Perens said the legal arrangement between Sun and Microsoft was “creepy.” The agreement, he added, “essentially says that Sun will not stand together with the open source developers who contributed to their own product.” Sun spokesperson Russ Castronovo, however, said Perens “can make whatever call he wants to make.“
Perens Hits Out at Sun over OpenOffice
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Do OOo developers asign their copyrights to SUN? Are you allowed to contribute code only under the GPL, without signing over your copyright?
Don’t use it, and don’t contribute to it.
That seems the simple answer – If you don’t trust Sun, then simply don’t work with them – dump OO from UserLinux, and work on making the alternatives (KOffice, AbiWord, GNUMeric etc.) better. Don’t bitch about how you got something for free but that it somehow wasnt enough for you.
It seems a pretty straightforward agreement to me – Sun will indemnify it’s commercial customers, but wont take the rap for a product over which it has no real control.
I don’t se this as a problem per se. Sun has given away the OpenOffice code – thats a a great gift to the community – and it *needs* to be enough – if there is infringing code in OO, the OO developers are the ones who need to defend it, rip it out, or otherwise respond to attacks – the community has to be strong enough to stand on it’s own – whether that means distributing development more widely across the globe to avoid being a target for the USA’s execrable patent laws, or building stronger, better funded development communities so that legal threats can be met head on.
If this is a tacit admission by Perens that free software is untenable without the legal protection of giant corporations, well, i suggest he just packs up and goes home right now.
Crying about how terrible Sun are when they are simply giving the community some code and saying ‘here you go, make of this what you can’ is just wrong, and very childish.
http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/36920.html
“Describing the legal arrangement between Sun and Microsoft as “creepy,’ Perens added: “It essentially says that Sun will not stand together with the open source developers who contributed to their own product.”
What’s so creepy about the “deal” between Sun and Microsoft in this context?
Perhaps they finally got the clue: sueing eatchother is very contra productive
and doesn’t provide a sole victory for either side in the end.I admire Sun for
acquiring OpenOffice in the late nineties and bringing the source code under the OSS licence.
“Linux Insider” — AFAICT from what I’ve seen of it previously — seems to be a FUD-generater thinly disguised as a pro-linux site.
I’m sure that I’ll eventually hear BP’s opinions from a source that doesn’t require me to 2bl-check every reference for accuracy and context. Until I do, I won;t even consider it worth the effort.
As for the Sun deal; other coverage I’ve seen leaves me unsure how to distinguish between principles and business realities, or even what the actual significance of the Sun-MS deal is. The optics *are* very poor, but it may not be as simple as it seem at first glance. I don’t know if Perens understands it either, but at least I don’t question his sencerity.
This is the only the beginning of a very large problem.
When corporations began “playing” with the open source side of things, problems were certain to follow.
There is a basic conflict of interest between the for profit corporations, and ALL of these so called “g” licenses. In the end none of these “fatcats” really give a hoot in hell about open source, unless there are large profits at the end of the rainbow. Having Novell, IBM, HP, and a host of others fooling with open source is “creepy”. The same folks who consider MS evil corporate bastards, need to do a re-eval of what they are dealing with on the current corporate side of open source. Novell and IBM certainly don’t make me feel warm and cozy. So called gifts and contributions to the community, are little more than an attempt to create goodwill while keeping the true agenda as far out of view as possible.
Seldom to I totally agree with Mr. Perens; however I have to completely agree this time around.
VNUNet (listed in the article’s copyright) is in my limited experience … uneven … in the quality of its Linux coverage, but this appears to be more a result of differing contributers than any patent malice.
They used to dis Linux in a rather ignorant manner, but seem to have become more clue-ful as time went on.
If this is a tacit admission by Perens that free software is untenable without the legal protection of giant corporations, well, i suggest he just packs up and goes home right now.
Great point. There’s nothing stopping Perens et al from creating their own Office suite. Perens has turned whining into an art form.
I think you missed the point. Mr. Perens isn’t upset about the usage of openoffice, but Sun playing both sides of the fence for their own benefit but should pay the price for not supporting the community it depends on for submissions.
Sun asks all OO.o contributers to assign their copyrights to the code to Sun. Perens is saying, if you donate code to OO.o, it is wise for you to keep you copyrights to yourself and to only donate them to the open version, not to the Star Office version, that way it puts a flame under Sun’s ass to get them to decide with side of the fence they need to get on. But more importantly, I think if SUN has control of the code in ways other than the GPL, meaning they have the copyrights, I think Sun might be motivated some time in the future, when OO.o has poliferated business, to try and fight the GPL to sieze control of OO.o. Maybe that’s a stretch, but SCO has convinced me it’s a completely valid concern.
