09.30.10
Posted in GNOME, GNU/Linux, HP, Microsoft, Novell, Patents at 9:54 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“Open source is great for debugging, but it’s crucial not to touch [the code...] Intellectual property [IP] socialism is the worst that can happen to any IP-based society. And we are an IP-based society. If there is no way to protect IP, there is no reason to invest in IP.”
–Shai Agassi, SAP president
Summary: A SAP CEO becomes the CEO of HP after HP began to explore Linux very seriously, just like Nokia had its CEO canned to give way to a Microsoft President after it had moved aggressively and strongly in MeeGo’s (Linux/LSB) direction
WHAT WE dreaded the most is becoming a reality. One of the biggest OEMs in the world — just like the world’s biggest mobile phones manufacturer — seems to have become somewhat of a victim of Microsoft entryism and assimilation after supporting Linux ‘too much’. The CEOs got thrown out under mysterious circumstances. The subject was discussed in IRC a few hours ago, but here is just a preliminary summary (more information to come later).
For those who know not so much about Hurd’s departure, it turns out not to have been caused by sexual harassment at all [1, 2, 3, 4] (and it’s not surprising that Oracle immediately hired him after he had been ousted). The CEO who replaces him will be far less sympathetic towards Linux at HP because it is a SAP CEO, Leo Apotheker:
Today was the day eh? HP has chose Leo Apotheker as CEO and President. Who is Leo? Well, for the last 20 years he has been the CEO of a tiny little company called SAP.
HP has already hired some top guns from Microsoft, even a ~20-year veteran who became a Vice President at HP earlier this year. Microsoft must not have liked seeing Hurd drop Vista 7 like a rock Slate, putting instead on his tablets a nice touch of Linux, which performed a lot better (Vista 7 on the Slate is a subject of ridicule at the moment). When Hurd got canned Microsoft seemed to have managed to reverse Hurd’s judgment. And who exactly is this new CEO? It’s the top man from SAP (see our Wiki page about SAP). Microsoft wanted to buy SAP some years ago because it’s Microsoft’s #1 ally in Europe, perhaps if only large companies are accounted for. SAP is also the major party among the few lobbyists for software patents in Europe. As for its relationship with Microsoft at present, they recently signed yet another partnership (right after lobbying together against SUN), building upon other relationships that they had (there are many past deals between this pair). They are close to Novell because Microsoft-taxed SUSE is the main GNU/Linux distribution SAP would dare to touch these days (it was solidified last week). It’s all rather telling and there is a lot more ugly stuff about SAP (see the Wiki and today’s IRC logs).
“Imagine what they can do with their own as well as acquired IP, including Palm. WebOS will pay the MS. tax?”
–ZiomatrixTo quote Ziomatrix about SAP: “They seem like MS’s minime concerning European lobbying. What’s their market cap? [...] Hurd was no saint but who knows what this CEO may unleash onto HP. He could be their Nero. [...] either that or HP will gain abundant market share by becoming a key patent hoarder. Imagine what they can do with their own as well as acquired IP, including Palm. WebOS will pay the MS. tax? [...] you think Nokia’s fate is as much sealed?”
Well, that’s the thing though, there are similarities there too. Nokia was assimilated to Microsoft right after it had moved a little ‘too close’ to Linux (MeeGo) and declared its intent to put Linux on the future crown jewel handsets (N series phones). In Nokia too the CEO got ousted, as if putting a Microsoft President instead of him and then exploring Vista Phone 7 [sic] would provide a lifeline somehow. For background see:
Getting back to HP, Hurd was canned (some would say “framed”) not so long after Microsoft had identified HP as a “risk” and its executives said this to their investors; HP was labelled a threat specifically for ‘daring’ to support GNU/Linux on sun-notebooks/netbooks (see the SEC filing for MSFT) and so was Intel, which built Moblin at the time (now it’s merged with Nokia’s Maemo and Microsoft has influence inside Nokia, the more dominant steward of MeeGo).
