Proposed F19 Feature: Apache OpenOffice

[Luya Tshimbalanga]

On 30/01/13 05:22 AM, Stephen Gallagher wrote:
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> Given that OpenOffice and LibreOffice share a common history (and not
> that far back), are there going to be any efforts made to allow them
> to be parallel-installable on the system, or will they be
> fully-fledged Conflicts: packages?
>
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My issue with Apache OpenOffice can be seen on LWN: 
https://lwn.net/Articles/532665/
Here is an extract:

-- Beginning quote
The Apache Software Foundation releases code under the Apache license; 
they are, indeed, rather firm on that point. The Symphony repository, 
though, as checked out from svn.apache.org, contains nearly 3,600 files 
with the following text:

     * Licensed Materials - Property of IBM.
     * (C) Copyright IBM Corporation 2003, 2011.  All Rights Reserved.

That, of course, is an entirely non-free license header. Interestingly, 
over 2,000 of those files /also/ have headers indicating that they are 
distributable under the GNU Lesser General Public License (version 3). 
These files, in other words, contain conflicting license information but 
neither case (proprietary or LGPLv3) is consistent with the Apache 
license. So it would not be entirely surprising to see a bit of 
confusion over what IBM has really donated.

The conflicting licenses are almost certainly an artifact of how 
Symphony was developed. IBM purchased the right to take the code 
proprietary from Sun; when IBM's code was added to existing, 
LGPLv3-licensed files, the new headers were added without removing the 
old. Since this code has all been donated to the Foundation, clearing up 
the confusion should just be a matter of putting in new license headers. 
But that has not yet happened.
-- End quote

Licensing is the problem. I think it is too early to add Apache 
OpenOffice as feature in Fedora repository due to this ambiguity and 
legal matter.

Luya


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