[ooo-build] Do you consider Go-oo project to be a fork of OpenOffice.org?
espinosa_cz
espinosa_cz at centrum.cz
Wed Sep 29 17:39:19 PDT 2010
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
More information about the ooo-build
mailing list