“Microsoft’s Elop does not even come from a mobile background, he comes from the Microsoft Movement and Steve Ballmer’s announcement of Elop’s departure seemed so optimistic that it aroused suspicion of it being arranged.”What are we trying to suggest here? In order to counter Android/Linux Microsoft seems to be invading companies which very much promote Linux and develop for Linux. In some cases, Microsoft signs Linux-hostile patent deals with those companies (e.g. HTC, Samsung, and LG), so Microsoft seems to have achieved a lot with this distasteful strategy. Just days ago it seemed like HP put Vista 7 on the HP Slate, even though Hurd had decided to call off this project (or focus a lot more on the Linux-based WebOS, which he bought along with Palm, expending billions). And then there’s the recent news about Vista Phone 7 on Nokia phones. Seriously, how much more evidence does one need to say that the Microsoft Movement is dealing some tricks? Companies don’t just reverse their strategies and return to old, discarded strategies overnight. Management can change in all sorts of ways and just as cats can be shaved in all sorts of ways, CEOs too can be disgraced and canned in many different ways. There was no reason for Nokia, for example (a longtime Microsoft sceptic/foe) to appoint a Microsoft President to become CEO. Microsoft’s mobile business is an utter disgrace and sheer failure, despite huge spendings on it. Microsoft’s Elop does not even come from a mobile background, he comes from the Microsoft Movement and Steve Ballmer’s announcement of Elop’s departure seemed so optimistic that it aroused suspicion of it being arranged.
The following timely links from Pogson may help explain why Microsoft had to prevent HP and Nokia/Intel (MeeGo) from releasing Linux-based products. Published today:
-
The OEMs are seeing that that other OS is holding them back. They can make more money by cutting prices and selling machines without that other OS but with no OS or GNU/Linux.
-
-
White-box players also believe that even though they have inferior quality over hardware and software, with the addition of GPS, WiDi, micro projector and e-book reading capabilities, as well as a price point of half the mainstream tablet PC’s price, their products can still attract consumers from emerging markets such as China, India and the Middle-East.
-
As for Intel’s new Atom N550 processor, based on Acer’s internal testing, the new processor performs 50% faster than the previous generation model, but the price is at about the same range. Since new netbooks are priced at US$300-400, about the same as previous models, while having better performance, Lin believes the price/performance ratio should help attract consumers.
-
While a number of IT companies and handset vendors have unveiled tablet PC products, volume shipments are unlikely to hit the market until 2011 as most of the newly developed tablet PC products are still in sampling or small volume production, as well as low yields in lamination of medium-size touch panels, according to Lin Sheng-chang, president of Chunghwa Picture Tubes (CPT).
-
Microsoft is left out of these market segments.
Another question worth asking is, what will happen to HP’s role in GNOME (Stormy Peters et al.) and Free software? Why would a SAP guy be committed to it? SAP hates GNU/Linux (not Ballnux), it loves Microsoft, and it loves software patents (it still lobbies for them in Europe). SAP has a very Free software-hostile history, with notable remarks that include some from Shai Agassi (see the top of this post). █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
09.28.10
Posted in Fork, GNOME, GNU/Linux, Google, OpenDocument, OpenOffice, Oracle at 2:00 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The Document Foundation and LibreOffice are formally announced, beginning an era of a vendor-independent office suite with ODF support, no copyright assignment requirements, and a clear direction with long-term commitment
The Document Foundation has just been announced and Techrights was briefed about it weeks in advance. Basically, OpenOffice.org is being forked, and that is probably a positive thing, although it may depend on one’s perspective.
Oracle Does Not Understand Software Freedom
Oracle cannot be trusted with and around Free software. Its boss does not understand software freedom. To quote some old interviews:
Remarking on more recent events, Matthew Aslett wrote: “Only a few hours in to #oow10 and already detected a subtle but important change in how Oracle describes its relationship with open source. [...] Out goes “we have no open source strategy” in comes “we are are proprietary company that believes there’s an important role for open source”"
Is this a company that can be relied on in the long term? Well, as part of Oracle’s recently-announced transition to Fog Computing it was announced that the company would make better use of JavaFX to incorporate the Web and commitment to Java gets extended, just not quite in the way which preserves freedom. Zonker says that there is more than GPL compliance to stay true to and thus Oracle is failing. To quote: “The GNU General Public License (GPL) and other open source licenses dictate the things you’re allowed to do with code. Simply because the GPL allows parasitic behavior, doesn’t mean that Oracle can’t be called out when it’s not being a good community citizen. Some see the GPL’s reciprocal requirements as restrictive — but even the requirements to give back changes and share code only go so far. Open source licenses leave a lot of room for companies to behave poorly while still complying with the license. Oracle could ship GPL’ed code on DVDs in wallets made out of the finest baby seal pelts housed in ivory boxes, and it wouldn’t be against the GPL. But that doesn’t mean the house that Larry built should get a pass if it chooses to do so.”
