Hello guys.. very interesting discussion.
I am new to OpenOffice.org and indeed new to Apache and I am basically the result of both organizations coming together. On 05/20/12 16:11, Paulo de Souza Lima wrote:
... Keep in mind the following: OpenOffice.org community has passed through a traumatic phase. For BrOffice this phase was much more traumatic, because we had many fightings for power. And we are tired of fighting. Contributing to Free Software should be for fun for most of us.Suddenly we were involved in a war in against some people. I really don't want to relive that situation and we decided to get away from LibreOffice and TDF because those people we were fighting against became key persons in TDF. We got out and founded Escritorio Livre Community. We were seeking some projects to help, like Caligra, and others, but when OpenOffice came out from the ashes, we thought we could help a lot on it. So, some of us decided to submit their agreements to Apache Foundation.
In general I don't follow the LO lists, but it would seem you are not the only community having a similar situation. I see that there were/are huge economical interests behind OOo, LO and to certain extent AOO. The Apache License *is* commercial friendly and that's something we are not ashamed of. The Apache Foundation has been under attack since day one for taking this project and, all in all, in that in-fighting between the different commercial interests, the Apache Foundation is neutral and will likely continue to be so. This said, the ASF is not really used to have a project of this type: many, many users and most of them non-technical but very enthusiastic. The Apache structures and resources were meant for another type of modus operandi: more like a technocracy, less as a user community, and evidently the PPMC has tried hard to adapt to this new situation but we do need help from people like you to do a better job. I do agree we should have native language mailing lists when there is demand for one. I think everyone is aware that speaking about development in non-english or local marketing campaigns is something that will happen in small circles or in companies and for transparency it would be better for the ASF to have that exchange happen in a public list and not in private. This said, we don't want to generate many low traffic lists. I think you already know how to create a local list: there are processes and we have to live with them: discussion, call for consensus/vote then have someone from the PPMC open a JIRA issue. Be patient and understand it is a process for us too :).
But the most important is: we want to help AOO (and we can do a lot of noise in Brazil) for fun. We don't want to be involved again in economic or political issues like we were in TDF/LibreOffice. We are the only brazilian community who openly declared support to AOO, who are spreading news, presenting lectures and talking about AOO. And who are helping people to use AOO. You can see that when we post threads about people like Rogério, who is willing to instal AOO 3,4 in thousands of computer in a digital inclusion government project Today, we are under attack from those people that think TDF and AOO must fight till death and have commercial interests in brazilian market. Of couse you don't know that, because you don't use to read brazilian FLOSS news, despite the fact that Brazil is a huge market for open source office suites. The fact is: there's a lot of people helping AOO and you don't really know them. And they don't want to fill a form to officially help AOO or Apache Foundation. But it would be good to see they are recognized as "helpers", or "contributors", or whatever, some way.
As some have pointed out already the iCLA is not required to contribute unless you want to become a committer, and most people don't need it. We can't offer Apache addresses or special titles but you can use our Wikis for your groups and with some assistance from a committer (I know I have voted for brazilians ;) ) you can also add links from the AOO Br website. Money is another issue; we really don't want to get into the obscure territory other projects are and we have rules about the few things we may spend money on (ApacheCon Brazil?), hopefully you will manage to make your group sustainable through local activities: one thing is to be a volunteer but to additionally *have* to finance it is not really fair ;). We also have no problem with other methods that the previous license didn't permit: feel free to make your own added value distribution without redistributing sources (do be careful with the trademarks of course). Pedro.
