Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Christian Grobmeier]

Hello Luke,

don't know if OpenOffice is an exception, but usually Proposals are done here:
http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/

Best regards,
Christian

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 5:41 PM, Luke Kowalski  wrote:
> The following project is being sent in as an incubator candidate.
>
> regards
> luke
>
>
>
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-- 
http://www.grobmeier.de

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Greg Stein]

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 11:57, Christian Grobmeier 
wrote:
> Hello Luke,
>
> don't know if OpenOffice is an exception, but usually Proposals are done
here:
> http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/

There is no requirement to use the Wiki. I've attached the text of the .ODT
file in the message below.

Abstract


 OpenOffice.org is comprised of (6) personal productivity applications: word
processor, spreadsheet, presentation graphics, drawing, equation editor, and
database. OpenOffice.org supports Windows, Solaris, Linux and Macintosh
operation systems. OpenOffice.org is localized, supporting over 110
languages worldwide.
 Proposal


 OpenOffice.org will be contributed to Apache Software Foundation by Oracle
Corporation in compliance with ASF licensing and governance.


 This contribution will form the basis of the new OpenOffice project at
Apache.


 Background


 OpenOffice.org was launched as an open source project by Sun Microsystems
in June 2000. OpenOffice.org was originally developed by Star Division which
was acquired by Sun in 1999. OpenOffice.org is the leading alternative to
MS-Office available as an open source licensed offering. The source is
written in C++ and delivers language-neutral and scriptable functionality.
This source technology introduces the next-stage architecture, allowing use
of the suite elements as separate applications or as embedded components in
other applications. Numerous other features are also present including
XML-based file formats based on the vendor-neutral OpenDocument Format (ODF)
standard from OASIS and other resources.


 Rationale


 OpenOffice.org core development would continue at Apache following the
contribution by Oracle, in accordance with Apache bylaws and its usual open
development processes. Both Oracle and ASF agree that the OpenOffice.org
development community, previously fragmented, would re-unite under ASF to
ensure a stable and long term future for OpenOffice.org. ASF would enable
corporate, non-profit, and volunteer stakeholders to contribute code in a
collaborative fashion.


 Supporting tooling projects will accompany the OpenOffice.org contribution,
providing APIs for extending and customizing OpenOffice.org.


 Both OpenOffice.org and the related tooling projects support the OASIS Open
Document Format, and will attract an ecosystem of developers, ISVs and
Systems Integrators. ODF ensures the users of OpenOffice.org and related
solutions will own their document data, and be free to choose the
application or solution that best meets their requirements.


 The OpenOffice.org implementation will serve as a reference implementation
of the Open Document Format standard.



 Current Status


 This is a new project.


 Meritocracy


 The initial developers are very familiar with open source development, both
at Apache and elsewhere. Apache was chosen specifically because Oracle as
contributor, and IBM as Sponsor and the initial developers want to encourage
this style of development for the project. A diverse developer community is
regarded as necessary for a healthy, stable, long term OpenOffice.org
project.


 Community


 OpenOffice.org. seeks to further encourage developer and user communities
during incubation, beyond the existing developers currently working on the
project.


 Core Developers


 The initial set of committers include people from the community of
OpenOffice.org Technology projects. We have varying degrees of experience
with Apache-style open source development, ranging from none to ASF Members.


 Alignment


 The developers of OpenOffice.org will want to work with the Apache Software
Foundation specifically because Apache has proven to provide a strong
foundation and set of practices for developing standards-based
infrastructure and related components. Additionally, the project may evolve
to support cloud and mobile platforms from its starting point of desktop
operating systems.


 Known Risks


 Orphaned products


 OpenOffice.org is a mature project, with a set of APIs. It is continuing to
evolve.


 Inexperience with Open Source


 The initial developers include long-time open source developers, including
Apache Members.


 Homogenous Developers



   OpenOffice.org for many years was managed by Sun, who provided the
   majority of its engineering resources as well as its direction. Moving this
   project to Apache will enable a new start and provide a broad framework.


 Reliance on Salaried Developers


 The initial group of developers will be employed by IBM, Linux distribution
companies, and likely public sector agencies. Localization resources are
expected to gravitate to the new project, as well. Ensuring the long term
stability of OpenOffice.org is a major reason for establishing the project
at Apache.


 Relationships with Other Apache Products


 POI potentially, if POI extends to support ODF, the default file format of
OpenOffice.org.


 A Excessive Fascination with the Apache Brand


 We believe in the processes, systems, a

Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Stefan Seelmann]

Oops, the attachment was opened with LibreOffice here. Sorry, can't resist.

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 5:41 PM, Luke Kowalski  wrote:
> The following project is being sent in as an incubator candidate.
>
> regards
> luke
>
>
>
> -
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
>

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Christian Grobmeier]

>> don't know if OpenOffice is an exception, but usually Proposals are done
> here:
>> http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/
>
> There is no requirement to use the Wiki. I've attached the text of the .ODT
> file in the message below.

Thanks Greg.

...but it helps developing the proposal. Guess we can expect some
discussion. People proabably would like to read it without searching
the mailinglist.

Is it ok if I would add it, even when I am not the proposer?

Cheers

>
> Abstract
>
>
>  OpenOffice.org is comprised of (6) personal productivity applications: word
> processor, spreadsheet, presentation graphics, drawing, equation editor, and
> database. OpenOffice.org supports Windows, Solaris, Linux and Macintosh
> operation systems. OpenOffice.org is localized, supporting over 110
> languages worldwide.
>  Proposal
>
>
>  OpenOffice.org will be contributed to Apache Software Foundation by Oracle
> Corporation in compliance with ASF licensing and governance.
>
>
>  This contribution will form the basis of the new OpenOffice project at
> Apache.
>
>
>  Background
>
>
>  OpenOffice.org was launched as an open source project by Sun Microsystems
> in June 2000. OpenOffice.org was originally developed by Star Division which
> was acquired by Sun in 1999. OpenOffice.org is the leading alternative to
> MS-Office available as an open source licensed offering. The source is
> written in C++ and delivers language-neutral and scriptable functionality.
> This source technology introduces the next-stage architecture, allowing use
> of the suite elements as separate applications or as embedded components in
> other applications. Numerous other features are also present including
> XML-based file formats based on the vendor-neutral OpenDocument Format (ODF)
> standard from OASIS and other resources.
>
>
>  Rationale
>
>
>  OpenOffice.org core development would continue at Apache following the
> contribution by Oracle, in accordance with Apache bylaws and its usual open
> development processes. Both Oracle and ASF agree that the OpenOffice.org
> development community, previously fragmented, would re-unite under ASF to
> ensure a stable and long term future for OpenOffice.org. ASF would enable
> corporate, non-profit, and volunteer stakeholders to contribute code in a
> collaborative fashion.
>
>
>  Supporting tooling projects will accompany the OpenOffice.org contribution,
> providing APIs for extending and customizing OpenOffice.org.
>
>
>  Both OpenOffice.org and the related tooling projects support the OASIS Open
> Document Format, and will attract an ecosystem of developers, ISVs and
> Systems Integrators. ODF ensures the users of OpenOffice.org and related
> solutions will own their document data, and be free to choose the
> application or solution that best meets their requirements.
>
>
>  The OpenOffice.org implementation will serve as a reference implementation
> of the Open Document Format standard.
>
>
>
>  Current Status
>
>
>  This is a new project.
>
>
>  Meritocracy
>
>
>  The initial developers are very familiar with open source development, both
> at Apache and elsewhere. Apache was chosen specifically because Oracle as
> contributor, and IBM as Sponsor and the initial developers want to encourage
> this style of development for the project. A diverse developer community is
> regarded as necessary for a healthy, stable, long term OpenOffice.org
> project.
>
>
>  Community
>
>
>  OpenOffice.org. seeks to further encourage developer and user communities
> during incubation, beyond the existing developers currently working on the
> project.
>
>
>  Core Developers
>
>
>  The initial set of committers include people from the community of
> OpenOffice.org Technology projects. We have varying degrees of experience
> with Apache-style open source development, ranging from none to ASF Members.
>
>
>  Alignment
>
>
>  The developers of OpenOffice.org will want to work with the Apache Software
> Foundation specifically because Apache has proven to provide a strong
> foundation and set of practices for developing standards-based
> infrastructure and related components. Additionally, the project may evolve
> to support cloud and mobile platforms from its starting point of desktop
> operating systems.
>
>
>  Known Risks
>
>
>  Orphaned products
>
>
>  OpenOffice.org is a mature project, with a set of APIs. It is continuing to
> evolve.
>
>
>  Inexperience with Open Source
>
>
>  The initial developers include long-time open source developers, including
> Apache Members.
>
>
>  Homogenous Developers
>
>
>
>   OpenOffice.org for many years was managed by Sun, who provided the
>   majority of its engineering resources as well as its direction. Moving this
>   project to Apache will enable a new start and provide a broad framework.
>
>
>  Reliance on Salaried Developers
>
>
>  The initial group of developers will be employed by IBM, Linux distribution
> companies, and likely public sector agencies. Localization resources are
> ex

Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Jukka Zitting]

Hi,

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 6:00 PM, Greg Stein  wrote:
> OpenOffice.org will be contributed to Apache Software Foundation by Oracle
> Corporation in compliance with ASF licensing and governance.

Nice!

>  Community
>
>  OpenOffice.org. seeks to further encourage developer and user communities
> during incubation, beyond the existing developers currently working on the
> project.

Any thoughts on how (or if) the LibreOffice community would fit into
this picture?

>  Relationships with Other Apache Products

Apache Tika [1] is obviously interested in cooperation around the ODF format.

[1] http://tika.apache.org/

BR,

Jukka Zitting

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Ross Gardler]

Thanks for this exciting proposal. I have a few questions.

There are only two initial committers identified in the proposal. Why 
only two for such a large codebase?


It's going to be very hard for two committers to manage and maintain 
this code.


The proposal states "Both Oracle and ASF agree that the OpenOffice.org 
development community, previously fragmented, would re-unite under ASF 
to ensure a stable and long term future for OpenOffice.org." What 
evidence is there to support this bold statement? And who are the "ASF" 
that made this statement?


"The initial developers are very familiar with open source development, 
both at Apache and elsewhere. " I don't see any obvious engagement of 
either of the initial committers with existing ASF projects and the 
proposal does not provide any evidence for the claimed familiarity. 
Existing experience is, of course, not required for entry into the 
incubator. I'm just wondering if I've missed something?


There is a statement that "Oracle will assist in the transition and 
migration from OpenOffice.org.", I am probably reading too much into it, 
but why is there not a statement that Oracle intend to continue 
development once the transition is complete?


I hope my questions don't push you onto the defensive, that's not my 
intention. This is going to be a hard project to bring into the 
incubator given the recent history of OpenOffice.org.


As you will no doubt know, the incubator is not a place for code dumps 
and I expect that recent events will make plenty of people worry that 
this is, in fact, a code dump. By answering these questions I hope you 
can start to address these concerns for the Incubator PMC.


Ross

On 01/06/2011 16:41, Luke Kowalski wrote:

The following project is being sent in as an incubator candidate.

regards
luke




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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Greg Stein]

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 12:12, Christian Grobmeier  wrote:
>>> don't know if OpenOffice is an exception, but usually Proposals are done
>> here:
>>> http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/
>>
>> There is no requirement to use the Wiki. I've attached the text of the .ODT
>> file in the message below.
>
> Thanks Greg.
>
> ...but it helps developing the proposal. Guess we can expect some
> discussion. People proabably would like to read it without searching
> the mailinglist.

Quite true!

> Is it ok if I would add it, even when I am not the proposer?

Seems reasonable to me. I see no reason to avoid providing the
proposal in a more useful format :-)

Please post a URL after you've got it all entered into the wiki. Thanks!

Cheers,
-g

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Jim Jagielski]

On Jun 1, 2011, at 12:21 PM, Ross Gardler wrote:

> 
> There is a statement that "Oracle will assist in the transition and migration 
> from OpenOffice.org.", I am probably reading too much into it, but why is 
> there not a statement that Oracle intend to continue development once the 
> transition is complete?
> 

Most likely because they don't intend to.

Which is fine (imo)... They will help incubation but
not the graduated TLP. IMO a "code dump" is when people
don't help at all and that is totally unacceptable.
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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Greg Stein]

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 12:21, Ross Gardler  wrote:
> Thanks for this exciting proposal. I have a few questions.
>
> There are only two initial committers identified in the proposal. Why only
> two for such a large codebase?

Hopefully more will show up. As with other podlings, we're usually
quite liberal with adding people onto the "Initial Committers" list.

>...
> The proposal states "Both Oracle and ASF agree that the OpenOffice.org
> development community, previously fragmented, would re-unite under ASF to
> ensure a stable and long term future for OpenOffice.org." What evidence is
> there to support this bold statement? And who are the "ASF" that made this
> statement?

No idea. Maybe they're missing a "we hope".

> "The initial developers are very familiar with open source development, both
> at Apache and elsewhere. " I don't see any obvious engagement of either of
> the initial committers with existing ASF projects and the proposal does not
> provide any evidence for the claimed familiarity. Existing experience is, of
> course, not required for entry into the incubator. I'm just wondering if
> I've missed something?

IBM has said they're going to put a bunch of people on the project.
Presumably, they have experience (certainly, IBM as whole has plenty
of Apache experience)

> There is a statement that "Oracle will assist in the transition and
> migration from OpenOffice.org.", I am probably reading too much into it, but
> why is there not a statement that Oracle intend to continue development once
> the transition is complete?

Maybe because they don't intend to. *shrug*

>...
> As you will no doubt know, the incubator is not a place for code dumps and I
> expect that recent events will make plenty of people worry that this is, in
> fact, a code dump. By answering these questions I hope you can start to
> address these concerns for the Incubator PMC.

It would only be a code drop if nobody was there to pick it up. At
least IBM sounds like they want to work on it. How many others will be
attracted by this proposal, and join in?

(of course, if it looks like nobody is going to work on it, then
yes... the Incubator would probably just reject the proposal)

Cheers,
-g

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Benson Margulies]

> There are only two initial committers identified in the proposal. Why only
> two for such a large codebase?
>

Not only is it a very large code base, it was a weakly maintained and
documented code base for quite some time before the
Sun->Oracle->LO-Split/Splat process.

We generally expect Apache project to provide a reasonable level of
support for their users. Questions should be answered. Not all issues
will get fixed, but they will be responded to in some timely way.

I'm writing here from personal experience: at my day job, we put a ton
of work into building a Java extension for OO, and we ended up doing a
vast amount of reverse engineering in the face of incomplete (and in
some cases completely incorrect) documentation.

In general, I'm all in favor of giving a nacent community every
opportunity to itself together in the incubator, but this one faces
such high barriers that I'm worried.

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[robert_weir]

Jukka Zitting  wrote on 06/01/2011 12:13:09 PM:

> 
> >  Community
> >
> >  OpenOffice.org. seeks to further encourage developer and user 
communities
> > during incubation, beyond the existing developers currently working on 
the
> > project.
> 
> Any thoughts on how (or if) the LibreOffice community would fit into
> this picture?
> 

There are many projects, open source and proprietary that are derived from 
Sun/Oracle's original OpenOffice project. 

I made a diagram of this on a blog post a while ago:

http://www.robweir.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/oo-forks.png
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2010/11/the-legacy-of-openoffice-org.html

So I think we want to consider all of this.  This code base, although not 
your typical piece of componentry, does appear to have been treated as 
something that could be customized, repackaged and redistributed.  I don't 
have the exactly numbers, but there are significant users of the following 
OpenOffice derivatives:

- LibreOffice
- IBM Lotus Symphony
- EuroOffice
- BrOffice (which some would say is a derivative of LibreOffice)
- RedOffice

In all cases there are several overlapping communities:

- a community of developers
- a community of users
- a community of supporters, trainers, consultants, etc.

We'll need to work out how these related, and especially which of these 
community functions are a good fit for an eventual Apache TLP, and which 
things fit better outside of Apache.  But my recommendation is that we 
encourage the core development of the editors to occur in Apache, while 
making it easy, via a modular extension mechanism, a modular install, etc. 
for others to customize and redistribute as permitted by the Apache 2.0 
license.


> >  Relationships with Other Apache Products
> 
> Apache Tika [1] is obviously interested in cooperation around the ODF 
format.
> 
> [1] http://tika.apache.org/
> 

That would be great.  There is also another project (or set of projects) 
that IBM and Sun/Oracle have worked on over the past few years, called the 
:ODF Toolkit".  For example, this component was just released today:  
http://odftoolkit.org/projects/simple/pages/ReleaseNotes

The ODF Toolkit work was all written to an Apache 2.0 license.  I think 
we're agreed that this should go to Apache as well.  But we were not sure 
what the best place would be.  I could see a close relationship to Apache 
POI.  It is very similar to those components, but it is certainly not a 
"Microsoft" file format.  And I don't agree that the "Pretty Obfuscated 
Interface" part accurately describes ODF.  But I could also see the ODF 
Toolkit being a component in the Office project, perhaps even being 
co-incubated with today's proposal.

Any thoughts on that?


-Rob

> BR,
> 
> Jukka Zitting
> 
> -
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org
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> 


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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Ross Gardler]

On 01/06/2011 17:28, Jim Jagielski wrote:


On Jun 1, 2011, at 12:21 PM, Ross Gardler wrote:



There is a statement that "Oracle will assist in the transition and migration from 
OpenOffice.org.", I am probably reading too much into it, but why is there not a 
statement that Oracle intend to continue development once the transition is complete?



Most likely because they don't intend to.


:-)
Thanks for the clarity.


Which is fine (imo)... They will help incubation but
not the graduated TLP. IMO a "code dump" is when people
don't help at all and that is totally unacceptable.


But with just two named committers on a code base which OhLoh reports as 
24M LOC I'm worried that it can ever get out of incubation.


Who will develop the software?
Who will maintain it?
Who will manage any patches that come in?
Who will do the community development work?

It's still a code dump if there is no chance of graduating.

Please understand I'm not saying there is no chance, I'm asking how do 
we maximise the chance of graduation?


