Hi Mathias,
On Thu, 2008-02-07 at 16:05 +0100, Mathias Bauer wrote:
> I don't want to kill the thread - I'm not even empowered to do that. :-)
Good 'oh :-) personally I think the discussion is helpful. Jurgen is
right, of course, that we discussed this 3 months ago, and that there
has been no progress in between. That itself is worth noticing - despite
the perception of activity & improvement created by Advisory Boards and
so on.
Anyhow, if we can discuss there are a few other bits worth clearing up
as well:
On Wed, 2008-02-06 at 23:54 +0100, Mathias Bauer wrote:
> Michael Meeks wrote:
> > Haha :-) I once tried using OpenOffice too, it's user-interface
> > was perfection: no changes welcome.
> OK, I was just pulling your leg. Sorry for that.
Of course, no need to apologise, it was amusing, good to inject some
humour :-)
> > Of course you can :-) I spent some time explaining that the vast
> > majority of that code is CA free (I call that eclectic ownership).
>
> How much code is CA free doesn't make a difference -
This is partially true - but re-applying this back to the interesting
case: OO.o - what then is the problem with having CA free plugins
included in the product ? :-)
> - it doesn't change the fact that only Novell is able to licence the
> whole stuff under proprietary conditions. With regard to our current
> discussion this is the identical situation as in case of OOo.
Not really; lets summarise the differences: the vast majority of the
Mono code is eclectic ownership, there is a small (and shrinking) core
that is not. Furthermore, there are replacements for the 'core' piece as
I understand it: eg. 'Portable.Net' implements their own core, and
shares the run-time libraries, or you could use an IKVM type technique
to run .Net apps on a JVM (I imagine), and at worst there is the
non-free MS runtime. Were Novell to do something truly stupid &
unreasonable with the core Mono licensing tomorrow, demanding cash /
concessions / whatever to ship / use it - there are lots of other
options.
Now consider OO.o - Sun owns everything, and insists on owning and
controlling everything, even cleanly separated components [ included in
the product ] (despite as you say) it not really making an immediate
difference to Sun's licensing stranglehold. Obviously this leaves a very
different situation if Sun decides to do something stupid tomorrow.
IMHO, representation should follow contribution, the more you
contribute - the more say & ownership you should have: that seems only
fair.
Unfortunately, this is not true of OO.o - and I was hoping for some
movement here - AB wise. A trivial and incremental way to achieve this,
without hurting Sun's licensing business (in the 1st instance), is (as I
outline) - allowing non-Sun-owned components into OO.o, under some
suitable license of Sun's choosing etc. It seems fair and extremely
reasonable. It is the sheer reasonable-ness of the proposal, combined
with it's (apparent) unequivocal rejection by Sun that concerns me most.
> If a company gave me the opportunity to get some useful open source
> software and adjust it to my needs I would gladly accept that
> wonderful opportunity and contribute my code back. That would be my
> "thank you" for the huge amount of work that the company already had
> invested and that gives me a benefit.
I know the argument, I used to try to persuade people of this view :-)
clearly however gratitude has its limits.
It cuts both ways: Novell, and others have contributed substantially to
OO.o, yet (apparently) Sun is unwilling to accept a wonderful
opportunity to contribute their changes to our code back to (not even
Novell of course, but some open & transparent foundation). ie. why
should the "thank-yous" appear to only go one-way ?
> Insinuating a participation of Sun in the case of "Butler office" really
> is ridiculous. *That* is the stupid part of the thread I would like to
> see stopped.
Fine :-) it would be silly anyway, now we know it's not so.
> The rest might still be boring, as it presents the same
> arguments we heard days, weeks or months ago (and probably we will
> also hear days, weeks and months later), but that's life.
Heh :-) glad you can cope.
> And as you are doing your own builds anyway where you can include
> extensions easily - why bother?
Well - ultimately, I would like to aim at working within the
OpenOffice.org project, and reducing the differences between our builds
to a minimum [ and of course, trying to ensure OO.o & our users have the
latest & greatest components / features we work on in their download ].
But as you know, the main problem is that non-inclusion of components,
appears to lead to duplication in the core.
HTH,
Michael.
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot
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