Re: [libreoffice-users] i have questions about licensing in libreoffice.

On 04/17/2017 09:01 AM, nasrin khaksar wrote:
> i heard sometimes that openoffice license is license of oracle company.

Oracle purchased Sun. That purchase included the trademarks, copyrights,
and other intellectual property rights held by OpenOffice.org.

After a couple of years, Oracle donated OpenOffice.org, including
trademarks, copyright, and other intellectual property rights to The
Apache Software Foundation.

Which means that Oracles does owns neither Apache Open Office nor
OpenOffice.org.

However, Oracle does own Java, which is used by both LibreOffice and
Apache Open Office.  Given a couple of somewhat bizarre legal theories,
supported by, what shall be termed "interesting' court decisions, an
extremely shaky legal theory can be made that Oracle owns both
LibreOffice, and Apache Open Office. As much as I'd like to think that
Oracle has persuaded itself that ownership of FLOSS is not possible, I
wouldn't put it past them to be willing to squander away a trillion or
so dollars, in lawsuits to assert ownership of LibreOffice, Apache
OpenOffice, and other FLOSS software that it finds either inconvenience,
or a potential cash cow.

> is it true?

There is an apocryphal story of a first legal intern being told examine
a software license. In researching the license, he asked: "Is there any
way, shape, or form, in which Oracle can assert control of the
software?" Upon being told that Oracle was purchasing the company that
made the software whose license was being analysed, the intern said; "I
can not recommend accepting this license, because it will depend upon
Oracle. As an Oracle license, all terms and conditions are subject to
their specific interpretation, which usually comes down to: "All your
bases, they belong to us".  Said intern was dully blacklisted by the
company. A decade later, one of the members of the board of directors
found himself across the dinner table from said intern. The member told
the intern that his prediction about what Oracle would do, turned out to
be valid, with disastrous consequences to the company.

jonathon


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