Oracle To Give OpenOffice.org To Apache Incubator

Julie188 writes "Oracle has finally officially spilled the beans: It's proposing OpenOffice.org as an Apache Incubator project — and not handing it to The Document Foundation. Oracle had announced earlier this year that it would be passing the torch to the community, but failed to provide any specifics about the ultimate destination. The Document Foundation is the organization behind the OpenOffice fork, LibreOffice."

Re:Choices are good, but...

[stating_the_obvious]

If they do merge, it'll be Apache incubator giving up and joining TDF. TDF already announced that they were going forward regardless of Oracle's actions regarding giving OO back of the community. TDF welcomes all new members -- including Apache Incubator.

At this point, TDF/LO is a stronger horse to back -- they've shown they can organize the community, and the software is (arguably) more willing to accept improvements that OO didn't (perhaps because Oracle was still working to find a way to monetize some aspect of OO)

Re:ORACLE

[RazzleFrog]

There are very few companies who don't use some Oracle product - whether it is their database, their eBusiness Suite, Hyperion, or Java. People don't realize how much they are impacted by Oracle.

Re:Let it die

[VortexCortex]

I suspect rather that Oracle didn't have the ability, willingness, or the guts to revise the source code licensing/assignment restrictions put in place by Sun Microsystems. And maybe they would have liked to, but could not legally resolve the assignments with a change to a more open license.

No. Contributors to OO.org had to assign their copyright to Sun/Oracle [openoffice.org], EXPRESSLY SO THEY COULD EASILY change the source code license at will...

LibreOffice does not require any copyright assignment [documentfoundation.org], so if they want to switch licenses they better do it before it becomes infeasible to request permission from all the copyright holding contributors. FTFAQ:

Q: What difference will The Document Foundation make to developers?

A: The Document Foundation sets out deliberately to be as developer friendly as possible. We do not demand that contributors share their copyright with us. People will gain status in our community based on peer evaluation of their contributions - not by who their employer is.

Source code can only flow one way, from OO.org to LibreOffice / Document foundation, not vise versa. OO.org has a disadvantage: Their competitor (LO) can gobble up their codebase, but OO.org can not -- Well, depending on if you can get the developer to assign copyright. (Haven't cared to read the new Apache license for OO.org, but if it still requires assignment, they're toast).