Ross

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Ross Gardler]

On 01/06/2011 17:29, Greg Stein wrote:

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 12:21, Ross Gardler  wrote:

Thanks for this exciting proposal. I have a few questions.

There are only two initial committers identified in the proposal. Why only
two for such a large codebase?


Hopefully more will show up. As with other podlings, we're usually
quite liberal with adding people onto the "Initial Committers" list.


I see, so the community development starts now. Good. I hope we see 
plenty of LibreOffice people stepping up to be named. If they do step up 
will they be added?



The proposal states "Both Oracle and ASF agree that the OpenOffice.org
development community, previously fragmented, would re-unite under ASF to
ensure a stable and long term future for OpenOffice.org." What evidence is
there to support this bold statement? And who are the "ASF" that made this
statement?


No idea. Maybe they're missing a "we hope".


I'll subscribe to "we hope".

Ross

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Mohammad Nour El-Din]

Here you are ;) [1].

[1] - http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/OpenOfficeProposal

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 6:23 PM, Greg Stein  wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 12:12, Christian Grobmeier  wrote:
 don't know if OpenOffice is an exception, but usually Proposals are done
>>> here:
 http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/
>>>
>>> There is no requirement to use the Wiki. I've attached the text of the .ODT
>>> file in the message below.
>>
>> Thanks Greg.
>>
>> ...but it helps developing the proposal. Guess we can expect some
>> discussion. People proabably would like to read it without searching
>> the mailinglist.
>
> Quite true!
>
>> Is it ok if I would add it, even when I am not the proposer?
>
> Seems reasonable to me. I see no reason to avoid providing the
> proposal in a more useful format :-)
>
> Please post a URL after you've got it all entered into the wiki. Thanks!
>
> Cheers,
> -g
>
> -
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
>
>



-- 
Thanks
- Mohammad Nour
  Author of (WebSphere Application Server Community Edition 2.0 User Guide)
  http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg247585.html
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mnour
- Blog: http://tadabborat.blogspot.com

"Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving"
- Albert Einstein

"Writing clean code is what you must do in order to call yourself a
professional. There is no reasonable excuse for doing anything less
than your best."
- Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship

"Stay hungry, stay foolish."
- Steve Jobs

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Jukka Zitting]

Hi,

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 6:28 PM, Jim Jagielski  wrote:
> On Jun 1, 2011, at 12:21 PM, Ross Gardler wrote:
>> There is a statement that "Oracle will assist in the transition and migration
>> from OpenOffice.org.", I am probably reading too much into it, but why is
>> there not a statement that Oracle intend to continue development once
>> the transition is complete?
>
> Most likely because they don't intend to.

This should be clearly spelled out if it's the intention. I'd also
like to see how the community plans to cope with such a major loss of
experience and know-how.

A related example is the Apache River podling that nearly died when
the then Sun employees were pulled out of the project, which left next
to nobody to look after the codebase. Only with major efforts by
mentors and new contributors was the project salvaged, but even now
it's only a shadow of what Jini used to be. I'd hate to see the same
happen to OpenOffice.

BR,

Jukka Zitting

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Greg Stein]

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 12:34, Luke Kowalski  wrote:
> we were instructed to send the proposal to an email address.
> Should we go and hack at the wiki now? No issues, either way.

Thanks for the offer, but we're all good. The proposal came through just fine.

Cheers,
-g

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Richard Frovarp]

On 06/01/2011 11:45 AM, Ross Gardler wrote:

On 01/06/2011 17:29, Greg Stein wrote:

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 12:21, Ross Gardler wrote:

Thanks for this exciting proposal. I have a few questions.

There are only two initial committers identified in the proposal. Why
only
two for such a large codebase?


Hopefully more will show up. As with other podlings, we're usually
quite liberal with adding people onto the "Initial Committers" list.


I see, so the community development starts now. Good. I hope we see
plenty of LibreOffice people stepping up to be named. If they do step up
will they be added?


The proposal states "Both Oracle and ASF agree that the OpenOffice.org
development community, previously fragmented, would re-unite under
ASF to
ensure a stable and long term future for OpenOffice.org." What
evidence is
there to support this bold statement? And who are the "ASF" that made
this
statement?


No idea. Maybe they're missing a "we hope".


I'll subscribe to "we hope".

Ross


The The Document Foundation released this announcement today:

http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/announce/msg00047.html

One thing of note is that they state that the Apache License is 
compatible with LGPLv3+ and MPL. This means that improvements made under 
the Apache License could be merged into LibreOffice. However, I don't 
think that the opposite will be true.


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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Christian Grobmeier]

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 6:49 PM, Mohammad Nour El-Din
 wrote:
> Here you are ;) [1].
>
> [1] - http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/OpenOfficeProposal

hey I was just about to enter it - my phone prevented me to submit.



>
> On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 6:23 PM, Greg Stein  wrote:
>> On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 12:12, Christian Grobmeier  
>> wrote:
> don't know if OpenOffice is an exception, but usually Proposals are done
 here:
> http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/

 There is no requirement to use the Wiki. I've attached the text of the .ODT
 file in the message below.
>>>
>>> Thanks Greg.
>>>
>>> ...but it helps developing the proposal. Guess we can expect some
>>> discussion. People proabably would like to read it without searching
>>> the mailinglist.
>>
>> Quite true!
>>
>>> Is it ok if I would add it, even when I am not the proposer?
>>
>> Seems reasonable to me. I see no reason to avoid providing the
>> proposal in a more useful format :-)
>>
>> Please post a URL after you've got it all entered into the wiki. Thanks!
>>
>> Cheers,
>> -g
>>
>> -
>> To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org
>> For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Thanks
> - Mohammad Nour
>   Author of (WebSphere Application Server Community Edition 2.0 User Guide)
>   http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg247585.html
> - LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mnour
> - Blog: http://tadabborat.blogspot.com
> 
> "Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving"
> - Albert Einstein
>
> "Writing clean code is what you must do in order to call yourself a
> professional. There is no reasonable excuse for doing anything less
> than your best."
> - Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship
>
> "Stay hungry, stay foolish."
> - Steve Jobs
>
> -
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
>
>



-- 
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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Ross Gardler]

On 01/06/2011 17:33, robert_w...@us.ibm.com wrote:

Jukka Zitting  wrote on 06/01/2011 12:13:09 PM:




  Community

  OpenOffice.org. seeks to further encourage developer and user

communities

during incubation, beyond the existing developers currently working on

the

project.


Any thoughts on how (or if) the LibreOffice community would fit into
this picture?



There are many projects, open source and proprietary that are derived from
Sun/Oracle's original OpenOffice project.

I made a diagram of this on a blog post a while ago:

http://www.robweir.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/oo-forks.png
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2010/11/the-legacy-of-openoffice-org.html


This is really helpful Rob. Thanks.


So I think we want to consider all of this.  This code base, although not
your typical piece of componentry, does appear to have been treated as
something that could be customized, repackaged and redistributed.  I don't
have the exactly numbers, but there are significant users of the following
OpenOffice derivatives:

- LibreOffice
- IBM Lotus Symphony
- EuroOffice
- BrOffice (which some would say is a derivative of LibreOffice)
- RedOffice

In all cases there are several overlapping communities:

- a community of developers
- a community of users
- a community of supporters, trainers, consultants, etc.

We'll need to work out how these related, and especially which of these
community functions are a good fit for an eventual Apache TLP, and which
things fit better outside of Apache.  But my recommendation is that we
encourage the core development of the editors to occur in Apache, while
making it easy, via a modular extension mechanism, a modular install, etc.
for others to customize and redistribute as permitted by the Apache 2.0
license.


I like the sound of this and I note that Bob Sutor says similar in his 
blog [1]


I think it would be really good to have this goal in the proposal 
itself, it is something concrete to point to from a community 
development point of view.


Ross

[1] 
http://www.sutor.com/c/2011/06/some-remarks-on-openoffice-going-to-apache/



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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[William A. Rowe Jr.]

On 6/1/2011 11:33 AM, robert_w...@us.ibm.com wrote:
> 
> That would be great.  There is also another project (or set of projects) 
> that IBM and Sun/Oracle have worked on over the past few years, called the 
> :ODF Toolkit".  For example, this component was just released today:  
> http://odftoolkit.org/projects/simple/pages/ReleaseNotes
> 
> The ODF Toolkit work was all written to an Apache 2.0 license.  I think 
> we're agreed that this should go to Apache as well.  But we were not sure 
> what the best place would be.  I could see a close relationship to Apache 
> POI.  It is very similar to those components, but it is certainly not a 
> "Microsoft" file format.  And I don't agree that the "Pretty Obfuscated 
> Interface" part accurately describes ODF.  But I could also see the ODF 
> Toolkit being a component in the Office project, perhaps even being 
> co-incubated with today's proposal.
> 
> Any thoughts on that?

I believe you should go ahead with a new proposal (wiki would be best with
a link to general@)... this bit has no licensing concerns, so it would be
on the fast track to becoming part of another existing project or a new
project in its own right.

I'd suggest you invite the dev@ lists of tika/poi to participate in the
discussion here at general and join this incubation project if they are
interested.  With very few concerns the entire process should be very fast
and I would not weigh it down with the complexities of the OOo proposal
which may take longer to sort out.


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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Benson Margulies]

>> Hopefully more will show up. As with other podlings, we're usually
>> quite liberal with adding people onto the "Initial Committers" list.
>
> I see, so the community development starts now. Good. I hope we see plenty
> of LibreOffice people stepping up to be named. If they do step up will they
> be added?
>

If you read the link that Shane posted to the LO posting, you will see
that we probably do not need to fortify the stockade in preparation
for a stampede.

The Document Foundation is committed to copyleft. They are not going
to line up in an orderly queue to be assimilated here at Apache.

>From their statement, I can see a little glimmer of possibility that
TDF or some LO individuals might conclude that some pieces of the
(O|L)O ecosystem might be better off at the ASF under the ALv2. And
perhaps this podling will shrink to a manageable size.

Or maybe a cohort of IBM employees in blue shirts is about to come
yodelling along.

 The irony of this is very large for me. The following attempts to map
the analogies:

 Oracle --- TDF
 IBM--- IBM + Oracle
 ASF   --- ASF
 Java   --- LO
 Harmony --- OO

Instead of IBM loving and leaving ASF in an attempt to outmaneuver
Oracle, we have IBM, with help from Oracle, proposing to love ASF to
outmaneuver an open source foundation.  It all looks like fox-hunting
to me. (The unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible.)

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Greg Trasuk]

We're working on it (River, that is)!

Cheers,

Greg.

On Wed, 2011-06-01 at 12:49, Jukka Zitting wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 6:28 PM, Jim Jagielski  wrote:
> > On Jun 1, 2011, at 12:21 PM, Ross Gardler wrote:
> >> There is a statement that "Oracle will assist in the transition and 
> >> migration
> >> from OpenOffice.org.", I am probably reading too much into it, but why is
> >> there not a statement that Oracle intend to continue development once
> >> the transition is complete?
> >
> > Most likely because they don't intend to.
> 
> This should be clearly spelled out if it's the intention. I'd also
> like to see how the community plans to cope with such a major loss of
> experience and know-how.
> 
> A related example is the Apache River podling that nearly died when
> the then Sun employees were pulled out of the project, which left next
> to nobody to look after the codebase. Only with major efforts by
> mentors and new contributors was the project salvaged, but even now
> it's only a shadow of what Jini used to be. I'd hate to see the same
> happen to OpenOffice.
> 
> BR,
> 
> Jukka Zitting
> 
> -
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-- 
Greg Trasuk, President
StratusCom Manufacturing Systems Inc. - We use information technology to
solve business problems on your plant floor.
http://stratuscom.com


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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Mohammad Nour El-Din]

Sorry :D

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 6:52 PM, Christian Grobmeier  wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 6:49 PM, Mohammad Nour El-Din
>  wrote:
>> Here you are ;) [1].
>>
>> [1] - http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/OpenOfficeProposal
>
> hey I was just about to enter it - my phone prevented me to submit.
>
>
>
>>
>> On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 6:23 PM, Greg Stein  wrote:
>>> On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 12:12, Christian Grobmeier  
>>> wrote:
>> don't know if OpenOffice is an exception, but usually Proposals are done
> here:
>> http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/
>
> There is no requirement to use the Wiki. I've attached the text of the 
> .ODT
> file in the message below.

 Thanks Greg.

 ...but it helps developing the proposal. Guess we can expect some
 discussion. People proabably would like to read it without searching
 the mailinglist.
>>>
>>> Quite true!
>>>
 Is it ok if I would add it, even when I am not the proposer?
>>>
>>> Seems reasonable to me. I see no reason to avoid providing the
>>> proposal in a more useful format :-)
>>>
>>> Please post a URL after you've got it all entered into the wiki. Thanks!
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> -g
>>>
>>> -
>>> To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org
>>> For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Thanks
>> - Mohammad Nour
>>   Author of (WebSphere Application Server Community Edition 2.0 User Guide)
>>   http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg247585.html
>> - LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mnour
>> - Blog: http://tadabborat.blogspot.com
>> 
>> "Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving"
>> - Albert Einstein
>>
>> "Writing clean code is what you must do in order to call yourself a
>> professional. There is no reasonable excuse for doing anything less
>> than your best."
>> - Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship
>>
>> "Stay hungry, stay foolish."
>> - Steve Jobs
>>
>> -
>> To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org
>> For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> http://www.grobmeier.de
>
> -
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
>
>



-- 
Thanks
- Mohammad Nour
  Author of (WebSphere Application Server Community Edition 2.0 User Guide)
  http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg247585.html
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mnour
- Blog: http://tadabborat.blogspot.com

"Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving"
- Albert Einstein

"Writing clean code is what you must do in order to call yourself a
professional. There is no reasonable excuse for doing anything less
than your best."
- Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship

"Stay hungry, stay foolish."
- Steve Jobs

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Jukka Zitting]

Hi,

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 7:56 PM, Greg Trasuk  wrote:
> We're working on it (River, that is)!

I know, and (having been one of the key mentors) I couldn't be happier
about that!

What I'm trying to bring up are lessons learned from the troubles that
River had to go through. Let's make sure OpenOffice won't end up
encountering similar problems.

BR,

Jukka Zitting

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Jim Jagielski]

On Jun 1, 2011, at 12:41 PM, Ross Gardler wrote:

> On 01/06/2011 17:28, Jim Jagielski wrote:
>> 
>> On Jun 1, 2011, at 12:21 PM, Ross Gardler wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> There is a statement that "Oracle will assist in the transition and 
>>> migration from OpenOffice.org.", I am probably reading too much into it, 
>>> but why is there not a statement that Oracle intend to continue development 
>>> once the transition is complete?
>>> 
>> 
>> Most likely because they don't intend to.
> 
> :-)
> Thanks for the clarity.
> 
>> Which is fine (imo)... They will help incubation but
>> not the graduated TLP. IMO a "code dump" is when people
>> don't help at all and that is totally unacceptable.
> 
> But with just two named committers on a code base which OhLoh reports as 24M 
> LOC I'm worried that it can ever get out of incubation.
> 

For sure, we need to add people. I expect that we will get
quite a bunch interested. After all, this was all kept
hush-hush. Now that the cat is out of the bag, we will for
sure see that list grow.


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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Alexei Fedotov]

OpenOffice is used in our product [1] we want to submit to the
incubator. We promised to show that we can gradually clean up LGPL
from the code and were working on that [2]. We'd have one less
head-ache with OO under Apache License (even if we don't statically
linking it, GPL does not define linking).

If some guys would consider merging back changes from Lotus Symphony
and some other guys wouldn't be abandoning OO in this nice, polite and
gentle way, I'd really like the change.

Thanks for an opportunity to answer to a president. :-)

[1] http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/OpenmeetingsProposal
[2] http://www.mail-archive.com/general@incubator.apache.org/msg23299.html

--
With best regards / с наилучшими пожеланиями,
Alexei Fedotov / Алексей Федотов,
http://dataved.ru/
+7 916 562 8095



On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 7:41 PM, Luke Kowalski  wrote:
>
> The following project is being sent in as an incubator candidate.
>
> regards
> luke
>
>
>
> -
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org
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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Nick Burch]

On Wed, 1 Jun 2011, robert_w...@us.ibm.com wrote:

That would be great.  There is also another project (or set of projects)
that IBM and Sun/Oracle have worked on over the past few years, called the
:ODF Toolkit".  For example, this component was just released today:
http://odftoolkit.org/projects/simple/pages/ReleaseNotes

The ODF Toolkit work was all written to an Apache 2.0 license.  I think
we're agreed that this should go to Apache as well.  But we were not sure
what the best place would be.  I could see a close relationship to Apache
POI.  It is very similar to those components, but it is certainly not a
"Microsoft" file format.  And I don't agree that the "Pretty Obfuscated
Interface" part accurately describes ODF.  But I could also see the ODF
Toolkit being a component in the Office project, perhaps even being
co-incubated with today's proposal.


POI has generally stuck to the Microsoft formats for two reasons:
* It's where we started, and where we knew best
* We haven't had the volunteer energy to take on a whole new format

Speaking personally, I would be interested in seeing how ODF Toolkit could 
fit within the POI project. We already have a number of components, and 
interfaces that try to smooth over the differences between the different 
formats underneath. In the past, we helped bring in the OpenXML4J project 
which became part of what powers many of our components today, so it's not 
too large a stretch. We certainly wouldn't say no to new people joining 
the project :)


This would possibly warrant a seperate discussion though, especially if 
the codebase were to be destined for POI rather than a new TLP.


As I don't think many of the POI committers are currently actively 
involved in the Incubator, it might be worth you sending something through 
to the dev list giving an introduction to the project and the code, and 
hopefully we can then tempt people over to a thread here to discuss the 
toolkit.


Thanks
Nick

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Jim Jagielski]

On Jun 1, 2011, at 1:13 PM, Jim Jagielski wrote:
> 
> For sure, we need to add people. I expect that we will get
> quite a bunch interested. After all, this was all kept
> hush-hush. Now that the cat is out of the bag, we will for
> sure see that list grow.
> 

FWIW, I have contacted the 2 main people within OOo and
LOo pointing them to the proposal and asking for their
help in sharing the link w/ their communities...

