On 10/06/11 17:02, Sam Ruby wrote:
*** Please change your Subject: line for any [DISCUSSION] of this [VOTE]
As the discussions on the OpenOfficeProposal threads seem to be winding
down, I would like to initiate the vote to accept OpenOffice.org as an
Apache Incubator project.
At the end of this mail, I've put a copy of the current proposal. Here
is a link to the document in the wiki:
http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/OpenOfficeProposal?action=recall&rev=207
As the proposal discussion threads are numerous, I encourage people to
scan and review the archives for this month:
http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-general/201106.mbox/browser
Please cast your votes:
[ ] +1 Accept OpenOffice.org for incubation
[ ] +0 Indifferent to OpenOffice.org incubation
[ ] -1 Reject OpenOffice.org for incubation
I may have missed the vote it being over a weekend and me not checking
my mail until work hours, but being in GMT0BST I think I'm still in
time. I've also read through the other votes to help shape my own.
-1 (non binding)
* This may not foster an OSS community -just split a growing one in a
way that benefits two large vendors (Oracle, IBM) rather than the world
as a whole. In particular, a large chunk of the ongoing LibreOffice team
are against this proposal, and I'd be happier being on good terms with
the rest of the OSS world than with anyone else.
* A code dump without the oracle engineering team is going to be a hard
thing to work with. If the majority of people who work on the ASF
codebase are IBM FTEs, the knowledge of the codebase doesn't spread, and
when IBM decide to re-assign the engineers (as has happened with Axis
and Harmony), the knowledge of the code will go away. Sanjiva can vouch
for that, having helped pick up the pieces of one of those projects (and
done a good job of it :)
* It's a mass-market consumer OSS project on a par with firefox, not the
developer-centric tooling or server-side platforms we've historically
been involved in. If my mother has a problem with OpenOffice on her
(Ubuntu 10.4) laptop, I can't tell her to download SVN trunk and debug
the problem then submit a patch, as she can't even get the font settings
right in Yahoo! mail to stop it sending emails out in Courier 36.
* Although it's key download bandwidth may be on Windows, it is the key
office-compatible platform in the Linux world, which is why I run it on
all my office PCs. That bandwidth doesn't get measured, as it comes from
the RHEL, CentOS, Ubuntu, SuSE and, um, Oracle repositories. Linux
hasn't suffered by being GPL, and IBM are happy to work within that
license constraint, so why not say "you want to stay on the trunk of the
open-office derivative works? Embrace GPL!"
* I don't see why the ASF should do Oracle any favours, not given their
past behaviour w.r.t the Java TCK, and their apparent willingness to sue
google on what may be apparent patent issues within the Apache codebase.
You can't sue someone over one bit of code and then at the same time say
"let's be friends", on what may be just a way to gain some tax kickback
by donating a half-dead brand to an open source project.
* I've not been happy with some of the discussions here were some of the
evangelists of the proposal -who have never been seen on any ASF project
I've ever encountered- suddenly seem to be knowledgeable about Apache's
goals and intentions that myself. I get the feeling the ASF is being
used as one of those pawns in a technology cold war "we'll trade Cuba
for Hungary". Case in point: press releases announced this before
anything else, implies to me a propaganda effort rather than progress.
The momentum is with TdF, that's where its home should be, and the ASF,
Oracle and IBM should accept and acknowledge that fact.
-Steve
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