LOOL is about to be archived

Hi Daniel,

thanks for sharing your experience with OxOOL!

We definitely have to look at it in more details.

LOOL is in the agenda for Monday’s BoD meeting, please come along to comment about it.

Ciao

Paolo

On 24/06/2022 12:00, Daniel A. Rodriguez wrote:

As Franklin mentioned, the university where I work (UNAU) is using OxOOL since 2020. And works like a charm have to add.
Would love to have it’s features as LOOL base.

El 24 de junio de 2022 1:37:32 a. m. GMT-03:00, Franklin Weng franklin@goodhorse.idv.tw escribió:

Hi,

Here I have a proposal: to have LOOL respository sync to another LOOL-derived suite:

https://github.com/OSSII/oxool-community

OxOOL is developed by OSSII in Taiwan, derived from LOOL. It has commercial version, which is several versions advanced to community version, while the community version is also open sourced. Currently National Development Council Taiwan, the main dominant unit of ODF policy in Taiwanese government, uses (forks) this community version into “NDCODFweb”:

https://github.com/NDCODF/ndcodfweb

which is also mainly supported by OSSII.

Besides NDCODFWeb and some other Taiwanese government units, OxOOL is also used in different companies and products. For example, it is integrated into ASUS cloud Omnistor Office (https://www.asuscloud.com/omnistor-office/), OpenFind SecuShare Pro (https://www.openfind.com.tw/taiwan/secusharepro.html). It is migrated into Pou Chen Group (https://www.pouchen.com) and some other big anonymous companies. Also, it is deployed in UNAU (https://www.unau.edu.ar/la-universidad/ ).

OxOOL v4 will be released in a month and can be a good and useful base to LOOL, also good to the LibreOffice community.

I’m not a representative of OSSII, but the GM of OSSII told me that they are happy to share the community version.

In this proposal there are two ways to relive LOOL:

  1. To sync current LOOL with patches from OxOOL community v4, which may technically take more time and efforts.

  2. Start a new repository from OxOOL community v4, which I’ll say that it is actually a “fast forward” from current status since OxOOL is also derived from LOOL, though a bit far before. It will be technically easier than 1., just that maybe some community people may feel uneasy or unhappy with this way.

Both ways are okay for me, as long as LOOL can be relived. However no matter which way, IMO TDF needs to employ in-house developers (independent from any ecosystem member) for rerunning LOOL. The second option, which is my prefer option, is a lot easier technically and in-house developers would just need to (cowork with community members and OSSII to) maintain LOOL repository.

Features in OxOOL commercial version are mostly (customized) requests from customers and hence may not necessarily need to be backported (to community version), but the GM of OSSII also promised that OxOOL Commercial version functions (which they think good / necessary to be back ported) and bugfixes will be back ported to LOOL (and OxOOL community version too).

Of course, after reliving LOOL all developers are welcomed to contribute to LOOL.

Details can be discussed with OSSII.

Regards,
Franklin

Paolo Vecchi 於 2022/6/21 20:15 寫道:

Hi all,

just a heads up in case the community would like to come up with proposals in regards to LibreOffice On-Line.

As you might be aware LOOL’s repository has been frozen since the major code contributor decided to move it to GitHub and not contribute back to TDF’s repository.

At the time there has been a debate about it but then nothing actionable seems to have been proposed by the community since then.

Recently an ex-member of the ESC proposed to the ESC to archive LOOL [0] and during the following ESC meeting no concerns were expressed for doing so [1].

The “Attic Policy” [2], that has been written to archive obsolete projects, states that the Board will need to vote on the archival process to confirm ESC’s choice.

It is likely that the board will need to vote on it soon so if the community would like to do something with LOOL there might be a small window of opportunity to have your preferences on what to do with it heard.

If nobody comes along proposing to look after it and update if so that it could be brought back into an usable form for the community then the board might have to vote for having LOOL archived.

Ciao

Paolo

[0] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-June/088982.html
[1] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-June/089018.html
[2] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Policies/Attic

Hi Simon,

thanks for bringing up those points.

On 24/06/2022 11:49, Simon Phipps wrote:

Hi Franklin,.

Why is this better than working with the version Collabora (who actually contribute to TDF’s work) maintain?

I believe that Collabora has been explicitly asked a few time if they were available to contribute back to LOOL but we never received any answer or signs of goodwill.

OSSII has been working on a fork of LOOL for quite a while and is kindly offering to share it back for the community to enjoy it.

They also offer a commercial version so it will be important to set clear rules to avoid the conflicts we have seen in the past.

Why should TDF hire developers to maintain code for the Taiwanese government?

IMHO, unless we are talking about quick fixes, in-house developers should not focus on LOOL.

However there could be opportunities to develop synergies with OSSII and the Taiwanese community on CJK issues as together with RTL bug fixes will enable a couple of billion people to use LibreOffice properly in their own languages.

Sincerely.

Simon

Ciao

Paolo

On Fri, Jun 24, 2022 at 5:47 AM Franklin Weng <franklin@goodhorse.idv.tw> wrote:

Hi,

Here I have a proposal: to have LOOL respository sync to another LOOL-derived suite:

https://github.com/OSSII/oxool-community

OxOOL is developed by OSSII in Taiwan, derived from LOOL. It has commercial version, which is several versions advanced to community version, while the community version is also open sourced. Currently National Development Council Taiwan, the main dominant unit of ODF policy in Taiwanese government, uses (forks) this community version into “NDCODFweb”:

https://github.com/NDCODF/ndcodfweb

which is also mainly supported by OSSII.

Besides NDCODFWeb and some other Taiwanese government units, OxOOL is also used in different companies and products. For example, it is integrated into ASUS cloud Omnistor Office (https://www.asuscloud.com/omnistor-office/), OpenFind SecuShare Pro (https://www.openfind.com.tw/taiwan/secusharepro.html). It is migrated into Pou Chen Group (https://www.pouchen.com) and some other big anonymous companies. Also, it is deployed in UNAU (https://www.unau.edu.ar/la-universidad/ ).

OxOOL v4 will be released in a month and can be a good and useful base to LOOL, also good to the LibreOffice community.

I’m not a representative of OSSII, but the GM of OSSII told me that they are happy to share the community version.

In this proposal there are two ways to relive LOOL:

  1. To sync current LOOL with patches from OxOOL community v4, which may technically take more time and efforts.

  2. Start a new repository from OxOOL community v4, which I’ll say that it is actually a “fast forward” from current status since OxOOL is also derived from LOOL, though a bit far before. It will be technically easier than 1., just that maybe some community people may feel uneasy or unhappy with this way.

Both ways are okay for me, as long as LOOL can be relived. However no matter which way, IMO TDF needs to employ in-house developers (independent from any ecosystem member) for rerunning LOOL. The second option, which is my prefer option, is a lot easier technically and in-house developers would just need to (cowork with community members and OSSII to) maintain LOOL repository.

Features in OxOOL commercial version are mostly (customized) requests from customers and hence may not necessarily need to be backported (to community version), but the GM of OSSII also promised that OxOOL Commercial version functions (which they think good / necessary to be back ported) and bugfixes will be back ported to LOOL (and OxOOL community version too).

Of course, after reliving LOOL all developers are welcomed to contribute to LOOL.

Details can be discussed with OSSII.

Regards,
Franklin

Simon Phipps

TDF Trustee

Hi Paolo, Franklin, all,

it would be great, if we could work together on a process to merge both branches together and get the community versions in sync. I think this could be done most easy on Github.

Regards,
Andreas

Am 24. Juni 2022 11:29:16 MESZ schrieb Paolo Vecchi paolo.vecchi@documentfoundation.org:

Hi Franklin,

thanks for the great proposal.

As the LOOL archival discussion is planned for Monday I’ll ask the board to modify the agenda to start discussing your’ and Andreas’ proposal.

There is a lot that needs to be evaluated with the community to see if and in which way we can make LOOL available for the community again.

Ciao

Paolo

On 24/06/2022 06:37, Franklin Weng wrote:

Hi,

Here I have a proposal: to have LOOL respository sync to another LOOL-derived suite:

https://github.com/OSSII/oxool-community

OxOOL is developed by OSSII in Taiwan, derived from LOOL. It has commercial version, which is several versions advanced to community version, while the community version is also open sourced. Currently National Development Council Taiwan, the main dominant unit of ODF policy in Taiwanese government, uses (forks) this community version into “NDCODFweb”:

https://github.com/NDCODF/ndcodfweb

which is also mainly supported by OSSII.

Besides NDCODFWeb and some other Taiwanese government units, OxOOL is also used in different companies and products. For example, it is integrated into ASUS cloud Omnistor Office (https://www.asuscloud.com/omnistor-office/), OpenFind SecuShare Pro (https://www.openfind.com.tw/taiwan/secusharepro.html). It is migrated into Pou Chen Group (https://www.pouchen.com) and some other big anonymous companies. Also, it is deployed in UNAU (https://www.unau.edu.ar/la-universidad/ ).

OxOOL v4 will be released in a month and can be a good and useful base to LOOL, also good to the LibreOffice community.

I’m not a representative of OSSII, but the GM of OSSII told me that they are happy to share the community version.

In this proposal there are two ways to relive LOOL:

  1. To sync current LOOL with patches from OxOOL community v4, which may technically take more time and efforts.

  2. Start a new repository from OxOOL community v4, which I’ll say that it is actually a “fast forward” from current status since OxOOL is also derived from LOOL, though a bit far before. It will be technically easier than 1., just that maybe some community people may feel uneasy or unhappy with this way.

Both ways are okay for me, as long as LOOL can be relived. However no matter which way, IMO TDF needs to employ in-house developers (independent from any ecosystem member) for rerunning LOOL. The second option, which is my prefer option, is a lot easier technically and in-house developers would just need to (cowork with community members and OSSII to) maintain LOOL repository.

Features in OxOOL commercial version are mostly (customized) requests from customers and hence may not necessarily need to be backported (to community version), but the GM of OSSII also promised that OxOOL Commercial version functions (which they think good / necessary to be back ported) and bugfixes will be back ported to LOOL (and OxOOL community version too).

Of course, after reliving LOOL all developers are welcomed to contribute to LOOL.

Details can be discussed with OSSII.

Regards,
Franklin

Paolo Vecchi 於 2022/6/21 20:15 寫道:

Hi all,

just a heads up in case the community would like to come up with proposals in regards to LibreOffice On-Line.

As you might be aware LOOL’s repository has been frozen since the major code contributor decided to move it to GitHub and not contribute back to TDF’s repository.

At the time there has been a debate about it but then nothing actionable seems to have been proposed by the community since then.

Recently an ex-member of the ESC proposed to the ESC to archive LOOL [0] and during the following ESC meeting no concerns were expressed for doing so [1].

The “Attic Policy” [2], that has been written to archive obsolete projects, states that the Board will need to vote on the archival process to confirm ESC’s choice.

It is likely that the board will need to vote on it soon so if the community would like to do something with LOOL there might be a small window of opportunity to have your preferences on what to do with it heard.

If nobody comes along proposing to look after it and update if so that it could be brought back into an usable form for the community then the board might have to vote for having LOOL archived.

Ciao

Paolo

[0] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-June/088982.html
[1] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-June/089018.html
[2] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Policies/Attic


Diese Nachricht wurde von meinem Android-Gerät mit K-9 Mail gesendet.

Hi Andreas,

it’s great to see this types of cooperation offers.

I might be biased but I would prefer to see the project on TDF’s infrastructure and covered by the appropriate agreements so that we can ensure we invest on a project that will clearly provide long term benefits for the wider community.

Ciao

Paolo

On 24/06/2022 12:23, Andreas Mantke wrote:

Hi Paolo, Franklin, all,

it would be great, if we could work together on a process to merge both branches together and get the community versions in sync. I think this could be done most easy on Github.

Regards,
Andreas

Am 24. Juni 2022 11:29:16 MESZ schrieb Paolo Vecchi paolo.vecchi@documentfoundation.org:

Hi Franklin,

thanks for the great proposal.

As the LOOL archival discussion is planned for Monday I’ll ask the board to modify the agenda to start discussing your’ and Andreas’ proposal.

There is a lot that needs to be evaluated with the community to see if and in which way we can make LOOL available for the community again.

Ciao

Paolo

On 24/06/2022 06:37, Franklin Weng wrote:

Hi,

Here I have a proposal: to have LOOL respository sync to another LOOL-derived suite:

https://github.com/OSSII/oxool-community

OxOOL is developed by OSSII in Taiwan, derived from LOOL. It has commercial version, which is several versions advanced to community version, while the community version is also open sourced. Currently National Development Council Taiwan, the main dominant unit of ODF policy in Taiwanese government, uses (forks) this community version into “NDCODFweb”:

https://github.com/NDCODF/ndcodfweb

which is also mainly supported by OSSII.

Besides NDCODFWeb and some other Taiwanese government units, OxOOL is also used in different companies and products. For example, it is integrated into ASUS cloud Omnistor Office (https://www.asuscloud.com/omnistor-office/), OpenFind SecuShare Pro (https://www.openfind.com.tw/taiwan/secusharepro.html). It is migrated into Pou Chen Group (https://www.pouchen.com) and some other big anonymous companies. Also, it is deployed in UNAU (https://www.unau.edu.ar/la-universidad/ ).

OxOOL v4 will be released in a month and can be a good and useful base to LOOL, also good to the LibreOffice community.

I’m not a representative of OSSII, but the GM of OSSII told me that they are happy to share the community version.

In this proposal there are two ways to relive LOOL:

  1. To sync current LOOL with patches from OxOOL community v4, which may technically take more time and efforts.

  2. Start a new repository from OxOOL community v4, which I’ll say that it is actually a “fast forward” from current status since OxOOL is also derived from LOOL, though a bit far before. It will be technically easier than 1., just that maybe some community people may feel uneasy or unhappy with this way.

Both ways are okay for me, as long as LOOL can be relived. However no matter which way, IMO TDF needs to employ in-house developers (independent from any ecosystem member) for rerunning LOOL. The second option, which is my prefer option, is a lot easier technically and in-house developers would just need to (cowork with community members and OSSII to) maintain LOOL repository.

Features in OxOOL commercial version are mostly (customized) requests from customers and hence may not necessarily need to be backported (to community version), but the GM of OSSII also promised that OxOOL Commercial version functions (which they think good / necessary to be back ported) and bugfixes will be back ported to LOOL (and OxOOL community version too).

Of course, after reliving LOOL all developers are welcomed to contribute to LOOL.

Details can be discussed with OSSII.

Regards,
Franklin

Paolo Vecchi 於 2022/6/21 20:15 寫道:

Hi all,

just a heads up in case the community would like to come up with proposals in regards to LibreOffice On-Line.

As you might be aware LOOL’s repository has been frozen since the major code contributor decided to move it to GitHub and not contribute back to TDF’s repository.

At the time there has been a debate about it but then nothing actionable seems to have been proposed by the community since then.

Recently an ex-member of the ESC proposed to the ESC to archive LOOL [0] and during the following ESC meeting no concerns were expressed for doing so [1].

The “Attic Policy” [2], that has been written to archive obsolete projects, states that the Board will need to vote on the archival process to confirm ESC’s choice.

It is likely that the board will need to vote on it soon so if the community would like to do something with LOOL there might be a small window of opportunity to have your preferences on what to do with it heard.

If nobody comes along proposing to look after it and update if so that it could be brought back into an usable form for the community then the board might have to vote for having LOOL archived.

Ciao

Paolo

[0] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-June/088982.html
[1] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-June/089018.html
[2] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Policies/Attic

– Diese Nachricht wurde von meinem Android-Gerät mit K-9 Mail gesendet.

Huh, did I say TDF hire developers to maintain code for Taiwanese government? Is it my English so bad or yours?

Simon Phipps <simon@webmink.com> 於 2022年6月24日 週五 17:50 寫道:

Hi Paolo, all,

no objections. I’d Prüfer that too. But we should make developer life mouch more easy and also implement tools like the workflows available on github.

Regards,
Andreas

Am 24. Juni 2022 12:37:54 MESZ schrieb Paolo Vecchi paolo.vecchi@documentfoundation.org:

Hi Andreas,

it’s great to see this types of cooperation offers.

I might be biased but I would prefer to see the project on TDF’s infrastructure and covered by the appropriate agreements so that we can ensure we invest on a project that will clearly provide long term benefits for the wider community.

Ciao

Paolo

On 24/06/2022 12:23, Andreas Mantke wrote:

Hi Paolo, Franklin, all,

it would be great, if we could work together on a process to merge both branches together and get the community versions in sync. I think this could be done most easy on Github.

Regards,
Andreas

Am 24. Juni 2022 11:29:16 MESZ schrieb Paolo Vecchi paolo.vecchi@documentfoundation.org:

Hi Franklin,

thanks for the great proposal.

As the LOOL archival discussion is planned for Monday I’ll ask the board to modify the agenda to start discussing your’ and Andreas’ proposal.

There is a lot that needs to be evaluated with the community to see if and in which way we can make LOOL available for the community again.

Ciao

Paolo

On 24/06/2022 06:37, Franklin Weng wrote:

Hi,

Here I have a proposal: to have LOOL respository sync to another LOOL-derived suite:

https://github.com/OSSII/oxool-community

OxOOL is developed by OSSII in Taiwan, derived from LOOL. It has commercial version, which is several versions advanced to community version, while the community version is also open sourced. Currently National Development Council Taiwan, the main dominant unit of ODF policy in Taiwanese government, uses (forks) this community version into “NDCODFweb”:

https://github.com/NDCODF/ndcodfweb

which is also mainly supported by OSSII.

Besides NDCODFWeb and some other Taiwanese government units, OxOOL is also used in different companies and products. For example, it is integrated into ASUS cloud Omnistor Office (https://www.asuscloud.com/omnistor-office/), OpenFind SecuShare Pro (https://www.openfind.com.tw/taiwan/secusharepro.html). It is migrated into Pou Chen Group (https://www.pouchen.com) and some other big anonymous companies. Also, it is deployed in UNAU (https://www.unau.edu.ar/la-universidad/ ).

OxOOL v4 will be released in a month and can be a good and useful base to LOOL, also good to the LibreOffice community.

I’m not a representative of OSSII, but the GM of OSSII told me that they are happy to share the community version.

In this proposal there are two ways to relive LOOL:

  1. To sync current LOOL with patches from OxOOL community v4, which may technically take more time and efforts.

  2. Start a new repository from OxOOL community v4, which I’ll say that it is actually a “fast forward” from current status since OxOOL is also derived from LOOL, though a bit far before. It will be technically easier than 1., just that maybe some community people may feel uneasy or unhappy with this way.

Both ways are okay for me, as long as LOOL can be relived. However no matter which way, IMO TDF needs to employ in-house developers (independent from any ecosystem member) for rerunning LOOL. The second option, which is my prefer option, is a lot easier technically and in-house developers would just need to (cowork with community members and OSSII to) maintain LOOL repository.

Features in OxOOL commercial version are mostly (customized) requests from customers and hence may not necessarily need to be backported (to community version), but the GM of OSSII also promised that OxOOL Commercial version functions (which they think good / necessary to be back ported) and bugfixes will be back ported to LOOL (and OxOOL community version too).

Of course, after reliving LOOL all developers are welcomed to contribute to LOOL.

Details can be discussed with OSSII.

Regards,
Franklin

Paolo Vecchi 於 2022/6/21 20:15 寫道:

Hi all,

just a heads up in case the community would like to come up with proposals in regards to LibreOffice On-Line.

As you might be aware LOOL’s repository has been frozen since the major code contributor decided to move it to GitHub and not contribute back to TDF’s repository.

At the time there has been a debate about it but then nothing actionable seems to have been proposed by the community since then.

Recently an ex-member of the ESC proposed to the ESC to archive LOOL [0] and during the following ESC meeting no concerns were expressed for doing so [1].

The “Attic Policy” [2], that has been written to archive obsolete projects, states that the Board will need to vote on the archival process to confirm ESC’s choice.

It is likely that the board will need to vote on it soon so if the community would like to do something with LOOL there might be a small window of opportunity to have your preferences on what to do with it heard.

If nobody comes along proposing to look after it and update if so that it could be brought back into an usable form for the community then the board might have to vote for having LOOL archived.

Ciao

Paolo

[0] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-June/088982.html
[1] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-June/089018.html
[2] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Policies/Attic

– Diese Nachricht wurde von meinem Android-Gerät mit K-9 Mail gesendet.


Diese Nachricht wurde von meinem Android-Gerät mit K-9 Mail gesendet.

Hi,

Hi Andreas,

thank you for letting us know that you are working on it.

Ideally it would be great to have a few developers working on it,
especially to fix known security issues, and sufficient activity to
make it viable.

It is true that LOOL has been in a kind of limbo. The repository has
been frozen "temporarily" but it kind of became a permanent situation.

In your opinion, would reopening the repository for 12 months provide
enough time for a community to form around it?

It would require warnings until all the security bugs have been fixed
and that it might not be well maintained until we see constant and
sufficient activity but it could be an option to make it up for the
longer than expected temporary freeze of the repository.

We need not only a security warning, but clear information that the
recommended versions of LOOL are still CODE and Collabora Online (LibreOffice Technology (TM)).

A few months ago my corporate client wasted time and money because they didn't notice on the
TDF site that LOOL is not actively developed. Thanks to the helpfulness of employees of
Collabora Productivity, now they can test its fork with an up-to-date LibreOffice in their intranet, and
started to contribute back to CODE (they have already been one of the biggest contributors
of LibreOffice Desktop).

Why do we need to emphasize that CODE/Collabora Online are the recommended versions (by TDF, too:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/LibreOffice_Online#Current_Status)?
Not only because LOOL was the idea and for the most part, product of Collabora Productivity,
but because the original core LOOL developers still work for Collabora in the spirit of the
free software: CODE is the only actively developed version of LOOL, and this is the only maintained
version which contributes back to LibreOffice actively.

More information: https://collaboraonline.github.io/post/faq/ (by the way, Collabora's description
mentions other maintained versions, like OSSII and Zimbra Docs).

If after 12 months we don't see much activity then we could be certain
that the community is not really interested in working on LOOL.

It would be great to know if others have other
takes/options/alternatives on this subject.

I'm sure, the potential corporate contributors will prefer CODE/Collabora Online, so it's really important to inform them (and every LibreOffice users) correctly, like in https://collaboraonline.github.io/post/faq/.

As CODE/Collabora Online are LibreOffice Technology (TM), and for the healthy long-term LibreOffice development, I would like to see more contribution with Collabora Productivity. In my opinion, as LOOL was, CODE is still the key for the survival of LibreOffice. In the spirit of a successful free software contribution, respecting the decision of Collabora Productivity, TDF must help CODE development, as much as possible, for the sake of LibreOffice! As a first step, we shouldn't hijack future CODE users and as described above, future (and recent) LibreOffice users and contributors with false hopes and misleading information.

Best regards,
László

Hi Laszlo, all,

I'm not sure, if you as a former Collabora staff member don't any
potential CoI in the whole topic.

I'd prefer if only community members without potential CoI share their
opinion on this topic.

I also have no idea why it's not possible to work on a common ground of
LOOL (LibreOffice Online) and why it is/was instead necessary to fork
the code away from the LibreOffice community and rename it.
If I look over the fence into another OSS community there is no such
behavior. Maybe because the license is GPL and there is a contributor
assignment for the foundation in place (or there is more common spirit
in the project and the professional contributors are more divers).

Regards,
Andreas

Hi Andreas,

Hi Laszlo, all,

I'm not sure, if you as a former Collabora staff member don't any
potential CoI in the whole topic.

I'd prefer if only community members without potential CoI share their
opinion on this topic.

I'm not only a former Collabora contractor (near 3 years until 2017), but a former
LOOL developer, too, and still like the term "LibreOffice Online". But now as a
fresh TDF director ȧnd almost fresh full-time LibreOffice developer, I would like
to continue on my 20-year contribution, based on my experience (see the
case of my corporate client with LOOL mentioned in my previous letter).

I also have no idea why it's not possible to work on a common ground of
LOOL (LibreOffice Online) and why it is/was instead necessary to fork
the code away from the LibreOffice community and rename it.
If I look over the fence into another OSS community there is no such
behavior. Maybe because the license is GPL and there is a contributor
assignment for the foundation in place (or there is more common spirit
in the project and the professional contributors are more divers).

I'm sorry about the change, too. I don't know the details, maybe LOOL was
never a core LibreOffice development, but it seems, there was no choice for
Collabora Productivity, only forking. Likely the reason is known for the
former TDF board, and Michael Meeks wrote about it, too, see "Why is
Collabora Online its own project?" in
https://collaboraonline.github.io/post/faq/.

Forking is possible for everyone, but only with renaming. So it was very unfair to write about that renaming is some evil thing, while that was likely a mandatory trade mark issue for Collabora Productivity, too.

The good thing, that CODE/Collabora Online are still "LibreOffice
Technology (TM)" (see https://www.collaboraoffice.com/community-lot/),
so we have the common ground. We must continue to recommend CODE/Collabora
Online, as the best way to use LOOL code base: CODE is the only actively
developed fork of LOOL, and this is the only maintained fork which
associated with active LibreOffice development, while other forks left
alone not only LOOL, but LibreOffice, too.

Best regards,
László

Hi all,

Hi Andreas,

(..)

