[ooo-build] Do you consider Go-oo project to be a fork of OpenOffice.org?

[espinosa_cz]

Dear Go-oo developers,
Do you consider Go-oo project, your project, to be a fork of OpenOffice.org?

General public opinion seems to be quite sure and general perception is 
that it is a fork or at least branch; considering Go-oo as fork is 
matter of habit for most forum speakers.

My stance same is – Go-oo is a patchset, with a lively community, 
providing own build, forums, but still it is primarily a patchset. I 
would consider a bed news for whole open-source community if such 
important project would fork.

Wikipedia is inconsistent here. This does not help.

In OpenOffice.org Wikipedia entry 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org) is clearly stated that 
Go-oo is fork (details below).

In Go-oo Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go-oo) is however:
Go-oo .. is a concentrated set of patches for the cross-platform 
OpenOffice.org office suite.

Details from OpenOffice.org Wikipedia entry 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org):
[citation]
Although branded as OpenOffice.org, the office suite included in most 
Linux distributions (including Ubuntu, openSUSE and Mandriva Linux) is 
actually a fork or an unofficial branch called Go-oo.[citation end]

Are there any better articles on that topic? If yes, they should be 
added and replace the weaker existing.

My reaction in “talk” page 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:OpenOffice.org):
[citation]
Go-oo is a patchset. Full stop. Go-oo team is committed to upstream the 
changes and they upmerge changes from official (Oracle driven) OO.o 
source. Therefore they are not a fork. Please check the Go-oo article 
they have it right there. There is NO official source (Go-oo site 
preferably) suggesting we are a fork. Even the links provided are not 
suggesting that or are of a questionable quality.

I am suggesting to change the offending sentence: Although branded as 
OpenOffice.org, the office suite included in most Linux distributions 
(including Ubuntu, openSUSE and Mandriva Linux) is actually a fork or an 
unofficial branch called Go-oo.[9][10][11] to Application branded as 
OpenOffice.org in most Linux distributions (including Ubuntu, openSUSE 
and Mandriva Linux) extensively use patchset called [Go-oo], sometimes 
arguably [9][10] considered to be a special branch of OpenOffice.org. 
Any comments on this? (2 May 2010)
[citation end]

Reply from jonathon (is it someone relevant from this community?):
[citation]
It is a fork because it excludes code from upstream, and includes code 
that will not be included upstream. It is called "a special branch", 
precisely because it is a fork, with different bugs, features, and 
functions. (13 August 2010)
[citation end]

I was most struck by this statement: “it [go-oo] excludes code from 
upstream”.
That completely breaks my go-oo perception.
The 2.3.1 go-oo is build on top of 2.3.1 vanilla OOo.
The 2.3.0 go-oo is build on top of 2.3.0 vanilla OOo etc.
Or do I miss something important here?

I somewhat see situation with go-oo and OpenOffice.org similar to Linux 
kernel. No distribution really use vanilla kernel but patched kernel 
using patches from existing patchsets and distribution own 
modifications. Similar is also that some kernel patches contains code 
never or hardly make it into the upstream (Suspend2/TuxOnIce, Colivas 
scheduler patches, proprietary drivers, various splash screens,..)

I intend to use reply to this post (if there are any) as a reference to 
Wikipedia.

Best Regards
Espinosa