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Nick Burch]

On Wed, 1 Jun 2011, Luke Kowalski wrote:

The following project is being sent in as an incubator candidate.


As there are likely quite a few people new to Apache interested in and 
coming with this proposal, I thought I should send a quick note pointing 
out some community releated resources and events.


Firstly with an IPMC/ComDev hat on. There's a lot of useful information on 
how the incubator works to be found on the incubator website. The podling 
guides are a good place to start:

   http://incubator.apache.org/guides/index.html
And the Who/How/When are worth a look through:
   http://incubator.apache.org/incubation/Incubation_Policy.html

If you'd like to know more about communities at Apache, and getting 
involved, then Community Development (ComDev) provide guides:

   http://community.apache.org/
These complement the overall guides on the main site (which provide some 
overviews, along with details on specific tasks and questions):

   http://www.apache.org/dev/


Onto a different topic, this time with my Conference Committee (ConCom) 
hat on. If you're interested in learning more about the ASF, the 
Incubator, The Apache Way, or even just meeting other Apache developers, 
then there are two events coming up. Firstly there's an Apache BarCamp in 
Oxford in September[1]. Secondly there's ApacheCon in Vancouver in 
November, which will feature a lot on Community (schedule due up soon, 
once all the speakers confirm!)


Nick

[1] http://barcamp.org/BarCampApacheOxford
[2] http://na11.apachecon.com/

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Jochen Wiedmann]

I view this proposal very critical. IMO, OpenOffice@Apache would be a dead end:

- There is an existing community over at LibreOffice. So what good
does it, to build a second community here?
- The afore mentioned community was built exactly, because the
initiators of the current proposal have been unable to hold the
community. Why should they do any better, if the code base where moved
to Apache?
- While LibreOffice could take over any ASL'ed code, the opposite
wouldn't be true. In other words, LibreOffice would have a very clear
advantage that could never be eliminated as long as the project where
ASL'ed.

Jochen

-- 
I Am What I Am And That's All What I Yam (Popeye)

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[William A. Rowe Jr.]

On 6/1/2011 12:48 PM, Nick Burch wrote:
> 
> This would possibly warrant a seperate discussion though, especially if the 
> codebase were
> to be destined for POI rather than a new TLP.

And note, this is a decision that can be made *during* incubation,
with POI folks participating on the incubating project's dev list.

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[dsh]

To me the proof point whether this proposal will be successful or not
is whether Linux distributions having already dropped support for
OpenOffice and switched to LibreOffice instead would be willing to
reverse that decision and move back to OpenOffice again now that it is
in a process to be proposed to become an Apache incubator project.

Cheers
Daniel

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 8:08 PM, Jochen Wiedmann
 wrote:
> I view this proposal very critical. IMO, OpenOffice@Apache would be a dead 
> end:
>
> - There is an existing community over at LibreOffice. So what good
> does it, to build a second community here?
> - The afore mentioned community was built exactly, because the
> initiators of the current proposal have been unable to hold the
> community. Why should they do any better, if the code base where moved
> to Apache?
> - While LibreOffice could take over any ASL'ed code, the opposite
> wouldn't be true. In other words, LibreOffice would have a very clear
> advantage that could never be eliminated as long as the project where
> ASL'ed.
>
> Jochen
>
> --
> I Am What I Am And That's All What I Yam (Popeye)
>
> -
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org
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>
>

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[robert_weir]

Nick Burch  wrote on 06/01/2011 01:48:49 PM:

> 
> Speaking personally, I would be interested in seeing how ODF Toolkit 
could 
> fit within the POI project. We already have a number of components, and 
> interfaces that try to smooth over the differences between the different 

> formats underneath. In the past, we helped bring in the OpenXML4J 
project 
> which became part of what powers many of our components today, so it's 
not 
> too large a stretch. We certainly wouldn't say no to new people joining 
> the project :)
> 
> This would possibly warrant a seperate discussion though, especially if 
> the codebase were to be destined for POI rather than a new TLP.
> 
> As I don't think many of the POI committers are currently actively 
> involved in the Incubator, it might be worth you sending something 
through 
> to the dev list giving an introduction to the project and the code, and 
> hopefully we can then tempt people over to a thread here to discuss the 
> toolkit.
> 


I think you'll find it to be very close to other POI work, since it was 
partially inspired by my earlier use of POI.  So similar level granularity 
in the API.

But I see this as pulling in two directions:

1) On the one hand it is a good fit for a module in an OpenOffice SDK, so 
the OpenOffice project might be a good fit.  On the other hand ODF is an 
application-independent document format, not necessarily just for 
OpenOffice.  So we might not want to bury it as a component in this much 
larger project.

2) It is complementary to POI, doing some of the same functions with ODF 
that POI does with MS Office binary and OOXML documents.  But it is a 
little bit of scope creep if POI takes on non-Microsoft formats.  I could 
live with that, if done consistently in how POI describes itself.

Another option of course is to incubate it toward its own TLP eventually. 
We do have Java and C# libraries already, along with some useful 
ODF-processing XSLT scripts, a servlet "runner" and an ODF validator 
components.

But unless anyone wants to argue strongly for doing #1 above immediately, 
let's put this on hold.  I'll have more cycles to discuss that on the POI 
dev list once we get the OpenOffice podling off to a smooth start.

Thanks!

-Rob

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[robert_weir]

Ross Gardler  wrote on 06/01/2011 12:21:23 PM:

> 
> There are only two initial committers identified in the proposal. Why 
> only two for such a large codebase?
> 

We could have put a much longer list of IBM names on this list, developers 
familiar with the code base via their work on Lotus Symphony (which is our 
OpenOffice based project).  But then we could have been criticized for the 
proposal being too dominated by IBM.  It is clearly our intent to grow 
this project, both from our corporate developers, but also by recruiting 
new members to the project, including developers from related open source 
projects (see my previous note) 

>From a practical perspective it would have been impossible to do all of 
that recruitment without this proposal becoming public prematurely. So the 
majority of the recruitment will occur during incubation.  We obviously 
don't graduate from incubation with only two.  But it should be enough to 
get the ball rolling. 


> It's going to be very hard for two committers to manage and maintain 
> this code.
> 

Indeed.

> The proposal states "Both Oracle and ASF agree that the OpenOffice.org 
> development community, previously fragmented, would re-unite under ASF 
> to ensure a stable and long term future for OpenOffice.org." What 
> evidence is there to support this bold statement? And who are the "ASF" 
> that made this statement?
> 
> "The initial developers are very familiar with open source development, 
> both at Apache and elsewhere. " I don't see any obvious engagement of 
> either of the initial committers with existing ASF projects and the 
> proposal does not provide any evidence for the claimed familiarity. 
> Existing experience is, of course, not required for entry into the 
> incubator. I'm just wondering if I've missed something?
> 

I am "robweir", committer (inactive) for Apache Xalan.


> There is a statement that "Oracle will assist in the transition and 
> migration from OpenOffice.org.", I am probably reading too much into it, 

> but why is there not a statement that Oracle intend to continue 
> development once the transition is complete?
> 

Companies don't write code.  People do.  The intent is to get the best 
developers we can to continue working on this project, regardless of the 
former or current affiliations. 

Oracle owns the copyright to the code and is is the one legally permitted 
to contribute it under Apache 2.0 license.  This is because they required 
copyright assignment to Sun/Oracle as part of their CLA for OpenOffice. So 
they aggregated and owned all copyrights.  But that does not mean that 
they were the sole developers on OpenOffice.org  And they are not the sole 
contributors on this proposal.

To graduate from incubation we would need to demonstrate diversity, which 
is defined in part as "not highly dependent on any single contributor". So 
I think we need to look at the composition of the project community as 
whole and not base a decision on the presence or absence of any single 
party.


> I hope my questions don't push you onto the defensive, that's not my 
> intention. This is going to be a hard project to bring into the 
> incubator given the recent history of OpenOffice.org.
> 

Certainly graduating a project from incubation of this magnitude will 
require much work.  We would not have made this proposal if we were not 
serious.

> As you will no doubt know, the incubator is not a place for code dumps 
> and I expect that recent events will make plenty of people worry that 
> this is, in fact, a code dump. By answering these questions I hope you 
> can start to address these concerns for the Incubator PMC.
> 

Is there any feasible way that I can prove, in advance, that a project 
will be successful?  Is there any concrete step I can take now to prevent 
people from worrying?  A little skepticism is warranted.  But my 
understanding is that this is why we have the Incubator, for projects to 
prove themselves.

Regards,

-Rob

> Ross
> 
> On 01/06/2011 16:41, Luke Kowalski wrote:
> > The following project is being sent in as an incubator candidate.
> >
> > regards
> > luke
> >
> >
> >
> >
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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[robert_weir]

dsh  wrote on 06/01/2011 02:16:58 PM:

> 
> To me the proof point whether this proposal will be successful or not
> is whether Linux distributions having already dropped support for
> OpenOffice and switched to LibreOffice instead would be willing to
> reverse that decision and move back to OpenOffice again now that it is
> in a process to be proposed to become an Apache incubator project.
> 

My understanding is that the Linux distros never really included the core 
OpenOffice.org.  They included the Novell Edition of OpenOffice, since 
Novell (and some volunteers) did the leg work to get the code into a form 
suitable for the distros to consume (packaging, catalog metadata, etc.) 
When LibreOffice was announced, Novell pulled their OpenOffice Novell 
Edition and put the same engineers on LibreOffice.  The distros could 
simply continue working with the same engineers they had worked with 
previously.  This was not necessarily some ideological switch by the 
distros.  From their perspective LibreOffice was more a rebranding of 
Novell Edition of OpenOffice.  They include LibreOffice because it was 
packaged, ready for their consumption.

But I certainly agree that we want to ensure that the project's binaries 
are easy for anyone to consume.  I'd leave it as a question to the PMC 
members on whether Apache TLP's generally liaise with the various Linux 
distros to get their packages included, or whether that is done 
unofficially, by individuals?  And is it generally held to be a criterion 
for a podling to graduate or even initiate, that it first persuade all 
Linux distros to include it?

-Rob



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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Jochen Wiedmann]

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 8:24 PM,   wrote:

> We could have put a much longer list of IBM names on this list, developers
> familiar with the code base via their work on Lotus Symphony (which is our
> OpenOffice based project).  But then we could have been criticized for the
> proposal being too dominated by IBM.  It is clearly our intent to grow
> this project, both from our corporate developers, but also by recruiting
> new members to the project, including developers from related open source
> projects (see my previous note)

And why couldn't IBM do quite the same with LibreOffice, or, even
better, with a remerged O/LOffice?


-- 
I Am What I Am And That's All What I Yam (Popeye)

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[William A. Rowe Jr.]

On 6/1/2011 1:16 PM, dsh wrote:
> To me the proof point whether this proposal will be successful or not
> is whether Linux distributions having already dropped support for
> OpenOffice and switched to LibreOffice instead would be willing to
> reverse that decision and move back to OpenOffice again now that it is
> in a process to be proposed to become an Apache incubator project.

That isn't particularly an issue.

As LibreOffice has pointed out, they are free to adopt improvements to
any Apache Licensed OO.  The net result is all of the best of both code
bases.  Similar successful projects exist.

What is a more serious question, how many bug fixes would go into
LibreOffice without being offered to the ASF under the AL?  LO has no
copyright assignment, so the principals of LO don't have the flexibility
to offer these to the ASF, it is contributor-by-contributor.  Each fix
would be independently authored, and ultimately the two code bases end
up too disjoint to maintain with one another.

I am further interested to know which LibreOffice contributors see the
benefit of having the base, or at least some of the components, under
the more permissive ALv2 in order to propagate the standards desired
by LibreOffice.  Software at the ASF has enjoyed very broad adoption
in large part because it promotes the widest possible consumption.

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Greg Stein]

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 14:56, Jochen Wiedmann  wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 8:24 PM,   wrote:
>
>> We could have put a much longer list of IBM names on this list, developers
>> familiar with the code base via their work on Lotus Symphony (which is our
>> OpenOffice based project).  But then we could have been criticized for the
>> proposal being too dominated by IBM.  It is clearly our intent to grow
>> this project, both from our corporate developers, but also by recruiting
>> new members to the project, including developers from related open source
>> projects (see my previous note)
>
> And why couldn't IBM do quite the same with LibreOffice, or, even
> better, with a remerged O/LOffice?

IBM has long seemed to favor the ALv2 when they build products on top
of underlying OSS software. I imagine that building Lotus Symphony on
top of an Apache codebase will be *much* easier for them [than the
copyleft'd LibreOffice), since they won't have to carefully partition
codebases and linking and stuff like that.

I believe this is one area where the LibreOffice people don't have it
quite right: the copyleft actually *prevents* corporations like IBM
from contributing in many ways. It is true that many changes are
returned to the codebase due to the copyleft, which may otherwise stay
private, but I don't believe that is a long-term strategy. Companies
building atop OSS projects generally have an incentive to return
changes to keep their patchset small (or, at least, to create hook
points for their changes). Some companies might not participate at
all, due to the copyleft.

(and I *am* glad that TDF does not require copyright assignment; that
is horrible for building a community, though it certainly helps Apache
today, with this proposal from Oracle)

Cheers,
-g

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Ross Gardler]

On 01/06/2011 19:51, robert_w...@us.ibm.com wrote:

dsh  wrote on 06/01/2011 02:16:58 PM:


...


And is it generally held to be a criterion
for a podling to graduate or even initiate, that it first persuade all
Linux distros to include it


We don't care where it is used or how it is used. What we care about is 
whether there is a healthy community around the code base. Who makes up 
that community is not our concern, just as long as it is healthy.


Ross

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Benson Margulies]

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 5:18 PM, Ross Gardler  wrote:
> On 01/06/2011 19:51, robert_w...@us.ibm.com wrote:
>>
>> dsh  wrote on 06/01/2011 02:16:58 PM:
>
> ...
>
>> And is it generally held to be a criterion
>> for a podling to graduate or even initiate, that it first persuade all
>> Linux distros to include it

Generally held by whom? Citation please?

>
> We don't care where it is used or how it is used. What we care about is
> whether there is a healthy community around the code base. Who makes up that
> community is not our concern, just as long as it is healthy.
>
> Ross
>
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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Greg Stein]

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 17:20, Benson Margulies  wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 5:18 PM, Ross Gardler  wrote:
>> On 01/06/2011 19:51, robert_w...@us.ibm.com wrote:
>>>
>>> dsh  wrote on 06/01/2011 02:16:58 PM:
>>
>> ...
>>
>>> And is it generally held to be a criterion
>>> for a podling to graduate or even initiate, that it first persuade all
>>> Linux distros to include it
>
> Generally held by whom? Citation please?

Rob is *posing the question*. Basically, I read his message as a
diplomatic way to say "you're full of it, if you think distro adoption
is a requirement. take your red herring elsewhere". :-)

>> We don't care where it is used or how it is used. What we care about is
>> whether there is a healthy community around the code base. Who makes up that
>> community is not our concern, just as long as it is healthy.

That's basically what Rob said. Read it again :-)

Cheers,
-g

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Benson Margulies]

Greg,

I'm happy to see more people throw tomatoes at the 'distro
requirement'. At the quote depth at the time, I though I was just
joining Ross in challenging that supposed requirement.

--benson


On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 5:26 PM, Greg Stein  wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 17:20, Benson Margulies  wrote:
>> On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 5:18 PM, Ross Gardler  wrote:
>>> On 01/06/2011 19:51, robert_w...@us.ibm.com wrote:

 dsh  wrote on 06/01/2011 02:16:58 PM:
>>>
>>> ...
>>>
 And is it generally held to be a criterion
 for a podling to graduate or even initiate, that it first persuade all
 Linux distros to include it
>>
>> Generally held by whom? Citation please?
>
> Rob is *posing the question*. Basically, I read his message as a
> diplomatic way to say "you're full of it, if you think distro adoption
> is a requirement. take your red herring elsewhere". :-)
>
>>> We don't care where it is used or how it is used. What we care about is
>>> whether there is a healthy community around the code base. Who makes up that
>>> community is not our concern, just as long as it is healthy.
>
> That's basically what Rob said. Read it again :-)
>
> Cheers,
> -g
>
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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[dsh]

Guys,

"to me" means to me as in it's my personal opinion and nothing else.
And that opinion of course still stands unchanged. I never wrote
anything about requirements especially not in a sense of formal
requirements.

Cheers
Daniel

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 11:30 PM, Benson Margulies  wrote:
> Greg,
>
> I'm happy to see more people throw tomatoes at the 'distro
> requirement'. At the quote depth at the time, I though I was just
> joining Ross in challenging that supposed requirement.
>
> --benson
>
>
> On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 5:26 PM, Greg Stein  wrote:
>> On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 17:20, Benson Margulies  wrote:
>>> On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 5:18 PM, Ross Gardler  wrote:
 On 01/06/2011 19:51, robert_w...@us.ibm.com wrote:
>
> dsh  wrote on 06/01/2011 02:16:58 PM:

 ...

> And is it generally held to be a criterion
> for a podling to graduate or even initiate, that it first persuade all
> Linux distros to include it
>>>
>>> Generally held by whom? Citation please?
>>
>> Rob is *posing the question*. Basically, I read his message as a
>> diplomatic way to say "you're full of it, if you think distro adoption
>> is a requirement. take your red herring elsewhere". :-)
>>
 We don't care where it is used or how it is used. What we care about is
 whether there is a healthy community around the code base. Who makes up 
 that
 community is not our concern, just as long as it is healthy.
>>
>> That's basically what Rob said. Read it again :-)
>>
>> Cheers,
>> -g
>>
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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Ross Gardler]

On 01/06/2011 19:24, robert_w...@us.ibm.com wrote:

Ross Gardler  wrote on 06/01/2011 12:21:23 PM:



There are only two initial committers identified in the proposal. Why
only two for such a large codebase?



