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

On 18 October 2011 09:15, Charles-H. Schulz <
charles.schulz@documentfoundation.org> wrote:

> 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.

Which is a consideration everyone should take seriously. There is a clear
philosophical issue there. On the other hand, if you want a standard like
.odf to proliferate as widely as possible - a real goal for marketing...
 Apple has spread the BSD code more than desktop GNU/Linux from all the
distros.

> 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.

Well you can re-use the code, but not maintaining a copy left license.


> One contributor here would have to specifically relicence its code back
> into
> Apache to make that work.


Only one? I thought it would be several?

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.

True, still quite a lot to do but with the number of people working on it,
it's going to happen at some time.

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.

But what really matters is the developers working on the project and most of
them have experience not only of developing end-user software, but OOo. The
Apache structure is quite different from the old OOo organisation so it will
take time to optimise in the new environment. The good thing is that it
appears to be a lot more flexible so I'd say given time it will be an
improvement rather than make things worse from a management point of view.
Marketing is a bit of a void at the moment but there is work on that
beginning.

-- 
Ian

Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications (The Schools ITQ)

www.theINGOTs.org +44 (0)1827 305940

The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth,
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