On the OpenOffice.org side, new Developer Snapshots recently arrived, e.g. (from GullFOSS):
-
Developer Snapshot OOo-Dev OOO330m8 is available for download.
OOO330 is the development codeline for upcoming OOo 3.3.x releases.
-
Developer Snapshot OOo-Dev DEV300m88 is available for download.
DEV300 is the development codeline for upcoming OOo 3.x releases.
-
Beyond this release, the future of OpenOffice.org is unknown, whereas the future the LibreOffice is very much certain, thanks to the backing from many committed parties.
Oracle’s Bad Direction for OpenOffice.org
Here is an insight into Oracle’s plan for OpenOffice.org:
As such, it competes against Google Docs and the browser version of Office, Microsoft Office Web Apps.
The narrator in the Oracle Cloud Suite video touts the integration with Oracle Open Office (natch), the open document format (ODF) and is compatible with Microsoft Office. And Oracle Cloud Suite is accessible to the industry’s increasing mobile workforce.
But the International Business Times pieces raises a few questions about how viable the Oracle threat is.
“Oracle preps Google and Microsoft Office challenger,” says another headline:
The Reg understands Cloud Office is a closed-source product developed by Oracle, rather than a part of the OpenOffice Project.
Oracle has promised that Cloud Office uses web standards, but it will also use JavaFX – the currently closed Java scripting language for rich-internet applications and UIs Oracle inherited from Sun Microsystems.
With an imminent OpenOffice.org Hackfest, it is clear that OpenOffice.org is not being abandoned by Oracle, but increasingly it is taken in a proprietary direction where Oracle gains greater control. From Roberto Galoppini’s blog:
Few days ago I shortly mentioned the OpenOffice.org Hackfest, and today I asked my friend Florian Effenberger – OpenOffice.org Marketing Project Lead – to tell us more about the event, to be held on the 6-7 of November at the Attraktor in Hamburg.
How many will attend now that LibreOffice is where all the action is at?
Fork Announced
So, OpenOffice.org is being forked and here is what people need to know. The press release is appended below and documentfoundation.org contains more information as it has only just come live (9 AM Paris/Berlin time).
First of all, the fork is backed by many vendors, as well as non-commercial entities such as the GNOME Foundation. The licence will be LGPLv3 (and no copyright agreement is required, which is now one of the various pressures Oracle is putting on the community). The details are all at the bottom.
Why is it so necessary? To quote someone from the Steering Committee, the “situation with Oracle inside Openoffice.org is untenable… they don’t even want to commit after the 3.3… they refuse to communicate on roadmap… are getting insolently crazy on trademarks… are shutting down portions of our open development process…”
Asked about OpenSolaris as an analogy, we we told that it’s “a bit like that, but with less hostility… they don’t want to shut it down, they want to have it their way exclusively, so we are forking…. we [as in] Novell, Red Hat, Google, the Brazilian Government, its banks and largest companies, several international OOo associations (forming the backbone of the community), and we’re awaiting some more supporters such as the SFLC, the FSF, the OSI, the FSFE… in fact SFLC, Debian, OSI and FSFE are more or less already acquired… Canonical and Red Hat will ship our own binaries in their next version of Ubuntu and Fedora.”
Asked about the role of Novell, it turned out that they are included in this. There was “no choice”, but “the source code will be OOo vanilla (no go-oo patches) [...] but we’re using the ooo-build system (well, everyone on Linux uses it except Red Hat who made the decision now to switch to us).”
All the infrastructure was made ready about two weeks ago when they were “in the process of registering the trademarks”. Later on it was decided that “the Foundation will be named The Document Foundation [...] the office suite named LibreOffice.”
“Libre” is good in the sense that it conveys something better than just “open source”.
As Glyn Moody put it some days ago, “We [May Be] Entering the Golden Age of Forks”. OpenOffice.org was named by Moody:
Oracle’s high-handed approach to open source is fast making it Public Enemy Number 1 as far as free software is concerned (yes, even relegating Microsoft to second place). This means that people working on the MySQL or OpenOffice.org projects are going to be far warier, and more distrustful of the company’s moves in future.