I would have to disagree it is a good point. Simply because it has nothing to do with Mr. Perens concerns.
Mr. Perens is looking out for the best interests of the opensource community, and FOSS in particular.
Please look at my above post as to why I think this way. I really don’t think Mr. Perens is looking at this as a ‘need’ for corporate protection, but rather as more evidence Sun is playing both sides of the fence, and that has to stop. And I agree. Sun is too big of a player to be allowed to walk down the middle. Either you support us or you don’t.
Tho Sun reminds me of those friends that smile to your face and greet you with open arms, but you catch time to time speaking and doing horrible things about you behind your back. At least MS is better in their ways, you know where they stand and you can count on it. Sun, you can’t count on and you would be a fool to trust them.
Lets hope time proves me wrong, cause some of the best programmers work for Sun, and it would be a shame if they work against us and not with us.
“Sun asks all OO.o contributers to assign their copyrights to the code to Sun. Perens is saying, if you donate code to OO.o, it is wise for you to keep you copyrights to yourself and to only donate them to the open version, not to the Star Office version, that way it puts a flame under Sun’s ass to get them to decide with side of the fence they need to get on.”
So you think the contributors to Fedora should do the same?
Quote:
“So you think the contributors to Fedora should do the same?”
I’d say so. Redhat got lazy with the desktop, so they palmed off their already GPL based open desktop o/s to the community and said ‘here, play with it and fix it, cos we can’t be bothered, there’s no money in this, we want money from enterprises’. If I was contributing code to Fedora I certainly wouldn’t be assigning copyright to Redhat, i’d keep copyright, release it under the GPL so these bastards can’t play silly games later on.
IMHO, Sun (and i’ve stated it before else on these forums) is playing both sides, and sitting on the fence and acting in a disgusting manner. If they don’t want to really support OSS/GPL etc then they shouldn’t have contributed ANY code at all. Since they have done so, and obviously know if there are any potential patent infringement issues, I consider it a trojan horse. Whether it’s deliberate or not I do not know, but I wouldn’t trust Sun as far as I can throw them.
As an example, say a OSS developer has created some code for OpenOffice…Sun likes it, backports it to Staroffice. This code is patent infringing on say, Microsoft. Under the agreement between Microsoft & Sun, Microsoft won’t sue Sun for the infringement. But they’ll sue OpenOffice developers. For the same code. It’s either infringing or not, with no favouritism thanks. If OpenOffice is infringing, then so is Sun. And any decent court of law would agree with this. Personally, get rid of software patents, limit copyrights, and get rid of patent bargaining between large corporations and the software industry would be a lot more innovative and better for everyone as a whole.
Just my 2c worth. RMS has it right. He’s totally spot on in his overview of the corporate bully syndrome that Microsoft and Sun et al continue to do.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again (even if it means my post gets deleted or moderated down), if the US DOJ had any guts they’d have nailed Microsoft to the wall, instead of giving them such a pathetically soft slap on the wrist as to be totally useless. But, Microsoft has lots of money, and makes lots of political donations, and i’m sure that all counts. Money = power. Power corrupts. Absolute power, corrupts absolutely.
Dave W Pastern
SUN has always played both sides of the fence, why is this surprising? If there is a corporation that has dual personality disorder, it has to be SUN.
Take a look at their business direction, their stand on linux, their issue with open-closed java, their commitment problem with hardware platforms, their interpretation of open solaris and now Openoffice.org.
Their message has always been vague, ambivalent, contradictory and confusing to the general public. I recommend their public relations department be overhauled. Self discovery classes wouldn’t hurt either. Pffft…
Read the small letters
By Tom Sanders
[..]
© 2004 VNUNet.com. All rights reserved.
© 2004 ECT News Network. All rights reserved.
1) They’re lying about the above; e.g. not copyrighted by the above, slightly edited.
2) The above companies are accountable for the article’s text; not Linuxinsider.com.
I’d go for #2 unless there are indications #1 happened on the same site (the SCO FUD from that website is something different than described in #1).
Anyway, i rather read Perens his original view than a few quotes taken out of context. Anyone got a link? I couldn’t find it on Technocrat.net or Perens.com.
Kind of funny how Microsoft is leaving their options open to sue…what about suing Corel for their Office product or suing Lotus for Perfect Office? Seems to me that there are many other competing office products out there that are just as capable, but OpenOffice seems to get picked out…because of the dreaded Linux threat. Everyone knows that that is the real motivation.
Dano.
If this is a tacit admission by Perens that free software is untenable without the legal protection of giant corporations, well, i suggest he just packs up and goes home right now.