We could have put a much longer list of IBM names on this list, developers
familiar with the code base via their work on Lotus Symphony (which is our
OpenOffice based project).  But then we could have been criticized for the
proposal being too dominated by IBM.  It is clearly our intent to grow
this project, both from our corporate developers, but also by recruiting
new members to the project, including developers from related open source
projects (see my previous note)


So my "optimist interpretation" earlier in the thread was accurate. I 
think this is a sensible move. Normally we don't care about projects 
heavily influenced by a single company as long as the community is 
balanced. The incubator is here to bring that balance. However, I 
understand that in this case there are other considerations.


It might be worth making this decision explicit in the proposal though. 
Personally I see it as a strength of the proposal. I suggest something like:


"In order to help facilitate the creation of a broad and varied project 
built upon merit as required of an Apache project we have not loaded the 
initial committer list with contributors from a single company. Our 
intention is for the initial committer list to be representative of the 
various users of OOo code."


I realise that this might slow down entry into the incubator, but I feel 
that (if its an accurate representation of your intention) it will serve 
as an olive branch to "members of related open source projects".




 From a practical perspective it would have been impossible to do all of
that recruitment without this proposal becoming public prematurely. So the
majority of the recruitment will occur during incubation.  We obviously
don't graduate from incubation with only two.  But it should be enough to
get the ball rolling.


Yes, I think it is now that we have your explanation (even without my 
proposal to expand the list during proposal stage).



I am "robweir", committer (inactive) for Apache Xalan.


Excellent, thanks Rob. Glad to see you back at the ASF.



There is a statement that "Oracle will assist in the transition and
migration from OpenOffice.org.", I am probably reading too much into it,



but why is there not a statement that Oracle intend to continue
development once the transition is complete?



Companies don't write code.  People do.  The intent is to get the best
developers we can to continue working on this project, regardless of the
former or current affiliations.


Fair comment

[ASIDE: I sheepishly admit to being upset about having to make this very 
point in a proposal I was involved with just a couple of months ago ;-)



As you will no doubt know, the incubator is not a place for code dumps
and I expect that recent events will make plenty of people worry that
this is, in fact, a code dump. By answering these questions I hope you
can start to address these concerns for the Incubator PMC.



Is there any feasible way that I can prove, in advance, that a project
will be successful?  Is there any concrete step I can take now to prevent
people from worrying?  A little skepticism is warranted.  But my
understanding is that this is why we have the Incubator, for projects to
prove themselves.


There is no way of proving it in advance, no. The concrete steps you can 
take are the ones you are taking, answer the concerns of those on the 
Incubator Project Management Committee.


The Incubator is not here for projects to "prove themselves", it is here 
to ensure that ASF Top Level Projects are viable. This means a viable 
community. There is little point in entering the incubator if it has no 
chance of being viable.


You know, as well as we do, that "build it and they will come" does not 
work. As the proposal was written it sounded like a "build it and they 
will come". My questions were targetted at the areas I felt needed to be 
addressed in order to remove this concern.


That being said, the answers given so far have, to a large extent, 
satisfied my concerns about entry to the incubator (I'm not ready to 
vote yet). Successful exit is a different issue of course ;-)


Ross

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Ross Gardler]

On 01/06/2011 22:26, Greg Stein wrote:

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 17:20, Benson Margulies  wrote:

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 5:18 PM, Ross Gardler  wrote:

On 01/06/2011 19:51, robert_w...@us.ibm.com wrote:


dshwrote on 06/01/2011 02:16:58 PM:


...


And is it generally held to be a criterion
for a podling to graduate or even initiate, that it first persuade all
Linux distros to include it


Generally held by whom? Citation please?


Rob is *posing the question*. Basically, I read his message as a
diplomatic way to say "you're full of it, if you think distro adoption
is a requirement. take your red herring elsewhere". :-)


We don't care where it is used or how it is used. What we care about is
whether there is a healthy community around the code base. Who makes up that
community is not our concern, just as long as it is healthy.


That's basically what Rob said. Read it again :-)


I don't need to, I was answering Robs question with an IPMC hat. I was 
trying to support his position. I'm British I can't be as direct as you :-P


Ross

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[dsh]

Again,

"to me" means to me as in it's my personal opinion and nothing else.
How could I be somebody defining the rules? I suspect the rules are
all documented anyway. So you did the interpretation of an opinion
expressed by somebody else and of course if you treat that opinion as
a requirement or a re-definition of the rules you got it all wrong.

Cheers
Daniel

On Thu, Jun 2, 2011 at 12:13 AM, Ross Gardler  wrote:
> On 01/06/2011 22:26, Greg Stein wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 17:20, Benson Margulies
>>  wrote:
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 5:18 PM, Ross Gardler  wrote:

 On 01/06/2011 19:51, robert_w...@us.ibm.com wrote:
>
> dsh    wrote on 06/01/2011 02:16:58 PM:

 ...

> And is it generally held to be a criterion
> for a podling to graduate or even initiate, that it first persuade all
> Linux distros to include it
>>>
>>> Generally held by whom? Citation please?
>>
>> Rob is *posing the question*. Basically, I read his message as a
>> diplomatic way to say "you're full of it, if you think distro adoption
>> is a requirement. take your red herring elsewhere". :-)
>>
 We don't care where it is used or how it is used. What we care about is
 whether there is a healthy community around the code base. Who makes up
 that
 community is not our concern, just as long as it is healthy.
>>
>> That's basically what Rob said. Read it again :-)
>
> I don't need to, I was answering Robs question with an IPMC hat. I was
> trying to support his position. I'm British I can't be as direct as you :-P
>
> Ross
>
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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Greg Stein]

Ease up... people just lost the "to me" in your message. And others
didn't see it in the quoted sections.

It happens

Cheers,
-g

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 18:31, dsh  wrote:
> Again,
>
> "to me" means to me as in it's my personal opinion and nothing else.
> How could I be somebody defining the rules? I suspect the rules are
> all documented anyway. So you did the interpretation of an opinion
> expressed by somebody else and of course if you treat that opinion as
> a requirement or a re-definition of the rules you got it all wrong.
>
> Cheers
> Daniel
>
> On Thu, Jun 2, 2011 at 12:13 AM, Ross Gardler  wrote:
>> On 01/06/2011 22:26, Greg Stein wrote:
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 17:20, Benson Margulies
>>>  wrote:

 On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 5:18 PM, Ross Gardler  wrote:
>
> On 01/06/2011 19:51, robert_w...@us.ibm.com wrote:
>>
>> dsh    wrote on 06/01/2011 02:16:58 PM:
>
> ...
>
>> And is it generally held to be a criterion
>> for a podling to graduate or even initiate, that it first persuade all
>> Linux distros to include it

 Generally held by whom? Citation please?
>>>
>>> Rob is *posing the question*. Basically, I read his message as a
>>> diplomatic way to say "you're full of it, if you think distro adoption
>>> is a requirement. take your red herring elsewhere". :-)
>>>
> We don't care where it is used or how it is used. What we care about is
> whether there is a healthy community around the code base. Who makes up
> that
> community is not our concern, just as long as it is healthy.
>>>
>>> That's basically what Rob said. Read it again :-)
>>
>> I don't need to, I was answering Robs question with an IPMC hat. I was
>> trying to support his position. I'm British I can't be as direct as you :-P
>>
>> Ross
>>
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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[robert_weir]

Ross Gardler  wrote on 06/01/2011 12:52:46 PM:

> 
> I think it would be really good to have this goal in the proposal 
> itself, it is something concrete to point to from a community 
> development point of view.
> 

Thanks, Ross.  I've updated the "community" section of the proposal on the 
wiki to map out a bit the wider OpenOffice community, and the 
implications.

-Rob

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Sam Ruby]

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 9:25 PM, Geir Magnusson Jr.  wrote:
> Hi all -
>
> I see that I'm listed as a sponsor.  Can you please remove my name and 
> replace with someone else?  I never agreed to sponsor this.

I've removed your name.

- Sam Ruby

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[robert_weir]

Alexei Fedotov  wrote on 06/01/2011 01:38:43 PM:

> 
> OpenOffice is used in our product [1] we want to submit to the
> incubator. We promised to show that we can gradually clean up LGPL
> from the code and were working on that [2]. We'd have one less
> head-ache with OO under Apache License (even if we don't statically
> linking it, GPL does not define linking).
> 
> If some guys would consider merging back changes from Lotus Symphony
> and some other guys wouldn't be abandoning OO in this nice, polite and
> gentle way, I'd really like the change.
>
.
.
. 
>[1] http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/OpenmeetingsProposal

Hi Alexei, I'm not familiar with OpenMeetings.  Can you say a little more 
about how it uses OpenOffice?  In particular, does it reuse the OpenOffice 
binaries as-is?  Does it extend OpenOffice via scripts or plugins?  Or 
does it require making core source code modifications and rebuilding?  Or 
something else?

I'm just trying to better understand the nature of the dependency, so we 
can better coordinate on this.
Regards,

-Rob

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[robert_weir]

sa3r...@gmail.com wrote on 06/01/2011 10:36:39 PM:

> > Hi all -
> >
> > I see that I'm listed as a sponsor.  Can you please remove my name
> and replace with someone else?  I never agreed to sponsor this.
> 
> I've removed your name.
> 


What am I missing here?

According to the Incubation Policy [1]:

"A Sponsor SHALL be either:

* the Board of the Apache Software Foundation;
* a Top Level Project (TLP) within the Apache Software Foundation 
(where the TLP considers the Candidate to be a suitable sub-project);or
* the Incubator PMC."

So how would an individual appear as a sponsor?

[1] http://incubator.apache.org/incubation/Incubation_Policy.html#Sponsor

Regards,

-Rob

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[robert_weir]

Jochen Wiedmann  wrote on 06/01/2011 02:56:10 
PM:

> 
> > We could have put a much longer list of IBM names on this list, 
developers
> > familiar with the code base via their work on Lotus Symphony (which is 
our
> > OpenOffice based project).  But then we could have been criticized for 
the
> > proposal being too dominated by IBM.  It is clearly our intent to grow
> > this project, both from our corporate developers, but also by 
recruiting
> > new members to the project, including developers from related open 
source
> > projects (see my previous note)
> 
> And why couldn't IBM do quite the same with LibreOffice, or, even
> better, with a remerged O/LOffice?
> 

I trust I do not need to explain at length to an Apache PMC the relative 
merits of the Apache 2.0 license or the strengths and stability of the 
ASF.  I'll take it as granted that this is well-known to you all.  In any 
case I am a strict adherent to the practical wisdom of not debating open 
source licenses while sober, and I decline to make an exception in this 
case.

A re-merged OO/LO would be great.  Even more ideal a re-merged 
OpenOffice/LibreOffice/Symphony/RedOffice, with greater discipline for how 
we relate to other projects that make smaller customizations (NeoOffice, 
BrOffice, EuroOffice).  But I think the best place for this to happen is 
at Apache. 

Of the options we considered (and we did consider several, including 
LibreOffice's Document Foundation) Apache was the clear top choice.  I 
don't want to denigrate the accomplishments of LibreOffice.  What they 
have seems to work for them.  So instead of pointing out their 
liabilities, let me just enumerate what I see as some of the relative 
strengths of AFS:  pragmatic commercially-friendly open source license, 
proven track record and organizational stability, mature, 
meritocracy-based process and strong technical infrastructure. 

Regards,

-Rob

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[William A. Rowe Jr.]

On 6/1/2011 1:24 PM, robert_w...@us.ibm.com wrote:
> Ross Gardler  wrote on 06/01/2011 12:21:23 PM:
> 
>> There are only two initial committers identified in the proposal. Why 
>> only two for such a large codebase?
> 
> We could have put a much longer list of IBM names on this list, developers 
> familiar with the code base via their work on Lotus Symphony (which is our 
> OpenOffice based project).  But then we could have been criticized for the 
> proposal being too dominated by IBM.  It is clearly our intent to grow 
> this project, both from our corporate developers, but also by recruiting 
> new members to the project, including developers from related open source 
> projects (see my previous note) 

The ASF preference (which you already know) is for individual IBM developers
to add themselves to the effort.  A large representation by IBM, or Novell,
or any other part of the ecosystem is not itself a problem.  But there is
an apathy towards individuals who are 'signed up' to a project, and who do
not volunteer themselves.

On a related note, is it Oracle's intent to prohibit participation at this
ASF project, or are interested developers (particularly previous developers)
permitted to participate on their own time?

> From a practical perspective it would have been impossible to do all of 
> that recruitment without this proposal becoming public prematurely. So the 
> majority of the recruitment will occur during incubation.  We obviously 
> don't graduate from incubation with only two.  But it should be enough to 
> get the ball rolling. 

Understood.  Looking forward to Sam's response to the 'sign yourself up'
discussion which Jim already responded to.

> Oracle owns the copyright to the code and is is the one legally permitted 
> to contribute it under Apache 2.0 license.  This is because they required 
> copyright assignment to Sun/Oracle as part of their CLA for OpenOffice. So 
> they aggregated and owned all copyrights.  But that does not mean that 
> they were the sole developers on OpenOffice.org  And they are not the sole 
> contributors on this proposal.

I've reviewed http://www.openoffice.org/license.html and the code providence
doesn't seem to be a serious obstacle to entering incubation.  However, there
is this;

  Other Works

  Our preference is always for contributions of editable work. But in those
  cases where editable material is difficult to obtain, there are several
  options; all presume you hold copyright in the work:

* You can sign the OCA, which covers all work (and not just code)
  contributed to OpenOffice.org by you;

* If your country's laws allow it, you can make it public domain by
  declaring as much in a signed document (check if it is possible, first!);
  or

* You can use the Creative Commons Attribution License 
("Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5").
  We only accept work under this license that is non-editable and for which
  there is no editable version that can be contributed to the project.

This last item concerns me.  How much of the contribution is unusable due
to the "Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5" tag, which would appear to be a category X
license to ASF works?  (I couldn't find a corresponding Jira in the legal
discuss tracker.)



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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[robert_weir]

"William A. Rowe Jr."  wrote on 06/01/2011 03:01:50 
PM:
> 
> What is a more serious question, how many bug fixes would go into
> LibreOffice without being offered to the ASF under the AL?  LO has no
> copyright assignment, so the principals of LO don't have the flexibility
> to offer these to the ASF, it is contributor-by-contributor.  Each fix
> would be independently authored, and ultimately the two code bases end
> up too disjoint to maintain with one another.
> 
> I am further interested to know which LibreOffice contributors see the
> benefit of having the base, or at least some of the components, under
> the more permissive ALv2 in order to propagate the standards desired
> by LibreOffice.  Software at the ASF has enjoyed very broad adoption
> in large part because it promotes the widest possible consumption.
> 

There are good, important questions.  But I'd urge you to not think of 
this as a bi-polar OpenOffice/LibreOffice problem.  It is much more 
complex than this.  We also have IBM Lotus Symphony and RedOffice each 
making significant feature enhancements, performance improvements and bug 
fixes.  This is a multi-project, multi-distribution ecosystem.  I think it 
is more of hub-and-spokes, where Apache OpenOffice is the hub.

Obviously there are multiple theoretical solutions to this kind of 
problem.  If everyone in the universe were Affero GPL, that would be one 
solution.  If everyone were Apache 2.0 that would be another solution. 
However, what is technical possible and what is politically possible will 
differ.  But I think the general parameters of a workable solution would 
be to push the "hard" work, at the very least the core C++/Java dev and 
test functions, into a core project at Apache. But we should be 
considering the impact of this kind of arrangement on all OpenOffice 
derivative projects, not merely LibreOffice.


Regards,

-Rob

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Greg Stein]

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 22:52,   wrote:
>...
> What am I missing here?
>
> According to the Incubation Policy [1]:
>
> "A Sponsor SHALL be either:
>
>    * the Board of the Apache Software Foundation;
>    * a Top Level Project (TLP) within the Apache Software Foundation
> (where the TLP considers the Candidate to be a suitable sub-project);or
>    * the Incubator PMC."
>
> So how would an individual appear as a sponsor?

They wouldn't. It was just a simple error in the section headings.
There is the "Sponsors" subsection, with several subsections. There
shouldn't have really been anything under that main section, so I
removed it and adjusted the subsections.

http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/OpenOfficeProposal

Cheers,
-g

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[robert_weir]

Ross Gardler  wrote on 06/01/2011 06:03:09 PM:

> >>
> >> There are only two initial committers identified in the proposal. Why
> >> only two for such a large codebase?
> >>
> >
> > We could have put a much longer list of IBM names on this list, 
developers
> > familiar with the code base via their work on Lotus Symphony (which is 
our
> > OpenOffice based project).  But then we could have been criticized for 
the
> > proposal being too dominated by IBM.  It is clearly our intent to grow
> > this project, both from our corporate developers, but also by 
recruiting
> > new members to the project, including developers from related open 
source
> > projects (see my previous note)
> 
> So my "optimist interpretation" earlier in the thread was accurate. I 
> think this is a sensible move. Normally we don't care about projects 
> heavily influenced by a single company as long as the community is 
> balanced. The incubator is here to bring that balance. However, I 
> understand that in this case there are other considerations.
> 
> It might be worth making this decision explicit in the proposal though. 
> Personally I see it as a strength of the proposal. I suggest something 
like:
> 
> "In order to help facilitate the creation of a broad and varied project 
> built upon merit as required of an Apache project we have not loaded the 

> initial committer list with contributors from a single company. Our 
> intention is for the initial committer list to be representative of the 
> various users of OOo code."
> 
> I realise that this might slow down entry into the incubator, but I feel 

> that (if its an accurate representation of your intention) it will serve 

> as an olive branch to "members of related open source projects".
> 


Hi Ross,  I'm trying to find the right balance here threading the needle 
between PMC desires to have many names as well as diversity on the list of 
initial committers.  But it makes sense to include a statement along your 
suggestion, which I have now added.

-->  One thing that struck me today is that it is almost arcane mystical 
knowledge, for anyone outside of Apache, how exactly to affix their name 
in support of this proposal as a proposed initial committer, or even that 
this was encouraged at this stage.  If I had not been on that draft 
proposal from the start, I would not have known, and I've read all the 
Incubation policy and guideline documentation on the web site, or at least 
I think I did.