Let’s get this ball rolling and the word spread as far as possible. In order for LibreOffice to succeed in a major way, people all around the world need to be aware of it. █
OpenOffice.org Community announces The Document Foundation
The community of volunteers developing and promoting OpenOffice.org sets up an independent Foundation to drive the further growth of the project
The Internet, September 28, 2010 – The community of volunteers who develop and promote OpenOffice.org, the leading free office software, announce a major change in the project’s structure. After ten years’ successful growth with Sun Microsystems as founding and principle sponsor, the project launches an independent foundation called “The Document Foundation”, to fulfil the promise of independence written in the original charter.
The Foundation will be the cornerstone of a new ecosystem where individuals and organisations can contribute to and benefit from the availability of a truly free office suite. It will generate increased competition and choice for the benefit of customers and drive innovation in the office suite market. From now on, the OpenOffice.org community will be known as “The Document Foundation”.
Oracle, who acquired OpenOffice.org assets as a result of its acquisition of Sun Microsystems, has been invited to become a member of the new Foundation, and donate the brand the community has grown during the past ten years. Pending this decision, the brand “LibreOffice” has been chosen for the software going forward.
The Document Foundation is the result of a collective effort by leading independent members of the former OpenOffice.org community, including several project leads and key members of the Community Council. It will be led initially by a Steering Committee of developers and national language projects managers. The Foundation aims to lower the barrier of adoption for both users and developers, to make LibreOffice the most accessible office suite ever.
The Foundation has chosen the LibreOffice brand as an alternative to OpenOffice.org, and will coordinate and oversee the development of the software, which is available in beta version at the placeholder site: http://www.libreoffice.org. Developers are invited to join the project and contribute to the code in the new friendly and open environment, to shape the future of office productivity suites alongside contributors who translate, test, document, support, and promote the software.
Speaking for the group of volunteers, Sophie Gautier – a veteran of the community and the former maintainer of the French speaking language project – has declared: “We believe that the Foundation is a key step for the evolution of the free office suite, as it liberates the development of the code and the evolution of the project from the constraints represented by the commercial interests of a single company. Free software advocates around the world have the extraordinary opportunity of joining the group of founding members today, to write a completely new chapter in the history of FLOSS”.
FSF President Richard Stallman welcomed LibreOffice release and it’s stated policy of only recommending free software. “I’m very pleased that the Document Foundation will not recommend nonfree add-ons, since they are the main freedom problem of the current OpenOffice.org. I hope that the LibreOffice developers and the Oracle-employed developers of OpenOffice will be able to cooperate on development of the
body of the code”.
“The Document Foundation supports the Open Document Format, and is keen to work at OASIS to the next evolution of the ISO standard”, says Charles Schulz, member of the Community Council and lead of the Native Language Confederation. “The Document Foundation brings to the table the point of view of developers, supporters and users, and this might accelerate the adoption process of ODF at government and enterprise level”.
Chris DiBona, Open Source Programs Manager at Google, Inc., has commented: “The creation of The Document Foundation is a great step forward in encouraging further development of open source office suites. Having a level playing field for all contributors is fundamental in creating a broad and active community around an open source software project. Google is proud to be a supporter of The Document Foundation and participate in the project”.
“Viva la LibreOffice”, said Markus Rex, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Open Platform Solutions at Novell. “We look forward to working with the Document Foundation to help develop a solid open source document software offering. Ultimately, we hope to see LibreOffice do for the office productivity market what Mozilla Firefox has done for browsers”.
Jan Wildeboer, EMEA Open Source Affairs at Red Hat, has commented: “All over the world, users, companies and governments are moving to truly open solutions based on Open Standards. LibreOffice delivers the missing link, and at Red Hat we are proud to join this effort”.
Mark Shuttleworth, founder and major shareholder of Canonical, the makers of Ubuntu, has declared: “Office productivity software is a critical component of the free software desktop, and the Ubuntu Project will be pleased to ship LibreOffice from The Document Foundation in future releases of Ubuntu. The Document Foundation’s stewardship of LibreOffice provides Ubuntu developers an effective forum for collaboration around the code that makes Ubuntu an effective solution for the desktop in office environments”.
“The Open Source Initiative has observed a trend back towards open collaborative communities for open source software”, said Simon Phipps, a Director of the Open Source Initiative. “We welcome The Document
Foundation initiative and look forward to the innovation it is able to drive with a truly open community gathered around a free software commons, in the spirit of the best of open source software”.
