Linked by Kroc Camen on Wed 1st Jun 2011 19:22 UTC, submitted by sjvn
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RE[3]: Isn't libreoffice being somewhat silly here ...
by umccullough on Thu 2nd Jun 2011 04:14
in reply to "RE[2]: Isn't libreoffice being somewhat silly here ..."
Two communities developing two almost exactly identical pieces of software instead of just one; makes both communities weaker and makes progress slower.
[Citation Needed]
But seriously.. I don't think that's necessarily true. I think that's a notion that people come up with because it makes them angry that there are two "competing" projects.
With proper source control, sharing patches between the projects could be a no-brainer.
Time and again, it's been proven that competition is healthy.
Edited 2011-06-02 04:15 UTC
RE[3]: Isn't libreoffice being somewhat silly here ...
by twitterfire on Thu 2nd Jun 2011 09:19
in reply to "RE[2]: Isn't libreoffice being somewhat silly here ..."
Two communities developing two almost exactly identical pieces of software instead of just one; makes both communities weaker and makes progress slower.
That's usual in GNU/Linux/FOSS world.
How many widget toolkits are there? How many desktop environments? How many distros? How many pieces of software that do the same thing? People like for sure reinventing the wheel.
RE[4]: Isn't libreoffice being somewhat silly here ...
by mksoft on Thu 2nd Jun 2011 12:54
in reply to "RE[3]: Isn't libreoffice being somewhat silly here ..."
RE[4]: Isn't libreoffice being somewhat silly here ...
by libray on Fri 3rd Jun 2011 15:32
in reply to "RE[3]: Isn't libreoffice being somewhat silly here ..."
RE[4]: Isn't libreoffice being somewhat silly here ...
by pfgbsd on Fri 3rd Jun 2011 18:26
in reply to "RE[3]: Isn't libreoffice being somewhat silly here ..."
"Two communities developing two almost exactly identical pieces of software instead of just one; makes both communities weaker and makes progress slower.
That's usual in GNU/Linux/FOSS world.
How many widget toolkits are there? How many desktop environments? How many distros? How many pieces of software that do the same thing? People like for sure reinventing the wheel. "
That's not a valid comparison: there is only toolkit with the Qt API and toolkit with the GTK+ API. There's OpenMotif and there is/was lesstif but that was not a fork.
There some different office packages already but, while there are some specific variants of OpenOffice, the only real fork is Libreoffice. This will cause a lot of repeated efforts until the projects diverge (which is admittedly not that bad). The *real* downside, of course, is that 100 people were laid off by Oracle after libreoffice forked.
The license may become an interesting difference though. I would see why IBM is more interested in keeping the code under a non-copyleft license, and others may follow.
All in all, I like the forking idea: there was no advantage in giving the code to libreoffice since they already have it with the license they want and they are not asking for code attribution so there was nothing to gain by giving the code to libreoffice.
RE[4]: Isn't libreoffice being somewhat silly here ...
by abraxas on Sat 4th Jun 2011 14:20
in reply to "RE[3]: Isn't libreoffice being somewhat silly here ..."
"Two communities developing two almost exactly identical pieces of software instead of just one; makes both communities weaker and makes progress slower.
That's usual in GNU/Linux/FOSS world.
How many widget toolkits are there? How many desktop environments? How many distros? How many pieces of software that do the same thing? People like for sure reinventing the wheel. "
That's oversimplifying. Forks happen for a reason or they die. If that reason is gone then a fork is pointless. This is different from competing projects that do not share a direct lineage to each other. Often those projects have different goals in the first place, although they generally overlap in some places.




Member since:
2006-05-09
Two communities developing two almost exactly identical pieces of software instead of just one; makes both communities weaker and makes progress slower.