On 31/03/2011 05:48, aqualung wrote: > Got a couple of questions. > > (1) I heard that OpenOffice is restricted from re-using code from > LibreOffice because Oracle insists on broader licenses than LO developers > are willing to give, but the reverse is not true. So, from this aspect LO > can only get stronger while OOo stagnates. Is this accurate? > As I understand it, this is more or less true though it is mainly due to copyright assignments that Oracle insist on but that LibreOffice will not grant. > > (2) According to what I've read so far, most of the work to create and > maintain OpenOffice was done by a team of developers originally working for > StarOffice, later bought by Sun, in turn bought by Oracle. Outside > volunteers working without pay contributed only a small portion of the code. > This is certainly true, but let me say right now that it was definitely the right way to work! I suggested and to some extent drove a change to Impress to allow free-motion movement paths for objects. Sun - this was before the Oracle takeover - were quite happy to let me see code and to suggest changes and even where in the code they might be made. But to be honest, the code was such a tangled and complex mess that I would have needed months of work just going through code before I even tried to change a single command.
I am slightly concerned that, even now, there is a damn good chance the code for LibreOffice is still much the same tangled (and uncommented) mess. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to [email protected] Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