-Rob


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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[robert_weir]

Dumb question.  Are we obligated to converse like this, in a single email 
thread, for the duration of the proposal review process?  Is this an 
organizing principle?  Would I break anything if I created threads, 
perhaps prefixed in a consistent way, like "OpenOffice Proposal: Topic 
Foo"?

-Rob

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Ralph Goers]

Multiple threads would be welcome.

Ralph

On Jun 1, 2011, at 10:25 PM, robert_w...@us.ibm.com wrote:

> Dumb question.  Are we obligated to converse like this, in a single email 
> thread, for the duration of the proposal review process?  Is this an 
> organizing principle?  Would I break anything if I created threads, 
> perhaps prefixed in a consistent way, like "OpenOffice Proposal: Topic 
> Foo"?
> 
> -Rob
> 
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> To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
> 


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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Luke Kowalski]

we were instructed to send the proposal to an email address.
Should we go and hack at the wiki now? No issues, either way.


On 6/1/2011 9:00 AM, Greg Stein wrote:
On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 11:57, Christian Grobmeier > wrote:

> Hello Luke,
>
> don't know if OpenOffice is an exception, but usually Proposals are 
done here:

> http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/

There is no requirement to use the Wiki. I've attached the text of the 
.ODT file in the message below.



  Abstract


OpenOffice.org is comprised of (6) personal productivity applications: 
word processor, spreadsheet, presentation graphics, drawing, equation 
editor, and database. OpenOffice.org supports Windows, Solaris, Linux 
and Macintosh operation systems. OpenOffice.org is localized, 
supporting over 110 languages worldwide.



  Proposal


OpenOffice.org will be contributed to Apache Software Foundation by 
Oracle Corporation in compliance with ASF licensing and governance.



This contribution will form the basis of the new OpenOffice project at 
Apache.



  Background


OpenOffice.org was launched as an open source project by Sun 
Microsystems in June 2000. OpenOffice.org was originally developed by 
Star Division which was acquired by Sun in 1999. OpenOffice.org is the 
leading alternative to MS-Office available as an open source licensed 
offering. The source is written in C++ and delivers language-neutral 
and scriptable functionality. This source technology introduces the 
next-stage architecture, allowing use of the suite elements as 
separate applications or as embedded components in other applications. 
Numerous other features are also present including XML-based file 
formats based on the vendor-neutral OpenDocument Format (ODF) standard 
from OASIS and other resources.



  Rationale


OpenOffice.org core development would continue at Apache following the 
contribution by Oracle, in accordance with Apache bylaws and its usual 
open development processes. Both Oracle and ASF agree that the 
OpenOffice.org development community, previously fragmented, would 
re-unite under ASF to ensure a stable and long term future for 
OpenOffice.org. ASF would enable corporate, non-profit, and volunteer 
stakeholders to contribute code in a collaborative fashion.



Supporting tooling projects will accompany the OpenOffice.org 
contribution, providing APIs for extending and customizing 
OpenOffice.org.



Both OpenOffice.org and the related tooling projects support the OASIS 
Open Document Format, and will attract an ecosystem of developers, 
ISVs and Systems Integrators. ODF ensures the users of OpenOffice.org 
and related solutions will own their document data, and be free to 
choose the application or solution that best meets their requirements.



The OpenOffice.org implementation will serve as a reference 
implementation of the Open Document Format standard.




  Current Status


This is a new project.


  Meritocracy


The initial developers are very familiar with open source development, 
both at Apache and elsewhere. Apache was chosen specifically because 
Oracle as contributor, and IBM as Sponsor and the initial developers 
want to encourage this style of development for the project. A diverse 
developer community is regarded as necessary for a healthy, stable, 
long term OpenOffice.org project.



  Community


OpenOffice.org. seeks to further encourage developer and user 
communities during incubation, beyond the existing developers 
currently working on the project.



  Core Developers


The initial set of committers include people from the community of 
OpenOffice.org Technology projects. We have varying degrees of 
experience with Apache-style open source development, ranging from 
none to ASF Members.



  Alignment


The developers of OpenOffice.org will want to work with the Apache 
Software Foundation specifically because Apache has proven to provide 
a strong foundation and set of practices for developing 
standards-based infrastructure and related components. Additionally, 
the project may evolve to support cloud and mobile platforms from its 
starting point of desktop operating systems.



  Known Risks


  Orphaned products


OpenOffice.org is a mature project, with a set of APIs. It is 
continuing to evolve.



  Inexperience with Open Source


The initial developers include long-time open source developers, 
including Apache Members.



  Homogenous Developers


  OpenOffice.org for many years was managed by Sun, who provided
  the majority of its engineering resources as well as its
  direction. Moving this project to Apache will enable a new start
  and provide a broad framework.


  Reliance on Salaried Developers


The initial group of developers will be employed by IBM, Linux 
distribution companies, and likely public sector agencies. 
Localization resources are expected to gravitate to the new project, 
as well. Ensuring the long term stability of OpenOffice.org is a majo

Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[William A. Rowe Jr.]

> 
> OpenOffice.org will be contributed to Apache Software Foundation by Oracle
> Corporation in compliance with ASF licensing and governance.

Luke, could you offer some insight into affixing the Apache License v2.0
to this code base?  Only ALv2 code is released by the foundation.

LGPL/MPL cannot be relicensed into any non-copyleft license schema without
relicensing (including multiple licensing) by the copyright holders.

Were all contributions to OpenOffice.org under copyright assignment (via
employment or specific copyright assignment agreement)?  How many other
independent copyright holders would have to assent to the license change?
How much non-assenting code would have to be eliminated and potentially
replaced?

Yours,

Bill

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Geir Magnusson Jr.]

Hi all - 

I see that I'm listed as a sponsor.  Can you please remove my name and replace 
with someone else?  I never agreed to sponsor this.

Sorry about any inconvenience.

geir

On Jun 1, 2011, at 11:41 AM, Luke Kowalski wrote:

> The following project is being sent in as an incubator candidate.
> 
> regards
> luke
> 
> 


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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Alexandro Colorado]

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 10:23 PM, William A. Rowe Jr. wrote:

> On 6/1/2011 1:24 PM, robert_w...@us.ibm.com wrote:
> > Ross Gardler  wrote on 06/01/2011 12:21:23 PM:
> >
> >> There are only two initial committers identified in the proposal. Why
> >> only two for such a large codebase?
> >
> > We could have put a much longer list of IBM names on this list,
> developers
> > familiar with the code base via their work on Lotus Symphony (which is
> our
> > OpenOffice based project).  But then we could have been criticized for
> the
> > proposal being too dominated by IBM.  It is clearly our intent to grow
> > this project, both from our corporate developers, but also by recruiting
> > new members to the project, including developers from related open source
> > projects (see my previous note)
>
> The ASF preference (which you already know) is for individual IBM
> developers
> to add themselves to the effort.  A large representation by IBM, or Novell,
> or any other part of the ecosystem is not itself a problem.  But there is
> an apathy towards individuals who are 'signed up' to a project, and who do
> not volunteer themselves.
>
> On a related note, is it Oracle's intent to prohibit participation at this
> ASF project, or are interested developers (particularly previous
> developers)
> permitted to participate on their own time?
>
> > From a practical perspective it would have been impossible to do all of
> > that recruitment without this proposal becoming public prematurely. So
> the
> > majority of the recruitment will occur during incubation.  We obviously
> > don't graduate from incubation with only two.  But it should be enough to
> > get the ball rolling.
>
> Understood.  Looking forward to Sam's response to the 'sign yourself up'
> discussion which Jim already responded to.
>
> > Oracle owns the copyright to the code and is is the one legally permitted
> > to contribute it under Apache 2.0 license.  This is because they required
> > copyright assignment to Sun/Oracle as part of their CLA for OpenOffice.
> So
> > they aggregated and owned all copyrights.  But that does not mean that
> > they were the sole developers on OpenOffice.org  And they are not the
> sole
> > contributors on this proposal.
>
> I've reviewed http://www.openoffice.org/license.html and the code
> providence
> doesn't seem to be a serious obstacle to entering incubation.  However,
> there
> is this;
>
>  Other Works
>
>  Our preference is always for contributions of editable work. But in those
>  cases where editable material is difficult to obtain, there are several
>  options; all presume you hold copyright in the work:
>
>* You can sign the OCA, which covers all work (and not just code)
>  contributed to OpenOffice.org by you;
>
>* If your country's laws allow it, you can make it public domain by
>  declaring as much in a signed document (check if it is possible,
> first!);
>  or
>
>* You can use the Creative Commons Attribution License
> ("Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5").
>  We only accept work under this license that is non-editable and for
> which
>  there is no editable version that can be contributed to the project.
>

> This last item concerns me.  How much of the contribution is unusable due
> to the "Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5" tag, which would appear to be a category
> X
> license to ASF works?  (I couldn't find a corresponding Jira in the legal
> discuss tracker.)
>

The CC was generated for non-code contributions as far as I know. I would
need to have that confirmed.


>
>
>
-- 
*Alexandro Colorado*
*OpenOffice.org* Español
http://es.openoffice.org

Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Alexandro Colorado]

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 10:31 PM,  wrote:

> "William A. Rowe Jr."  wrote on 06/01/2011 03:01:50
> PM:
> >
> > What is a more serious question, how many bug fixes would go into
> > LibreOffice without being offered to the ASF under the AL?  LO has no
> > copyright assignment, so the principals of LO don't have the flexibility
> > to offer these to the ASF, it is contributor-by-contributor.  Each fix
> > would be independently authored, and ultimately the two code bases end
> > up too disjoint to maintain with one another.
> >
> > I am further interested to know which LibreOffice contributors see the
> > benefit of having the base, or at least some of the components, under
> > the more permissive ALv2 in order to propagate the standards desired
> > by LibreOffice.  Software at the ASF has enjoyed very broad adoption
> > in large part because it promotes the widest possible consumption.
> >
>
> There are good, important questions.  But I'd urge you to not think of
> this as a bi-polar OpenOffice/LibreOffice problem.  It is much more
> complex than this.  We also have IBM Lotus Symphony and RedOffice each
> making significant feature enhancements, performance improvements and bug
> fixes.  This is a multi-project, multi-distribution ecosystem.  I think it
> is more of hub-and-spokes, where Apache OpenOffice is the hub.
>

There is also OOo4Kids/OOoLight which Eric lead and have been modified to
work on low resource platoforms like OLPC-XO and ported recently to ARM7,
strip from any Java requirement and other modifications and enhacements.

Eric is on this list so he could answer more specific questions related to
the modifications of these particular projects.



>
> Obviously there are multiple theoretical solutions to this kind of
> problem.  If everyone in the universe were Affero GPL, that would be one
> solution.  If everyone were Apache 2.0 that would be another solution.
> However, what is technical possible and what is politically possible will
> differ.  But I think the general parameters of a workable solution would
> be to push the "hard" work, at the very least the core C++/Java dev and
> test functions, into a core project at Apache. But we should be
> considering the impact of this kind of arrangement on all OpenOffice
> derivative projects, not merely LibreOffice.
>
>
> Regards,
>
> -Rob
>
> -
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
>
>


-- 
*Alexandro Colorado*
*OpenOffice.org* Español
http://es.openoffice.org

Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Sam Ruby]

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 11:23 PM, William A. Rowe Jr.
 wrote:
> On 6/1/2011 1:24 PM, robert_w...@us.ibm.com wrote:
>
>> From a practical perspective it would have been impossible to do all of
>> that recruitment without this proposal becoming public prematurely. So the
>> majority of the recruitment will occur during incubation.  We obviously
>> don't graduate from incubation with only two.  But it should be enough to
>> get the ball rolling.
>
> Understood.  Looking forward to Sam's response to the 'sign yourself up'
> discussion which Jim already responded to.

Just to connect the dots: I gave my +1 here: http://s.apache.org/cEc

- Sam Ruby

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Sam Ruby]

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 1:07 PM, William A. Rowe Jr.  wrote:
>>
>> OpenOffice.org will be contributed to Apache Software Foundation by Oracle
>> Corporation in compliance with ASF licensing and governance.
>
> Luke, could you offer some insight into affixing the Apache License v2.0
> to this code base?  Only ALv2 code is released by the foundation.

We have a standard software grant for substantial portions of
OpenOffice.org.  While such records are private to the foundation, ASF
members such as yourself are welcome to review such.  To assist you in
finding such, the name of the file in svn is "oracle-openoffice.pdf".

We know up front that this is not 100% of the code.  There is much
work to be done during incubation.

> LGPL/MPL cannot be relicensed into any non-copyleft license schema without
> relicensing (including multiple licensing) by the copyright holders.

Relicensing, replacement, and inclusion in accordance to our policy
are all options.

http://www.apache.org/legal/resolved.html#category-b

> Were all contributions to OpenOffice.org under copyright assignment (via
> employment or specific copyright assignment agreement)?  How many other
> independent copyright holders would have to assent to the license change?
> How much non-assenting code would have to be eliminated and potentially
> replaced?

The answers to these questions are not known at this time, and will
need to be resolved before exiting incubation.

> Yours,
>
> Bill

- Sam Ruby

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Jim Jagielski]

On Jun 2, 2011, at 12:40 AM, robert_w...@us.ibm.com wrote:

> 
> -->  One thing that struck me today is that it is almost arcane mystical 
> knowledge, for anyone outside of Apache, how exactly to affix their name 
> in support of this proposal as a proposed initial committer, or even that 
> this was encouraged at this stage.  If I had not been on that draft 
> proposal from the start, I would not have known, and I've read all the 
> Incubation policy and guideline documentation on the web site, or at least 
> I think I did.
> 

The bar for Incubator committership is quite low... basically,
just an interest in helping is enough to be counted in.


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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Jim Jagielski]

Threads are fine, as long as they are really threads ;)

On Jun 2, 2011, at 1:25 AM, robert_w...@us.ibm.com wrote:

> Dumb question.  Are we obligated to converse like this, in a single email 
> thread, for the duration of the proposal review process?  Is this an 
> organizing principle?  Would I break anything if I created threads, 
> perhaps prefixed in a consistent way, like "OpenOffice Proposal: Topic 
> Foo"?
> 
> -Rob
> 
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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Jim Jagielski]

Let's use the Wiki to craft up the latest rev... Much easier for
people not on the mailing lists.

On Jun 1, 2011, at 12:34 PM, Luke Kowalski wrote:

> we were instructed to send the proposal to an email address.
> Should we go and hack at the wiki now? No issues, either way.
> 
> 
> On 6/1/2011 9:00 AM, Greg Stein wrote:
>> On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 11:57, Christian Grobmeier > > wrote:
>> > Hello Luke,
>> >
>> > don't know if OpenOffice is an exception, but usually Proposals are done 
>> > here:
>> > http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/
>> 
>> There is no requirement to use the Wiki. I've attached the text of the .ODT 
>> file in the message below.
>> 
>> 
>>  Abstract
>> 
>> 
>> OpenOffice.org is comprised of (6) personal productivity applications: word 
>> processor, spreadsheet, presentation graphics, drawing, equation editor, and 
>> database. OpenOffice.org supports Windows, Solaris, Linux and Macintosh 
>> operation systems. OpenOffice.org is localized, supporting over 110 
>> languages worldwide.
>> 
>> 
>>  Proposal
>> 
>> 
>> OpenOffice.org will be contributed to Apache Software Foundation by Oracle 
>> Corporation in compliance with ASF licensing and governance.
>> 
>> 
>> This contribution will form the basis of the new OpenOffice project at 
>> Apache.
>> 
>> 
>>  Background
>> 
>> 
>> OpenOffice.org was launched as an open source project by Sun Microsystems in 
>> June 2000. OpenOffice.org was originally developed by Star Division which 
>> was acquired by Sun in 1999. OpenOffice.org is the leading alternative to 
>> MS-Office available as an open source licensed offering. The source is 
>> written in C++ and delivers language-neutral and scriptable functionality. 
>> This source technology introduces the next-stage architecture, allowing use 
>> of the suite elements as separate applications or as embedded components in 
>> other applications. Numerous other features are also present including 
>> XML-based file formats based on the vendor-neutral OpenDocument Format (ODF) 
>> standard from OASIS and other resources.
>> 
>> 
>>  Rationale
>> 
>> 
>> OpenOffice.org core development would continue at Apache following the 
>> contribution by Oracle, in accordance with Apache bylaws and its usual open 
>> development processes. Both Oracle and ASF agree that the OpenOffice.org 
>> development community, previously fragmented, would re-unite under ASF to 
>> ensure a stable and long term future for OpenOffice.org. ASF would enable 
>> corporate, non-profit, and volunteer stakeholders to contribute code in a 
>> collaborative fashion.
>> 
>> 
>> Supporting tooling projects will accompany the OpenOffice.org contribution, 
>> providing APIs for extending and customizing OpenOffice.org.
>> 
>> 
>> Both OpenOffice.org and the related tooling projects support the OASIS Open 
>> Document Format, and will attract an ecosystem of developers, ISVs and 
>> Systems Integrators. ODF ensures the users of OpenOffice.org and related 
>> solutions will own their document data, and be free to choose the 
>> application or solution that best meets their requirements.
>> 
>> 
>> The OpenOffice.org implementation will serve as a reference implementation 
>> of the Open Document Format standard.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>  Current Status
>> 
>> 
>> This is a new project.
>> 
>> 
>>  Meritocracy
>> 
>> 
>> The initial developers are very familiar with open source development, both 
>> at Apache and elsewhere. Apache was chosen specifically because Oracle as 
>> contributor, and IBM as Sponsor and the initial developers want to encourage 
>> this style of development for the project. A diverse developer community is 
>> regarded as necessary for a healthy, stable, long term OpenOffice.org 
>> project.
>> 
>> 
>>  Community
>> 
>> 
>> OpenOffice.org. seeks to further encourage developer and user communities 
>> during incubation, beyond the existing developers currently working on the 
>> project.
>> 
>> 
>>  Core Developers
>> 
>> 
>> The initial set of committers include people from the community of 
>> OpenOffice.org Technology projects. We have varying degrees of experience 
>> with Apache-style open source development, ranging from none to ASF Members.
>> 
>> 
>>  Alignment
>> 
>> 
>> The developers of OpenOffice.org will want to work with the Apache Software 
>> Foundation specifically because Apache has proven to provide a strong 
>> foundation and set of practices for developing standards-based 
>> infrastructure and related components. Additionally, the project may evolve 
>> to support cloud and mobile platforms from its starting point of desktop 
>> operating systems.
>> 
>> 
>>  Known Risks
>> 
>> 
>>  Orphaned products
>> 
>> 
>> OpenOffice.org is a mature project, with a set of APIs. It is continuing to 
>> evolve.
>> 
>> 
>>  Inexperience with Open Source
>> 
>> 
>> The initial developers include long-time open source developers, including 
>> Apache Members.
>> 
>> 
>>  Homogenous Developers
>>

Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Alexei Fedotov]

Rob, thanks for your question.