Additional information, including the mission, are available on the web site of The Document Foundation: http://www.documentfoundation.org
Biographies and pictures of the founding members of The Document Foundation are available here: http://www.documentfoundation.org/foundation/.
There is a specific page for people interested in contributing to the development of the code: http://www.documentfoundation.org/developers/.
The Document Foundation has a Twitter account: http://twitter.com/docufoundation and an Identi.ca account: http://identi.ca/docufoundation.
The announcements mailing list is at: announce+subscribe@documentfoundation.org.
The discussion mailing list is at: discuss+subscribe@documentfoundation.org.
The Document Foundation
The Document Foundation is an independent self-governing democratic Foundation created by leading members of the former OpenOffice.org Community. It continues to build on the Foundation of ten years’ dedicated work by the OpenOffice.org community, and was created in the belief that an independent Foundation is the best fit to the Community’s core values of openness, transparency, and valuing people for their contribution. It is open to any individual who agrees with our core values and contributes to our activities, and welcomes corporate participation, e.g. by sponsoring individuals to work as equals alongside other contributors in the community.
Media Contacts
Florian Effenberger (Germany)
Mobile: +49 151 14424108
E-mail: floeff@documentfoundation.org
Olivier Hallot (Brazil)
Mobile: +55.21.88228812
E-mail: olivier.hallot@documentfoundation.org
Charles H. Schulz (France)
Mobile: +33 6 98655424
E-mail: charles.schulz@documentfoundation.org
Italo Vignoli (Italy)
Mobile: +39 348 5653829
E-mail: italo.vignoli@documentfoundation.org
APPENDIX
STEERING COMMITTEE MEMBERS
Sophie Gautier
Francophone project co-lead, former Project Lead Education Project, former Community Council Member for Native Lang projects category
I’ve been deeply involved in the OpenOffice.org Community since its very beginning in 2000. First I participated to the Documentation Project, then I’ve been the lead of the French-speaking project from 2002 to 2007, then the co-lead in 2009 until now. I’ve represented the Native Language Confederation at the Community Council since its launch until last year. Now I’m managing the French localization of the OOo product and satellite sites and participating to QA, Documentation, User Support and Marketing. In my daily job, I’ve worked as an OpenOffice.org consultant and trainer on my own first, then for the Linagora Group from 2006 to 2010 and I’m currently unemployed.
Thorsten Behrens
GSL Project co-lead, OASIS ODF TC / ECMA TC45 / ISO SC34 WG4 participant
Thorsten was part of OpenOffice.org almost from the start, when he joined the then-Sun-Microsystems development team back in early 2001. He’s a computer scientist by education, and a Free Software enthusiast by heart, a geek from early childhood – and someone who was lucky enough to turn a hobby into an occupation.
During his now nine years of tenure in the project, he’s spent most of his time hacking the code, in areas ranging from build system, platform abstraction libraries, Impress and Writer. Thorsten is currently co-lead of the graphical system layer project, member of the OASIS ODF technical committee, the ECMA TC45, and technical advisor on the ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34 working group 4.
He’s sponsored by Novell to work full-time on OpenOffice.org.
Florian Effenberger
Marketing Project Lead and German MarCon, Distribution Project Lead
Florian Effenberger has been an open source evangelist for many years. He is lead of the international OpenOffice.org marketing project as well as a member of the management board of the non-profit OpenOffice.org Deutschland e.V. He has ten years’ experience of designing enterprise and educational computer networks, including software deployment based on free software. He is also a frequent contributor to a variety of professional magazines worldwide on topics such as free software, open standards and legal matters.
Caolán McNamara
Former Writer Project co-lead and member of the OpenOffice.org Engineering Steering Committee
Caolán is a Senior Software Engineer at Red Hat, Inc, and has over 10 years experience in developing OpenOffice.org. Starting 2000 in Hamburg as an employee of Sun Microsystems developing StarOffice before its subsequent release under the LGPL as OpenOffice.org later that year. From 2000 to 2005 Caolán specialized in improving the the binary MSWord import/export filters, building on his prior experience developing libwv, libwmf and other free software projects to parse Microsoft binary file formats.
