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Re:OpenOffice.org Council members resign by gaius on Tuesday October 26, 2010 @09:58AM (#1834164)

  1. Star Division wrote StarOffice
  2. Sun bought Star Division and forked, StarOffice commercial and OpenOffice free
  3. Oracle bought Sun
  4. OpenOffice devs decide to fork OpenOffice again, to spite Oracle
  5. Oracle says fine, but we're keeping the name
  6. OpenOffice devs throw toys out of pram, Oracle asks them politely to go home
  7. OpenOffice devs "resign"
Re:OpenOffice.org Council members resign by jaen on Tuesday October 26, 2010 @10:11AM (#1834221)
That's one side of the story... the other side is that OpenOffice was stagnating, in terms of commits and added developers, the current developers were not happy with how the community was managed by Sun/Oracle, and eventually decided to take matters into their own hands.

Historical data: http://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/ooo-commit-stats-2008....

Re:OpenOffice.org Council members resign by mdda on Tuesday October 26, 2010 @10:18AM (#1834254)
If you're talking kids and toys :

Oracle is the new kid who is sitting in the corner writing his name in marker all over 'his toys'.

The Libre kids just want to share toys, and think the new kid is a bully.

Maybe one day they'll all play together. But it'll probably take the new kid realizing that the kids that share each get to play with shiny new toys.

Re:OpenOffice.org Council members resign by gaius on Tuesday October 26, 2010 @10:37AM (#1834331)
Forking the code is absolutely fine. Wanting the name too to pretend that the shareholders who underwrote all this development aren't part of it is just plain rude.
Re:OpenOffice.org Council members resign by davidw on Tuesday October 26, 2010 @11:12AM (#1834496)
Do you think the Oracle shareholders really care much one way or the other about the OpenOffice name?

I think if anything, the more profit-minded amongst them would simply be happy to cut loose a project that is probably not bringing in any direct revenues.

The argument for keeping it might be to develop it as "Project Stick It To Microsoft", and attempt to undercut the office revenues. Even that, though, doesn't really gain anything for Oracle in the short term.

Re:OpenOffice.org Council members resign by gaius on Tuesday October 26, 2010 @11:16AM (#1834514)
Yes. It is an asset that Sun paid cash money for, and Oracle paid cash money for in turn. So of course they care.

My personal opinion is that eventually we'll see OO Calc getting the same integration with Oracle that Excel has with MSAS/SQL Server, and possibly OO Writer will form the core of a report writing engine.

Re:OpenOffice.org Council members resign by davidw on Tuesday October 26, 2010 @12:58PM (#1834985)
> Yes. It is an asset that Sun paid cash money for, and Oracle paid cash money for in turn. So of course they care.

"Paid cash for" is a sunk cost. They care about what it's going to do for them now and in the future. How much revenue did it bring in for Sun?

Maybe they can hack at it to make what you describe, but at that point do you think Oracle will care much about what it's called? I think it'd have a new name, myself. Oracle something, most likely.

I just don't see Oracle caring that much about it one way or the other. They wanted the server stuff, supposedly, and Java, most certainly. I can't see OO having figured much one way or the other, really.

Re:OpenOffice.org Council members resign by gaius on Tuesday October 26, 2010 @01:16PM (#1835068)
Oracle Open Office dot Org. OOOO.
Re:OpenOffice.org Council members resign by davidw on Tuesday October 26, 2010 @10:06AM (#1834198)
Do you know anything about what has actually gone on between those developers and Oracle to be so condescending?
Re:OpenOffice.org Council members resign by viraptor on Tuesday October 26, 2010 @10:08AM (#1834209)
I don't really agree with point 6. If a number of developers left, because of the new company, that would be throwing toys out of the pram...

If 3 project leads hand in resignation and some of them join the forked project... that's a beginning / end of something. We'll have to see how it all ends.

Also, it's not just the devs that forked the project. There's support from outside entities to keep that project going and make it as formal as possible.