Idiocy.
What is problematic is this: the Stallman pipedream that you can cheat the system playing by ITS OWN RULES, i.e laws, and more specifically copyright laws.
Stallman’s vision is nice and needed (albeit a little extravagant). But believing that the OS community can use the copyright laws to its favor, i.e by creating and using copyleft licences is simple minded.
Quite simply, the law system (and the goverments, be it Bush or whoever jerks are in E.E) is in the end owner by large corporations and such.
There are million of ways to diver O.S. From changing copyright laws, to going the patent route, to sue without merit (a la SCO), etc.
Under GPL et al lies a specific premise: that the system is fair. We know better than that. This is a problem with “creative commons” also.
Simply using liberal licences IS NOT the solution. Problems like the above arive, problems like SCO arise, problems with Mono will maybe arise, etc.
What is needed is a combination of OS LICENCES and WORK TO CHANGE THE SYSTEM. The system must be kept at edge at all times. Where were the protests and marches when the Sonny Bono copyright act was passed? Where are the protests about patents?
“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again (even if it means my post gets deleted or moderated down), if the US DOJ had any guts they’d have nailed Microsoft to the wall, instead of giving them such a pathetically soft slap on the wrist as to be totally useless. But, Microsoft has lots of money, and makes lots of political donations, and i’m sure that all counts. Money = power. Power corrupts. Absolute power, corrupts absolutely.”
Part of what you state is absolutely true. The rest of it is simply your vision of how it should have been handled.
The U.S. gov and MANY of the states have entirely too much to lose by “nailing” MS. You could argue corporations the size of MS don’t pay taxes, however their employees damn sure pay tons of them. MS has a huge number of employees directly, and an even larger number in related support positions. The economic impact of simply ripping MS apart would come with an enormus price tag.
No sooner is the U.S. gov going to rip MS to bits than they are General Motors, Ford, or General Electric. As much as it is the wetdream of a good chunk of the world; economics dictates this is unlikely to ever happen.
MS does in fact have a ton of political clout, however any corporation of their size certainly does no matter what country they happen to be based in.
I suppose your going to attempt to convince me you don’t have big time politics in AU? LOL
Yes, we do have big time politics in AU…and it is truly disgusting. No company or individual should ever be above the law. Everyone is equal. That’s how it should be. I know some would consider me naive, but in the reality of it all, as time goes by, more and more power will be held by fewer and fewer. In the end the masses will rise, and it will be bloody. We are already seeing the initial emergence of this trend and it will only get worse.
That said, I wonder what would happen if 1 million Americans had the guts to form a mass suet against the DOJ for failed justice vs. Microsoft in a joint suit. That’s a huge number of people. Whilst it’s only 0.4% or so of the American population it’s a huge legal complaint. I’m sure there’s at least a million linux users in America. The evidence is overwhelming that Microsoft is still a monopoly with predatory practices. That despite being convicted twice within the US, found guilty within the EEC, being investigated in both Japan and Israel for similar offences. Internet Explorer was meant to be removable by the end user as part of the US DOJ settlement. It isn’t. 3 years down the track. Sure it looks like it’s gone, but all of that Internet Explorer crap is still under the hood, just the links and shortcuts are removed. Out of sight, out of mind so to speak. To me that is plain disrespect for the DOJ decision. Bill Gates lied under oath, was he tried for perjury? Nooooooo…the system is not equal. And it should be. A true democratic society would be. Americans are about the most un democratic nation on this planet. And you know what – they hate it when foreignors point out this truth to them. I don’t really give a shit if my post is removed, i’ll damn well continue to post my point – the more people that see it, the more people who might actually wake up from it all and start to act.
Dave W Pastern
The whole patent/copyright situation is confusing and frustrating to say the least. It must be really difficult for an OSS developer to do any coding without constantly thinking of potential IP infringements.
If you cant even reverse engineer file formats to develop import/export filters or do a different implementation of certain design concepts something is seriously wrong in the computing industy.
I would not want to be an OSS developer these days although it sounds fun and these people to an amazing job.
“Yes, we do have big time politics in AU…and it is truly disgusting. No company or individual should ever be above the law. Everyone is equal. That’s how it should be. I know some would consider me naive, but in the reality of it all, as time goes by, more and more power will be held by fewer and fewer. In the end the masses will rise, and it will be bloody. We are already seeing the initial emergence of this trend and it will only get worse.”
David most of the problems began long before either of us took our first breath. Corporations have always had a huge influence on the way countries operate.
The whole issue of software patents etc., comes from a lack of understanding of how it should be handled. Patent offices don’t understand the difference between hardware and things that should be in “another” category. It’s not that patent offices are intentionally screwing up the system. They simply don’t understand this is not 1950, and they need to operate with different rules.