From 2005 to present Caolán has been employed full-time by Red Hat, Inc. to maintain, improve and enhance OpenOffice.org, typically focusing on GNOME desktop integration, font and glyph replacement, Indic text layout, linguistic components, tooling to improve overall code quality, debugging the type of problems no one wants to touch, while retaining an interest in MSOffice compatibility.
Olivier Hallot
BrOffice.org CFO, Community Council Member, Main translator for pt-BR
Graduated Electronic Engineer in 1982, MSc in Digital Signal Processing in 1985 and MBA in Oil&Gas industry in 2001.
I initiated my career as Assocate Researcher for digital signal processing in the IBM Scientific Center in Brasilia, Brazil, for the Oil&Gas industry in seismic data processing and high performance computing. Later I moved to marketing and sales for the same industry all over Latin America. In 1998 I joined Oracle Brazil in sales for the Oil& Gas industry and later as Alliance relationship manager for large hardware manufacturers as well as with the Oracle academic initiative. Since 2002 and on my own, I have participated actively in FLOSS projects notably in OpenOffice.org as one of the translators for
Brazilian Portuguese and volunter CFO of BrOffice.org NGO. I am now senior consultant in OpenOffice.org technology for large corporations on migration projects.
André Schnabel
Coordinator for German localization, former Project Lead QA Project, former Community Council Member for accepted projects category
André is involved in the OpenOffice.org project since 2001. Being a software developer in his professional live he focused his voluntary work for OpenOffice.org on user support, documentation and quality assurance. He has been Co-Lead of the Germanophone project as well as project lead of the Quality Assurance project and member of the Community Council for several years. Today he is maintaining the German localization and working on a translation process based on open standards. André is also founding member and chairman of the board of the German non-profit OpenOffice.org Deutschland e.V.
Charles-H. Schulz
NLC Lead, Community Council Member (Lang Representative)
Charles-H. Schulz (The “H” letter standing for his second name “Henri”) is a French technologist, Free Software and Open Standards advocate. As a long time contributor to the OpenOffice.org project he helped grow its community from a few mostly european communities to over a hundred communities and teams of various sizes. In the end of 2009 he was elected at the Community Council of the OpenOffice.org project. He is currently the lead of the Native-Language Confederation and a member of the Community Council. He also contributed to the development and adoption of the OpenDocument Format standard through the company he co-founded, Ars Aperta. Member of several international organizations he helped to create the Digital Standards Group and is part of the OASIS standards consortium, of which he is now one of the directors.
Italo Vignoli
Italian MarCon, President of Associazione PLIO (Italian National Language Project)
Italo Vignoli is president of PLIO, OpenOffice.org Italian National Language Project, a not for profit association that represents the community of volunteers who promote the free office productivity suite. In everyday life, is partner and president of Quorum PR, a public relations agency with a strong bias to the integration of traditional media and social network. He has almost thirty years of experience in marketing and communication of high-tech companies in Italy and at international level, and is responsible for the social networks practice within the Italian Federation of Public Relations.
Since 1984, it is connected to the network with a portable PC and a messaging or e-mail system despite a degree in humanities from the University of Milan, where he has been a researcher on urban geography. He is working as a freelance journalist since 1972, writing about sports, music and IT. He blogs in Italian about libre software at http://www.cwi.it/blogs/sistemaperto/.
MESSAGE FOR ORACLE
Gentlemen – as founders and principle supporters of the OpenOffice.org Community during the past decade, we’re giving you advance notice that we will shortly be announcing the launch of an independent Foundation to take the Community forward into its next decade.
You will be aware that this has been discussed many times over the years. We now feel the time is right to make the move. We believe it will be more powerful if the move is initiated by the Community itself, which is why we are launching this initiative.
We do of course hope that you will be able to move with us on this exciting new journey. As custodians of many OpenOffice.org assets, your continued support will be most warmly appreciated.
Signed on behalf of the group:
Sophie Gautier
Thorsten Behrens
Florian Effenberger
Olivier Hallot
Caolan McNamara
Christoph Noack
Charles-H. Schulz
André Schnabel
Italo Vignoli
MESSAGE FOR THE COMMUNITY
Dear OpenOffice.org community members,
Dear leads of the native-language projects,
Dear project leads,
Today, we would like to introduce you to an idea that has grown very concretely during the past weeks. We ask you to NOT share it with anyone else at this moment. There will be plenty of time to discuss and work on it soon.
