I want OO.o support, not Go-OO from Novell - Any statement from Fedora or RedHat?

Fernando Cassia fcassia at gmail.com
Sun Nov 7 19:41:18 UTC 2010


On Sun, Nov 7, 2010 at 12:27 AM, James McKenzie
<jjmckenzie51 at earthlink.net> wrote:
> On 11/3/10 10:31 PM, Fernando Cassia wrote:
>> Hi there,
>>
>> Now, having said that, I didn´t like the hysteria surrounding
>> OpenOffice.org, and I think Oracle will do an OK job advancing the
>> open source project going forward.
>>
> The 'hysteria' surrounding 'OpenOffice.org' is not what you state it
> is.  Oracle bought Sun, Oracle does not subscribe to the 'OpenSource is
> better' mantra that Sun did.

Oh really? Why have they stated that:

1. They are releasing JavaFX 2.0 controls as GPL?
2. Why have they stated that they´ll contribute back JDK7 and JDK8
back to the OpenJDK project?.
3. Why did they fund (not cancel) this years OpenOffice.org conference
in Europe?

> RedHat and other distributions
> realize that OpenOffice.org will soon become 'pay as you go' software
> under the StarOffice label and have decided to embrace LibreOffice.

Wrong and uninformed. StarOffice as a brand ceased to exist a long
time ago. There´s two products now: OpenOffice.org, the GPL project,
and "Oracle Open Office" (notice the space and lack of .org), the
commercial product with formal tech support and a price tag, just as
StarOffice was.

See
http://www.sun.com/staroffice redirects to the "Oracle Open Office"
commercial product page.
and see how
http://www.openoffice.org shows the GPL project.

Unifying the brand names was the right thing to do, IMHO, otherwise it
suffered from what I call the "Netscape Syndrome", by which no matter
what Netscape did with its 6.x or 7.x packaging of Mozilla, people
always talked about Mozilla.org.

> Too bad.  The had the best directory service that I've worked with just
> because of that:  It worked and was universal rather than the 'Active
> Directory' crap that Microsoft foists on the unsuspecting.

Yes, I agree. NDS is nice. Argentina´s largest telco ran it, until
someone convinced one of its managers that Microsoft´s solutions were
better. Of course I say "convinced" with suspicion-filled quotes
around them.

OpenOffice.org will remain free... "Oracle Open Office" is just the
rebranding of the commercial build that was StarOffice.

http://www.sys-con.com/node/1554770

DOOMSDAY PREDICTION: "Oracle might kill OpenOffice"

"Oracle may well kill OpenOffice and MySQL"
http://www.zdnetasia.com/could-oracle-fracture-open-source-community-62202707.htm

Result: Killing of OpenOffice never happened, Oracle sponsored the
OpenOffice.org conference in Budapest earlier this year

http://blogs.oracle.com/office/2010/09/live_from_the_openofficeorg_conference_in_budapest.html

Would they do that if they intented to kill the project or turn it
proprietary?. Are they stupid?

2nd DOOMSDAY PREDICTION:

Oct 2009 - "some fear that Oracle will bury or weaken MySQL"
http://www.computerworlduk.com/toolbox/open-source/open-source-business/news/index.cfm?newsid=17331&tsb=email

RESULT:
Didn´t happen. Oracle is INVESTING in MySQL

April 2010: Oracle boosts investment in MySQL, targets Microsoft
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63C3DV20100413

And then you see who is behind the criticism... Ingres....

Ingres criticises Oracle investment strategy for MySQL
http://www.computing.co.uk/computing/news/2261291/database-giant-insists-strategy

Yeah another database vendor criticising Oracle, a competitor, for
"not investing enough" It makes my head spin...

Instead, Oracle so far has:

- Confirmed that work on the new Java 7 and Java 8 versions will be
contributed back as open source, as part of the OpenJDK project
(@mreinhold on Twitter)

- Is backing Netbeans with lots of investments (despite the fact that
Oracle had another, propietary IDE, Oracle JDeveloper).
http://java.dzone.com/articles/oracles-roadmap-sun

- Says it will release JavaFX 2.0 as open source when 2.0 is completed
(without the MPEG4 codecs that are patent-encumbered by the MPEG-LA).
http://www.drdobbs.com/blog/archives/2010/09/javafx_open_sou.html

- Is backing the open source Glassfish J2EE server, with two new
releases planned for next year.

So, was it right to spit in the face of Oracle, and then "invite" them
to come "join" the new independent body?. Sounds like more "forcing
their hand" to me.

Like I said, it seems that for some, Oracle must prove they´re not
guilty of future crimes, that it might commit, sometime in the
future, when nobody´s looking. If there isn´t good faith from one of
the parties, no long lasting relationship can be established.

Then you have stupid journalists that confuse open source and the GPL
with "public domain" **

http://www.crn.com/news/applications-os/227500492/oracle-promises-to-keep-java-tools-in-the-public-domain.htm

And others who claim Java ME was never released under a GPL license,
plus they confuse a runtime environment with an "operating system":

http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/oracle-isnt-completely-wrong-sue-google-over-

"Although parts of Java are open-source under GPL2, __Java ME, Sun's
embedded operating system, was not__"

Well, gee, I guess what Sun´s PhoneME project is

http://mobilepit.com/11/phoneme-open-source-java-me-j2me-implementation.html
... and how PhoneME (J2ME open source) for Windows CE was created...

http://davy.preuveneers.be/phoneme/

Too much FUD going around, and the usual suspects that wanted a piece
of Sun´s pie (Novell, IBM, Microsoft) rejoycing...

> You can always add OO.o to your system.  However, RedHat and others will
> not be including it in their packages for a number of reasons, most of
> them legal.
>
> Also, in the spirit of FOSS, this is a 'good thing'.  OpenOffice.org was
> a Sun thing.  It is NOT an 'Oracle' thing.
>
> James McKenzie

Believe me: corporations can learn from their mistakes, and spitting
someone in the face and saying "you ARE EVIL, I don´t want to have
anything to do with you!" and then "but you´re welcome to join our
Foundation, if you behave" is surely to have the totally opposite
outcome: the other party becomes rightly offended and won´t come to
your dinner/party/organization.

What facts have shown me, is that

1. Oracle wants to displace and beat Microsoft

2. That Ellison has supported Linux for over a decade, starting with
its "Think NIC" thin client computer which sold for $399-$499 and ran
Linux booting from a CD. Of course, it failed, being a product ahead
of its time

3. That contrary to anti-Oracle FUD, OpenJDK is alive and kicking,
Netbeans is not dead but being actively developed, along with
Glassfish, and MySQL is being heavily invested on.

4. Not to mention the diferent FOSS projects and contributions hosted
and worked on by Oracle even before the Sun acquisition
http://oss.oracle.com/projects/

That´s my view. Of course, as someone said, this thread has been going
nowhere for a while. So I take it as a "no", that Fedora won´t give
users a choice and that there´s no chance of OpenOffice.org being part
of the repos. Don´t take me wrong, this is not an indictment, or
complaint, I´m just stating the obvious.

Thanks,
FC
** The article headline has been apparently fixed to read "open
source" yet the URL remains with the original story title that made it
to Google News, which read "Public domain".


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