Re: [Libreoffice] Proposal to join Apache OpenOffice

On 04.06.2011 6:06, Allen Pulsifer wrote:
> Among
> other requirements, the podling project has to review the copyright history
> of all code to ensure it has a clean "title" and is or can be licensed under
> the Apache License.
A lurker is speaking here.

AFAIU, one of the reasons why Go-Openoffice split from OOo, and why it 
merged back with LO later was copyright policy that forced all 
developers to give up copyright to Sun and let Sun release proprietary 
versions of OOo. AFAICS, LO does not have that requirement (plain LGPL, 
no strings attached), which is why, i presume, other OOo forks merged 
with it.
Would developers of these forks split away from LO again now? Or will LO 
remain independent, committing only *parts* of its new code (from 
authors that are not opposed to Apache License) to ASF, while also 
keeping its own LGPL-only changes and their developers as well? I know 
that this can be technically done, and is legally sound, but the cost of 
juggling with a large number of patches (that might become incompatible 
with OOo as its development goes forward) might be too great.
H-m-m-m...OTOH, joining ASF and contributing to OOo there might entitle 
TDF members to preserve OOo-LO compatibility. That is, make sure that 
OOo doesn't get code that breaks LO's own LGPL-only patches simply out 
of spite. On the third hand, this might not work very well for some 
things, as OOo might get its own implementations of LO's LGPL-only 
features, and these will be, obviously, mutually exclusive.

I am not a OOo/LO developer, and i haven't been lurking long, but i 
would really like to see LO thriving, and i am very concerned.