OpenOffice integration is a minor issue compared to Hibernate and some
other packages which require code changes. Openmeetings uses
OpenOffice service via socket. Having the common license helps, for
example, putting both into one distribution package.

--
With best regards / с наилучшими пожеланиями,
Alexei Fedotov / Алексей Федотов,
http://dataved.ru/
+7 916 562 8095




On Thu, Jun 2, 2011 at 6:45 AM,   wrote:
> Alexei Fedotov  wrote on 06/01/2011 01:38:43 PM:
>
>>
>> OpenOffice is used in our product [1] we want to submit to the
>> incubator. We promised to show that we can gradually clean up LGPL
>> from the code and were working on that [2]. We'd have one less
>> head-ache with OO under Apache License (even if we don't statically
>> linking it, GPL does not define linking).
>>
>> If some guys would consider merging back changes from Lotus Symphony
>> and some other guys wouldn't be abandoning OO in this nice, polite and
>> gentle way, I'd really like the change.
>>
> .
> .
> .
>>[1] http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/OpenmeetingsProposal
>
> Hi Alexei, I'm not familiar with OpenMeetings.  Can you say a little more
> about how it uses OpenOffice?  In particular, does it reuse the OpenOffice
> binaries as-is?  Does it extend OpenOffice via scripts or plugins?  Or
> does it require making core source code modifications and rebuilding?  Or
> something else?
>
> I'm just trying to better understand the nature of the dependency, so we
> can better coordinate on this.
> Regards,
>
> -Rob
>
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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[dsh]

Yep and that's why I "just" felt tempted that it is important to
"just" point out that people "just" lost the "to me" in my message ;)

Cheers
Daniel

On Thu, Jun 2, 2011 at 1:18 AM, Greg Stein  wrote:
> Ease up... people just lost the "to me" in your message. And others
> didn't see it in the quoted sections.
>
> It happens
>
> Cheers,
> -g
>
> On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 18:31, dsh  wrote:
>> Again,
>>
>> "to me" means to me as in it's my personal opinion and nothing else.
>> How could I be somebody defining the rules? I suspect the rules are
>> all documented anyway. So you did the interpretation of an opinion
>> expressed by somebody else and of course if you treat that opinion as
>> a requirement or a re-definition of the rules you got it all wrong.
>>
>> Cheers
>> Daniel
>>
>> On Thu, Jun 2, 2011 at 12:13 AM, Ross Gardler  wrote:
>>> On 01/06/2011 22:26, Greg Stein wrote:

 On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 17:20, Benson Margulies
  wrote:
>
> On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 5:18 PM, Ross Gardler  wrote:
>>
>> On 01/06/2011 19:51, robert_w...@us.ibm.com wrote:
>>>
>>> dsh    wrote on 06/01/2011 02:16:58 PM:
>>
>> ...
>>
>>> And is it generally held to be a criterion
>>> for a podling to graduate or even initiate, that it first persuade all
>>> Linux distros to include it
>
> Generally held by whom? Citation please?

 Rob is *posing the question*. Basically, I read his message as a
 diplomatic way to say "you're full of it, if you think distro adoption
 is a requirement. take your red herring elsewhere". :-)

>> We don't care where it is used or how it is used. What we care about is
>> whether there is a healthy community around the code base. Who makes up
>> that
>> community is not our concern, just as long as it is healthy.

 That's basically what Rob said. Read it again :-)
>>>
>>> I don't need to, I was answering Robs question with an IPMC hat. I was
>>> trying to support his position. I'm British I can't be as direct as you :-P
>>>
>>> Ross
>>>
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>>>
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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Christian Grobmeier]

Luke, the proposal meanwhile arrived in the wiki:
http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/OpenOfficeProposal

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 6:34 PM, Luke Kowalski  wrote:
> we were instructed to send the proposal to an email address.
> Should we go and hack at the wiki now? No issues, either way.
>
>
> On 6/1/2011 9:00 AM, Greg Stein wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 11:57, Christian Grobmeier > > wrote:
>> > Hello Luke,
>> >
>> > don't know if OpenOffice is an exception, but usually Proposals are done
>> > here:
>> > http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/
>>
>> There is no requirement to use the Wiki. I've attached the text of the
>> .ODT file in the message below.
>>
>>
>>  Abstract
>>
>>
>> OpenOffice.org is comprised of (6) personal productivity applications:
>> word processor, spreadsheet, presentation graphics, drawing, equation
>> editor, and database. OpenOffice.org supports Windows, Solaris, Linux and
>> Macintosh operation systems. OpenOffice.org is localized, supporting over
>> 110 languages worldwide.
>>
>>
>>  Proposal
>>
>>
>> OpenOffice.org will be contributed to Apache Software Foundation by Oracle
>> Corporation in compliance with ASF licensing and governance.
>>
>>
>> This contribution will form the basis of the new OpenOffice project at
>> Apache.
>>
>>
>>  Background
>>
>>
>> OpenOffice.org was launched as an open source project by Sun Microsystems
>> in June 2000. OpenOffice.org was originally developed by Star Division which
>> was acquired by Sun in 1999. OpenOffice.org is the leading alternative to
>> MS-Office available as an open source licensed offering. The source is
>> written in C++ and delivers language-neutral and scriptable functionality.
>> This source technology introduces the next-stage architecture, allowing use
>> of the suite elements as separate applications or as embedded components in
>> other applications. Numerous other features are also present including
>> XML-based file formats based on the vendor-neutral OpenDocument Format (ODF)
>> standard from OASIS and other resources.
>>
>>
>>  Rationale
>>
>>
>> OpenOffice.org core development would continue at Apache following the
>> contribution by Oracle, in accordance with Apache bylaws and its usual open
>> development processes. Both Oracle and ASF agree that the OpenOffice.org
>> development community, previously fragmented, would re-unite under ASF to
>> ensure a stable and long term future for OpenOffice.org. ASF would enable
>> corporate, non-profit, and volunteer stakeholders to contribute code in a
>> collaborative fashion.
>>
>>
>> Supporting tooling projects will accompany the OpenOffice.org
>> contribution, providing APIs for extending and customizing OpenOffice.org.
>>
>>
>> Both OpenOffice.org and the related tooling projects support the OASIS
>> Open Document Format, and will attract an ecosystem of developers, ISVs and
>> Systems Integrators. ODF ensures the users of OpenOffice.org and related
>> solutions will own their document data, and be free to choose the
>> application or solution that best meets their requirements.
>>
>>
>> The OpenOffice.org implementation will serve as a reference implementation
>> of the Open Document Format standard.
>>
>>
>>
>>  Current Status
>>
>>
>> This is a new project.
>>
>>
>>  Meritocracy
>>
>>
>> The initial developers are very familiar with open source development,
>> both at Apache and elsewhere. Apache was chosen specifically because Oracle
>> as contributor, and IBM as Sponsor and the initial developers want to
>> encourage this style of development for the project. A diverse developer
>> community is regarded as necessary for a healthy, stable, long term
>> OpenOffice.org project.
>>
>>
>>  Community
>>
>>
>> OpenOffice.org. seeks to further encourage developer and user communities
>> during incubation, beyond the existing developers currently working on the
>> project.
>>
>>
>>  Core Developers
>>
>>
>> The initial set of committers include people from the community of
>> OpenOffice.org Technology projects. We have varying degrees of experience
>> with Apache-style open source development, ranging from none to ASF Members.
>>
>>
>>  Alignment
>>
>>
>> The developers of OpenOffice.org will want to work with the Apache
>> Software Foundation specifically because Apache has proven to provide a
>> strong foundation and set of practices for developing standards-based
>> infrastructure and related components. Additionally, the project may evolve
>> to support cloud and mobile platforms from its starting point of desktop
>> operating systems.
>>
>>
>>  Known Risks
>>
>>
>>  Orphaned products
>>
>>
>> OpenOffice.org is a mature project, with a set of APIs. It is continuing
>> to evolve.
>>
>>
>>  Inexperience with Open Source
>>
>>
>> The initial developers include long-time open source developers, including
>> Apache Members.
>>
>>
>>  Homogenous Developers
>>
>>
>>      OpenOffice.org for many years was managed by Sun, who provided
>>      the majority

Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Jochen Wiedmann]

On Thu, Jun 2, 2011 at 5:10 AM,   wrote:
> Jochen Wiedmann  wrote on 06/01/2011 02:56:10
> PM:
>
>>
>> > We could have put a much longer list of IBM names on this list,
> developers
>> > familiar with the code base via their work on Lotus Symphony (which is
> our
>> > OpenOffice based project).  But then we could have been criticized for
> the
>> > proposal being too dominated by IBM.  It is clearly our intent to grow
>> > this project, both from our corporate developers, but also by
> recruiting
>> > new members to the project, including developers from related open
> source
>> > projects (see my previous note)
>>
>> And why couldn't IBM do quite the same with LibreOffice, or, even
>> better, with a remerged O/LOffice?
>>
>
> I trust I do not need to explain at length to an Apache PMC the relative
> merits of the Apache 2.0 license or the strengths and stability of the
> ASF.  I'll take it as granted that this is well-known to you all.  In any
> case I am a strict adherent to the practical wisdom of not debating open
> source licenses while sober, and I decline to make an exception in this
> case.

Rob, it may come as a surprise to you: But what I wrote was in no way
related to a particular license. I would have written just the same,
if Apache would use the LGPL/MPL and LibreOffice where ASL licensed.

The point I am trying to make is that it is (IMO) in noone's interest
to create a second community (!), the exception (at least it seems)
being IBM. Everyone else would be just as happy or even happier if the
OO code base, trademarks, etc. where simply donated to TDF.

Jochen


-- 
Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men
will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of
everyone.

John Maynard Keynes (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Keynes)

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Greg Stein]

On Thu, Jun 2, 2011 at 10:25, Jochen Wiedmann  wrote:
>...
>  Everyone else would be just as happy or even happier if the
> OO code base, trademarks, etc. where simply donated to TDF.

Please don't speak for me under that "everyone else". As long as the
TDF maintains a copyleft stance, then I am happier with the donation
here at the ASF, where we can provide OO.o under a permissive license.
That is important to me.

Cheers,
-g

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Nick Burch]

On Wed, 1 Jun 2011, William A. Rowe Jr. wrote:

On 6/1/2011 12:48 PM, Nick Burch wrote:
This would possibly warrant a seperate discussion though, especially if 
the codebase were to be destined for POI rather than a new TLP.


And note, this is a decision that can be made *during* incubation, with 
POI folks participating on the incubating project's dev list.


Yup. It is a thing possibly in favour of bringing the ODF Toolkit in in a 
different podling, as per your earler email.


Nick

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Nick Burch]

On Wed, 1 Jun 2011, robert_w...@us.ibm.com wrote:

But I see this as pulling in two directions:

1) On the one hand it is a good fit for a module in an OpenOffice SDK, so
the OpenOffice project might be a good fit.  On the other hand ODF is an
application-independent document format, not necessarily just for
OpenOffice.  So we might not want to bury it as a component in this much
larger project.


It's not impossible for a project to live in one TLP, but be referenced by 
another. One example is the various projects within the Hadoop family. 
Most of them are independent TLPs, which do collaborate and work together, 
with the websites linking each other.



2) It is complementary to POI, doing some of the same functions with ODF
that POI does with MS Office binary and OOXML documents.  But it is a
little bit of scope creep if POI takes on non-Microsoft formats.  I could
live with that, if done consistently in how POI describes itself.


I can't speak for the whole project, but personally I'd be interested in 
discussing how the POI mission statement could be expanded, and if that'd 
work well for everyone.


Another option of course is to incubate it toward its own TLP 
eventually. We do have Java and C# libraries already, along with some 
useful ODF-processing XSLT scripts, a servlet "runner" and an ODF 
validator components.


It may be worth bringing all of these in as one podling, seperate from the 
main OOo one. Once in the incubator, the communities can decide where they 
want to go, which could be aiming for a TLP for all the ODF tools, or 
could be some moving to POI and some into the OOo podling.


I'll have more cycles to discuss that on the POI dev list once we get 
the OpenOffice podling off to a smooth start.


Hopefully discussions on the POI dev list can shake out a few mentors (I'm 
happy to mentor an ODF Toolkit podling, but it'd take more than just me!), 
then we could put together a proposal to bring in the ODF Toolkit. As Bill 
has pointed out, it could be a 2nd proposal alongside the OOo one, and 
potentially a quicker one to get in as the situation is simpler.


Nick

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[William A. Rowe Jr.]

On 6/1/2011 11:07 PM, Greg Stein wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 22:52,   wrote:
>> ...
>> What am I missing here?
>>
>> According to the Incubation Policy [1]:
>>
>> "A Sponsor SHALL be either:
>>
>>* the Board of the Apache Software Foundation;
>>* a Top Level Project (TLP) within the Apache Software Foundation
>> (where the TLP considers the Candidate to be a suitable sub-project);or
>>* the Incubator PMC."
>>
> They wouldn't. It was just a simple error in the section headings.
> There is the "Sponsors" subsection, with several subsections. There
> shouldn't have really been anything under that main section, so I
> removed it and adjusted the subsections.
> 
> http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/OpenOfficeProposal

Is this correct?  From what we've witnessed, the Board appears to have
presented this to the incubator on behalf of the proposers.  Although this
doesn't change the need for the incubator to vote to accept the podling,
it does seem to be a request at the behest of the Board of the ASF, and
should be marked as such under Sponsoring Entity, no?

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Greg Stein]

On Thu, Jun 2, 2011 at 12:23, William A. Rowe Jr.  wrote:
>...
> Is this correct?  From what we've witnessed, the Board appears to have
> presented this to the incubator on behalf of the proposers.  Although this
> doesn't change the need for the incubator to vote to accept the podling,
> it does seem to be a request at the behest of the Board of the ASF, and
> should be marked as such under Sponsoring Entity, no?

The Board is not involved, other than to work with Oracle on how to
submit a proposal to the Incubator. Now that the proposal has been
made, the Board is uninvolved.

So to accept it, the Incubator will be the Sponsoring Entity here at the ASF.

Cheers,
-g

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Yegor Kozlov]

> I can't speak for the whole project, but personally I'd be interested in
> discussing how the POI mission statement could be expanded, and if that'd
> work well for everyone.
>

On the web site we say that the Apache POI Project's mission is to
create and maintain Java APIs for Microsoft Documents, but in the code
we avoid any MS-specific terms such as 'Excel' and 'Word' and use more
generic terms like 'Spreadsheet' and 'Document'. We (I mean POI team)
really aim to be a general-purpose  API for Office documents, not
necessarily MS Office. I don't see why we shouldn't put the ODF
Toolkit under POI umbrella.

>
> Hopefully discussions on the POI dev list can shake out a few mentors (I'm
> happy to mentor an ODF Toolkit podling, but it'd take more than just me!),
> then we could put together a proposal to bring in the ODF Toolkit. As Bill
> has pointed out, it could be a 2nd proposal alongside the OOo one, and
> potentially a quicker one to get in as the situation is simpler.
>

I'll be happy to mentor the ODF Toollkit too.

Yegor

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[robert_weir]

Yegor Kozlov  wrote on 06/02/2011 01:36:52 PM:

> 
> > I can't speak for the whole project, but personally I'd be interested 
in
> > discussing how the POI mission statement could be expanded, and if 
that'd
> > work well for everyone.
> >
> 
> On the web site we say that the Apache POI Project's mission is to
> create and maintain Java APIs for Microsoft Documents, but in the code
> we avoid any MS-specific terms such as 'Excel' and 'Word' and use more
> generic terms like 'Spreadsheet' and 'Document'. We (I mean POI team)
> really aim to be a general-purpose  API for Office documents, not
> necessarily MS Office. I don't see why we shouldn't put the ODF
> Toolkit under POI umbrella.
> 
> >
> > Hopefully discussions on the POI dev list can shake out a few mentors 
(I'm
> > happy to mentor an ODF Toolkit podling, but it'd take more than just 
me!),
> > then we could put together a proposal to bring in the ODF Toolkit. As 
Bill
> > has pointed out, it could be a 2nd proposal alongside the OOo one, and
> > potentially a quicker one to get in as the situation is simpler.
> >
> 
> I'll be happy to mentor the ODF Toollkit too.
> 


This is great news.  But since I'm a principal on the ODF Toolkit Union, 
as Steering Committee member, as well as one of the proposers on the 
OpenOffice proposal, I think I'll need to serialize these proposals.  I 
don't have bandwidth to work a second proposal until the OpenOffice 
podling gets kicked off.  But I promise you, I am interested, and I can 
get the right parties from the ODF Toolkit Union into this list once 
things get back to normal. (Normal does happen, right?)

