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What's next for Apache OpenOffice

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By Jonathan Corbet
September 8, 2016
Concerns about the viability of the Apache OpenOffice (AOO) project are not new; they had been in the air for a while by the time LWN looked at the project's development activity in early 2015. Since then, though, the worries have grown more pronounced, especially after AOO's recent failure to produce a release with an important security fix nearly one year after being notified of the vulnerability. The result is an internal discussion on whether the project should be "retired," or whether it will find a way to turn its fortunes around.

The current chair of the AOO project management committee (PMC) is Dennis Hamilton, whose term is set to end shortly. He has been concerned about the sustainability of the project for some time (see this message from one year ago, for example), a concern sharpened by the routine requirement that he report to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) board on the project's status. The board, seemingly, had asked few questions about the status of AOO until recently, when the handling of CVE-2016-1513 (or the lack thereof) came to its attention. Now the board is apparently asking some sharp questions indeed and requiring monthly (rather than every three months as usual) reports from the project. "Retirement" of the project, it seems, has been explicitly mentioned as a possibility.

Pondering retirement

In response, on September 1, Hamilton went to the AOO development list with a detailed description of what retiring the project would involve. He said:

I have regularly observed that the Apache OpenOffice project has limited capacity for sustaining the project in an energetic manner. It is also my considered opinion that there is no ready supply of developers who have the capacity, capability, and will to supplement the roughly half-dozen volunteers holding the project together.

Given that, he said, it is time to openly face the prospect that AOO is not sustainable and needs to be wound down. ASF board member (and corporate vice president) Jim Jagielski added that "it has become obvious to the board that AOO has not been a healthy project for some time." Given that, he said, the important thing is to figure out what is to be done now.

This conversation has been widely reported; the result, unsurprisingly, has been a strong "we told you so" response. There has been quite a bit of rehashing of the history of the AOO project and how the current situation came to be. But Jagielski had a point when he said that most of that does not matter; what does matter is what happens next. Your editor would agree. There may be an opportunity to make things better for developers and users of free office suites, but doing so may require forgiving and forgetting quite a bit of unpleasant history.

Jagielski suggested that, while the project cannot sustain itself as an end-user-focused effort, it may be able to go forward as a framework that others could build applications with. Who those others would be was not specified. He suggested that the OpenOffice.org domain could be redirected to LibreOffice — a suggestion that still seems to be seen as heretical by many in the AOO project.

To top things off, he even said that the project might consider making an apology of sorts for the excesses of one of its advocates in the past. While his tone might be read as being less than fully sincere, one would hope that any such apology, should it be forthcoming, would be taken at its word and accepted fully. LibreOffice developers could even consider making an apology of their own (they have not been 100% perfect either), perhaps ahead of anything from AOO. The sharing of some conciliatory words could do a lot to end the hostilities of past years, enable cooperation, and bring about a solution that is good for everybody involved.

Pondering non-retirement

The above discussion, like much of the conversation on the net as a whole, has an underlying assumption that AOO will, indeed, wind down. The project has been unable to compete with LibreOffice; its commit volume and developer participation are not just lower, they are two orders of magnitude lower. LibreOffice makes regular feature and maintenance releases; AOO has been unable to put out even a single emergency security-fix release. LibreOffice has significant corporate investment driving its development; AOO, seemingly, has none since IBM ceased its involvement. The current AOO development community is too small to even hope to fully understand its (large) code base, much less make significant improvements to it. So, to many, it seems clear that AOO is not sustainable.

There are, however, AOO developers who disagree with this assessment. Some of them clearly think that AOO can be saved and saw Hamilton's message as something close to an act of sabotage. Others saw it as "liberating" and as a way to kickstart the process of bringing in new developers. AOO's remaining community has a clear attachment to the project and a strong lack of desire for any kind of accommodation with LibreOffice. It was said by a few that AOO provides an important competition for LibreOffice, though what form that competition takes when the project has not made a feature release for 2.5 years is not clear.

What is clear is that AOO needs to bring in more developers if it is going to survive. To that end, a new recruitment mailing list has been created to help new developers get started. Plans are forming to try to turn the current round of publicity into a call for developers to join a reinvigorated AOO project. Jagielski has claimed that "AOO has simply been overloaded w/ emails from developers and other contributors offering their help, skills, talents and support" since the discussion started, but that overload is not yet evident on the mailing lists.

The developers involved must surely be aware of just how big a challenge they face. Many office-suite users may not have heard of LibreOffice, but the development community is well aware of the relative health of the two projects; attracting them will continue to be hard. The state of the code base, which has not seen the sort of energy put in by LibreOffice to make development easier, will not help. There is no financial investment going into AOO and, seemingly, no plans to try to attract any; if a company did come in, it would likely end up dominating the project in short order — a situation with its own problems.

AOO also has an interesting problem that is not shared by many other projects: it is subject to the decisions of a foundation board of directors that is concerned about potential damage to the overall Apache brand. Even if the AOO developers feel they are making progress, the possibility of the board pulling the plug on them is real. As board member Greg Stein recently said, "PMCs do *not* want the Board involved ... it rarely turns out well for them". Should such a thing happen to AOO, its developers would still have the source, of course, but would lose access to the ASF's resources and, probably, the OpenOffice brand. With such a cloud hovering over them, it is not surprising that AOO developers are concerned and asking for more time.

So the challenge is real. But one thing should be kept in mind here: the free-software community is famous for proceeding in the face of "you can't possibly accomplish that" criticism and proving the critics wrong. A quick look back at what was said about the GNU project in the 1980s, or Linux in the early 1990s, will drive that lesson home. One should never underestimate what a small group of determined developers can do. If the AOO developers think they can muster the resources to manage their code base, they should probably be given the space — by the ASF board and the world as a whole — to try.

The board, though, would be right to want some specific milestones to demonstrate that the project is back in good health and able to meet its users' needs. Apache OpenOffice cannot continue to distribute software that it cannot fix and cannot keep secure, using a well-known trademark to keep up a user base that may be unaware that there is little underneath. One way or another, that is a situation that needs to be fixed.

It is rare for the community to talk overtly about shutting down a project; usually, projects either just fade away or they are killed by a parent company with little warning. It is the type of discussion that we naturally tend to shy away from. But, like people, projects have a life cycle and do not last forever. Facing up to that cycle can motivate developers to rejuvenate a project or, at worst, can help minimize the pain caused by a shutdown. The AOO project has thus begun an important conversation; quite a bit rides on how it ends.

to post comments

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 8, 2016 10:09 UTC (Thu) by xtifr (guest, #143) [Link] (32 responses)

As an outsider, never really involved with either project, I'm in a better position to forgive and forget than most. And I'm not going to get into assigning blame, because we just had a thread for that. I'm hoping this thread can focus on the future instead of the past.