In the case of MS; They just happened to be the first company on the planet to develop a monopoly based entirely on computer software. Nobody had a clue in the mid-80’s things would be as they are now. MS had a huge head start in nearly every area of a brand new field. Patents included. I don’t exactly blame them for doing this; as I likely would have done similar.
As for the monopoly side of it; a good chunk of it was simply a matter of being there first, having a popular product, and a huge lack of natural competition. I’m certainly not going to say MS has always acted nicely in their business practices, but a BIG piece of it comes down to nothing more than reinvestment of early profits and plain LUCK.
Doesn’t matter how they got to where they are now. The issue is how to deal with the current situation. It’s going to take quite awhile before any amount of competition has an effect. They are just too damn BIG.
I do believe they will fall at some point. I don’t however see Linux or any variant of it being the spoiler. Something will however come along.
It is disturbing that FOSS leaders take the attitude that the world, in general, and corporate America, in particulary, owes us a free lunch.
“Sun asks all OO.o contributers to assign their copyrights to the code to Sun. Perens is saying, if you donate code to OO.o, it is wise for you to keep you copyrights to yourself and to only donate them to the open version, not to the Star Office version, that way it puts a flame under Sun’s ass to get them to decide with side of the fence they need to get on. But more importantly, I think if SUN has control of the code in ways other than the GPL, meaning they have the copyrights, I think Sun might be motivated some time in the future, when OO.o has poliferated business, to try and fight the GPL to sieze control of OO.o. Maybe that’s a stretch, but SCO has convinced me it’s a completely valid concern.”
This hits the nail on the head. Everyone else here taking pot shots at Perens don’t understand the implications, and probably did not read the article. Perens clearly states in the article that OO.o contributors should only release their code under the GPL or their own license, or simply keep it under wraps, and to ignore Sun’s requirements to turn it over to Sun for Star Office.
It is ridiculous for a corporation to recieve free development from volunteer programmers and for that corporation to not back up those developers. That is what Sun is doing with their deal with MS. And you can be sure that MS, if it can get away with it, will go after users, developer, and distributors of OpenOffice. MS hates competition.
So, Perens is correct in saying that OO.o developers should release their code under the GPL exclusively and not let Sun have it for Star Office. Perens is not a whiner, he is a practical realist. He just wants free contributors to be safe.
Your post is spot on about corporate bullys. I don’t agree 100% with Stallman, but he is completely right on this. Also, software patents are nothing but landmines for big corporations to stifle competition and innovation. And OO.o is looking like a Trojan horse. I don’t think Sun intended it this way originally. They intended it to bite MS’s butt, back when they were still sworn enemies. But now that MS is Sun’s new sugar daddy (and financial savior – can’t blame them on that), their new StarOffice/OO.o patent deal MS has sold OO.o developers’ asses down the river.
Anyway, your post – I couldn’t have put any better myself. I really enjoy your very well informed and well thought out posts.
Okay, I don’t agree with your post about America being the most undemocratic nation. But your point is well taken. While we try to be democratic, the reality is that the huge mega-corporations puppet the government, and thus have most of the power and influence. Most of us, except for the most conservative of Republicans, want to change this. Most Americans value the idea of “power to the people”, and cherrish democracy. But often we are like blind sheep being led by our corporate masters.
Anyway, enough political/philosophicl stuff.
Sun really is two-faced towards open source. I don’t expect them to indemnify free stuff (and in some regards the open source community should be thankful towards Sun), but they should not be making their contributions into a Trojan horse. The open source community is not stupid – it can tell when Sun is trying to manipulate them to their own advantage.
IBM should have just done a hostile takeover and used OpenOffice as a big stick to beat Microsoft with. They may already have the Lotus suite, but they could always replace it with StarOffice.
SUN is not the sole contributor (http://www.openoffice.org/copyright/copyrightapproved.html)to the OO.o project. So your “Free Lunch” metaphor is flawed.
By the way the whole Joint Copyright (http://www.openoffice.org/licenses/jca.pdf) scheme feels sorta iffy.
“IBM should have just done a hostile takeover and used OpenOffice as a big stick to beat Microsoft with. They may already have the Lotus suite, but they could always replace it with StarOffice.”
That would be more like a twig….and a very small immature twig. They couldn’t beat your mother with the office suite they have now. IBM has this incredible ability to take large things Lotus Development, and turn them into things few people can remember. They are very consistant, I will give them that. Call IBM and them it’s now 2004 and they can wake up.
