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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/15/oracle_letting_openoffice_go/
Oracle is turning OpenOffice into a purely community project, and no
longer plans to offer a commercial version of the collaboration suite
loved by many.
Very interesting. Quote from article:
"Although LibreOffice provided an alternative, it's sorely lacking in the
kind of brand recognition held by OpenOffice, while as a fork it was within
Oracle's power to accept changes in LibreOffice back in the main code base."
I was under the impression that Oracle's demand for contributors to assign
their copyright meant that they could not accept LO code unless such
assignment was given?
As much as Ellison hates Microsoft, you have to wonder how easy it was for
him to give up OpenOffice. It was a cheap way for Oracle to hurt their rival
by forcing them to keep down prices to retain their near-monopoly.
One can speculate now what will happen to the in-house OO development team
at Oracle. I guess they will be offered new assignments within the company.
Another quote: "It's not clear, meanwhile, whether the Document Foundation
has a future when OpenOffice is back in the open." TDF can be the champion
of open document formats, fighting for a level playing ground, exploring
legal challenges to Microsoft Office's abuse of its market-dominant position
(IMHO, I am not a lawyer), spreading the message of document freedom,
educating the public, providing expertise. Plenty of work there to last a
decade.
Assuming that LibreOffice is the heir apparent to OpenOffice, who will step
in as the heavyweight patron to replace Oracle -- IBM?
Lots more questions. Although this forum is frequented by many "big names"
who could speak from an insider's perspective, I don't expect many answers
at this point. It could be risky for them to reveal much while the situation
is in flux. At the same time there are hundreds of thousands of users who
are probably quite anxious to find out what's in the cards for their
preferred office software.
Hi 
Brand recognition is building rapidly, more rapidly than Google grew in it's
first 6months. Recognition of the OpenOffice brand is not necessarily a bonus
given that many people found it clunky and incompatible until recently. The bad
reputation it has with some people is wiped clean by having a new name.
Ellison clearly is biased and doesn't know what he is talking about. You were
right about code submissions and Ellison was wrong. OpenOffice is picking up a
few of LO's developments but not all. In the 3.3.0 OOo had about half the extra
functionality that LO's added in its upgrade.
Traditionally, Oracle is famous for stopping or almost stopping developments on
their acquired products and then they start charging a lot for user-support.
There are hints of them breaking OOo into 2 parts; one part free but the useful
stuff into an "Enterprise Edition" or "Professional Edition" which people would
have to pay for.
OpenOffice is not back in the open. Oracle are being very unclear about what
(if anything) they are doing. At trade shows and events Oracle and OOo are
notably absent or look like a tramp whereas TDF stalls look smart (ish) and
busy.
His comments about Open Document Formats and legal issues is interesting.
Presumably he has not noticed that during the break-up another organisation
gained independence and a new name. ODFauthors used to be a large sub-group
within OOo but is now a separate organisation that supports both OOo and TDF and
is now able to support things like AbiWord, KOffice and all the rest too without
worrying about what Sun or Oracle try to block.
I'm not sure about the legal fights, perhaps he expects something like the Opera
challenge to IE. If so then again he shows lack of understanding. IE is or was
tightly integrated into Windows and it is/was impossible to remove IE without
breaking Windows. Opera said that was unfair competition for other
web-browsers. By contrast MS Office is a separate product which is
bought/acquired separately from the Operating System. While it still dominates
and is often pre-installed on OEM machines it is still the case that a fresh
install of Windows has no Office Suite by default (unless you count Notepad,
even Wordpad is a choice that has to be selected).
LibreOffice has many patrons rather than relying on a single one that would then
dictate. Look in our list of supporters to see heavy-weights that are generally
more famous to serious servers and massive corporations, people such as RedHat
are not known to desktop hobbyists that may have heard of IBM, Ms and little
else. However, whenever they connect to the internet they will often be totally
relying on people/organisations in our supporters lists, such as RedHat,
Cannonical and many others that are significant in the stock exchanges.
His basic premise (as reported, i haven't read the original article) is flawed
and he adds to that by being desperately wrong and/or mis-informed in his key
assertions.
It is the kind of article that becomes an embarrassment to the author or a huge
joke at his expense in years to come: such as the school teacher that allegedly
told Winston Churchill that he would never get far in life.
The idea is that communities cannot manage things. This is constantly disproved
yet constantly re-stated without being questioned or proven. For small start-up
businesses that have a 1-person-in-charge-hierarchy 80% fail within 2 years.
For co-operative business which have a group in charge rather than a single
person the failure rate is something like 40%. Presumably because people can
take breaks and holidays or even be replaced without the business losing it's
direction & lead. I got these figures from an ICOF or ICOM video years ago but
curiously there don't appear to have been further studies into this. Just the
frequently unsupported assertion that 1 man has to rule in order for anything to
work.
Regards from
Tom
Hi again,
Lol, things like this get me really quite angry lol. I should just sit back and
laugh smugly about how wrong they are and watch them trip over their own
shoelaces. People get paid for this type of utter drivel while people that do
know stuff are shooed away to the side-lines.
"It was a cheap way for Oracle to hurt their rival" ?? Sun you (Ellison)
idiot. Not Oracle, but Sun was the company that owned OpenOffice and did the
work of preventing the community from developing the product.
Regards from
Tom
PS ooo, at least it has woken me up this morning
I thought ODF was meant to free people from software lock-in? 
-r
Good morning Tom
Although I agree with most of your arguments, Microsoft's position on Office
has changed a lot lately.
First it is almost impossible to buy a new Win7 machine which doesn't have
some version of Office bundled. It varies from a Trial version to a Starter
version and sometimes even the whole Office is included.
On a second (and probably more important) front, Microsoft silently retired
the Office Genuine Advantage check which prevented illegal copies to be
updated
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/microsoft-quietly-shuts-down-office-genuine-advantage-program/2798
I think that Microsoft is taking measures to prevent it's users to shift to
an Open Source Office suite
This is a good point.
Simos
(i do not normally do these 'me too' posts).
Tom Davies wrote:
<snip>
"It was a cheap way for Oracle to hurt their rival" ?? Sun you (Ellison)
idiot. Not Oracle, but Sun was the company that owned OpenOffice and did
the
work of preventing the community from developing the product.
Ahem, Tom... Those were my words, so I guess it's me who is the idiot
Also, the article in The Register was written by Gavin Clarke, not Larry
Ellison (CEO of Oracle).
Glad to hear that companies are lining up to support LibreOffice. It is
essential in my opinion. I used to think that Open Source meant amateur
enthusiasts writing code in their spare time, but that was before I learned
that more than three quarters of Linux comes from developers on the payroll
of corporations.
Ryan Jendoubi wrote:
[...]
It could be risky for them to reveal much while the situation
is in flux. At the same time there are hundreds of thousands of users who
are probably quite anxious to find out what's in the cards for their
preferred office software.I thought ODF was meant to free people from software lock-in?
Well, it does. If Microsoft dies tomorrow, billions of Word and Excel files
are left in limbo. In theory, the proprietary file format could be buried
with the company.
If both LibreOffice and OpenOffice die, it will be easy for a successor to
pick up where they left off... in the interim, however, there would be some
anxiety so let's hope this never happens.
________________________________
From: aqualung <xfekdcugjrkz@mailinator.com>
To: users@libreoffice.org
Sent: Sat, 16 April, 2011 10:27:36
Subject: [libreoffice-users] Re: Ellison's Oracle washes hands of OpenOffice
Tom Davies wrote:
<snip>
"It was a cheap way for Oracle to hurt their rival" ?? Sun you (Ellison)
idiot. Not Oracle, but Sun was the company that owned OpenOffice and did
the
work of preventing the community from developing the product.
Ahem, Tom... Those were my words, so I guess it's me who is the idiot
Also, the article in The Register was written by Gavin Clarke, not Larry
Ellison (CEO of Oracle).
Glad to hear that companies are lining up to support LibreOffice. It is
essential in my opinion. I used to think that Open Source meant amateur
enthusiasts writing code in their spare time, but that was before I learned
that more than three quarters of Linux comes from developers on the payroll
of corporations.
Hi
Sorry my quoting doesn't work in here!
Ooops, well it was a minor point and probably the first one you made and you are
not getting paid for writing an article against LO. I thought you said it was
Ellison that wrote the article so that's my mistake lol. If the writer had made
the mistake then it would have been stacked on top of a whole series of FUD.
When someone makes an innocent mistake that is fine, we all do it. When people
use a whole stack of mis-information in a supposedly reputable paper with what
appears to be a malicious intent then that is a whole different bottle of
crisps.
Now, next time i read anything in The Register i will do so with the knowledge
that they do no fact-checking and are little more than rumour-mongers rather
than anything worth taking notice of. Gavin has sullied the reputation of The
Register imo, although i would have to read the actual article before really
judging it.
Regards from
Tom
[snip]
On a second (and probably more important) front, Microsoft silently
retired
the Office Genuine Advantage check which prevented illegal copies to
be
updated
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/microsoft-quietly-shuts-down-office-genu
ine-advantage-program/2798
________________________________
From: plino <pedlino@gmail.com>
To: users@libreoffice.org
Sent: Sat, 16 April, 2011 10:07:11
Subject: [libreoffice-users] Re: Ellison's Oracle washes hands of OpenOffice
Good morning Tom
Although I agree with most of your arguments, Microsoft's position on Office
has changed a lot lately.
First it is almost impossible to buy a new Win7 machine which doesn't have
some version of Office bundled. It varies from a Trial version to a Starter
version and sometimes even the whole Office is included.
On a second (and probably more important) front, Microsoft silently retired
the Office Genuine Advantage check which prevented illegal copies to be
updated
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/microsoft-quietly-shuts-down-office-genuine-advantage-program/2798
I think that Microsoft is taking measures to prevent it's users to shift to
an Open Source Office suite
Hi
Possibly but MS has not even really started to fight yet. Shop-bought machines
often have tons of bloat installed, trialware and expensive stuff you don't
really have an option about having or not having but just have to pay for
anyway. Shops profit from that and wouldn't be able to profit so much from free
software. So, yes, the odds are stacked against us.
1. At least as trials-end people are given an option to buy MS or not even if
they have been hooked on MS by then.
2. If people freshly install or reinstall Windows from Cd/Dvd (which almost
never happens) that is where MS Office is not included.
3. an installed MS Office can be uninstalled without breaking the OS
4. LibreOffice can be installed alongside MS Office
5. People with 'old' versions of MS Office might choose us rather than upgrade
to MSO
Not great options but its what we have.
Regards from
Tom
HI, I'm new here. Pardon me while I tell everyone why you are all wrong,
probably insult you all, and proceed to stick my foot in my mouth up to my
hip (all the while being right). You can get the details off my
site<http://madhatter.ca>
.
First, you have to understand that Microsoft is under severe financial
pressure. If I've added the numbers up correctly they have about 3.5 years
until they go into Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection. Before you start
screaming that I am crazy, this is based on their SEC reports. Goto my site,
search for the term Microsoft Death Watch.
Second, all of the proprietary companies are under a lot of pressure at
present. I'm working on an article to explain the exact reasoning, but the
worst thing that could happen right now would be for Open Office and Libre
Office to combine. I am deadly serious about this. I have coined a term for
the process, and this explains why the big companies are pushing so heavily
for software patents.
Third, while Open Office/Libre Office has already destroyed a large part of
Microsoft's profitability, there's another factor at play. After Steve Jobs
returned to Apple, the company made a series of moves (which are still
continuing) each of which hurt Microsoft. There's an old saying. Once is
accident. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action. Let's look at
the list:
1. Resurrected Mac OS as Mac OS X instead of adopting Windows
2. Kept Quicktime alive instead of adopting Windows Media
3. Developed IPod (which hurt Windows Media)
4. Developed ITunes (which hurt Windows Media)
5. Developed X86/X86-64 Mac (Which hurt Windows)
6. Developed IWork and sold it for $200.00 less per copy (which hurt
Office Sales)
7. Developed IPhone (which hurt Windows Mobile)
8. Developed IPod Touch (which further hurt Windows Mobile)
9. Developed IPad (which hurt Windows for Tablets - well killed it
really)
I'm in a rush, so I probably missed a few. If three times is enemy action,
what does *NINE* times count as - a paper cut?