I also have no idea why it's not possible to work on a common ground of
LOOL (LibreOffice Online) and why it is/was instead necessary to fork
the code away from the LibreOffice community and rename it.
If I look over the fence into another OSS community there is no such
behavior. Maybe because the license is GPL and there is a contributor
assignment for the foundation in place (or there is more common spirit
in the project and the professional contributors are more divers).

I'm sorry about the change, too. I don't know the details, maybe LOOL was
never a core LibreOffice development, but it seems, there was no
choice for
Collabora Productivity, only forking. Likely the reason is known for the
former TDF board, and Michael Meeks wrote about it, too, see "Why is
Collabora Online its own project?" in
https://collaboraonline.github.io/post/faq/.

the faq and the linked info graphic showed the perception of the company
of itself and its view on the LibreOffice community and project.

Forking is possible for everyone, but only with renaming. So it was
very unfair to write about that renaming is some evil thing, while
that was likely a mandatory trade mark issue for Collabora
Productivity, too.

It's not necessary to change the naming of the upstream project or
create a second competing project, if you want to use the code from the
upstream project to develop a (commercial) derivative.

The MPL license is as far as I know open for such derivative work.

Regards,
Andreas

Hi all,

FYI: I wrote a short blog post about my work. And for those who like
visuals, I added two ones.

https://amantke.de/2022/06/25/work-on-revival-of-libreoffice-online/

Regards,
Andreas

Hi Andreas, all

Hi all,

FYI: I wrote a short blog post about my work. And for those who like
visuals, I added two ones.

https://amantke.de/2022/06/25/work-on-revival-of-libreoffice-online/

Thanks a lot for your work on this, I really appreciate and welcome the efforts :slight_smile: Maybe what we should do is to have an online meeting between you, Franklin, Daniel, Paolo and of course who in the community is interested to follow-up.

The new online version is a really good news for me (thanks a lot Franklin and Andreas for that), and I guess for a large part of the non European community (as well as for students, SMEs and so on). There is a clear interest in the community to have this online version.

This is for me rejoining part of the Foundation roots.

But we also have to think about the ecosystem and the value they have built upon this version and for us. I'm also concerned about this. We should not ignore it.

I'm really happy that TDF come back in this dynamic, however I think a serious discussion have to take place between the ecosystem and TDF, not to stop TDF in acting like it was in the past, but to find a fair place to live for everybody.
I'm sure this place exists if all parties are ready to make an effort to reach a common goal.

I ask, if I may, everybody taking part to the discussion to have a deep thought to the international community we, at TDF, are committed to represent.
Cheers
Sophie

Andreas thanks for taking the time to put all those bits together in your post. And would like to add that you are not the first developer stating that there were an artificial barrier for LOOL development and that is reflected in the lack of contributions back claimed by Lazlo.

/me don't like the idea to "recommended" any version at all, user (person/corporate) has the right of make its own choice. What TDF should do, and already does if I'm not mistaken, is emphasize that organizations in need of dedicated support should turn to the companies in the ecosystem, not one in particular.

Also support Sophi's proposal about the needing of a *serious discussion between the ecosystem and TDF with the aim to find a fair place for everybody*.

Hi Sophie, all,

Hi Andreas, all

Hi all,

FYI: I wrote a short blog post about my work. And for those who like
visuals, I added two ones.

https://amantke.de/2022/06/25/work-on-revival-of-libreoffice-online/

Thanks a lot for your work on this, I really appreciate and welcome
the efforts :slight_smile: Maybe what we should do is to have an online meeting
between you, Franklin, Daniel, Paolo and of course who in the
community is interested to follow-up.

The new online version is a really good news for me (thanks a lot
Franklin and Andreas for that), and I guess for a large part of the
non European community (as well as for students, SMEs and so on).
There is a clear interest in the community to have this online version.

+1

This is for me rejoining part of the Foundation roots.

But we also have to think about the ecosystem and the value they have
built upon this version and for us. I'm also concerned about this. We
should not ignore it.

I'm really happy that TDF come back in this dynamic, however I think a
serious discussion have to take place between the ecosystem and TDF,
not to stop TDF in acting like it was in the past, but to find a fair
place to live for everybody.
I'm sure this place exists if all parties are ready to make an effort
to reach a common goal.

I think such common ground could be reached, if not one side try to
dominate the other one. I don't see the necessary respect for the work
of every individual in the LibreOffice community and all talents. It
looks like if the developers think they are the only important part in
the community. And then there is the issue that the LibreOffice
(commercial) ecosystem is not divers enough. This leads to a situation
comparable with the situation in OOo community during the years before
the start of LibreOffice.

I want to state here that I have no issue with creating and selling
(commercial) derivatives from OSS projects, but I think there should be
the common ground of an upstream project, where all participants could
add their commits. And the hosting/administration of this upstream
project should be done by the LibreOffice community and TDF and not by
any vendor.

I think good citizens of a OSS community like to work together on a
common ground owned and administrated by the community.

And as far as I know the MPL and LGPL allows to make (commercial)
derivatives from this source with different flowers and for different
needs of customers (and if a customer agreed modifications on the source
code were committed back to the upstream project).

I ask, if I may, everybody taking part to the discussion to have a
deep thought to the international community we, at TDF, are committed
to represent.

