[Libreoffice] FYI: Latest Oracle move wrt to OpenOffice.org

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 2:37 PM, BRM <bm_witness at yahoo.com> wrote:
> ---- Original Message ----
>
>> From: Norbert Thiebaud <nthiebaud at gmail.com>
>> Oracle  announce:
>>
>>http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/statements-on-openofficeorg-contribution-to-apache-nasdaq-orcl-1521400.htm
>>m
>>
>> IBM  is very happy to be able to continue Symphony without having to
>> give code  back... (they seems to rejoyce at being able to do selective
>> GPL: i.e what is  yours is mine... but what is mine is yours only for
>> the peice I don't care  about and would like you to maintain  instead):
>>http://www.edbrill.com/ebrill/edbrill.nsf/dx/openoffice-moving-to-apache-good-news-for-the-desktop-productivity-market
>>t
>> "The  new project at Apache strengthens IBM's ability to continue to
>> offer our own  distributions of productivity tools based on the
>> OpenOffice code base and  make our own contributions to reinforce the
>> overall community. "
>>
>
> FYI - LGPL/GPL does not _require_ that code be contributed back to the
> _community_. Projects work best when that happens, but that is not a
> requirement.
> The _requirement_ is that the code be accessible to those that the project is
> being distributed to - e.g. end-users.
And with Apache License that requirement is gone...

>
> In the case of IBM, a user of Symphony would have been able to ask for the code
> and IBM would have had to provide it per LGPL/GPL if that were the license.
> It does not mean that IBM would have had to contribute back to LibreOffice,
> OpenOffice, or anyone else.

But that is _not_ the license, and with Apache License they would not
have to make it available at ALL to anybody... just as is the case
with their proprietary OO fork today.
Hence the Enthusiastic blog campaign that flourished from IBMers in
the minutes/hours following the public announcement of Oracle's intend
to dump OpenOffice.org in Apache's lap.

But that's fine, IBM is free to conduct their business they way they
want, as long as there is no doubt in anybody's mind that that latest
Oracle' move has nothing to do with 'unifying/strengthening the
'community', but everything to do with Oracle's contractual obligation
to IBM and IBM desire to continue their proprietary fork.

"OpenOffice.org version 1.1.4 was dual licensed under both the GNU
Lesser General Public License and Sun's own SISSL, which allowed for
entities to change the code without releasing their changes.
Therefore, IBM does not have to release the source code of Symphony."
source: http://ibm-lotus-symphony.software.informer.com/wiki/

If anybody in unconvinced why copyright assignment or Apache-like
full-copyright-license-no-string-attached are evil the quote above
should settle that.

Norbert