-Rob

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Dave Fisher]

On Jun 2, 2011, at 11:12 AM, robert_w...@us.ibm.com wrote:

> Yegor Kozlov  wrote on 06/02/2011 01:36:52 PM:
> 
>> 
>>> I can't speak for the whole project, but personally I'd be interested 
> in
>>> discussing how the POI mission statement could be expanded, and if 
> that'd
>>> work well for everyone.
>>> 
>> 
>> On the web site we say that the Apache POI Project's mission is to
>> create and maintain Java APIs for Microsoft Documents, but in the code
>> we avoid any MS-specific terms such as 'Excel' and 'Word' and use more
>> generic terms like 'Spreadsheet' and 'Document'. We (I mean POI team)
>> really aim to be a general-purpose  API for Office documents, not
>> necessarily MS Office. I don't see why we shouldn't put the ODF
>> Toolkit under POI umbrella.
>> 
>>> 
>>> Hopefully discussions on the POI dev list can shake out a few mentors 
> (I'm
>>> happy to mentor an ODF Toolkit podling, but it'd take more than just 
> me!),
>>> then we could put together a proposal to bring in the ODF Toolkit. As 
> Bill
>>> has pointed out, it could be a 2nd proposal alongside the OOo one, and
>>> potentially a quicker one to get in as the situation is simpler.
>>> 
>> 
>> I'll be happy to mentor the ODF Toollkit too.

+1 to Yegor's time on this!

>> 
> 
> 
> This is great news.  But since I'm a principal on the ODF Toolkit Union, 
> as Steering Committee member, as well as one of the proposers on the 
> OpenOffice proposal, I think I'll need to serialize these proposals.  I 
> don't have bandwidth to work a second proposal until the OpenOffice 
> podling gets kicked off.  But I promise you, I am interested, and I can 
> get the right parties from the ODF Toolkit Union into this list once 
> things get back to normal. (Normal does happen, right?)

I just joined the list because NIck brought our attention to it. According to 
the archives June has already exceeded a month of messages here.

FWIW - We now have three POI PMC members (Nick, Yegor and me) replying to the 
thread.

Regards,
Dave

> 
> -Rob
> 
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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Steve Loughran]

On 01/06/2011 17:21, Ross Gardler wrote:

Thanks for this exciting proposal. I have a few questions.

There are only two initial committers identified in the proposal. Why
only two for such a large codebase?

It's going to be very hard for two committers to manage and maintain
this code.

The proposal states "Both Oracle and ASF agree that the OpenOffice.org
development community, previously fragmented, would re-unite under ASF
to ensure a stable and long term future for OpenOffice.org." What
evidence is there to support this bold statement? And who are the "ASF"
that made this statement?

"The initial developers are very familiar with open source development,
both at Apache and elsewhere. " I don't see any obvious engagement of
either of the initial committers with existing ASF projects and the
proposal does not provide any evidence for the claimed familiarity.
Existing experience is, of course, not required for entry into the
incubator. I'm just wondering if I've missed something?

There is a statement that "Oracle will assist in the transition and
migration from OpenOffice.org.", I am probably reading too much into it,
but why is there not a statement that Oracle intend to continue
development once the transition is complete?

I hope my questions don't push you onto the defensive, that's not my
intention. This is going to be a hard project to bring into the
incubator given the recent history of OpenOffice.org.

As you will no doubt know, the incubator is not a place for code dumps
and I expect that recent events will make plenty of people worry that
this is, in fact, a code dump. By answering these questions I hope you
can start to address these concerns for the Incubator PMC.


I see that Oracle don't promise any engineering support either. Which 
means the effort has to come from IBM, the "public sector bodies" 
referred to, and the community. What community is there other than TDF?


-steve

(doc opens well in MSWord 2007, BTW)

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Steve Loughran]

On 01/06/2011 17:33, robert_w...@us.ibm.com wrote:

Jukka Zitting  wrote on 06/01/2011 12:13:09 PM:




  Community

  OpenOffice.org. seeks to further encourage developer and user

communities

during incubation, beyond the existing developers currently working on

the

project.


Any thoughts on how (or if) the LibreOffice community would fit into
this picture?



There are many projects, open source and proprietary that are derived from
Sun/Oracle's original OpenOffice project.

I made a diagram of this on a blog post a while ago:

http://www.robweir.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/oo-forks.png
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2010/11/the-legacy-of-openoffice-org.html

So I think we want to consider all of this.  This code base, although not
your typical piece of componentry, does appear to have been treated as
something that could be customized, repackaged and redistributed.  I don't
have the exactly numbers, but there are significant users of the following
OpenOffice derivatives:

- LibreOffice
- IBM Lotus Symphony
- EuroOffice
- BrOffice (which some would say is a derivative of LibreOffice)
- RedOffice

In all cases there are several overlapping communities:

- a community of developers
- a community of users
- a community of supporters, trainers, consultants, etc.

We'll need to work out how these related, and especially which of these
community functions are a good fit for an eventual Apache TLP, and which
things fit better outside of Apache.  But my recommendation is that we
encourage the core development of the editors to occur in Apache, while
making it easy, via a modular extension mechanism, a modular install, etc.
for others to customize and redistribute as permitted by the Apache 2.0
license.


OK, but what about the TDF people. Where do they appear here? Is this 
another donation of a dead brand after the OSS people forked off the 
project and kept it going? Like the donation of Hudson to Eclipse after 
the Jenkins fork?


I don't trust oracle since the Harmony mess. If they did support the 
Apache license, why don't they provide the TCK for the JDK without 
imposing Field of Use restrictions? That would be a sign of support for 
apache-licensed code?


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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Greg Stein]

On Thu, Jun 2, 2011 at 19:06, Steve Loughran  wrote:
> On 01/06/2011 17:33, robert_w...@us.ibm.com wrote:
>...
>> have the exactly numbers, but there are significant users of the following
>> OpenOffice derivatives:
>>
>> - LibreOffice
>> - IBM Lotus Symphony
>> - EuroOffice
>> - BrOffice (which some would say is a derivative of LibreOffice)
>> - RedOffice
>>
>> In all cases there are several overlapping communities:
>>
>> - a community of developers
>> - a community of users
>> - a community of supporters, trainers, consultants, etc.
>>
>> We'll need to work out how these related, and especially which of these
>> community functions are a good fit for an eventual Apache TLP, and which
>> things fit better outside of Apache.  But my recommendation is that we
>> encourage the core development of the editors to occur in Apache, while
>> making it easy, via a modular extension mechanism, a modular install, etc.
>> for others to customize and redistribute as permitted by the Apache 2.0
>> license.
>
> OK, but what about the TDF people. Where do they appear here? Is this

Right at the top of Rob's list: "LibreOffice".

> another donation of a dead brand after the OSS people forked off the project
> and kept it going? Like the donation of Hudson to Eclipse after the Jenkins
> fork?

It isn't "dead" if there is a community to pick it up. Oracle
seemingly doesn't want it, but I'll bet there are plenty of others who
*do*.

>
> I don't trust oracle since the Harmony mess. If they did support the Apache

Doesn't matter whether we trust Oracle or not. We have a signed
software grant. Strictly speaking, we don't need them, and they can't
do anything to us.

Cheers,
-g

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Niall Pemberton]

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 4:41 PM, Luke Kowalski  wrote:
> The following project is being sent in as an incubator candidate.

The "Required Resources" section of the proposal is pretty
minimalistic listing only two mailing lists, JIRA, Subversion &
download site. While it is not necessary IMO to detail all
requirements prior to accepting the proposal, it would be better to to
give a more realistic picture of the scope of the resources required.

Looking at the OpenOffice.org website I see the following:
 - 146 projects (each of which has a mailing list)
 - A wiki powered by http://www.mediawiki.org
 - Forums in 10 languages powered by http://www.phpbb.com/

How many of these projects is it anticipated (best guess) will end up
at the ASF? What is the likely number of mailing lists that will
(eventually) be required?

Will the user forums be hosted and supported by the ASF?

Will the MidiWiki and its content be hosted and supported by the ASF?

OpenOffice.org has quite a few domain names (e.g. OpenOffice.org,
projects.openoffice.org, support.openoffice.org, about.openoffice.org,
marketing.openoffice.org etc.) - which (if any) of these domain names
be transferred to the ASF?

I know there were good questions asked about trademarks in the following thread:

http://markmail.org/message/zjllzh3ushsd3kdu

...and the answer(s) were it will be cleared up during incubation. But
it would be good to have an idea of whether this is going to be a big
issue or not. On the face of it, it looks like there has been a more
liberal policy than the ASF's current policy and there could be a
large number of companies that might have to be dealt with. We have
seen that dealing with a trademark issue with one company can take
quite a bit of effort - OpenOffice.org could dwarf that. Specifically
then:

 - has the OpenOffice.org trademark policy been more liberal than the
ASF's current policy?
 - how many organisations have been granted permission to use the
trademark in their products and services?
   http://surveys.services.openoffice.org/surveys/index.php?sid=31881
 - If it has been more liberal, will the ASF allow this to continue
and if not how will organisations that have been given permission be
dealt with?

Lastly a couple of comments..

I thought Allen Pulsifer's post was good:
http://markmail.org/message/yowqc4eloxsjhhll
...especially the part about how OpenOffice.org dwarfs the scale of
any other ASF project and I worry about whether we have the volunteer
hours to first incubate this project and second to oversee and
administer it post graduation?

I know that Rob said they didn't want to flood the proposal with IBM
committers, but diversity isn't an issue for entering incubation -
only exiting, so IMO it would be better to see those people listed
from the start.

Thanks

Niall


> regards
> luke

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[robert_weir]

Niall Pemberton  wrote on 06/02/2011 09:07:31 
PM:

> 
> The "Required Resources" section of the proposal is pretty
> minimalistic listing only two mailing lists, JIRA, Subversion &
> download site. While it is not necessary IMO to detail all
> requirements prior to accepting the proposal, it would be better to to
> give a more realistic picture of the scope of the resources required.
> 

I'll update the wiki for this.  But I caution that much of this is pending 
discussion with the eventual project members.  It is not so much a matter 
of what assets we bring into the project and what assets are distributed 
in the project's deliverables, but more about how we structure the work. 
Some of this might also depend on how we ultimately relate to LibreOffice.

> Looking at the OpenOffice.org website I see the following:
>  - 146 projects (each of which has a mailing list)
>  - A wiki powered by http://www.mediawiki.org
>  - Forums in 10 languages powered by http://www.phpbb.com/
> 

I'd like to recommend the following general approach:

1) Where possible, map active project collaboration artefacts (mailings 
lists, repositories, wiki pages, etc.) from OpenOffice.org to equivalent 
in the Apache OpenOffice project infrastructure.

2) For inactive projects pages, we might just archive the static HTML 
state of the project pages, for reference.

3) For end-user facing pages, we'll want to preserve an OpenOffice.org 
destination, on an Apache server.  So not the vanilla Apache project 
infrastructure, but an Apache OpenOffice branded end-user portal.  We'll 
need to be careful to preserve relative URL's, or do mod_rewrite redirects 
to preserve the thousands of internal and external links to these pages. 
If someone likes puzzles, this would be a good project.

Just throwing that out to prompt debate.  I'm open to other approaches.

> How many of these projects is it anticipated (best guess) will end up
> at the ASF? What is the likely number of mailing lists that will
> (eventually) be required?
> 

Good question.  We haven't discussed this or reached consensus.  If anyone 
has a strong opinion on an approach, I'd love to hear it.  But it seems 
the poles are:

1) Bring over only what we absolutely need to build a release. 

2) Bring over everything at first, just in case we might need it sometime.

#1 looks like my wife's office.  #2 looks like my office.


> Will the user forums be hosted and supported by the ASF?
> 
> Will the MidiWiki and its content be hosted and supported by the ASF?
> 

Per above, I think we need to split the diamond.  We want to be good 
Apache citizens on the project infrastructure, the web site and tools that 
we use for collaborating in the project and developing and testing the 
code, tracking issues, etc.  But at the same time we realize that the 
OpenOffice.org web site is an amazing resource, full of end-user facing 
information.  If we tried to stuff that into an Apache project page, it 
would probably not work out well. 

Just throwing that out to prompt debate.  I'm open to other ideas here.


> OpenOffice.org has quite a few domain names (e.g. OpenOffice.org,
> projects.openoffice.org, support.openoffice.org, about.openoffice.org,
> marketing.openoffice.org etc.) - which (if any) of these domain names
> be transferred to the ASF?
> 

The domain is openoffice.org.  The variations are subdomains and these can 
be managed by whoever controls the domain.   Some of these are 
project-related, some are public facing.  I don't think we care about the 
project domain names, since there are not as many external links to them.

> I know there were good questions asked about trademarks in the 
> following thread:
> 
> http://markmail.org/message/zjllzh3ushsd3kdu
> 
> ...and the answer(s) were it will be cleared up during incubation. But
> it would be good to have an idea of whether this is going to be a big
> issue or not. On the face of it, it looks like there has been a more
> liberal policy than the ASF's current policy and there could be a
> large number of companies that might have to be dealt with. We have
> seen that dealing with a trademark issue with one company can take
> quite a bit of effort - OpenOffice.org could dwarf that. Specifically
> then:
> 
>  - has the OpenOffice.org trademark policy been more liberal than the
> ASF's current policy?
>  - how many organisations have been granted permission to use the
> trademark in their products and services?
>http://surveys.services.openoffice.org/surveys/index.php?sid=31881
>  - If it has been more liberal, will the ASF allow this to continue
> and if not how will organisations that have been given permission be
> dealt with?
> 

Do we need to be concerned with this?  In particular, if someone was given 
permission to use the trademark by Sun, or Oracle previously, does the 
assignment of the trademark to AFS negate the permission?  If not, then I 
think the question boils down to understanding better what AFS trademark 
polic

Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[James Kosin]

On 2:59 PM, Luke Kowalski wrote:
> The following project is being sent in as an incubator candidate.
>
> regards
> luke
>
Okay,

First, I've been reading the talking points going back and forth on this
for about 1-2 days now.  And there are some valid concerns.
(1)  The project as a whole is LARGE.  Some may even call it HUGE. 
Despite those complaints, I don't believe there is a size limit on the
size of a project; however, it brings up LOTS of questions on Why?  How?
and Who is to blame?
Basically, are the developers able to support the project entirely on
their own?  If so, showing some supporting evidence as to how.  Granted
learning code is fun in my opinion but it won't lead to a good outcome
in the long run without some very knowledgeable people supporting the
project.  Having 2 or even 3 people supporting a project of this size is
a sure sign of failure.  Unless these people really are major
contributors with evidence and know how to back them up.
(2)  The licensing is also an issue, and a serious one at that.  When a
project goes into Apache the entire project needs to be signed over by
all supporters and all code either signed over by all the copyright
holders or the copy-protected code removed.  Which may lead to an
unusable project... if everyone doesn't agree to the terms of the
transfer.  And yes, it means all parties that hold a stake in the software.
(3)  There is even talk as to why?  I'm also curious as to why they
would need or want to transfer the project to Apache.  That aside, I
don't think there needs to be a reason given just a clear plan on how OO
is going to be supported and developed under the Apache license.  Also,
someone mentioned the kernel... however the linux kernel is not the one
asking to be included in the Apache organization.  The kernel is still
on it's own and is thriving without Apache.  So, why this sudden change
is a good question.

I'm good with giving a +1 but on the condition that the planned document
be developed as a Wiki and all the details of how the team members are
going to support the project and allow it to thrive without just dumping
the project here and leaving.

James

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Ross Gardler]

On 03/06/2011 04:07, James Kosin wrote:

(2)  The licensing is also an issue, and a serious one at that.  When a
project goes into Apache the entire project needs to be signed over by
all supporters and all code either signed over by all the copyright
holders or the copy-protected code removed.  Which may lead to an
unusable project... if everyone doesn't agree to the terms of the
transfer.  And yes, it means all parties that hold a stake in the software.


This is not the case.

Oracle owns all copyright in contributions to date and they have already 
signed the grant to allow Apache to sublicence it. The grant is 
identical to the one all other projects coming in sign, see 
http://www.apache.org/licenses/proposed/software-grant.txt


If there are dependencies that Oracle do not own these need to be 
addressed on a case by case basis. That is part of the incubation 
process. It would be helpful if the proposal identified what licence 
incompatibilities there are, this has been requested and promised in 
another thread. The incubator is experieced with dealing with these 
issues once clearly identified.


Future contributions are made under the standard Apache CLA which grants 
a licence allowing the ASF to relicence the copyrighted material. 
Copyright remains with the original contributor.


Ross

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[eric b]

Hi James,

Le 3 juin 11 à 05:07, James Kosin a écrit :


On 2:59 PM, Luke Kowalski wrote:

The following project is being sent in as an incubator candidate.
regards
luke


Okay,

First, I've been reading the talking points going back and forth on  
this for about 1-2 days now.  And there are some valid concerns.

(1)  The project as a whole is LARGE.  Some may even call it HUGE.



Indeed, it is :-)




Despite those complaints, I don't believe there is a size limit on  
the size of a project; however, it brings up LOTS of questions on  
Why?  How?

and Who is to blame?
Basically, are the developers able to support the project entirely  
on their own?



See below


  If so, showing some supporting evidence as to how.



If this can help, I'm building OpenOffice.org  (1.x, 2.x and 3.x), on  
all platforms (Windows, Mac and Linux). since 2004, and contributing  
to bugfixes and fix build breakers since 2005.


As a game or stupid bet (choose the right word), and to have Fun with  
students, I forked OpenOffice.org (basicaly OOo3.2.1_m19) to create  
OOo4Kids, and OOoLight.

See : https://adullact.net/projects/ooo4kids1 for further information.

This is basicaly the same size as OpenOffice.org tree, but  
simplified. We forked OpenOffice.org to avoid a boring QA process,  
but are eager to contribute back when the students write interesting  
features. So yes, this is possible : since more than a year, we  
provide major ports, means Windows (including portable version), Mac  
OS X and Linux Intel and even ARM versions, in 17 locales.


With that, I can say I know well the OpenOffice.org build process  
(all platforms excepted Solaris), and as I wrote, I'm ready to  
participate, help if I can, and to share my knowledge, and participate.


But maybe I misunderstood your question ?


Granted learning code is fun in my opinion but it won't lead to a  
good outcome in the long run without some very knowledgeable people  
supporting the project.



I completely agree, and the most obvious way to create something  
sustainable is to start soon (urgent). And to document.


