Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Re: Numbers of devs working on LibreOffice and AOO

> "That never happened"?  Where are you posting your message Ian? :-)


It never happened in the context of early OOo backed by Sun and with the
support of Sun. Perhaps I should have been clearer.


> What
> do you think the LibreOffice project's goal were and are?


I know that.

The only
> reason we now have an Apache OO project is that Oracle and IBM worked
> out a deal that suits them, but didn't suit the largest majority of the
> community. You are thus right to point out that AOO is not really
> different from Sun in the earlier days of OOo: that project is
> controlled or has a majority of developers and contributors coming from
> one corporate sponsor. We could all live with that for several years,
> but ultimately we saw the consequences of such a choice, and decided to
> move on.

That is obviously a perspective that has some substance but it is not the
only perspective and there are some very significant differences in the way
ASF works when compared to Sun but really all that is beside the point
since AOO exists and is unlikely to go away any time soon.

> What makes me nervous, is that all this is done with the complacent
> > > supervision of ASF mentors, who perfectly know the situation and hide
> > > the issue with statements about a "diverse" development project.
> >
> > All mentors can do is apply the "Apache Way" in the particular
> > circumstances. PPMC members vote in committers and many, probably the
> great
> > majority of current commiters are nothing to do with IBM.
>
>
> I disagree. Just look at the list of committers and you will see that a
> sizeable chunk of them work for IBM. That list of committers is
> published on the Apache wiki, if I'm not mistaken.

I just took a look and to be honest I don't know the exact proportions but
there are plenty of names I recognise as nothing to do with IBM. But again
really that makes no difference really. The source code is going to be
developed and under an Apache license pretty well anyone is free to do what
they want with it.

> They could vote
> > against IBM staffers becoming committers but I don't think that is
> likely.
> > Most will see that the value of the additional engineering resource
> coupled
> > to the Apache Way out-weighs any disadvantage of having potential
> influence
> > on the direction of development from IBM. Anyone is free to fork the code
> > base produced.
>
> Yes, and so we (LibreOffice) did do that even before we had to ask the
> question about IBM and Apache OO. Problem solved from our end, although
> it's important to remember that IBM and anybody else is welcome to join
> the LibreOffice project.

I think all are aware of that. That is why I say its not really worth
arguing about. We are where we are and there are two development forks with
different licenses and reasons for attracting different community members.
Some will be firmly in one camp others on the other and others in both.

> Anyway, as soon as AOO will graduate, we will know the number of these
> > > hidden developers. What does not change is the number of commits.
> > >
> > > We should stick with Ohloh figures, because they are independent from
> > > both projects, and reflect the actual reality.
> > >
> > > I would also avoid speculations on AOO hidden developers, because this
> > > is their problem and not our problem.
> >
> > The only real problem is a splitting of resources into 2 code bases so
> > quite a bit of overlapping duplication of effort. That is just a fact of
> > life since it seems impossible to resolve the licensing issues.
>
> I tend to be more optimistic that you on this, but I'm still young and
> learning...

Well, maybe LibO will decide to adopt code from AOO because the license
lets that happen. I don't see much chance of the opposite because of the
licensing. But who knows. The most likely reason for either project dying
is more likely an outside factor like the world migrating to the web and
neither responding quickly enough than either taking over the other.

> > Personally
> > I hope both projects can maximise the number of developers because within
> > the internal political constraints it provides the most resource into the
> > FOSS ecosystem.
>
> You might add as well that a keyword in the future will be the
> differentiation in terms of products and codebases.

I hope so, it would be rather sad to just get two things that were
competing clones of each other with no obvious significant practical
differences. I just found AOO Draw to be a lot more svg compatible than
previous versions of LibO or OOo I have used so for me that is a plus if
this sort of enhancement gets accelerated in either code base.

-- 
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,
Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and
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