid .org from their name. Is it the name of the project or their website? nobody knows!

I believe they only used OpenOffice.org because OpenOffice was already trademarked.

When they discovered that, it might've been a good time to think up a different name.

> hopefully if they merge back to OpenOffice

Sure, and ditch the LGPL license and adopt the Apache one...

Why the quotes around "donates"? This doesn't seem like a white elephant, or a trojan horse. It's commendable that they gave it up rather than let it rot.

"despite Oracle's talk of 'donation', a lengthy process precedes the ASF's acceptance of candidates"

As with all of their projects.

With a project of this size, scope, and adoption, I'd imagine the "acceptance" will be somewhat rubber stamped, and the process will focus on setting up the proper ASF development environment, review of existing code, etc.

I think a lot of people are looking for drama where none exists; ASF is just following the same procedures that EVERY project would be forced to go through.

With all the active OOo developers having created The Document Foundation and producing a new, active project that almost every Linux distro is now supporting, donating it to another organisation is unproductive and poses a threat of dividing the community.

I think that it's too late to really damage LibreOffice though. They have got a lot of support so far.

Bradley Kuhn's take on this is that "relicensing part of the codebase out from under LibreOffice may actually be the most insidious attack Oracle and IBM could make on the project"

http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2011/06/01/open-office.html

Is there a good argument against Oracle releasing ZFS under the GPL (so that it could be integrated into the Linux kernel)?

No more reason to buy Solaris licenses?

How about donating MySQL too!

That would make even bigger news. :-)

Apache will likely release OOo under their permissive license allowing the code to be incorporated into proprietary software.

So why do Oracle want to make the OOo code available to Microsoft and IBM for use in their office suites? This may make it harder for OOo to compete with proprietary office software.

I think the Apache bureaucracy will kill that branch of the project and development will continue on the LibreOffice branch.

After they chased everyone away, now they just to just get rid of it and save themselves the hassle.They might as well donate all their Java patents to Google and save themselves another embarrassment.

> They might as well donate all their Java patents to Google

Are you kidding?!

They could donate them to the FSF, ASF or any other non-profit entity dedicated to promote of free and open-source software. Donating them to Google would create a whole lot of temptations the folks in Mountain View really don't need.

But they have "Don't be evil" as a motto. How could they possibly be tempted by that?

Ok, we get it. Google is "evil". I'd pay $0.05 for every time someone wants to harp on this and DOESNT.

And when they mess up with OpenJDK they'll give it to the PHP community ? What about MySQL, which bureaucratic and loosely related community shall it be given in case thinks goes south in your opinion ?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com