Over the past decade, thanks to your great help, support and enthusiasm, OpenOffice.org has grown to a important open source projects.
Now that we are approaching our tenth birthday, it is time to mark a major step in the evolution of OpenOffice.org. For the last ten years, the idea of an independent OpenOffice.org foundation has been existing (see http://www.openoffice.org/white_papers/OOo_project/openofficefoundation.html) but has never been realized.
We feel now is the time to make the vision from the very beginning of the project a reality. Therefore, a group of long-term community contributors, is about to establish a foundation called
“The Document Foundation”
(http://www.documentfoundation.org from September 28th on)
and will publicly announce these plans on Tuesday, September 28th
Our mission is to facilitate the evolution of the OpenOffice.org community into a new open, independent, and meritocratic organizational structure within the next few months.
We invite you to join us in these efforts. Help us to bring our community and our software to a new level and shape the next logical step of its evolution.
As it is yet uncertain whether we will get the OpenOffice.org trademark from its owner, Oracle Corporation, we plan to establish a new brand for the product, called
“LibreOffice” (http://www.libreoffice.org from September 28th on)
We have invited Oracle, which we owe much respect for all the good things that they have done in the past years, to become a member and partner of our initiative, and we hope they will join us together with the Hamburg development team, so that LibreOffice indeed is a temporary placeholder, which is our true wish.
We have already seen wide support from companies like Google, Novell and Red Hat as well as our friends from the Brazilian BrOffice.org community. Others are in favour of our plans and might actively join our initiative soon.
As of today, about 25 well-known and long-term contributors to the OpenOffice.org community are part of our initiative. We have formed an interim Steering Committee to drive things forward.
We currently work hard to put all the needed infrastructure at your disposal, to be able to quickly communicate with the community.
All this and maybe more will be announced on
Tuesday, September 28th
You are invited to join our
* official mailing list by subscribing at discuss+subscribe@lists.documentfoundation.org
* IRC channel at #documentfoundation on irc.freenode.net (irc://irc.freenode.net/#documentfoundation)
* initiative by signing the manifesto at http://www.documentfoundation.org
All the above addresses will be available from September 28th on.
We are here for any questions and suggestions that you will have. We hope for your support in this next major step and are sure that you will as be thrilled by this new project as we are, which is in fact the continuity of our community.
Yours truly,
the members of the Steering Committee and founders of the Document Foundation
Sophie Gautier, sophie.gautier@documentfoundation.org
Thorsten Behrens, thorsten.behrens@documentfoundation.org
Florian Effenberger, floeff@documentfoundation.org
Olivier Hallot, olivier.hallot@documentfoundation.org
Caolán McNamara, caolan.mcnamara@documentfoundation.org
André Schnabel, andre.schnabel@documentfoundation.org
Charles Schulz, charles.schulz@documentfoundation.org
Italo Vignoli, italo.vignoli@documentfoundation.org
Permalink
Send this to a friend
09.16.10
Posted in GNOME, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Mono, Novell at 7:15 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Nokia’s connections to Microsoft (or Novell) software like Mono are made more pronounced, commitment to Linux is taken aback, and Zeitgeist too is getting the ‘Mono treatment’
MeeGo was to some extent devoured by Mono, owing to work from Novell employees [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. This started just months before apparent Nokia entryism, wherein a Microsoft president was made the company’s CEO [1, 2, 3] (only months after Microsoft and Nokia signed deals). As several journalists pointed out (we cannot provide a complete list), MeeGo was already de-emphasised this week. This is a bad start for the company that has just put a Microsoft man in charge. Here is one new article of interest:
MeeGo a no-show at NokiaWorld, but CTO says it’s “critically important”
One of the oddest things about the keynote presentations during the NokiaWorld conference was the conspicuous absence of commentary about MeeGo, the Linux-based mobile platform that is expected to eventually displace Symbian as the dominant operating system on Nokia’s high-end products. During the major product announcements on the opening day of the conference, the only time that a Nokia executive mentioned MeeGo was to say that there would be no MeeGo-based products announced this week.
There are already rumours or speculations about Nokia striking an alliance with Microsoft against Google and Apple (those suggesting this are Microsoft boosters for the most part) and Nokia’s response to Google and Apple (with Symbian, not Linux) is seen as laughable by some:
Nokia has announced a number of sleek new handsets at its on going Nokia World 2010 in London. These devices are clearly aimed at going after both the iPhone and Android, two platforms that are bent on eating up all of Nokia’s smartphone market share.