This hits the nail on the head. Everyone else here taking pot shots at Perens don’t understand the implications, and probably did not read the article. Perens clearly states in the article that OO.o contributors should only release their code under the GPL or their own license, or simply keep it under wraps, and to ignore Sun’s requirements to turn it over to Sun for Star Office.
1) Doesn’t work. Most OO.o developers work at Sun whereas OO.o developers high in the herarchy only accept the code when copyright is transformed to Sun. So you’ll have to fork AND understand the code AND have a big # of people who do so.
2) Please also consider the FSF acts exactly in a similar way. If you want your (any) code to be part of a GNU project’s official sourcetree you have to assign your copyright over to the FSF.
3) Wether this is a problem or not is IMO different on a case by case scenerio. Imagine you developed and sell a proprietary desktop OS and you want OO.o to be available. You programmed a few fixes for OO.o and want to be included. Who cares if that means Staroffice can run on that OS too? Who cares you’re not the owner of that code? What matters is that OO.o runs on that OS.
4) Now i see why it the sentence in the Sun / MS deal makes sense. Because people transfer copyright to Sun whereas Sun and MS have a non-agression pact it means people could just use patented technologies in OO.o and use Sun as a safe harbor.
5) I think OO.o + Staroffice is actually an experiment from Sun to see how this way of profit actually functions. I guess they learned from this that they’re not gonna use (L)GPL for Opensolaris (its very hard to see these 2 developents as unrelated).
looks like people expecting FOR-PROFIT companies to
– pay developers to code FOSS
– pay marketeers to promote FOSS
not enough, now they asking..
– pay legal firms to protect FOSS
wow, what a wonderful world.
In Bangalore India, there are more IT people than in Silicon Valley. Perens should set up his Linux shop over there.
Put it this way. There is absolutely no hope what so ever of winning in the United States. That country is being centralized by multinationals. Not even the state and local governments can fight effectively against outsourcing.
One way to fight is to fight defensively, by expanding the size of the community in China, France, Germany, Japan and India. You might as well move a few steps ahead, because in the USA the fight is lost already.
The battle is for decentralization of the market is going to be more important in the future because of software automation.
Perens should burn that bridge (OO.o) and work on the long term future.
Howabout not using Open Office, X, Gnome, KDE, Apache and a lot of other software.
I guess that is what Perens really means since he doesn’t trust anything sun does….
Idiot!
That’s true, in fact the community should go straight to the Chinese government and make a deal regarding the building of a brand new IT industry based on the community having rights to the software that it produces.
The Chinese can produce the hardware and maybe some deal can be done with IBM as well. Let’s drop these turkeys (Microsoft, Sun, Dell). There is no need for them, they are just out to get control over everything.
The other thing is, the reason why IBM works is because it stays vendor neutral, it supports the community, it does business, but it is a solution provider for big business, and that’s not a problem.
China is the fastest growing economy in the world. That’s why you can depend on it, along with a few others like Germany, France, and maybe Canada.
In a deal with China, the community is actually a type of infrastructure. Laying the foundation of this infrastructure is of crutial importance, because this infrastructure has to be able to support information technology of the future. I see much more autonomic systems populating this infrastructure, so it’s not just about people, like it is now. Autonomic systems (agents) will be an extension of people, so that individual people can have more power. Writing a few million lines of code will not be out of reach for an individual.
I think that America has lost it’s way, and now the control is in the hands of multinationals. It’s their decision, the ball is in their hands. There has to be some level of decentralization, that means giving up power. The current IT industry isn’t worth two cents. It’s really a waste of time learning .Net, Java, Mono, etc. It’a all crap. They are worker assembly lines, hardly interesting.
Nobody really tries to figure out where the real value is from my point of view and base an industry on that fundamental. Yet when you don’t do that, the problem gets worse, you suffer more, not less.
“Americans are about the most un democratic nation on this planet. And you know what – they hate it when foreignors point out this truth to them.”
Since your comment was reviewed and not moderated down, i’m going to have to ask you to give me examples of democratic nations.
I never made this comment but I’ll respond. America is becoming centralized, it’s changing. What made America great what decentralization, a republic, a democracy. It’s almost no more. When the middle class is whiped out, than power is in the control of an oligarchy.
Freedom is not exclusive to America.
Freedom is in the hands of the people, it’s in the hands of the community, as far as IT is concerned.
Big business like Microsoft is anti american. If you don’t believe me than support Microsoft, but I warn you, you better sure has hell be a millionaire….like me.
Bruce Perens made one mistake, he didn’t go through IBM. If he wants UserLinux to succeed, than he has to talk to IBM. All I’m saying, is that if he doesn’t want to do that, than he should talk to China.