But, again, as an outsider, I have to ask, what would the appeal be in volunteering my time and efforts to help AOO? I'm not a license fantatic; both permissive and share-alike licenses are just fine in my book. And LO has had major cleanups of the code base. In fact, I've done a little browsing on the LO repository, and they're still doing a lot of cleanup. It's clear that the old OO code had a *lot* of technical debt. Many of the changes I saw in the LO code were exactly the sort of changes I'd *hope* to see!

So, what would be my incentive to work on the old, musty code that's still full of technical debt instead of the much-improved LO code? Why would I want to help turn that into a library instead of the newer, cleaner, and probably faster code offered by LO?

Or is the recruitment effort mainly aimed at LO folks, hoping they'll contribute to both projects? If so, then obviously AOO has little interest in trying to appeal to me. But again, I'm at least mildly curious what they think they're offering that would persuade people to take on the extra work involved in dealing with their quite divergent codebase? Is AOO even using C++11 yet? (I can't imagine anyone who has gotten used to C++11 wanting to go back to a previous standard; the difference is night and day.)

I understand being attached to a project and not wanting to give it up. I've been there. But unless AOO has something to offer which will lure people in, I can't imagine how they can even dream of surviving. And I haven't heard anything that would lure me or anyone I know in. So, ASF/AOO folks, how about it? What would be my motive in helping you out? Or anyone else's motive?

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 8, 2016 11:13 UTC (Thu) by johannbg (guest, #65743) [Link] (20 responses)

I dont think they can compete with LO in terms of community and recruitment or atleast it will take them year(s) to just get to the level that LO is at as can be seen if you just compare these two [1] [2] sites in the role of an end user, individual wanting to contribute or a corporate seeking information, the latest releases, or even professional support.

I think most people understand and realize for AOO this is not just about developers, fixing and releasing "code" this is about managing to rebuild an entire community surrounding the OpenOffice brand from ground up and that's a lot of a lot of work for a lot of people.

1. http://www.openoffice.org/
2. https://www.libreoffice.org/

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 8, 2016 16:16 UTC (Thu) by rahvin (guest, #16953) [Link] (2 responses)

It took LO IIRC, about a year to clean the code up and get a reliable build system without even making a single change to the software, I remember AOO developer being the first post on every LO announcement talking about how their changes were all "stupid" code cleanup . This was literally 1000's of developer hours doing really crappy work.

I don't give high odds for AOO to attract the talent they need to accomplish this but I wish them luck.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 8, 2016 17:11 UTC (Thu) by johannbg (guest, #65743) [Link]

As I mentioned earlier developers are but one role in the chain of successful project.

These roles are but not limited to the following.

Developers
Infrastructure
Documentation
Quality Assurance
Localization
Marketing
Designers

In the beginning of a project the developer or group of developers are in all of those roles but as the project grows and gains popularity by end users, the end users starts contributing back in which an community starts forming around the project and the roles gradually move from the developer(s) and on to the community members.

Unfortunately the above is something that a lot of developers seem to look down upon the significant the other roles play in the total success of an project as in they have tendency to see little to no value in the other roles but they will quickly find out if those roles existed and suddenly vanish since they would have 6x more load on their back and they also quickly find out when those roles starts to isolate themselves and be filled with community members since they discover they have more time on their hands ( or more time focusing strictly on the code )

So if you say that there where 1000's of hours being spent in one role (developer) in LO then there are equal or more hours being spent in any of those other roles and AOO needs to fill in *all* of those roles not just one (developers) to be on par with LO and to be able to successfully sustain and maintain itself.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 10, 2016 8:17 UTC (Sat) by dtardon (subscriber, #53317) [Link]

It took a lot longer than a year... Last remnants of the old build system were removed in February 2013, which means 2.5 years of work just on libreoffice's side. And the first steps had actually been done already in OO.o. But it was a gradual process: it did not hamper code changes (contrary to what you said).

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 8, 2016 16:39 UTC (Thu) by servilio-ap (guest, #56287) [Link] (6 responses)

or atleast it will take them year(s) to just get to the level that LO is

I don't think they have years… I doubt the ASF board wants to wait for the next vulnerability.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 8, 2016 17:22 UTC (Thu) by johannbg (guest, #65743) [Link] (1 responses)

I think everyone but ASF/AOO realize that they have already run out of time and if the bug handling is as was describe by seanyoung in a comment in this thread then those security vulnerabilities already exist since they aren't getting reported.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 8, 2016 17:54 UTC (Thu) by cesarb (subscriber, #6266) [Link]

It's worse than that. As I noted in the other thread (https://lwn.net/Articles/699108/), the vulnerability which started this discussion had been found and fixed on LO more than an year before it was reported to AOO. An attacker would just have to search the LO commits for the many ones marked as fixing issues reported by valgrind/coverity/etc; some of them will be vulnerabilities in OOo code inherited by both AOO and LO.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 5:51 UTC (Fri) by alison (subscriber, #63752) [Link] (3 responses)

>I doubt the ASF board wants to wait for the next vulnerability.

Kudos to ASF then. It would be great if Linux Foundation similarly shutdown dead projects and took their git repos and mailing lists down.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 13, 2016 11:33 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (2 responses)

You don't want to shut down the git repos and mailing lists of dead projects. Those are historical data and might well be valuable in future. You might not be able to push or post to them, but they should never go away.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 13, 2016 15:06 UTC (Tue) by alison (subscriber, #63752) [Link] (1 responses)

nix, point taken, but assuredly indicating that a project is dead would clear up some recurring confusion.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 14, 2016 23:53 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Oh, definitely. No project should be so dead that it can't say it's dead (says I, maintainer of at least three projects which are, uh, not technically dead but I haven't touched them in ten years. Zombie?)

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 8, 2016 21:05 UTC (Thu) by jimjag (guest, #84477) [Link] (9 responses)

>I dont think they can compete with LO in terms of community and recruitment or atleast it will take them year(s) to just get to the level that LO is at as can be seen if you just compare these two [1] [2] sites in the role of an end user, individual wanting to contribute or a corporate seeking information, the latest releases, or even professional support.

I guess then there is no reason for any new web-servers to pop up, like caddy, since it will take them years to get to the level of httpd or nginx. Or look at the various text editors (Bbedit, Sublime, Atom, Textmate...) or IDEs (...) or .... *grin*

There is the assumption that LO and AOO have to be *direct competition* or that there is no place for AOO. Or that AOO must match LO feature-for-feature or else it's worthless and should die. But that's a strawman argument.

The world is big enough for LO and lots of other FOSS open office suites. The issue isn't that AOO shouldn't exist, but rather IF it exists, it should be actively supported. It appears that that is being addressed.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 8, 2016 21:12 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link]

> It appears that that is being addressed.

It's not being addressed at all. Words on a mailing list are meaningless if the amount of work is huge. Every project wants more people to help out. Every project tries to attract more people.

Another webserver is completely different from the case here: two projects originating from the same codebase. One isn't able to make releases. The other has a 100 times the amount of commits. That's just on a development side. There's way more to a project that just development.

AOO vs. LO

Posted Sep 8, 2016 21:48 UTC (Thu) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link] (2 responses)

> The issue isn't that AOO shouldn't exist, but rather IF it exists, it should be actively supported

The issue is whether there's any sound reason for AOO to continue to exist in the first place.
All the examples you cite have some distinguishing feature which actually makes sense to the people writing or using that code, otherwise they wouldn't write/use it.

Now, apply that to AOO vs. LO. There are, to the best of my knowledge, four material differences between AOO and LO:
* A large number of features, code cleanups, and bug fixes are in LO but not in AOO
* LO has many active contributors and a community worthy of that name, resulting in faster bugfix turnaround
* LO has a working multi-platform build system
* AOO has a permissive license.

The only reasonable case for choosing AOO over LO is the license. Meaning, some company would want to create some sort of proprietary module/enhancement/whatever which they then (presumably) sell, in order to get their developer time back. (The other reason to keep code proprietary – trade secrets etc. – doesn't fly here. It's a friggin' office package, for pity's sake.)

However, AFAIK that idea does not work in practice because first you need to get it to build, then you need to make sure that your customers won't get bitten by any number of unfixed bugs and/or missing features in AOO. You'll never make any money that way.

The result is what we're seeing here. It's very unlikely to change.

In fact, I have a personal suspicion why some AOO supporters refuse to give up. This is, to the best of my knowledge, the first time that two pieces of open-source software have been in direct competition with each other, the *only* difference between them being the freedom/permissiveness of their license. Guess what? the GPL version wins by two orders of magnitude. To some anti-GPL zealots, that seems to be simply unacceptable.

How advantageous is the AOO license ?

Posted Sep 9, 2016 7:58 UTC (Fri) by moltonel (subscriber, #45207) [Link]

Regarding the alledged advantage of the premissive license, it's interesting to note that NeoOffice (a commercial version of OpenOffice for OSX) was forked from the go-oo branch (which later became LO and is where LO's license comes from). The code is free and the binaries are sold. So LO's licensing demonstrably doesn't impede commercial forks.

I'd be curious to know of any commercial third-party which decided to base itself on AOO rather than LO.

MPL, not GPL

Posted Sep 11, 2016 21:22 UTC (Sun) by louie (guest, #3285) [Link]

So the difference isn't even that much.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 8, 2016 21:55 UTC (Thu) by xtifr (guest, #143) [Link] (3 responses)

But those other web servers aren't just forks of Apache. Why does the world need another *fork of Staroffice*? If I really want to help improve the diversity of FLOSS office suites, wouldn't I do better to go help Gnome Office or Calligra? Or start something new, to avoid the mistakes of the past? (Which is how most of those web server projects got off the ground.)

The only similar case I can think of to the AOO/LO one is the longstanding Emacs/XEmacs split. And frankly, that's not a situation any project should want to emulate. I suspect the project which benefited the most from *that* split was vim! ;)

So, my question, which started this subthread, remains: what reasons can AOO/ASF folks offer me to make me want to contribute to *their* project? I'm not a license fanatic (so "we're not share-alike" is not an incentive), and if I merely want to encourage diversity in the market, I have a variety of projects I can go help. What about AOO *specifically* would make me want to contribute to it instead LO *or a third option*?

If you can't answer that simple question, you may find it hard to keep onto any new developers you may happen to luck onto. Because there's a good question people will be asking them the same question.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 11:20 UTC (Fri) by jimjag (guest, #84477) [Link] (2 responses)

>But those other web servers aren't just forks of Apache.

nginx was a heavily modified fork of Apache 1.3

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 12:12 UTC (Fri) by niner (guest, #26151) [Link]

Do you have any proof at all to back this claim?

Or do you mean "removed all Apache source and wrote new source" by "heavily modified fork"?

niginx' development history is available in full at http://hg.nginx.org/nginx

Version 0 available at http://hg.nginx.org/nginx/rev/0 has a staggering amount of 2241 lines of code according to cloc. This already includes sendfile support which did not appear until Apache 2.0.44 according to https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/core.html#enablesen...

What I cannot find is any reference at all to any of the central Apache http data structures or functions. None.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 19:58 UTC (Fri) by xtifr (guest, #143) [Link]

Is it? I had no idea. But in any case, nginx had a specific goal: higher performance. In the case of AOO vs. LO, that's already one of the LO goals. They've spent a lot of time looking at performance and efficiency, and they'll probably spend more.

So what's AOO's selling point? If you want to be a successful fork, you need *some* sort of selling point. For developers or users. I asked this at the start of the thread, and you ignored it, I asked it in the post you *just responded to* and you blatantly ignored it. Nobody needs a fork that exists *just to be* a fork. And, as should now be clear, nobody needs a fork whose only benefit is "we don't use a share-alike license". So what's the pitch?

The AOO folks are out begging for help, but they don't seem to be offering *any reasons* why someone would want to help them. Do you actually have a reason why you think AOO deserves our support? I don't know how to ask any more plainly than that. Oh, wait. If you do have a reason, *what is it?*

I am *bending over backwards* to try to be fair to AOO and give them a chance to explain their position and elicit my sympathy. The fact that I'm being pointedly ignored does not speak well for the project.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 9:04 UTC (Fri) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]

Those are all projects with a very small functional core. So being clever implementing this core is more critical than functional breadth, and a small team can quickly gain momentum.

Office suites are exactly the reverse, huge functional surface, huge document format compatibility requirements, no amount of cleverness can compensate lack of functional coverage, and coverage requires lots of coding.

Why volunteer?

Posted Sep 8, 2016 14:22 UTC (Thu) by david.a.wheeler (subscriber, #72896) [Link] (8 responses)

as an outsider, I have to ask, what would the appeal be in volunteering my time and efforts to help AOO? I'm not a license fantatic; both permissive and share-alike licenses are just fine in my book.

That is the fundamental problem for AOO. The only reason developer would support AOO, besides its OO trademark, is that AOO uses the Apache license (a permissive license). Very few people seem to think that having a permissive license is important for traditional office suites; even IBM has stopped caring. The Apache Software Foundation does not accept share-alike licenses, but all the development effort and backing for an OSS office suite is behind the copylefted version (LibreOffice).

If AOO won't be maintained, I think the Apache Software Foundation should just let the LibreOffice developers acquire the OOo trademarks and domain name, with the clear caveat that LibreOffice can't call it "Apache". Trademark (and company) acquisitions happen all the time in industry. Maybe sell it for a few bucks; if ASF gets some money, that might mollify some.

Why volunteer?

Posted Sep 8, 2016 15:48 UTC (Thu) by moltonel (subscriber, #45207) [Link] (2 responses)

I doubt that potential contibutors wondering between LO and AOO will care much about the trademark. Most newcomers are here to scratch their own itch (fix a bug, implement a feature, etc) and will already have tried both AOO and LO. Even an hypothetical AOO-using company wanting to contribute will have to weigh a migration to LO against hiring somebody to fix AOO (and consider that LO bugfixes likely costs less than AOO bugfixes). Same dilema for the altruistic contributor who wants to improve the lives of "OpenOffice" users out there: maybe his energy would be better spent convincing/helping people to migrate to LO.

The trademark issue remains a big one, but trademark alone was not enough to retain/attract developers to AOO. However, trademark alone is the main reason why some LO contributors and some outside observers have strong negative feelings towards Apache/AOO. If openoffice.org simply redirected to LO, the hardships faced by AOO would hardly be newsworthy. But it'd make it clear that AOO has "lost" and is a very hard pill to swallow. If openoffice.org pointed to both LO and AOO, it could mend a lot of bridges and maybe ressurect cross-polination between the projects. Making oppenoffice.org a shared home would greatly reduce the flak received by AOO from various angles, and make Apache look like an enabler of the wider OpenOffice community rather than a failing member of it.

Why volunteer?

Posted Sep 8, 2016 16:31 UTC (Thu) by rsidd (guest, #2582) [Link] (1 responses)

+1. Is there a single good argument on the AOO side to not point openoffice.org to both LO and AOO? That they don't do so already suggests that, in their minds, they and not LO are the "legitimate" inheritors of OOo.

Why volunteer?

Posted Sep 9, 2016 0:21 UTC (Fri) by simosx (guest, #24338) [Link]

> Is there a single good argument on the AOO side to not point openoffice.org to both LO and AOO? That they don't do so already suggests that, in their minds, they and not LO are the "legitimate" inheritors of OOo.

I have been on the AOO dev mailing list.
I brought this issue up in a few ways. They sidestepped/ignored my request.

There is extreme hatred among the AOO list members that they do not want to even mention LibreOffice on the openoffice.org.

Really sad attitude. In fact, what keeps the contributors of AOO from giving up, is their hatred for LibreOffice!

Why volunteer?

Posted Sep 8, 2016 21:07 UTC (Thu) by jimjag (guest, #84477) [Link] (2 responses)

>Maybe sell it for a few bucks; if ASF gets some money, that might mollify some.

We would never do something so crass.

Why volunteer?

Posted Sep 9, 2016 8:53 UTC (Fri) by branden (guest, #7029) [Link] (1 responses)

Pecunia non olet, nicht war?

Why volunteer?

Posted Sep 15, 2016 7:27 UTC (Thu) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]

It's spelled “nicht wahr”

Why volunteer?

Posted Sep 19, 2016 11:03 UTC (Mon) by thestinger (guest, #91827) [Link] (1 responses)

Note that they don't have a trademark for "OpenOffice".

Why volunteer?

Posted Sep 19, 2016 15:43 UTC (Mon) by orcmid (guest, #74478) [Link]

FYI,

Apache, Apache OpenOffice, OpenOffice, and the gull-wing
logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of
the Apache Software Foundation <http://apache.org> in
the United States and/or other countries.

When there are requests to make use of those marks in various ways, and written permission is provided, a statement such as the above is required for inclusion where permissions are stated in conjunction with the permitted use. Please note that registration is not a requirement although there are values to it in regimes where there are such arrangements. Sometimes registrations are legally transferred but that may not show up until such time as the registration comes up for renewal.

There are such requests for use and there are cases where the producer of a confusing use that would causes confusion is requested to stop and that is usually accomplished, sometimes quickly.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 8, 2016 15:19 UTC (Thu) by Jonimus (guest, #89694) [Link] (1 responses)

This is exactly the problem, unless you really really care about license there is zero reason to contribute to AOO over LO and many reasons to choose LO. Unless the AOO people get that through their head no amount of recruitment will help them. the AOO codebase is too full of debt to be worth touching.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 8, 2016 20:23 UTC (Thu) by xtifr (guest, #143) [Link]

That's certainly what it looks like from the outside. But since they're asking for help, I want to give them an opportunity to present what it looks like from the inside.

That's why I asked *them*, not the peanut gallery. [sticks out tongue]

If they have a reason other than "share-alike is bad!", it would be interesting to know. And if they can't offer anything else, maybe, just maybe, the ones who can't answer my question will stop to think* what that implies.

Which is *why* I asked them and not the peanut gallery. [evil grin]

* I know, I know. I'm a dirty, stinking optimist.

Consolidation please!

Posted Sep 8, 2016 10:10 UTC (Thu) by SimonO (guest, #56318) [Link]

As a free software and open standards advocate, I sincerely hope that the confusing situation with a nearly dead OpenOffice.org and a vibrant and alive LibreOffice will end ASAP.

The best possible outcome for all (potential) users of any office software suite is that there is a single and well supported/developed free and open one. All pointers to OpenOffice.org should be redirected to LibreOffice, which could go on as LibreOffice or OpenOffice, I don't care, as long as it is clear there is only one. There Can Be Only One!

Regardless of what users choose to use, I think it's safe to say that the developers have voted with their feet to go for LibreOffice. For the sake of open standards and free software, please remove the confusion by having only one true version of Libre/Open Office.

(I know there are other free and open office suites, but as these are totally different code-bases, there's no confusion and these implementations provide more credibility for open standards, not less)

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 8, 2016 11:04 UTC (Thu) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link] (5 responses)

> Some of them clearly think that AOO can be saved

No it can't be. This would require sanitizing the code base and the build system. The intersection of "people who can be motivated to do that" and "people who have not already done that work" (in LibreOffice) appears to be the null set.

Also note the passive-aggressive tone of this statement. Yeah, sure it can be saved. *If* somebody steps up and does it. Anybody, as long as it's not "some of them" because, again, if these people would be willing to get off their plush behind and start doing the work they'd already have done it.

Grant the LO people a license to use the OOo brand, and chalk the whole experience up to the fact that sometimes you gotta learn from your failure (and others' success) the hard way.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 8, 2016 21:10 UTC (Thu) by jimjag (guest, #84477) [Link] (4 responses)

>No it can't be.

That seem pretty presumptuous of you.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 0:26 UTC (Fri) by simosx (guest, #24338) [Link] (3 responses)

>>No it can't be.

> That seem pretty presumptuous of you.

The discussions on the dev mailing list of AOO do not look promising.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 12:13 UTC (Fri) by jimjag (guest, #84477) [Link] (2 responses)

>The discussions on the dev mailing list of AOO do not look promising.

I would suggest that that is your opinion. I would also suggest that more objective people would say the exact opposite.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 13, 2016 12:21 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

There seem to be terribly few 'objective' people around. In fact the only people I know of who have been 'objective' by this standard for lo these many years are people with stakes in AOO not failing. There's a word for that, and it's not 'objective'.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 14, 2016 13:27 UTC (Wed) by andy@barnes.net (guest, #5890) [Link]

Well LO managed to do it. AOO could save themselves some time by forking the current LO as their starting point ;)

I know, I trolled.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 8, 2016 11:05 UTC (Thu) by seanyoung (subscriber, #28711) [Link] (23 responses)

Many years ago I found some minor font fallback problem in OpenOffice that I wanted to fix, but I couldn't build it. I raised a bug in bugzilla with an untested patch, but noone ever looked at it.

When LibreOffice came about I decided to revisit those bugs and dealing with LibreOffice has been an absolute pleasure. It's so easy to build (just type "make"!), submitting patches was a breeze and the because there are regular releases, my patch appeared in a stable LibreOffice not that long after. After that I decided to some larger work (new import filter for MS Write and MS Word for DOS) and I've enjoyed taking part. I almost feel guilty for contributing more.

Recently I got an email from (apache) openoffice to confirm whether my original problem "was reproducable". Why would I bother?

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 8:36 UTC (Fri) by branden (guest, #7029) [Link] (18 responses)

I find it instructive to observe which comments jimjag does _not_ respond to.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 11:23 UTC (Fri) by jimjag (guest, #84477) [Link] (17 responses)

>I find it instructive to observe which comments jimjag does _not_ respond to.

That's because it is obvious that with some posts there is no reason to try to respond to them. Their minds are made up and nothing can be said that will make any difference at all.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 13:52 UTC (Fri) by bunk (subscriber, #44933) [Link] (13 responses)

> > I find it instructive to observe which comments jimjag does _not_ respond to.

> That's because it is obvious that with some posts there is no reason to try to respond to them. Their minds are made up and nothing can be said that will make any difference at all.

Jim, what are you trying to achieve here?

The L in LWN is for Linux, and AOO has nearly no users on Linux.
AOO was never shipped by Linux distributions, and looking at the download statistics at SF only approx. 2% of all current AOO downloads are for Linux.

Bragging here how many volunteers AOO got might have given a short-term boost to your ego, but that will fade once you realize that 99% of these people will have disappeared because there was noone who was mentoring them.

Someone must have an overview which tasks are required for making the 4.1.3 and 4.2.0 releases, which of these tasks are suitable for newcomers without years of OO development experience, and then distribute these among the volunteers (10 people trying to fix the same bug would only cause frustration).

If a newcomer has a code change, he needs guidance how code review and committing work.

In some cases you have volunteers today for work that will only be needed in several months.
AOO comes with translations for ~ 40 languages.
You will need translation updates for all of them after the 4.2.0 string freeze.
You have volunteers for translations.
Someone has to explain the translation update process to everyone volunteering for translations, and keep track of them so that they can be contacted closer to the 4.2.0 string freeze.

You have experience with both code development and managing large projects, and it would be a better use your time if you would step in as volunteer coordinator for AOO instead of wasting your time arguing with random people on the internet.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 14:16 UTC (Fri) by jimjag (guest, #84477) [Link] (5 responses)

>Jim, what are you trying to achieve here?

Historical accuracy and the clarification of the FUD that is being propagated.

>wasting your time arguing with random people on the internet

That is exactly what I am doing... But then I am "called out" for not responding to various comments.

A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 14:51 UTC (Fri) by martin.langhoff (subscriber, #61417) [Link]

Perhaps the move is to let go of the past to build the future.

Jimjag has shown some willingness to do that, imperfect but promising. Everyone needs to let go of the past to take advantage of the opportunity of _today_.

As I noted elsewhere, don't become what you hate...

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 14:57 UTC (Fri) by bunk (subscriber, #44933) [Link]

There is nothing you can win just by by arguing somewhere on the internet, that is normal.

And the success of Open Source projects rarely depends on differences between licenses, who screams loudest, or what FUD is somewhere on the internet.

The only thing that will matter for the future of AOO is whether or not AOO development will get back on track.

Think of the translation volunteer example I described.
Who is responsible that they will still be available when the translations will be needed for making the 4.2.0 release?

I pointed out an area where your skills could be very helpful for getting AOO development back on track.
I don't personally care about AOO, and whether or not the future of AOO is important enough for you to participate in the actual development of AOO is your decision.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 11, 2016 16:00 UTC (Sun) by niner (guest, #26151) [Link]

> Historical accuracy and the clarification of the FUD that is being propagated.

You mean like your completely baseless claim that nginx was an Apache httpd fork?

The post confronting you with evidence to the contrary is one of those you conveniently ignore. Well at least it shows clearly what you are really after.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 15, 2016 11:51 UTC (Thu) by WolfWings (subscriber, #56790) [Link] (1 responses)

...you're providing plenty of chances for others to correct your historical errors and the FUD you're inventing to propagate, please, do continue.

The sheer level of 'leg in throat' you exhibited with the nginx claim by itself is staggering in how much of a bald-faced and brazen lie it is, trivially debunked in five minutes of Googling.

Especially with the near-zero overlap in configuration or outward-facing components the two projects display would refute it to begin with, and nginx at this point actually being the better of the two for maintaining backwards compatibility in their configuration files w/ the 2.2 -> 2.4 config-file changes that purged major configuration-file syntax components.

So that claim came across purely as trying to claim "Yet another project profiting unjustly by stealing something from an Apache project!" like a fanatic. Note: Being a fanatic is not a good thing. Being fanatical can be, but losing those last two letters is a pitfall.

Apache unfortunately with their long-standing stance on licensing acts more and more like a fanatic with each passing year, and in my line of work as a 'mercenary' Linux Admin (meaning I handle and have on-going access to hundreds of unique environments of various sizes regardless of what components they have; as long as the sites stay functional and the developers can push code changes the clients are happy) I see developers moving from Solr, httpd, Cassandra, and ActiveMQ to Sphinx, nginx, ReThinkDB, and RabbitMQ month after month.

Many Apache projects, while they did build the backbone of the internet, have had a newer generation of services and tools developed that surpass what they offer, usually in features or ease of maintenance/deployment. About the only remaining 'infrastructure level' projects I can think of that Apache offers the only pony in the horse-show is Hadoop, and Tomcat, both of which are only of common use in my experienc ein fairly large environments where you usually have development teams not developers.

But please, continue railing against the dying of the light of the permission Apache license and evil forks that cared more about the end-users than your stigmata. The rest of us will continue getting up every day and getting work done with tools that work, instead of ones that are mostly name-recognition and inertia-based. :)

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 15, 2016 12:05 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> But please, continue railing against the dying of the light of the permission Apache license [...]

FWIW, Apache-licensed code is more prevalent than ever -- Witness Android, for example. It's the overwhemingly-preferred corporate "open source" play.

(But outside of Apache itself I'm not familiar with any Apache-licensed project that's not utterly dominated by the corporate entity that created it...)

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 18:14 UTC (Fri) by chirlu (guest, #89906) [Link] (6 responses)

> The L in LWN is for Linux, and AOO has nearly no users on Linux.

While the L in LWN did indeed originally stand for Linux, LWN is now about free software in general. See the FAQ (https://lwn.net/op/FAQ.lwn):

> LWN, initially, was "Linux Weekly News." That name has been deemphasized over time as we have moved beyond just the weekly coverage, and as we have looked at the free software community as a whole. We have yet to come up with a better meaning for LWN, however.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 20:11 UTC (Fri) by branden (guest, #7029) [Link]

Since coverage is of FLOSS generally, how about:

Libre Weekly News

?

LWN bacronym: "Libre Wide News"?

Posted Sep 10, 2016 14:42 UTC (Sat) by david.a.wheeler (subscriber, #72896) [Link] (4 responses)

If you make it "Libre Wide News", you move it beyond Linux and beyond Weekly. It's still news :-).

LWN bacronym: "Libre Wide News"?

Posted Sep 10, 2016 14:48 UTC (Sat) by tao (subscriber, #17563) [Link] (2 responses)

Lovely Wonderful Nachos!

LWN bacronym: "Libre Wide News"?

Posted Sep 10, 2016 16:00 UTC (Sat) by liw (subscriber, #6379) [Link] (1 responses)

I refrain from suggesting what L and W in LWN should be.

-- Lars Wirzenius

LWN backronym

Posted Sep 10, 2016 16:18 UTC (Sat) by branden (guest, #7029) [Link]

So instead of Kernel and Security pages, we'd have pages about Sex and Enemies of Carlotta?

And instant banhammer for anyone saying "c******g w***n"...

LWN bacronym: "Libre Wide News"?

Posted Sep 10, 2016 15:10 UTC (Sat) by gracinet (guest, #89400) [Link]

Like it ! Granted, I'm a french speaker, so "Libre" doesn't sound awkward at all to me

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 15:18 UTC (Fri) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link]

> That's because it is obvious that with some posts there is no reason to try to respond to them.
> Their minds are made up and nothing can be said that will make any difference at all.

Well, my mind is made up because, having listened to both sides, I find the arguments in favor of continuing AAO development substantially flawed.

In what way would not responding to me pointing out that (perceived(?)) flaw help change my mind?

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 20:14 UTC (Fri) by branden (guest, #7029) [Link]

Is that how you characterize seanyoung's comment? If so, then you may wish to reconsider the breadth of your definition of intractability.

Or just, you know, respond to him.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 11, 2016 11:38 UTC (Sun) by seanyoung (subscriber, #28711) [Link]

I take no joy in AOO not succeeding as well as LibreOffice. I don't wish ill on AOO, anyone should be free to create a fork without fear of abuse. The source code release of AOO is a good thing.

However due to historical reasons the trademark and domain are with AOO and with AOO not succeeding as well as LO, many feel that LibreOffice is the "rightful" place of the OpenOffice brand and domain, and AOO having it damages the brand.

That's not how trademark law works. Wishing ill on the AOO project is not going to make the trademark move and antagonising AOO members is just going to make it less likely. Any schadenfreude is just not helpful.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 16, 2016 1:26 UTC (Fri) by welinder (guest, #4699) [Link] (3 responses)

Well, your description of LO's handling of bug reports does not match the Gnumeric's developers experience. This is for technical spreadsheet issues -- I have no idea how bugs about other things get handled.

Way too often the lifespan of, say a bug report regarding generation of wrong ods files, is something like this:

1. Report
2. Crickets
3. Auto-generated "is that problem still there?"
4. "Yes"
5. Repeat from 3 until reporter gets tired.
6. Auto-generated close

For accuracy related bug reports, change (2) to a few rounds of "it's floating-point, you don't know what you're talking about".

The above actually isn't specific to LO. I understand that it can be hard to find time to look at all bug reports. What I do not understand is (3): it's basically saying "we haven't had time to look at your report; would you please do some extra work, the result of which we won't look at either". I say "While you're at it, why don't you give me a nice paper cut and pour lemon juice on it? We're closed."

On re-reading, I find I sound too negative. I don't mean to. The point is, with respect to ignoring bug reports I fear that AOO is in the same class as many large and active projects.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 16, 2016 1:53 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (2 responses)

Might be useful to post some references to such bug reports. Maybe LO developers can figure out what is going on there and solve it.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 17, 2016 11:55 UTC (Sat) by hummassa (guest, #307) [Link] (1 responses)

A meta-bug-report of sorts? Is there a good chance of it not being ignored? ;)

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 17, 2016 12:10 UTC (Sat) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Maybe. If someone talks about a bug report, I would like to see them for context.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 8, 2016 11:38 UTC (Thu) by rsidd (guest, #2582) [Link] (18 responses)

Since you mention GNU, a good example may be GCC -- because of moribund development in the 1990s a bunch of people "forked" gcc-2.7.something into a new project called "egcs", that they developed rapidly. But they were careful to keep license compatibility and even transferred copyrights to the FSF, and eventually the upstream GCC realised their codebase was a deadend and absorbed egcs (releasing it as gcc-2.95 if I remember right). Not that I expect any such thing to happen here.

A GNU fork that never merged was emacs/xemacs -- but emacs never really ceased development, and eventually it was xemacs that fell behind. I don't expect that to happen in this case either. A more likely outcome is what happened with the XFree86/Xorg split. XFree86 limped on and still has a webpage, but hasn't had a release since 2008. AOO will meet the same fate unless they dump the project and embrace LO.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 8, 2016 13:06 UTC (Thu) by njd27 (subscriber, #5770) [Link] (1 responses)

Hudson CI is still an active project and who remembers that!

To my mind, the main losers out of all of this are the thousands of Windows users who are still using AOO and haven't had the benefit of the last 2 years of LO improvements. Hopefully the inertia will die out eventually.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 8, 2016 15:47 UTC (Thu) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]

> Hudson CI is still an active project and who remembers that!

"active" seems like a bit of a stretch. It does seem to still get a few security and bugfix releases per year.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 8:51 UTC (Fri) by branden (guest, #7029) [Link]

"Since you mention GNU, a good example may be GCC -- because of moribund development in the 1990s a bunch of people "forked" gcc-2.7.something into a new project called "egcs", that they developed rapidly. But they were careful to keep license compatibility and even transferred copyrights to the FSF, and eventually the upstream GCC realised their codebase was a deadend and absorbed egcs (releasing it as gcc-2.95 if I remember right)."

It's worth keeping examples like the above in mind when one hears, from organizations sharply critical of the FSF, lamentations of its rigidity and blinkeredness.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 11:39 UTC (Fri) by tao (subscriber, #17563) [Link] (14 responses)

I don't see where being careful enters into it. The FSF were the main copyright holders, so the egcs developers had no legal standing to change the licence (short of a complete rewrite), and the GPL would subsume any compatible licences in any case.

So the situation isn't really comparable.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 15:29 UTC (Fri) by zlynx (guest, #2285) [Link] (13 responses)

The FSF won't officially support software that it doesn't have all the copyrights to. If the egcs developers had done their own thing, the egcs code could have been permanently disconnected from the FSF.