MeeGo faces a threat from another new front.
Philip Van Hoof, who expressed strong anti-Stallman sentiments (we mentioned Philip in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]) is speaking to the guy who may put Mono in GNOME Zeitgeist. Earlier today a reader told us: “just bumped into a blog posting from a Zeitgeist developer. Note the comment from Philip van H (iirc the sparkleshare developer) to integrate the Maemo version of Zeigeist “deeply” with tracker. Seems the mono fanboys are trying to push mono everywhere they possibly can: http://seilo.geekyogre.com/2010/…”
To quote Philip: “Dude dude dude! This is awesome stuff. Let’s get this on Harmattan and integrated deeply with the latest Tracker 0.9 stuff.”
gnufreex balked at “Integrate deeply” and claimed: “He is working for MS probably.”
He is not.
Whether he develops SparkleShare [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] or not, it doesn’t seem so, but “That is [an] anti-RMS guy,” gnufreex remembered correctly, “He proposed GNOME to spilt from FSF”
That’s correct and there is more to it. We already covered this before. “You can tell a man by his enemies,” wrote Wayne Borean, “RMS has so many enemies, all of who tell lies, that you know he’s got to be a great person.
“I have read all kind of RMS bashing, and none makes sense when you see whole picture.”
“Everybody says he is an extremist,” responded gnufreex, “nobody can prove it… When I say everybody I mean those who criticize him.”
“RMS has so many enemies, all of who tell lies, that you know he’s got to be a great person.”
–Wayne BoreanWayne wrote: “Just like they say Roy is an extremist. For that matter I’ve been called an extremist too. As has PJ. You will note that the common factor behind the attacks, is that someone is making money doing something, and is afraid that they might actually have to work. Think Microsoft and Free Software. Or The SCO Group and Groklaw.”
“I was called extremist too… more than once,” argued gnufreex. “Some people think everybody who don’t use Windows is some kind of extremist. It is good to be this kind of extremist then”
“In some cases they should worry. I’ve actually got a plan in place to do some damage to the RIAA member companies in Canada, by taking away their market. But this is legal. Outperforming the current market leader is legal,” added Wayne.
Responding to gnufreex he wrote: “Windows users are like battered spouses who keep going back to the abusive environment after being promised that ‘I really will change this time’”
“That is exactly what I think,” gnufreex concluded.
Going back to Nokia, let us recall Nokia'a Silverlight deal from 2008 and connect that to Moonlight, which was also rejected by Moblin (Intel) [1, 2, 3]. They picked Silverlight instead. What is with all the Mono in MeeGo then? Why is it that few people are willing to point out that Silverlight is dying [1, 2, 3, 4]? GNU/Linux “doesn’t really need it anymore (did it ever?),” I wrote to Glyn Moody earlier today because he mentioned it. “[I]ndeed,” he said, “the point is *Microsoft* needs Linux….”
Then, “to complete the sentence,” I told him, “‘*Microsoft* needs Linux…. to become more of a property of Microsoft’ (APIs, patents, software..)”
“[S]ure,” Moody replied, “I am not advocating it, just analysing it” (he linked to a Microsoft booster whose personal blog said in the headline that “If Microsoft is serious about Silverlight, it needs to do Linux”).
The booster, Tim Anderson, talked about cross-platform at Adobe and then mentioned Silverlight:
Microsoft, on the other hand, will not be able to play in this space unless it delivers Silverlight for Linux, Android, and other open platforms.
Microsoft has a curious history of cross-platform Silverlight announcements. Early on it announced that Moonlight was the official Linux player, though in practice support for Moonlight has been half-hearted. Then when Intel announced the Atom Developer Program (now AppUp) in September 2009, Microsoft stated that it would provide its own build of Silverlight for Linux, or rather, than Intel would build it with Microsoft’s code. Microsoft’s Brian Goldfarb told me that Microsoft and Intel would work together on bringing Silverlight to devices, while Moonlight would be the choice for desktop Linux.
Well, too bad (that’s sarcasm by the way) hardly a word is ever heard from Moonlight anymore and its developer, Novell, is allegedly being sold [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. How might this affect MeeGo’s/Nokia’s relationship with Moonlight/Silverlight and Mono/.NET? Thoughts about this can be a wee troubling. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