+1

I hope my statement above is a starting point to get back to the root
spirit of TDF and the LibreOffice community.

Regards,
Andreas

Nothing no add, just want to express full support to previous

Hi Laszlo,

thanks for your engagement. Just a few notes as I've been directly involved in proposing to get the community to be more involved with LOOL and to enjoy it's use while trying to agree with the major code contributor a mutually beneficial way to do it.

We need not only a security warning, but clear information that the
recommended versions of LOOL are still CODE and Collabora Online (LibreOffice Technology (TM)).

I respectfully disagree.

We can surely promote the fact that there are members of the ecosystem that provide support and other services that TDF does not provide for LibreOffice Community on the desktop but then that's it.

As we are not, yet, delivering to our community LOOL Community we don't have a supported edition to recommend. CODE and Collabora Online are just other products from a member of the ecosystem that at present have no TDF's hosted community version to refer to.

So at the end we cannot recommend an enterprise version of something we do not publish.

A few months ago my corporate client wasted time and money because they didn't notice on the
TDF site that LOOL is not actively developed.

It was a very unfortunate outcome and but it's a long time that we promote the fact that corporate clients should seek adequate support services.

LOOL has been frozen, by a split board vote, due to the unilateral decision of the major code contributor to fork and not contribute back.

You will find in the board-discuss archives several threads that try to explain how hard the board worked to provide more support to members of the ecosystem and to find a mutually beneficial agreement but once we made good our side the agreement the other side just walked out.

Thanks to the helpfulness of employees of
Collabora Productivity, now they can test its fork with an up-to-date LibreOffice in their intranet, and
started to contribute back to CODE (they have already been one of the biggest contributors
of LibreOffice Desktop).

It is good that your corporate client can enjoy the benefits of the combined efforts in terms of code and lots of contributions from TDF and the wider community.

Your corporate client made anyway the right choice as, unless they have a very capable team able to fix bugs and contribute back to a community project as LOOL was, then they should get support from other parties.

Why do we need to emphasize that CODE/Collabora Online are the recommended versions (by TDF, too:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/LibreOffice_Online#Current_Status)?

Thank you for pointing to that page that has been heavily edited since last time I looked at it.

It now seems to be an advertising page for products for which TDF doesn't have a community counterpart so I wonder if those changes shouldn't be reverted.

Not only because LOOL was the idea and for the most part, product of Collabora Productivity,
but because the original core LOOL developers still work for Collabora in the spirit of the
free software: CODE is the only actively developed version of LOOL, and this is the only maintained
version which contributes back to LibreOffice actively.

LOOL has been "temporarily" frozen for a long time so or we take a decision to bring it back to life, following suggestions that arrived in the past few days, or there is no LOOL and as a consequence no alternatives to point to.

OSSII seems to show that it is possible to have both a commercial and a community version, a bit of a shame that we couldn't find an agreement with a major contributor of LOOL. If it will be possible to create clear rules for cooperation, which might also include synergies to improve CJK handling, then that could be a commercial offering available for enterprise users. Needs more investigation.

Andreas options also requires investigation as it seems to involve backporting of an Open Source project managed by a commercial provider. It would be great to see if that commercial provider is also willing to cooperate under clear rules so that we can refer back to their products for enterprise users.

If after 12 months we don't see much activity then we could be certain
that the community is not really interested in working on LOOL.

It would be great to know if others have other
takes/options/alternatives on this subject.

I'm sure, the potential corporate contributors will prefer CODE/Collabora Online, so it's really important to inform them (and every LibreOffice users) correctly, like in https://collaboraonline.github.io/post/faq/.

Corporate contributors surely prefer to have their projects/products/services promoted, which TDF does for version that it hosts, but CODE/COOL do not relate to LOOL any more so it should be up to them to market their own products and services.

Until we revive LOOL and we (re)create a community around it we should not point to commercial versions of it.

As CODE/Collabora Online are LibreOffice Technology (TM), and for the healthy long-term LibreOffice development, I would like to see more contribution with Collabora Productivity.

We should actually evaluate if those product should use the "LibreOffice Technology" branding.

When Collabora Productivity moved LOOL's code from TDF's repositories to GitHub the first thing that it has done was to remove the header "This file is part of the LibreOffice project" from all the files.

Subsequently even the variables names have been renamed from LOOL to COOL.

This, and other changes, show the intention of removing any indication that the product COOL actually originated from LOOL and every indication that the project was a result of a common effort which included TDF and the wider community.

In my opinion, as LOOL was, CODE is still the key for the survival of LibreOffice.

CODE is now a product fully managed by a commercial contributor that decided to sever all links from TDF in regards to that product so unless they finally agree to join forces again and backport the code to LOOL there is nothing much we can do about their product.

On-line drafting tools are surely useful for many uses and users but there are still billions of people that cannot/do not want to rely on Cloud services to edit their documents so LibreOffice desktop with lots more features and better usability will still be very much relevant for many years to come.

LOOL, and products based on it, is just one of the ways to offer on-line collaborative editing so we may also want to investigate other ways to make LibreOffice available on-line.

In the spirit of a successful free software contribution, respecting the decision of Collabora Productivity, TDF must help CODE development, as much as possible, for the sake of LibreOffice!