Without changing the license the egcs devs could have also decided to fix the GPL version to version 2 only instead of v2 or later. That would have made a GPL v3 egcs impossible.

So it is somewhat comparable.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 15:53 UTC (Fri) by bunk (subscriber, #44933) [Link] (11 responses)

This is not really comparable, the license change of AOO was announced 9 months *after* LO started.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 16:12 UTC (Fri) by rsidd (guest, #2582) [Link] (10 responses)

It is still somewhat comparable. If GNU had changed the gcc licence to GPLv3 after egcs had (hypothetically) existed for a while as GPLv2-only, it would be the same situation. In my original post I did not intend to say the situations were exactly comparable. And I did say that I do not expect the egcs end-result to occur -- partly because of the licensing issues, but also because of the irrational hostility in the AOO camp to LO. (Am I the only one who finds jimjag's posts here passive-aggressive rather than reasonable?)

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 23:36 UTC (Fri) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link] (1 responses)

> (Am I the only one who finds jimjag's posts here passive-aggressive rather than reasonable?)
Nope. Quite a few have picked up on it. I get the sense that it's a symptom of some deep rooted cultural problem in Apache, since everyone knows it's not the first time they've had representatives here acting like this. The less words we give them to spin out of context, the better.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 15, 2016 16:15 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

As I put it, he seems to be a nice person parroting the company line ...

If you want to call it "passive aggressive", then yes, that doesn't sound far off.

I certainly get the impression he is NOT trying to confront the arguments on their merits...

Cheers,
Wol

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 13, 2016 12:42 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (7 responses)

The situations are principally not comparable because of the people involved. The egcs split consisted of more or less the entire developer base of GCC, eventually even including GCC's then official maintainer (Richard Kenner): the main change was an experiment with less cathedralic, more open development (public mailing lists, etc). It was a wild success, but was always planned for reintegration, hence keeping up with the copyright assignment and employer disclaimer bureaucracy, GNU coding style etc.

The Apache thing was a corporate code drop and an intentional license change without any of the original developers following along and sort of hoping to build up momentum from there (it didn't). egcs never *had* to build up momentum. On the contrary, a lot of pent-up development effort was immediately unleashed into it. Combine that with the fact that the corporate code drop was more or less unable to incorporate useful amounts of code from the actually living project, and doom was more or less certain from the start unless corporate sponsorship and a pre-made developer base larger than LO's could be found somewhere.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 13, 2016 13:02 UTC (Tue) by rsidd (guest, #2582) [Link] (1 responses)

Um, I was comparing egcs to LO, not AOO! LO is the project with the different name, the developers and the momentum.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 14, 2016 23:54 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Ah, sorry, I somehow flipped my understanding in the middle of what I was writing, and ended up writing something that made very little sense.

What you said is right.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 13, 2016 13:57 UTC (Tue) by orcmid (guest, #74478) [Link] (3 responses)

Minor correction #1: It is inaccurate to say that none of the original developers worked on Apache OpenOffice while it was incubating and later. Of those, a few were even hired by IBM to work on the project. Some contributors to Apache OpenOffice also contribute to LibreOffice (and vice versa), although that is now a small and, I believe, shrinking number. I'd say the greatest level of cooperation is with regard to security issues, as it should be.

Minor correction #2: Technically, there was no "license change." Oracle holds the copyright and all code released under LGPL2 is still under LGPL2. What Oracle did was grant a different license to the Apache Software Foundation (not unlike Sun made different license arrangements with commercial producers). The grant to the ASF allowed ASF to distribute the to-ASF licensed code under a license of its choosing, hence the Apache License. Similarly, IBM made a license grant to ASF for their originally closed-source Lotus Symphony code derived from the OpenOffice.org code licensed to them. Indeed, it is only through Apache that any code developed for Symphony finds its way into LibreOffice.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 13, 2016 15:55 UTC (Tue) by bunk (subscriber, #44933) [Link] (2 responses)

> I'd say the greatest level of cooperation is with regard to security issues, as it should be.

What went wrong with CVE-2016-1513, resulting in even http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=2016-1513 not mentioning that older LO versions are vulnerable?

> Minor correction #2: Technically, there was no "license change." Oracle holds the copyright and all code released under LGPL2 is still under LGPL2. What Oracle did was grant a different license to the Apache Software Foundation (not unlike Sun made different license arrangements with commercial producers). The grant to the ASF allowed ASF to distribute the to-ASF licensed code under a license of its choosing, hence the Apache License.

One could say AOO was created with a licensing that makes it impossible for AOO to take code from LO.
(Whether that was done intentionally by Oracle is a separate question.)

The important point is the order of events - no matter how you call it, the problem was introduced by the AOO side months after LO was started.

> Similarly, IBM made a license grant to ASF for their originally closed-source Lotus Symphony code derived from the OpenOffice.org code licensed to them. Indeed, it is only through Apache that any code developed for Symphony finds its way into LibreOffice.

It seems there is/was a lot of politics by Oracle and IBM involved.

I do not see a fundamental reason why IBM could not just have relicensed the Symphony code under the ASL, and then publish it as a tarball somewhere. Less work for them, and the code is in LO a year earlier.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 13, 2016 17:08 UTC (Tue) by orcmid (guest, #74478) [Link] (1 responses)

> What went wrong with CVE-2016-1513, resulting in even http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=2016-1513 not mentioning that older LO versions are vulnerable?

The reporter only provided their result for AOO 4.1.2. My mistake was I confirmed that the defect is not in a current release of LibreOffice and did not consider the case of down-version releases that would still be under maintenance.

I did inform [Officesecurity] before our disclosure, but it was very short notice.

To avoid that happening again, we are now always informing [Officesecurity] of pending AOO disclosures of defects that might still matter in that community, and they get to decide whether that is the case or not.

I didn't word the CVE and I have no account for that. The AOO advisory, linked from that CVE does mention the prospect. Of course that doesn't name other products. I assume that other descendants of the openoffice.org code base will issue their own advisories as they see fit. I know the patch we published is used by at least one other.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 13, 2016 19:30 UTC (Tue) by bunk (subscriber, #44933) [Link]

> The reporter only provided their result for AOO 4.1.2.

My guess (that could be wrong) would be that they found the issue while checking which of the fuzzing fixes in LO might be exploitable.

It isn't that uncommon that someone finds vulnerabilities in Open Source software by going through normal bugfixes - until the fix has reached all users, there are still years where it can be exploited if the finder has intentions other than publishing.

> I assume that other descendants of the openoffice.org code base will issue their own advisories as they see fit. I know the patch we published is used by at least one other.

What other direct (not through LO) descendants exist of the AOO code base?

The only area where AOO could have an advantage over LO would be for companies who don't want to use LO for license reasons.

And these descendants should have a financial interest in keeping AOO alive.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 15, 2016 16:19 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

Yup.

egcs forked because there was pent-up developer demand that couldn't get their changes into gcc.

