On Tue, 2007-10-09 at 16:26 +0200, Juergen Schmidt wrote: > Caolan McNamara wrote: > > On Mon, 2007-10-08 at 12:48 -0400, Allen Pulsifer wrote: > >> The one rational Simon offers that is a little bit different than the usual > >> is the following: > >> > >> "In many cases (including some very well-known open source projects) [the > >> JCA] also allows the original donor to offer commercial offerings, thus > >> ensuring the project continues to have engagement funded by its major > >> participants." > > > > What might be concerning Sun is that a foundation owning the copyright > > to OOo code, even one that has an explicit mechanism to allow major > > contributors to continue to make commercial closed source versions of > > OOo, would probably remove the ability of Sun to unilaterally > > sub-licence StarOffice under a proprietary license to other > > co-operations either for profit or as a major bargaining chip for the > > promotion of other products. > > well making some profit with OpenOffice.org or a product based on > OpenOffice.org is really helpful to pay all the developers on the > project ;-) I don't know the details, i assume Sun spend more money on > the project than they make profit with StarOffice. > > Anyway but Sun is not the only company that is making profit (or not) > with a product based on OpenOffice.org. > > Sun does it with StarOffice where everybody can see the 1:1 relation > between both products. There are other products/brands like Oxygenoffice > or EuroOffice ... > > Novell makes profit with their Desktop product and oh wonder the main > application that make the whole product interesting is what? > *OpenOffice.org* correct. ... > > A further example is IBM with LotusNotes or Symphony where > you also can't see a 1:1 relation as well.
Sure, and there is no issue with branded versions of OOo, or with making a profit out of OOo, all the companies represented here attempt to make a profit out of it. My point is simply that Sun is the only one of these groups that can re-licence the OOo code-base to third parties outside of provisions of the LGPL, and that's a possible important factor in requiring that ownership of OOo copyright be shared between the author and Sun, rather that between the author and some independent foundation, even if that foundation had an opt-out for e.g. Sun to link non-LGPL code into OOo to create StarOffice. > From my point of view it's cool when products can benefit from each other. > And i personally would like to see more of these collaborations > independent of they are based on StarOffice or OpenOffice.org or > another brand. And so do I, and I have no problem with StarOffice itself, Sun has contributed gigantically to OOo, and if they feel a need to link some non-LGPL compatible code into OOo, e.g. due to no suitable replacement or other reasons, in an effort to make a better final product then that's a prerogative I can accept that Sun has earned. My point isn't really around StarOffice. It's that I would feel hard-done by as a contributor to OOo to find my work extended in some *other* third-party applications without that enhancement available back to the community. And Sun can facilitate this by deciding to re-licence it to a third-party in a way that allows them to avoid the LGPL and extend their version of OOo in a proprietary fashion. I could even imagine accepting giving another group an opt-out from the provisions of the LGPL if it was for the greater good of OOo and there was some representative body for OOo which agreed to it, but the current governance does allow Sun to make that decision all on their own, and to reap benefits from doing so which could be totally unrelated to the good of OOo. C. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
