Re: [Libreoffice] Proposal to join Apache OpenOffice

Hi Allen,

On Sat, 2011-06-04 at 09:08 -0400, Allen Pulsifer wrote:
> If we wait however, we risk being locked out.

        That is what Rob's blog tries to imply. My conversations with various
key Apache leaders suggest that, on the contrary, their governance will
-never- lock people out; it is guaranteed to be open to all
contributors. Ergo - there will always be a place for new guys to be
come committers, PMC members etc.

        Indeed, the incubation cannot succeed without a level of diversity that
only LibreOffice has currently.

> So if you sign up now, it is no risk and no obligation.

        The risk is, that we give credibility to an incredibly divisive move,
and loose the clarity and unity we have currently around rejecting this
hostile action :-) Beyond that I agree.

> They will be contributing some, and holding back some to use only
> in their proprietary products.  The TDF community can do exactly
> the same thing--it can contribute some, while holding back some
> for LibreOffice only.

        The problem is, that very much of our work is inter-dependent, and we
want people to be able to work all over the code, cleaning, translating
and fixing it. It would suck giant rocks (through a straw) to say:

        "no copy-left lovers need think of working on X Y or Z
         big pieces of the code - since we want to license
         changes to these on to IBM (via Apache)" :-)

        At least - I don't want to just push the division down into the
code-base, excluding people from lots of it (and of course throwing away
our changes to those pieces).

> So what I would like to see is an many LibreOffice people at the
> table as possible.  If possible, I would like to see LibreOffice
> people dominating the Apache OpenOffice community to get as much
> out of the project as we can.

        My feeling is that incubator / 'initial committers' lists aside, the
people doing the work will get the positions of authority: whatever Rob
suggests to try to encourage people to sign up now.

> But the time to jump in is now.  We can't wait.

        I have entirely the opposite view; it would be unfortunate to get
involved now - and send an unhelpful message; still - everyone should do
as they think best.

        Thanks :-)

                Michael.

-- 
 michael.meeks@novell.com  <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot