OOo contributors make a dash for LibreOffice
Not enough ‘to continue working as we always did’
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More than 30 OpenOffice.org contributors are preparing to break free of Oracle’s code base in favour of LibreOffice.
Last month the OOo project revealed a massive rejig that ended Oracle’s dominant control of the code, with the group of developers declaring themselves independent of Larry Ellison’s company.
The OOo project was dubbed The Document Foundation, and the open office suite was granted the name of LibreOffice.
Over the past weekend, German OOo contributors carried out a mass departure to the LibreOffice fork, in protest at Oracle’s unwillingness to participate in the new project, which Ellison’s firm was humiliatingly asked to rejoin, following the divorce.
“Oracle's official response to the announcement of The Document Foundation was clear – Oracle will continue OpenOffice.org as usual," wrote Jacqueline Rahemipour in a letter about the exodus of contributors on Sunday.
"The result is now indeed the lately postulated conflict of interest for those community members who are in charge of or representing project, but to whom it is not enough ‘to continue working as we always did’.
“Although it has been stressed several times that there will be collaboration on a technical level, and changes are possible – there is no indication from Oracle to change it's mind on the question of the project organisation and management.
“For those who want to achieve such a change, but see no realistic opportunity within the current project and are therefore involved in the TDF, unfortunately this results in an ‘either / or’ question.”
With that, 33 OOo contributors co-signed the missive and flicked a big ‘fork-off’ finger to Oracle. ®
COMMENTS
Not the first time
Disputes about the management of the XFree86 windowing system resulted in the X.org fork. No one bothers with XFree86 anymore, this has effectively been killed by the X.Org fork proving itself the more vigorous and effective development.
Disputes over project management will occur. The advantage of open source here is the evolutionary benefit of survival of the fittest. When there is a dispute over the management of a closed source program there is no guarantee that the leadership chosen by management are the fittest for purpose. Does a genome care if one branch becomes incompatible with another ? Most of the time the better branch will survive, in other cases 2 species emerge into different evolutionary niches.
Splitters? Nah...
.. the word Ellison probably used was "forkers". That was just after they asked if they could take the name with them and suggested that Oracleś version be renamed "Larry's Leisure Suite".
A joke right?
OO is cross platform: would that translate to cmd-T on a Mac or option-T?
Try auto complete in OO - a dream! I have never figured out how to set MS word up for that - maybe you can help given you are a word guru.
Q: What version of office do you use? Do you ask recipients if they have Office 2007 or later? If they have 2003 do you tell them they need to upgrade to read a .docx?
OO ain't perfect that's for sure but when it comes to assessing superiority of products please don't use KB shortcuts as the ultimate test: get a life and get a real OS! I use Mac, Linux and Windows now what file format will you send me?? Hint: Try reading the comparisons of OO v MSO that may be a good place for you to start.
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