Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Glyn Moody's article

Hello,

2011/10/17 webmaster for Kracked Press Productions <
webmaster@krackedpress.com>

> The big thing about "The Apache Way" is they want to own the code our
> volunteers have worked on for the past year.
>
> I wonder how many of these people are willing to hand over their
> copyrights?


I don't think you have to hand over your copyrights at ASF; but the licence
allows anyone to take your contribution and turn it into proprietary
software.


> Also, since there is a move to replace Java coding with Python coding as
> the code base is cleaned out of unneeded and "bad" coding.  Does that mean
> that Apache's OOo project will not be able to us the code LO people create,
> even if they will allow the code owners to keep their copyrights?

There are two different questions, here, one about copyrights and the other
one about language. On copyright and licence the situation is clear: At
Apache you can't reuse our code legally as their licence does not allow it.
One contributor here would have to specifically relicence its code back into
Apache to make that work. When it comes to language it's somewhat different.
I understand that the two codebases are growing more and more different and
it is a wrong idea to think that now, in the last quarter of 2011, you can
just "plug out and plug in" code chunks from and to each of the suites.  By
the way, AOO has not yet been released anyway.



> What happens to all the open-source code that was part of OOo before it was
> converted to The Apache Way?



The hallowed parts went to the Cloud, the damned ones went to Azure :p

More seriously: I don't really understand your question. Part of the OOo
code was not under the Oracle copyright and this code cannot be relicensed,
therefore they (Apache) have to rewrite all of these parts.



> Since they seems to say that all that code no longer is owned by those who
> wrote it, but now are the propriety of Apache?  Will it be still allowed for
> LO to use that code base,


Yes in theory, but keep in mind the two codebases are diverging.



> until we modify it with the Python and other new coding standards LO are
> working towards?  I do not like the idea that a company could take
> open-source copyrighted code by others, and state that they now owe the code
> and the copyrights to it.

But what really happened in this specific case was that contributors to the
Openoffice.org project (the real one, the one that's gone now) were to
submit their copyrighted assignements to Sun, then when Sun got bought it
was acquired by Oracle, and now Oracle has agreed to transfer it over to the
Apache Software Foundation and based on their licensing regime other players
can reuse it to make proprietary software. Now if you personally don't feel
comfortable with the terms of the Apache licence I would hint that you are
precisely in the right project (LibreOffice) :-) .


> The software listed in the linked article, that are Apache products touted
> to be successful with The Apache Way, are once I never heard of.  I use to
> look for every free software out there for Windows users.



Most of the software listed is not enduser software, actually. In fact it is
interesting to note that Apache does not develop end-user software, and
Apache OpenOffice would be their first one.



>  I still do some times.  I never heard of these in all my searches, so
> their success is something that I cannot agree with.  You search for free
> software and LO comes up many places.  Those I never found.


Best,

Charles.


> On 10/17/2011 11:17 AM, Charles-H. Schulz wrote:
>
> > Glyn was invited in Paris at the Libreoffice conference, and here's his
> > article:
> > http://blogs.computerworlduk.**com/open-enterprise/2011/10/**
> > libreoffice-openofficeorg-and-**open-standard-office-suites/**index.htm<http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2011/10/libreoffice-openofficeorg-and-open-standard-office-suites/index.htm>
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > Charles.
>
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