Could we ban this (By Anonymous (IP: —.cg.shawcable.net)) guy. He is just flooding the comment section with nonsense.
“Bruce Perens made one mistake, he didn’t go through IBM. If he wants UserLinux to succeed, than he has to talk to IBM. All I’m saying, is that if he doesn’t want to do that, than he should talk to China.”
Highly likely IBM has about as much use for Bruce Perens as a submarine does with screen windows and patio doors. As a matter of fact Mr. Perens would probably stand a lot better chance of success with his distro, if he would learn to bite his tongue.
Quote:
“Most Americans value the idea of “power to the people”, and cherrish democracy.”
Jeff – I do agree with you here. I know the average American wants proper democracy, and is disgusted and frustrated with the current problems. I like Americans, don’t get me wrong. The people are fine, I have several American friends and they’re grand people. But what I here from them is that they’d never move back to America (from Australia), the corporate/political nature is crud in the US and uncaring of the average person, and they truly believe that they have NO ability to change it. The power for the average person to establish change has long been removed.
Dave
Quote:
“Since your comment was reviewed and not moderated down, i’m going to have to ask you to give me examples of democratic nation”
Truth be told – none are. No goverment is truly democratic, and that is our true social failing. I know what the reality is, and I detest it. I was brought up that there’s wrong and right. No grey in between. We see governments all over the world playing politics in the grey section, without a care or thought for the people that voted them in. Politicians are the representatives of the people, and are responsible to the people. I’m sure if you read the US constitution it says that, not ‘representatives of the business’ etc etc…
Dave
Man! This thread has degenerated into communist talking points utopia.
America is headed fast for military dictatorship, it’s not a far turn to communism.
And I really mean it. America is very close to becomming a communist country, and there is no stopping it. You just wait and see.
Just because some comments legitimately criticise Democracies failings does not a bunch of Communists make.
The World Democratic situation is floundering and no not only the politicians are to blame but the people who vote them in. If there is one thing (and only 1 thing) I like about what Putin is trying to do in Russia is keep Corporations hands of politics. Unfortunately this leads to business/corporations crying unfair and that he is creating a dictatorship. The jury is out on that one but it is time, like a few hundred years before with religion, for the separation of state from corporations.
Political parties need to be cleansed from contributions from business and corporate entities and private contributions must be limited to amounts that are affordable by the magority of the constituancy. Only then will you get parties representing everyone on a fair footing.
Now back on topic, if you don’t like what Sun is doing then either fork OO or use another FOSS Office Suite. I would be happy to pay a small fee to own a OO version which I can use on any platform I like. Something you will not see with Microsoft Office. Also remember that Sun is paying for a lot of development of OO so some returns on investment can be expected. Nothing is always free.
I think I’d judge the strenght of a country by the strength of it’s middle class. The American middle class is being sold out. It’s a very dire situation, and it’s being ignored. I think that multinationals guilty of centralization.
I don’t think we have time to figure out this problem, but other countries out there might be able to take the lead in the world economy. The United States is a dump, and it is rapidly driving itself into the ground. Maybe China or Russia can lead the world to better things.
I wish that China and Germany would step up right now and take leadership over FOSS…protect it against dictators.
What can lead the world to change is YOU. Stop complaining. You all complain about “outsourcing” all that really is is globalization. Deal with it. Nothing is stopping you militant nerds from moving into the woods and forming your own governments like most of the state of Montana and Wyoming is doing. You need internet access? Go wireless. Stop whining about the US because you all realize now that this is Capitalism not democracy.
Perens is right, GPL to protect your ideas and benefit the greater good of man. On the other hand you shouldn’t be developing on Linux in the first place, the technology is old as hack (Monolithic Kernel bleh!) and develop with GNU/Mach and provide true GPL leadership. Noone knows what will become of linux, there’s lawsuits and IP protection from a number of companies and noone knows what’s going to happen. I say abandon Linux and go with the HURD project if all you militant nerds are so hardcore.
Staroffice will never make it anywhere except into Communist nations like China where they trust noone. Do you want to associate yourselves with a country like that? Where you can’t even say what you believe or read anything that is considered “un holy” by the government.
I think all you people are just angry about the war on drugs in the US. That’s why you are so angry about the US government. Tell you the truth there’s more than enough things to worry about than you pot heads. Wake up.
4) Now i see why it the sentence in the Sun / MS deal makes sense. Because people transfer copyright to Sun whereas Sun and MS have a non-agression pact it means people could just use patented technologies in OO.o and use Sun as a safe harbor.
Exactly. The new buzzword for SUN is fence sitting while this is precisely what the open source wackos (note, not everyone involved in open source) are doing. You cannot have your cake and eat it too.
