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

[Dennis E. Hamilton]

I am not going to get into a debate about what is bad, good, and better with regard to different open-source licenses.  

It is my desire to give the recipients of my code all of the rights that I have, and have them know that they have those rights, subject to the requirement for attribution.  That's my sense of community. 

 I am a Creative Commons Attribution kind of guy.  I am the same way with my code (BSD generally but the Apache 2.0 CLA is all right with me).  It's my lawful right, and I am happy with it.  I'm also satisfied that both modified BSD and Apache 2.0 are considered GPL-compatible by the FSF.  

 - Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: Norbert Thiebaud [mailto:nthiebaud at gmail.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, June 01, 2011 17:05
To: dennis.hamilton at acm.org
Cc: libreoffice at lists.freedesktop.org
Subject: Re: [Libreoffice] FYI: Latest Oracle move wrt to OpenOffice.org

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 5:51 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton <dennis.hamilton at acm.org> wrote:
> I also notice that the Apache CLA is not a copyright assignment, it is 
> simply a non-exclusive license with the usual attestation that I have 
> the right to grant the license and it is my original work.  (Patch 
> contributions apparently don't even require a CLA, but committers do.)  
> One could make the same contribution to both an Apache project and 
> LibreOffice, although it takes more work.  For individual contributors such as myself:
> <http://www.apache.org/licenses/icla.txt>
>
>
>
> So, in that regard, it is not like the transfer that I understand 
> Sun/Oracle required for contributions to OO.o.

That is incorrect. the Sun/Oracle Ccontributor Agreement stipulate a 'join' ownership. http://www.openoffice.org/licenses/oca.pdf

It is essentially the same thing, except that in turn Apache grant license to everybody to do what-ever they want with the code (i.e not
copy-left)
whereas Sun/Oracle where doing that only to a select few of their choosing.

So, from a Third-Party Closed License perspective Apache License is 'better'... but from a 'community' point of view it is just as bad.

Norbert