Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Ellison's Oracle washes hands of OpenOffice

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 :)




________________________________
From: aqualung <xfekdcugjrkz@mailinator.com>
To: users@libreoffice.org
Sent: Sat, 16 April, 2011 7:09:22
Subject: [libreoffice-users] Re: Ellison's Oracle washes hands of OpenOffice

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.

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