Also, Anonymous (IP: —.cg.shawcable.net), the US is not a democracy, it is a constitutional republic. Most people forget that in a democracy, 50.0001% of the population can tell the other 49.9999% what to do. Democracy doesn’t look so free when you put it in that perspective, does it. You make very ridiculous claims, wanting to move software development to a country that is practically a dictatorship (China) and you have no idea about how its government operates. You also claim that IBM, the megacorporation that has more patents then anyone else in the computer industry and is more than willing to flex that muscle when need be, should take control, completely forgetting IBM’s past. I laugh every time someone thinks that IBM is the knight in shining armor. Needless to say, my throat has become very sore. Forgive my off topic remarks, but I cannot stand to see such blatant stupidity and/or ignorance.
American multinationals are moving IT to India. I never said that America was democracy. I say that it’s becoming a dictatorship because it’s losing it’s middle class.
…you are stupid, because you need your ass chopped off before you realize that there is a problem. Well, you’ll see!
Bangalore India is bigger than Silicon Valley, it’s the IT capital of the world. This is where American multinationals are moving their investment. Go ahead and support Microsoft you morons, what you are really supporting is the Indian middle class, at the expense of your own middle class.
…that means that your standard of living goes down. You might have to ask permission before you take a piss in a few years and maybe than you’ll understand that your trust and weakness for big business created a dictatorship.
Spending > 170 billion on Iraq doesn’t help the American economy either.You pay tax to get your son,daughter,father,brother shot Abroad. 🙁
If sun won’t extend the benefits of its deal with microsoft to those who code for OpenOffice then Sun/StarOffice should not benefit from the code contributed to OpenOffice…
tit for tat
quid pro quo
The idea that opensource people would willingly use OpenOffice to engage in patent violations hoping for protection from Sun is sheer paranoid insanity. Only a deranged mind can twist things that far. OpenOffice has *finally* started succeeding in gaining additional outside opensource hackers-in it took a long time for it to become something more than a sun-sponsored opensource project. Now that opensource developers have invested the time and energy to begin unravelling the mess of OpenOffice code and contribute to it-they are being exposed to potential patent liabilities whereas StarOffice is not exposed. Personally I sincerely doubt that Microsoft would egage in any kind of patent action against OpenOffice hackers/developers-Microsoft has no real record of doing such. But the notion that the now-turned-friendly relationship between Sun and Microsoft extends an indemnity to all things Sun but not to those projects which Sun initaited and still actively supports is shere nonsense-particularly if it is because of some supposed ‘opensource’ danger-which is what this entire agreement stinks of.
Groklaw has an excellent take on all this:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040928103850110
>> It was May of 2003 when Sun and Red Hat entered into a “global partnership agreement” and Sun put out a glowing press release about their new life together, their President Jonathan Schwartz, then executive vice president, saying this:
“The combination of Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Sun’s x86 systems affirms our commitment to the open source community. This relationship is the first of many efforts we expect to drive together with Red Hat on the Linux and Java front. . . .The combination of Java and Linux gives customers a compelling, cost-effective, and reliable alternative to proprietary offerings from Microsoft.”
Sun said that the partnership represented its commitment to open source, so what does it mean when that same man only a year or so later, says Sun is going after Red Hat, that Red Hat is a proprietary company, and that Red Hat is Sun’s enemy? We read articles that begin, “Sun and Microsoft are using a common strategy to attack a common enemy–Red Hat.”
The plan reportedly is that both companies will attack Linux by attacking Red Hat. Schizo Sun will also sell Linux to anyone confused enough to buy it from a declared enemy. And, in fact, Sun’s attacks on Red Hat have begun, in a blog war.<<
First Sun are great partners with Red Hat and Sun sings their praises. A year later Sun completely turns on Red Hat and declares them public enemy number one. Anyone thinking about doing business with Sun has to look at that kind of untrustworthy behavior and decide not to take their chances with Sun, and consider another vendor/partner.
How can anyone, particularily ISVs, business partners, and especially customers (established or potential), trust Sun? Looking at Sun’s Red Hat treatment, and looking at how they are schizo about open sourcing Java and/or Solaris, and look at how they hate MS one minute then love ’em when their paid off the next minuts, it would be unbelievably stupid for any wise business person to choose to do business with Sun.
And now Sun is throwing OO.o developers and users out the window of a speeding car.
It’s not just “ungrateful open source zealot loonies” that are not trusting Sun, it’s smart business people.
First Sun are great partners with Red Hat and Sun sings their praises. A year later Sun completely turns on Red Hat and declares them public enemy number one. Anyone thinking about doing business with Sun has to look at that kind of untrustworthy behavior and decide not to take their chances with Sun, and consider another vendor/partner.