Respect is a two way street, TDF kept its promises but the other party decided to fork regardless.

TDF invests in other Open Source software as it's the right thing to do and we could evaluate joint investments if we had a LOOL to give to our community but this time the rules of engagement should be very clear so that the third party does not walk away after having benefited from TDF's and our community's investments.

As a first step, we shouldn't hijack future CODE users and as described above, future (and recent) LibreOffice users and contributors with false hopes and misleading information.

When I accused people of creating false hopes and providing misleading information in regards to LOOL, that pushed me to propose to have a properly structured offering in collaboration with the major code contributor, I have done it with lots of supporting evidence.

You will find all the evidence in the board-discuss archives, in public board meeting minutes and, as now you are a board member and you should take decisions based on objective data, in board email exchanges that I'm very happy to share with you.

I do understand that you are a new member of the board and if you check your emails you will notice that one of my first recommendations was not to limit your choices on what you have been told but to verify things by looking for the relevant objective data or you risk being mislead by narratives that could be slightly biased.

Best regards,
László

Ciao

Paolo

Hi Laszlo, all,

(...)

Forking is possible for everyone, but only with renaming. So it was
very unfair to write about that renaming is some evil thing, while
that was likely a mandatory trade mark issue for Collabora
Productivity, too.

if you look at the LibreOffice source code you'll find out that there is
no renaming of e.g. the start scripts of LibreOffice and its modules.
Like in the times of OOo you could run the program with 'soffice',
'swriter' etc.

Also as far as I know no former modules / directories got new naming
after the born of LibreOffice. Thus it is not common in OSS development
to rename source code files or directories after a fork.

Regards,
Andreas

Hi Sophie and all,

Hi Andreas, all

Hi all,

FYI: I wrote a short blog post about my work. And for those who like
visuals, I added two ones.

https://amantke.de/2022/06/25/work-on-revival-of-libreoffice-online/

Thanks a lot for your work on this, I really appreciate and welcome the efforts :slight_smile: Maybe what we should do is to have an online meeting between you, Franklin, Daniel, Paolo and of course who in the community is interested to follow-up.

I'm very much in favour of it.

It is also important that you express your opinion during the board meetings.

Coincidentally LOOL was put in Monday's agenda just to confirm its "disposal" so come to tell us what you think about it.

The new online version is a really good news for me (thanks a lot Franklin and Andreas for that), and I guess for a large part of the non European community (as well as for students, SMEs and so on). There is a clear interest in the community to have this online version.

There is still no "new online version", there are a couple of proposals on the table but it's up to all of us to make it happen.

This is for me rejoining part of the Foundation roots.

We might need a meeting dedicated to re-discovering the Foundation roots as I have the impression that some have different understanding of why TDF was created and what its role should be.

But we also have to think about the ecosystem and the value they have built upon this version and for us. I'm also concerned about this. We should not ignore it.

I fully agree with you but as TDF has grown and got more complex it is essential to set clear rules of engagement between TDF and the ecosystem.

I'm really happy that TDF come back in this dynamic, however I think a serious discussion have to take place between the ecosystem and TDF, not to stop TDF in acting like it was in the past, but to find a fair place to live for everybody.
I'm sure this place exists if all parties are ready to make an effort to reach a common goal.

You may have noticed some decisions that have been recently published, and there are more to come, showing that lots of work is being put into it so that we can ensure that there is a fair and predictable environment for current and future members of the ecosystem.

It takes time for a bunch of stubborn guys to get to some agreements but we are getting there. It would be great if we could have more diverse future boards to bring in different approaches to problem solving :wink:

I ask, if I may, everybody taking part to the discussion to have a deep thought to the international community we, at TDF, are committed to represent.

True and it would be great to have more feedback from other parts of the world.

Hopefully once Decidim is up and running we'll have an easier way to collect feedback and ideas from the various community so that it will be easier to help each others.

Cheers
Sophie

Ciao

Paolo

Replying from the smartphone.

The LibreOffice Technology umbrella brand has been developed to group all products based on the LibreOffice transactional engine, independently from their origin and from details which are irrelevant for the end user such as file's headers.

Prohibiting its use would be against the spirit and the objectives of the marketing plan, and would kill it forever (the label Community has already killed half of it, by providing a wrong message to the project stakeholders).

Best regards, Italo

Hi Andreas, *,

Andreas Mantke wrote:

I don't see the necessary respect for the work of every individual
in the LibreOffice community and all talents. It looks like if the
developers think they are the only important part in the community.

TDF has been celebrating & acknowledging the work of all volunteers,
if not since day one, then at least when we started to have dedicated
marketing staff. I'm personally very grateful to each and everyone,
contributing their time, energy, commitment & personal resources to
our projects.

I therefore find your statement needlessly divisive, at a time when
instead we should work towards more unity. It is also not constructive
- e.g. if you would have written 'the email from developer XY made me
think they consider themselves the only important part in the
community', we could have asked that person to clarify.

As it stands, it blames a large group of community members of
something that is likely not true (e.g. I myself don't believe only
developers are important).

The quoted excerpt is thus not the way we want to communicate here, so
let's please try to do better next time.

Thanks,

-- Thorsten