I just signed up as a committer on the Apache incubator this morning. Why? Am I against LO and TDF - no, at heart I'm a copyleft person, however, there are also practical realities to consider too sometimes. What is the worst case? OOo code and trademark go with Apache and then little is done. LO and TDF can carry on business as usual. Best case scenario (depending on what you view as good or bad :-) ) IBM and others put in engineering effort and the OOo code base improves. TDF take and improve that code and release it with a copyleft license. TDF engineers cooperate with OOo engineers to ensure that as far as possible both sets of code remain manageable. Ok, there is a threat that developers from the TDF camp migrate to the OOo camp. But really there is not much choice than to take that risk. It will depend on how many really want only to work on copyleft code.
The not possible scenario which we might have liked better is Oracle donate everything to TDF - but they didn't and they won't so it's a case of "if my aunt had balls she would be my uncle". She hasn't so she isn't. :-) One thing that is very clear is that if TDF had not been formed Oracle would not transferred things to Apache, at least not this soon. So brilliant you guys, you took a risk and it has at least mostly worked if not perfectly. Better now to look for the opportunities rather than the threats when really there is not much that can be done about them. Pack out the committers list on Apache and make sure you have a say in the governance of OOo as well as TDF and LO. -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications The Schools ITQ www.theINGOTs.org +44 (0)1827 305940 You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