Unfortunately that’s the nature of business. Whether or not RedHat and SUN have had partnerships in the past, it does not mean that they will stop competing for the same customers.
Though if in fact SUN is willing to pull tactics such as the once speculated here, and elsewhere, they will be in for a rude awakening. Still though I have faith in SUN, and highly doubt they will turn into yet another SCO.
“Unfortunately that’s the nature of business. Whether or not RedHat and SUN have had partnerships in the past, it does not mean that they will stop competing for the same customers. “
Fortunately, it is also the nature of businesses that go out of business (unless they have a monopoly like MS).
Businesses that are consistent with their customers and partners, that deliver good products and services, that treat their customers and partners with respect, tend to thrive.
There is nothing wrong with competing for customers. But Sun has gone way beyond that. They brought in Red Hat as a partner, then threw them out the window and made them public enemy number one once they got their settlement with MS. Yeah, that’s just the nature of business, but it looks incredibly bad to potential partners and customers – to know that your potential vendor or partner will likely stab your back.
In spite of what Harvard MBAs are taught, and in spirte of what staunch conservative capitalists say, there is still room in today’s business world for honor, ethics, and integrity.
Southwest airlines is an excellent example. They are one of only two profitable airlines right now, and they are known for how good they treat their customers, vendors, and employees. They are thriving in the toughest of business climates (the plumeting of the airline industry) with great business honor, ethics, and integrity.
The lesson is that we consumers (and IT people) have power. We can choose to use products that are from a vendor that does practice good business ethics. Unfortunately, Sun is not a vendor such as this.
Harvard MBAs (like any of university student) are brainwashed. They are taught that ‘this is the acceptable way that society wants’, not ‘this is the right way’. I was actually thinking about this yesterday and realised that the whole tertiary education system is a joke. It’s funny, having an accountant that can’t manually add up (consistently and accurately) without a computer/calculator is a worrying thing. But such is life. University students are taught the way to act/work that will bring them the *most* money. Not the most honesty, integrity, morality etc. Dr.s take the hyppocratic oath, which is basically to value life above everything else. How come they won’t operate on you unless you have money (especially true in the very sad US medical system). mmm? If they valued life more than anything else, they’d say ‘screw the money, let’s open him/her up and fix em’. Nooooooo….
I’ve seen university kids fresh of out uni and their nice shiny computer sciences degree and they know jack shit. Makes me wonder what they’re being taught in university. A case in point – a friend completed such a degree and was taught nothing about networking layers etc etc. Rather worrying. Networking layers are a basic fundamental that one would expect a professionally trained IT staff to understand and know. The system is broken, has been broken for a while and will remain broken until it reaches critical mass. Then all hell will break loose. You can all scoff at me now, but in a hundred years (or less) you’re grandchildren will be knowing what it’s all about…
But, back on topic, Sun cares nothing for anyone other than itself. Microsoft was a sworn enemy because of the lawsuit, now with that settled their best buddies, like nothing with any animosity ever occurred before…Sun took up being a buddy with Redhat because it was:
1. sitting on the fence
2. the best thing it could do in lieu of no buddyship with Microsoft.
Now, Microsoft buddyish was preferred, because let’s face it, it’s nice to hang around a monopolist, cos it’s guaranteed to end up throwing money your way. But since the suit is now over and settled, the 2nd best Redhat is chucked out the window (can I say that without infringing on Microsofts bullshit copyright on the word) in favour of the no. 1 Microsoft…
Dave
>Anyway, i rather read Perens his original view than a few quotes taken out
>of context. Anyone got a link? I couldn’t find it on Technocrat.net or
>Perens.com.
Perens made the comments directly to vnunet.com, after I asked him what he thought about the Sun-Microsoft deal and its implications to OpenOffice.
If you believe I took things out of context, go look for a comment by Perens himself where he states so on one of the many open source discussion boards. You will find him commenting on this story, but not claiming I took things out of context. If you make accusations, make sure you can back them up.
>anyone know relationship berween “Linux Insider” and Vnunet ?
LinuxInsider purchased the copy from vnunet.com. The article was origainlly written for vnunet.com.
>© 2004 VNUNet.com. All rights reserved.
>© 2004 ECT News Network. All rights reserved.
>) They’re lying about the above; e.g. not copyrighted by the above, slightly
>edited.
>2) The above companies are accountable for the article’s text; not
>Linuxinsider.com.
ad 1:edited versions of text are copyrighted too.
ad 2: Linuxinsider.com is a subsidiary of ECT News Network.