On 16 April 2011 04:34, Louis Suarez-Potts lsuarezpo...@gmail.com wrote:
All,
As others have noted… well, this is interesting news.* And it comes as
news, indeed. It also comes unattached with any actual explication as to
what it means in practice. And there are many questions, and I've asked my
former colleagues some of them. The most obvious being, of course, Will
Oracle contribute code to the development of OpenOffice.org as it has in the
past? Right now, Oracle does virtually all of the coding for OpenOffice.org.
The resulting code is then worked on by competing projects—either to make it
more compatible with Microsoft Office, or to make it work with established
frameworks, or whatever.
As of now, the code is mature and powerful; it is being used by tens of
millions and being adopted by even more every year. I am not concerned about
the present, for OpenOffice.org addresses present needs more than
adequately.
I am, however, really interested in seeing what the future brings. And for
that, I think we, the OpenOffice.org community, need to be bold. I envision
a future where the tools for intellectual production are free, use open
standards that can be widely implemented, and that are not limited to this
or that environment but freely adaptable to a range of devices, mobile or
not.
The anchor here is the ODF, the format that transcends any particular
implementation but which is only fully realized by the most comprehensive,
OpenOffice.org. And the tools, such as those making up OpenOffice.org, to
satisfy my vision, and the vision of the community, as I understand it, must
be free and open.
But from a practical point of view there needs to be some sort of resource
generator to sustain development. If Oracle withdraws all the development
resource it makes it far more difficult for these aspirations to be
realised. We have concrete evidence that there is demand for OpenOffice.org
certification. We have the infrastructure to support it and we know that the
potential income to the community could easily be in the 10s of millions of
dollars. Question is how to make it most likely that that potential can be
realised?
Louis Suarez-Potts, PhD
Community Manager
Chair, Community Council
OpenOffice.org
Blog: http://ooo-speak.blogspot.com/
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Ian
Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications
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