Just as example, I'd suggest something like that (maybe a bit  
outdated) : http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/EnvironmentSetup


This is essential to propose the same asap for the incubator project.



Having 2 or even 3 people supporting a project of this size is
a sure sign of failure.



I hope more will join :)


Unless these people really are major contributors with evidence and  
know how to back them up.





Another thing coming is that IRC is essential for helping newcomers.  
What about discuss those points directly ?  (e.g. on  
#dev.openoffice.org , server : irc.freenode.net ?)


IMHO, the role of Oracle developers is essential, and we should  
firstly invite them to join. The problem is, that we don't know how  
Oracle management announced the donation, and how things have been  
done internaly.





(2)  The licensing is also an issue, and a serious one at that.



From my little own side, I just would like to say, for an individual  
contributor, is the story of the contributions. Any patch or code has  
a lifetime, and is not that important after all : what remains is  
"you did that a day".


But I know we are not that much in this situation, and I'll stop  
there :-)



Regards,
Eric Bachard

--
qɔᴉɹə
Education Project:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Education_Project
Projet OOo4Kids : http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/Main_Page
L'association EducOOo : http://www.educoo.org
Blog : http://eric.bachard.org/news

RE: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Allen Pulsifer]

>  (3)  There is even talk as to why?  I'm also curious as to why they would
need or want to transfer the project to Apache.

Only the person who made that decision knows the answer, and if you ask
them, you might get an answer, and it might even be the real answer.  But
you never know.

I will offer you my analysis though as a neutral observer, which might help
with the understanding.

It is not an uncommon model for companies to take a program they own and
release an open-source version while continuing to sell a proprietary
version that includes additional features and technical support.  Among
other reasons:

- Build a community around the application, hoping to upsell organizations
to the proprietary version.

- Get bug reports and code contributions that they can use in the
proprietary version.

Sun acquired the StarOffice program by acquiring the company that created
it.  That is a common reason for one company to acquire another: to acquire
the company's technology.  It has been said that Sun was looking for an
office suite for SunOS, both for Sun's customers and for Sun's own
employees.  Acquiring StarOffice met that need at a reasonable cost.

After acquiring StarOffice, Sun released an open source version called
OpenOffice, for the reasons listed above.  As mentioned in a prior post, Sun
required all community contributions to the open source version to include a
copyright assignment to Sun, so they could use those contributions in their
proprietary version.  This was rigorously enforced.

Oracle acquired Sun, primarily it is said to acquire Sun's Java and MySQL
products.  StarOffice and OpenOffice came along for the ride.  Oracle
continued to sell StarOffice, but changed the name to Oracle Open Office,
and continued the open source version, just like Sun, using the same
employees.  Oracle also envisioned creating an online version of Open Office
that would be similar to Google Docs.

Neither of the plans worked out.  Over at Oracle, sales and marketing runs
the show, not the engineers.  The Oracle sales force, which is accustomed to
being paid big commissions for large dollar sales, was not happy pushing a
$35 per seat office suite.  Meanwhile, little headway was made turning the
bloated and complex code into an online version.  Oracle gave the program a
short time frame to show $$$ results, and it did not make the cut.  So they
pulled the plug.

Meanwhile, Oracle has this open source community inherited from Sun, to
which they had been paying lip service.  In order to avoid a complete
public-relations disaster, Oracle declared, "we are going to turn this
project over to the open source community".  In addition, Oracle also has a
relationship with IBM, who had taken the code, under license from Sun, and
created their own proprietary derivative, IBM Lotus Symphony.  It has been
said that Oracle has some sort of contractual obligation to IBM to continue
development of the code, although I don't know if that is true or not or
what the terms of that agreement are.

IBM has had more success with IBM Lotus Symphony than Sun had with
StarOffice.  Symphony is an important product in the IBM portfolio, and they
were not going to drop it.  IBM also wished to continue the basic structure
Sun had in place and from which IBM has also been benefitting: a proprietary
version along with open source version.  IBM recognized however that Sun's
prior system of requiring a copyright assignment had led to dissatisfaction
in the open source community and eventually to a fork.  So they decided to
change the arrangement to an Apache License, which was more symmetrical and
which had worked for many other projects, including projects IBM has been
involved in.  IBM probably selected the Apache Software Foundation as a
place to host the project for similar reasons.  This arrangement also
satisfied Oracle's stated intention to "turn the code over to the open
source community".

So here was are.

It has been asked whether this is simply a code dump.  For Oracle, it is
exactly that.  They do not care about the code and are simply unloading it.
The primary driver of this proposal through is IBM, not Oracle.  For IBM, it
may or not be a code dump--I can't say for sure either way.  I personally do
not believe it is a code dump.  I personally believe that IBM wants
OpenOffice to continue as an open source project for exactly the reasons
listed above.  I'm not so naive to believe IBM is acting altruistically, but
I believe that as long as IBM continues to get the desired benefits from it,
they will continue to be involved in the open source project.  If however
the benefits do not materialize, there is a definite possibility IBM might
pull out, leaving the project to whomever remains.

It has been asked whether Oracle employees will still be involved or
permitted to be involved in the project on their own time.  To answer that
question, I think you need to look no further than the activity over at
OpenOffice.org.  As soon as Orac

RE: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Allen Pulsifer]

> When this question comes up I've been asking the commenter to give a
reasoned estimate for how
> many volunteers will be needed.  I'm generally seeing that 20 core
developers are needed for project
> maintenance.  Some suggest more is needed for incubation, but I think this
might be a shifting parade
> of experts that we tap for specific tasks, to supplement the core project.

This is my educated estimate.  The code base is large and complex.  It is
not impossible to understand, but it takes a fair bit of time to get up to
speed on it (6 months to a year).  In order to have ongoing development, I
think you need at least 5 people working on the code.  It has been suggested
that volunteers, working on their own time, are sufficient for other
projects, so the ASF likes to see that.  IMO, that is not going to cut it
with the OpenOffice code base.  With the OpenOffice code base, you need a
minimum core of people working on the code full time who are paid to work on
the code.  That means this project cannot be ongoing with only volunteers.
If there is no one paid to work on it, development will essentially stop.
Five people is also a rough minimum.  With five, you will have slow (perhaps
even glacial) progress.  Ten would be better.  I would guess that you need
at least 20 or more people paid to work on the code full time to keep it
running like it was.

Backing up the core paid developers, I think you need at least 50 volunteers
doing QA, documentation, web site development, support, etc.  I say 50
because of course some are going to be more active than others, so that 50
would include some doing more work than others.  But the 50 would give you a
good base to work from.  Of course, it would also be possible to put the
project into "maintenance mode" with less than 50 volunteers, but if you are
going to have ongoing development, I think you need at least 50.



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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Ian Lynch]

On 3 June 2011 14:31, Allen Pulsifer  wrote:

> >  (3)  There is even talk as to why?  I'm also curious as to why they
> would
> need or want to transfer the project to Apache.
>
> Only the person who made that decision knows the answer, and if you ask
> them, you might get an answer, and it might even be the real answer.  But
> you never know.
>
> I will offer you my analysis though as a neutral observer, which might help
> with the understanding.
>
> It is not an uncommon model for companies to take a program they own and
> release an open-source version while continuing to sell a proprietary
> version that includes additional features and technical support.  Among
> other reasons:
>
> - Build a community around the application, hoping to upsell organizations
> to the proprietary version.
>
> - Get bug reports and code contributions that they can use in the
> proprietary version.
>
> Sun acquired the StarOffice program by acquiring the company that created
> it.  That is a common reason for one company to acquire another: to acquire
> the company's technology.  It has been said that Sun was looking for an
> office suite for SunOS, both for Sun's customers and for Sun's own
> employees.  Acquiring StarOffice met that need at a reasonable cost.
>
> After acquiring StarOffice, Sun released an open source version called
> OpenOffice, for the reasons listed above.  As mentioned in a prior post,
> Sun
> required all community contributions to the open source version to include
> a
> copyright assignment to Sun, so they could use those contributions in their
> proprietary version.  This was rigorously enforced.
>
> Oracle acquired Sun, primarily it is said to acquire Sun's Java and MySQL
> products.  StarOffice and OpenOffice came along for the ride.  Oracle
> continued to sell StarOffice, but changed the name to Oracle Open Office,
> and continued the open source version, just like Sun, using the same
> employees.  Oracle also envisioned creating an online version of Open
> Office
> that would be similar to Google Docs.
>
> Neither of the plans worked out.  Over at Oracle, sales and marketing runs
> the show, not the engineers.  The Oracle sales force, which is accustomed
> to
> being paid big commissions for large dollar sales, was not happy pushing a
> $35 per seat office suite.  Meanwhile, little headway was made turning the
> bloated and complex code into an online version.  Oracle gave the program a
> short time frame to show $$$ results, and it did not make the cut.  So they
> pulled the plug.
>
> Meanwhile, Oracle has this open source community inherited from Sun, to
> which they had been paying lip service.  In order to avoid a complete
> public-relations disaster, Oracle declared, "we are going to turn this
> project over to the open source community".  In addition, Oracle also has a
> relationship with IBM, who had taken the code, under license from Sun, and
> created their own proprietary derivative, IBM Lotus Symphony.  It has been
> said that Oracle has some sort of contractual obligation to IBM to continue
> development of the code, although I don't know if that is true or not or
> what the terms of that agreement are.
>
> IBM has had more success with IBM Lotus Symphony than Sun had with
> StarOffice.  Symphony is an important product in the IBM portfolio, and
> they
> were not going to drop it.  IBM also wished to continue the basic structure
> Sun had in place and from which IBM has also been benefitting: a
> proprietary
> version along with open source version.  IBM recognized however that Sun's
> prior system of requiring a copyright assignment had led to dissatisfaction
> in the open source community and eventually to a fork.  So they decided to
> change the arrangement to an Apache License, which was more symmetrical and
> which had worked for many other projects, including projects IBM has been
> involved in.  IBM probably selected the Apache Software Foundation as a
> place to host the project for similar reasons.  This arrangement also
> satisfied Oracle's stated intention to "turn the code over to the open
> source community".
>
> So here was are.
>
> It has been asked whether this is simply a code dump.  For Oracle, it is
> exactly that.  They do not care about the code and are simply unloading it.
> The primary driver of this proposal through is IBM, not Oracle.  For IBM,
> it
> may or not be a code dump--I can't say for sure either way.  I personally
> do
> not believe it is a code dump.  I personally believe that IBM wants
> OpenOffice to continue as an open source project for exactly the reasons
> listed above.  I'm not so naive to believe IBM is acting altruistically,
> but
> I believe that as long as IBM continues to get the desired benefits from
> it,
> they will continue to be involved in the open source project.  If however
> the benefits do not materialize, there is a definite possibility IBM might
> pull out, leaving the project to whomever remains.
>
> It has been asked wh

Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Ross Gardler]

On 03/06/2011 14:53, Allen Pulsifer wrote:

It has been suggested
that volunteers, working on their own time, are sufficient for other
projects, so the ASF likes to see that.  IMO, that is not going to cut it
with the OpenOffice code base.  With the OpenOffice code base, you need a
minimum core of people working on the code full time who are paid to work on
the code.That means this project cannot be ongoing with only volunteers.


Please understand that people are always volunteers to the ASF project. 
That does not mean they are volunteers in the sense of "doing good work 
for free in their spare time" (although there are people who do that, in 
fact some of us are lucky enough to be paid as well as do it in our 
spare time).


So when you hear someone in the ASF say "we are all volunteers" it can 
usually be translated as "nobody is stopping you volunteering for that, 
don't ask me to do it" or perhaps "no I'm not doing that, it's not 
important to the objectives of *my* employer" or something similar.


OpenOffice.org is a big project, it has lots of users etc. But the ASF 
has a few "reasonably significant" projects already. I have no doubt 
that our models can work for OO.o, incubation is about figuring out how 
to make it work in this specific case.


Ross

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Ross Gardler]

On 03/06/2011 15:01, Ian Lynch wrote:

So the safest community strategy is to develop community driven business
models that can sustain the project. I said this back in 2004 and went off
to do it because of no understanding in the community leaders or Sun at the
time.  If 10% of the effort put into the project was in developing
sustainable service businesses around the product it would be very likely
that the project could become independent of large companies.


This is fundamental to the way we do things around here. We don't care 
*why* any individual wants to volunteer. We don't care *who* is paying 
their salary. All we care about is that they contribute in a way that is 
fair to the broader community. The intention is to allow everyone to 
carve their niche and satisfy their personal goals, whether that is to 
have fun, to make money, to educate themselves, to bring about world 
peace or just to kill some time.



Certification,
merchandising and support are all possible revenue streams but they need
strategic planning, expertise and focus.


Absolutely here at the ASF we like to say it's really about the 
community - code will emerge as the result of a healthy inclusive 
community. I'm really pleased to see you've signed up as an initial 
committer to help ensure the project is supportive of some of the 
non-code related aspects. You are absolutely right, it's not all about code.


The only thing we require is that the effort put into building 
businesses does not impact the neutrality of the ASF and its projects.


This is why, inside the ASF, we expect individuals to represent the 
communities interests not their commercial or their employers interests.


Ross

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 9:29 AM, Ross Gardler  wrote:
>
> This is why, inside the ASF, we expect individuals to represent the
> communities interests not their commercial or their employers interests.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary
depends upon his not understanding it." Upton Sinclair, Jr.
(1878-09-20 – 1968-11-25)

Norbert

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Ross Gardler]

On 03/06/2011 16:09, Norbert Thiebaud wrote:

On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 9:29 AM, Ross Gardler  wrote:


This is why, inside the ASF, we expect individuals to represent the
communities interests not their commercial or their employers interests.


"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary
depends upon his not understanding it." Upton Sinclair, Jr.
(1878-09-20 – 1968-11-25)



:-)

It's "difficult" but certainly not "impossible" - the ASF has experience 
of that.


Ross

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Benson Margulies]

Can we launch the Apache Sausage Project?

On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 11:13 AM, Ross Gardler  wrote:
> On 03/06/2011 16:09, Norbert Thiebaud wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 9:29 AM, Ross Gardler  wrote:
>>>
>>> This is why, inside the ASF, we expect individuals to represent the
>>> communities interests not their commercial or their employers interests.
>>
>> "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary
>> depends upon his not understanding it." Upton Sinclair, Jr.
>> (1878-09-20 – 1968-11-25)
>>
>
> :-)
>
> It's "difficult" but certainly not "impossible" - the ASF has experience of
> that.
>
> Ross
>
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>

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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Greg Stein]

Eh? I thought we were already a sausagefest?

On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 11:16, Benson Margulies  wrote:
> Can we launch the Apache Sausage Project?
>
> On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 11:13 AM, Ross Gardler  wrote:
>> On 03/06/2011 16:09, Norbert Thiebaud wrote:
>>>
>>> On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 9:29 AM, Ross Gardler  wrote:

 This is why, inside the ASF, we expect individuals to represent the
 communities interests not their commercial or their employers interests.
>>>
>>> "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary
>>> depends upon his not understanding it." Upton Sinclair, Jr.
>>> (1878-09-20 – 1968-11-25)
>>>
>>
>> :-)
>>
>> It's "difficult" but certainly not "impossible" - the ASF has experience of
>> that.
>>
>> Ross
>>
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>>
>>
>
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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[robert_weir]

Norbert Thiebaud  wrote on 06/03/2011 11:09:23 AM:

> 
> On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 9:29 AM, Ross Gardler  
wrote:
> >
> > This is why, inside the ASF, we expect individuals to represent the
> > communities interests not their commercial or their employers 
interests.
> 
> "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary
> depends upon his not understanding it." Upton Sinclair, Jr.
> (1878-09-20 – 1968-11-25)
> 

It is important to understand the "multiple hats" doctrine:

http://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html#hats

FWIW, I've found the IPMC members to be incredibly professional in acting 
in the best interest at AFS.  In some cases I've been scolded or otherwise 
brought down to earth someone that I only later found to come from another 
IBMer, doing the right thing for AFS and the community, rather than simply 
following any corporate alliance. 

Personally I think that is the right thing.  If a company thinks Apache is 
a good thing, and makes the investment of sponsoring developers to work in 
Apache projects, then they want Apache to succeed doing what it does well. 
 To go against that risks subverting the very organizational investment 
being made.

-Rob

Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Cor Nouws]

[Picking a random mail in this thread]

I have a suggestion by the wiki-proposal.

I read
" Reliance on Salaried Developers
  ...
  Ensuring the long term stability of OpenOffice.org is a major
  reason for establishing the project at Apache.
"

Unless really relevant, I would suggest to leave that last sentence out. 
I guess no need to explain why ;-)


Cor

--
 - http://nl.libreoffice.org
 - giving openoffice.org its foundation :: The Document Foundation -


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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal

[Robert Burrell Donkin]

On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 4:59 PM,   wrote:
> Norbert Thiebaud  wrote on 06/03/2011 11:09:23 AM:
>
>>
>> On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 9:29 AM, Ross Gardler 
> wrote:
>> >
>> > This is why, inside the ASF, we expect individuals to represent the
>> > communities interests not their commercial or their employers
> interests.
>>
>> "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary
>> depends upon his not understanding it." Upton Sinclair, Jr.
>> (1878-09-20 – 1968-11-25)
>>
>
> It is important to understand the "multiple hats" doctrine:
>
> http://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html#hats
>
> FWIW, I've found the IPMC members to be incredibly professional in acting
> in the best interest at AFS.  In some cases I've been scolded or otherwise
> brought down to earth someone that I only later found to come from another
> IBMer, doing the right thing for AFS and the community, rather than simply
> following any corporate alliance.
>
> Personally I think that is the right thing.  If a company thinks Apache is
> a good thing, and makes the investment of sponsoring developers to work in
> Apache projects, then they want Apache to succeed doing what it does well.
>  To go against that risks subverting the very organizational investment
> being made.

+1

The development process at Apache is (intentionally) as public, open
and transparent as possible. Karma is granted to individuals not
corporations. This helps reputation and standing in the community to
balance other pressures.

>From time to time, problems emerge but we've found that most
corporations respond quickly to pressure when they overstep the mark.

Robert

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