The only really profitable division that Microsoft has is their Business
division (it brings in nearly half of the total company profits). With
pressure from Apple, Open Office, Libre Office, Google, Word Perfect, etc.,
Microsoft is having to accept lower margins on sales, which cuts into
profits.
At the same time they are loosing Windows license sales to Apple (Mac,
IPad), and in the future will be loosing them to Acer (Android), HP (Web
OS), Dell (Ubuntu). Each lost OS sale means a smaller market for Office
sales. If my reading of the numbers are right, the Year end 10Q filing will
show some revenue drops in several places, which would be the first time
ever that Microsoft has had revenue drops when there wasn't a massive
recession hitting their competitors. Apple when reporting for the same time
period will not show a drop.
So you are facing an increasingly more desperate opponent. Microsoft will
attempt anything to survive. Consider the new laws that they are trying to
get passed in Washington State as an example, which will probably result in
an exodus of large firms from that state. I wonder what the politicians will
think then?
The next five-ten years are going to match the 'May you live in interesting
times' curse.
Wayne
Hey GPD.
Were you born yesterday? You seem to have no idea of the brutality MS
applied in the '80's and the following 2 decades against users.
You don't have any overall computer savvy as far as I can tell;
you don't even know iMAC.
The SEC stuff is a financial-gain ruse to rob users.
Do some research and include all users.
Educate yourself before making pronouncements.
Thank you.
Glenn
Glenn,
I learned programming on an IBM mainframe using Punch Cards, my start in the
industry predates Microsoft's founding. I can remember the switch from CP/M
to DOS 1.0. So yes, I know exactly what Microsoft did to the industry, and
how they did it. I've actually read many of the legal filings from the U.S.
anti-trust case.
I also know their financial limits which you don't.
Wayne
LOL - you tell 'em Wayne!
I learned on a 360/70 and am wondering whether you didn't learn on the
same machine
Marc,
I seriously don't remember what model it was now. I know that in 1972 it was
about four years old if that helps. We also had a whole bunch of card file
sorting machines, and they were telling the girls about how much money they
could make as keypunch operators, a job that didn't exist within five years.
My first personal computer was a Timex Sinclair ZX-80 with the 16K optional
ram pack. I lost it in a move years ago, but bought a used one on Ebay a
couple of years ago just for old times sake, think I've run it once. My
personal favorite was the Commodore C64, which was a fantastic little
machine. To bad the company was incompetent.
At home I run Bodhi Linux on an Acer Laptop, Moon OS on a Desktop (it's
moving to Mageia next week), and Fedora on a third desktop. My main
production machine is a Mac laptop which is 6 months old, and already has
worn keys, it gets about ten hours use a day. I avoid Microsoft. I don't
need the hassle.
I also have an IPad and an IPhone. I use the IPad as a laptop replacement
when out of the house now, it's lighter, and does what I need just as well.
The phone is my traveling internet connection.
I also like bad jokes - here's one of them:
Proposal For An Expedition To HD 38283 b To Be Funded By The Gates
Foundation – UPDATED<http://madhatter.ca/2011/04/13/proposal-for-an-expedition-to-hd-38283-b-to-be-funded-by-the-gates-foundation/>
Anyway, does anyone have any idea why the Beta won't run on my Mac yet?
Wayne
Hi Wayne,
Anyway, does anyone have any idea why the Beta won't run on my Mac yet?
Wayne
At a completely wild speculative guess, I would say because it wasn't
tested properly before it was released...oh silly me, I posted a warning
to the dev mailing list about the Mac nightly (3.4) builds not launching
before 3.4 got slated for release. Guess it didn't get seen /
acknowledged. We're still way behind when it comes to QA, so IMHO this
kind of thing could easily happen again in the future.
Alex
Marc,
OK. Guess I'll have to wait to test it then. I like running the Betas. My
readers like hearing about them too.
Wayne
Wayne,
True, I don't know all the the details of MS's financials. But I do know that
Bill Gates is probably the richest man in the world and it's all due to MS.
I guess that's where my bias comes in.
Also, MS might be in a better financial position if they weren't so arrogant.
Hence OpenOffice, LibreOffice and NeoOffice.
Let MS die. They missed the boat and the market through arrogance.
Let them die by their own sword.
Glenn
P.S. I see we have similar credentials from the same time period.