----- Original Message ---- > From: Keith Curtis <keit...@gmail.com> > On Fri, Jun 17, 2011 at 6:55 AM, Jim Jagielski <j...@jagunet.com> wrote: > > On Jun 17, 2011, at 7:44 AM, Michael Meeks wrote: > > > The overlap between TDF & ASF's goals for an office product (modulo > > > enabling 'mixed-source') is a pretty compelling proof of competition. > > > > I disagree... competition implies a "winner" and a "loser"... > > in FOSS, how do you measure that? Market Share? Feh. When > > you start looking at it that way, then what makes FOSS FOSS > > kinda gets overlooked. > > > > The intent of FOSS is not to take over but to instead provide > > freedom and choices to end-users. If having 2 "competing" implementations > > means that a larger set of end-users will enjoy those freedoms > > and choices than if there was only 1 implementation, then the > > "competition" is most valid. > > > > It's being complementary, not competitive. > > > > I think it is a helpful exercise to have a starting position that forks are > bad. They might be necessary and useful sometimes, like war, but that > doesn't make them ideal.
And TDF/LO is the real fork in this case. In your opinion it would have been a necessary fork, but it is the fork nonetheless. Any argument otherwise is revisionist history. > This is not like KOffice because that codebase is so different and missing > lots of features. No one is arguing to get rid of KOffice here, or that a > merge would be possible or makes sense.This is only about very slightly > different versions of a 10M line codebase. No it is not. But KOffice does provide a very good example of this. KOffice recently had a fork - Calligra - that most all of the development team moved to as the KOffice proper was not being properly managed. Very similar to to the OOo vs TDF/LO situation. Yet, Calligra and KOffice - which both have very similar codebases - have a much healthier relationship, etc. They don't see themselves as competing with each other either. > Another way to think about it: what features does Apache want that > LibreOffice does *not* want? Ubuntu forked Debian because they wanted > 6-month release cycles, proprietary drivers, etc. I see no list. Even if you > had a list of features LibreOffice didn't want, you could include the code > in LibreOffice and turn it off by default. OpenOffice could be LibreOffice > with different defaults. I don't think there is anything like that either. The real question is - since TDF/LO is the real fork, what does LibreOffice want that Oracle did not, and that Apache does not? And that is primarily the LGPL+MPL. Ben -- 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
