Charles-H. Schulz wrote:
> So far, we have 4 different cases:
> - distros compiling OOo from the OOo sources using the Sun (vanilla)
> build system : Red Hat / Fedora comes to mind, but they configure it
> their own way; Mandriva used to have that as well for a time. 
> - distros compiling OOo  from the OOo sources using the ooo-build
> system and applying a more or less large number of patches from Debian
> and Go-OO (patches, in general, that is). (Ubuntu, Debian, etc.)
> - distros "pulling" our binaries directly. That's for instance the
> case of Arch that offers OOo vanilla binaries, OOo binaries for betas,
> OOo developer binaries and even Go-OO binaries, although it does never
> recompile them. 
> - distros using Go-OO, which means using the source, compiling it with
> the ooo-build system by default or simply pulling the Go-OO binaries
> (see the case above). Here the Suse flavors come to mind; Frugalware
> and Mandriva as well.

You are omitting a fundamental difference, i.e. licenses and copyright
assignments/agreements. I won't comment on how questionable it is, but a
precise policy is enforced on the "vanilla" OOo that forbids including
code contributions that aren't covered by a JCA/SCA.

Now, discussing on the OOo Issue Tracker about code that is not and
cannot be part of the "vanilla" OOo is very questionable to me: I would
prefer that contributions that have been deliberately (legitimately, of
course! but deliberately) kept out of the project are not discussed on
the OOo Issue Tracker.

About the Red Hat case, I might be wrong, but I believe that they signed
the SCA and that they behave as proper citizens of the OOo Community and
are raising/discussing issues in the ordinary Issue Tracker; this
already happens, without any need for a special category, and allows the
project to benefit from their patches.

Again, to avoid all misinterpretations, I'm not saying that those
people/companies who decided not to sign the JCA/SCA did anything wrong:
it is their right to disagree with a policy and they probably have some
good reasons for doing so, but then I don't see a place for them in the
OOo Issue Tracker, as I don't see a place there for developers of
proprietary extensions, for StarOffice (Oracle Open Office) or whatever
cannot be contributed back to the upstream OOo.

Regards,
  Andrea Pescetti - Italian N-L Project Lead.


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