Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 18th Oct 2010 21:56 UTC, submitted by poundsmack
"A group of key OpenOffice.org contributors and community members recently decided to fork the project and establish The Document Foundation in order to drive forward community-driven development of the open source office suite. Oracle has responded to the move by asking several members of TDF to step down from their positions as representatives on the OOo community council."
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RE[2]: Unfortunate impasse with this fork
by Kebabbert on Tue 19th Oct 2010 11:42
in reply to "RE: Unfortunate impasse with this fork"
Member since:2007-07-27
You don't seem to understand the politics behind this fork.
Currently, if you wish to contribute to OpenOffice.org, you must sign a copyright waiver that gives Oracle (formerly Sun) ownership of your contribution and the right to do with it as they please. This is a massive barrier to contributing.
Currently, if you wish to contribute to OpenOffice.org, you must sign a copyright waiver that gives Oracle (formerly Sun) ownership of your contribution and the right to do with it as they please. This is a massive barrier to contributing.
Lots of companies involved in Open Source do this. Just the top of my head, SuSE also forces you to sign a copyright waiver.
RE[3]: Unfortunate impasse with this fork
by Rahul on Wed 20th Oct 2010 05:34
in reply to "RE[2]: Unfortunate impasse with this fork"
Member since:2005-07-06
RE[3]: Unfortunate impasse with this fork
by segedunum on Wed 20th Oct 2010 12:49
in reply to "RE[2]: Unfortunate impasse with this fork"
Member since:2005-07-06
Lots of companies involved in Open Source do this. Just the top of my head, SuSE also forces you to sign a copyright waiver.
Suse doesn't for anything because they don't control many of the projects they put into their distribution, but Novell does for things like Mono.
Saying that other projects do it doesn't make it acceptable nor does it not make it a hindrance to contributing as they say.
RE[2]: Unfortunate impasse with this fork
by BlueofRainbow on Tue 19th Oct 2010 21:37
in reply to "RE: Unfortunate impasse with this fork"
Member since:2009-01-06
Thanks for the clarifications.
It appears that Oracle only continues, albeit more strongly, the approach originally taken by Sun in preserving a corporate ownership of the code-tree. Too bad.
From the general perception of Oracle expressed in many comments on OSNews, it is unlikely that it will do an opening gesture for full collaboration with the community - for example assigning the ownership of the code contributed to OpenOfficeOrg to the organization it-self. This would also require an appropriate license to support this spirit so that Oracle and The Document Foundation can each pursue their respective goal/vision - one commercial and one communial.
As an end-user, I would be turned off if having to deal 2-3 years down the road with two incompatible "Open Office" file formats and/or ways of doing things because of the divergences arising form this fork.
Features
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 21:38 UTC
At an event earlier today, Microsoft unveiled the next Xbox - the third model, but confusingly named Xbox One. The big focus was TV, integrated Kinect, and all the other stuff we all expected to be forced down our throats. I think it took them 25 minutes to actually come to what should be the core of the story: gaming. Nothing groundbreaking in the gaming department, except for how Microsoft intends to handle the used games market and borrowing games from friends: pay up, buddy!
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 11:29 UTC
The day has finally come! Jolla has finally announced the launch device for its Sailfish operating system - and by god this is a looker. It's decidedly different from other phones out there, but it has good specifications and carries a relatively reasonably price tag - EUR 399, and it's up for pre-order today, shipping in the fourth quarter of this year.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:33 UTC
Why does Google get so much credit in the technology industry? Why, despite the company's many obvious failings, do many geeks and enthusiasts still hold a somewhat positive view on the all-knowing technology giant? A specific talk at Google I/O this week provides the answer.
Linked by David Adams on 05/16/13 4:23 UTC
OSNews is a sponsor of this year's O'Reilly OSCON in Portland, Oregon, USA. A lucky OSNews reader will win a free three-day pass, including two tutorials days. To win the pass, post a comment on this story saying something about Open Source Software or OSCON. We'll pick a winner at random next week. If you don't have an OSNews account, you may email us your entry. Part of the conference is the 9th annual Open Source Awards, and today the 16th is the deadline for nominations. If you'd like to nominate an outstanding open source contributor, do it here. Read on for more information about OSCON. Update: The 20% discount code for OSNews readers is "OSN."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/11/13 21:41 UTC
"Windows is indeed slower than other operating systems in many scenarios, and the gap is worsening." That's one way to start an insider explanation of why Windows' performance isn't up to snuff. Written by someone who actually contributes code to the Windows NT kernel, the comment on Hacker News, later deleted but reposted with permission on Marc Bevand's blog, paints a very dreary picture of the state of Windows development. The root issue? Think of how Linux is developed, and you'll know the answer.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/08/13 14:22 UTC
This is one of those news items that's fun to write, fun to read, fun to comment on, and where no one will be able to say anything unkind. It's all just one big ball of awesome fluffiness. TuneTracker, the BeOS radio automation software, has just released something very special: TuneTracker System 5, the first version designed entirely and specifically for Haiku. In fact, it actually includes Haiku in the software package. Better yet, TuneTracker also unveiled several system-in-a-box products - which have Haiku and TuneTracker pre-installed.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/02/13 15:28 UTC
Exactly twenty years ago, a document was published that played a huge role in establishing the web as we know it today. Twenty years later, and this simple and straightforward document is proof of an irrefutable fact: while closed technologies can change markets, open technologies can change the world.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/29/13 21:06 UTC
Oh multitasking. That staple of computing that got thrown out the window with many modern smartphones. We got some rudimentary thing in its place - but even as multitasking on phone and tablets improves, its user-visible side remains cumbersome. Windows 8 has a neat implementation, and now it's time Android follows in it footsteps.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/24/13 22:24 UTC
They're here! Whether that excites you or not remains to be seen, but the Galaxy S4, which will most likely become the best selling Android smartphone of the year by a huge margin, has been reviewed by all the major sites, and there's lots of interesting conclusions in there - although I think most of you will get the gist.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/18/13 11:21 UTC
Nokia has posted its quarterly results for the first quarter of 2013, and just like the quarters that came before, there's not a whole lot of good news in there. The rise in Lumia sales still can't even dream of making up for the sales drop in Symbian phones, and when broken down in versions, the sales figures for Windows Phone 8 Lumias in particular are very disappointing. In North America, Nokia is getting slaughtered.More Features »
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2007-04-13
You don't seem to understand the politics behind this fork.
Currently, if you wish to contribute to OpenOffice.org, you must sign a copyright waiver that gives Oracle (formerly Sun) ownership of your contribution and the right to do with it as they please. This is a massive barrier to contributing.
Since the open source release of OpenOffice.org, a decade ago, Sun has been promising to set up an independent foundation to manage OpenOffice.org which would allow community ownership of the project. Oracle has been ignoring this subject since the acquisition of Sun. So, the foundation has not been forthcoming, and control of the project is still under the Oracle (formerly Sun) corporate umbrella.
This fork is for the freedom of the project. It is not to do with features (although the current structure of the project was blocking certain features) but to do with how the project was run. It should be doing better than it is by now, given it's critical role in the open source desktop and the number of companies that work with it.
The fork is to take a corporate-run open source project and make it a community-run Free software project.