LO (Go-OO) forked because there was pent-up developer demand that couldn't get their changes into Sun Open Office.

Likewise Xorg forked because there was pent-up developer demand that couldn't get their changes into XFree.

So all those projects were vibrant from the start, getting off to a flying start. Unfortunately, AOO is the direct descendant of Sun Open Office, with a reputation for cathedral development and a disinclination for accepting outside help ... :-(

Cheers,
Wol

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 12, 2016 10:41 UTC (Mon) by mina86 (guest, #68442) [Link]

> The FSF won't officially support software that it doesn't have all the copyrights to.

That's not true in general. Whether FSF requires copyright assignment is dependent on a project. Some do require it, some don't.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 8, 2016 15:45 UTC (Thu) by martin.langhoff (subscriber, #61417) [Link] (11 responses)

As an external observer, I must say that Jim's openness and generosity are remarkable. Hopefully they help people leave the past behind.

This was not the first fraught fork, and it won't be the last. Perhaps the dev community at LibreOffice takes Jim's gestures and helps build the bridge that is obviously needed here.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 8, 2016 23:47 UTC (Thu) by bunk (subscriber, #44933) [Link] (9 responses)

What kind of future do you have in mind?

The LO people are sitting on 13 years (sic) of LGPL development (ooo-build was started in 2003), which makes the licence change of AOO in 2011 a real problem.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 0:09 UTC (Fri) by bunk (subscriber, #44933) [Link]

(I am aware that the actual license situation is more complicated when you consider the MPL licensing of LO - relevant for this discussion is that the ASF would not accept any LO code.)

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 13:55 UTC (Fri) by martin.langhoff (subscriber, #61417) [Link] (7 responses)

A future where LO offers some friendly gestures to the few still-active AOO devs, and perhaps AOO points to LibreOffice as the recommended successor, transfers trademark, etc.

It's not something that can happen overnight; there's a dozen reasons that say it can't be done. With a bit of time, and community-building, it'll turn out that it can be done.

Maybe AOO needs to make one more try, see if they can actually make a security fix release; see whether a feature release can be put together. If over that time they get pestered, they'll bolster their pride and soldier on, ready to die with in their boots.

If we can muster a friendlier "why don't you try the same thing you are doing, but here in LO?", I'm sure there are more productive conversations to be had.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 13:57 UTC (Fri) by martin.langhoff (subscriber, #61417) [Link] (6 responses)

When I say "community-building" I mean LO+AOO community. Outreach.

I essentially mean: working to avoid becoming what you hate.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 15:17 UTC (Fri) by bunk (subscriber, #44933) [Link] (5 responses)

> If we can muster a friendlier "why don't you try the same thing you are doing, but here in LO?", I'm sure there are more productive conversations to be had.

All the people who were doing actual work on OO already went to LO years ago.
That is the reason why AOO is dead since IBM left.

You are aware that Jim is a member of the ASF board, not someone who does work or has any direct position in AOO?

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 15:36 UTC (Fri) by martin.langhoff (subscriber, #61417) [Link] (4 responses)

I know Jim's not a committer (a few days ago, with initial reporting of the topic, I reviewed the changelog for AOO), and that his concerns are with AOO's and ASF's boards.

The AOO dev mailing list thread is interesting, with various posters indicating they are passionate about keeping the AOO flame, but they haven't committed a thing in ages. And at my last read, I could not spot any "let's get builds out with the security fix!" thread (maybe it's elsewhere?).

AOO will follow its path, it's theirs. It will be easier to come together... if we make it easier.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 16:14 UTC (Fri) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]

As I understand it, their intention is that 4.1.3 will be those "builds [...] with the security fix" and they are beginning the painstaking process of making 4.1.3 happen. Their goal for now seems to be to have this released before ApacheConEU, in November.

For comparison, it takes LibreOffice about four weeks to ship each micro version update. I'm not aware of any emergency security releases for LibreOffice, with a "responsible disclosure" type policy they could be slip-streamed into existing releases because of the rapid cadence. A bug identified in March becomes a patch in April and a release in May accompanying the CVE announcement. I would presume they can rush out an emergency fix in under a week if somebody released something nasty under a "full disclosure" approach.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 16:15 UTC (Fri) by excors (subscriber, #95769) [Link]

> I could not spot any "let's get builds out with the security fix!" thread

That's probably https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/4b1922a18c9b479ae0c2... (in which, after AOO sat on the security bug for about 11 months and still failed to come up with a satisfactory fix, then hit the current crisis and presumably became more aware of the importance and urgency of this (for its own reputation and maybe for its continued existence, not just for its users' security), there is now a goal to hopefully do a 4.1.3 release about 2 months from now).

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 16:27 UTC (Fri) by orcmid (guest, #74478) [Link] (1 responses)

In fact Jim Jagielski is a committer on the Apache OpenOffice project and a member of the project's Project Management Committee. If you look him up on the Apache Phonebook, you'll see he is highly active across a wide variety of ASF areas, <http://people.apache.org/phonebook.html>.

There are many ways to contribute to an Apache project, and having made code commits is one of them. Lately, if you have followed the dev@ list for the project, you'll find that Jim is working on the MacOSX build process.

There is a private and discrete coverage of security matters, the same as for all projects at the ASF and elsewhere. You can find the ASF policies and practices with regard to security reports at <https://www.apache.org/security/> and pages linked from there.

Since you are following dev@, please notice that there is work at a streamlined 4.1.3 maintenance release. Whatever the next release is, you can expect to see any disclosures and advisories related to that distribution at that time and not before.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 13, 2016 16:41 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Whatever the next release is, you can expect to see any disclosures and advisories related to that distribution at that time and not before.
I'm fairly certain that the existence of a security hole in 4.1.2 is widely known by now. (Far more widely known than it would have been if the bug had just been fixed in a quick point release with an advisory like more or less every other project can manage.)

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 10, 2016 8:39 UTC (Sat) by dtardon (subscriber, #53317) [Link]

First, I don't believe in his sincerity, as he constantly tries to shift the blame for the past to TDF. It's practically a conspiracy theory... Second, the rest of the AOO community is openly hostile to LibreOffice and TDF--just read their dev. mailing list for the past week.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 8, 2016 19:39 UTC (Thu) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link] (6 responses)

>AOO has simply been overloaded w/ emails from developers and other contributors offering their help, skills, talents and support
Sounds almost as optimistic as XFree86: their homepage proudly proclaims that it's “the premier open source X11-based desktop infrastructure”, and they also used to have a list of all the Linux distros that still package their software, right on the front page, as late as 2014.

I think they still do, technically...

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 8:47 UTC (Fri) by branden (guest, #7029) [Link] (5 responses)

Having watched the XFree86/X.Org fork closely at the time, I can't help but notice that hostility to copyleft licenses, and more broadly to anything that might conceivably have ever passed within 1 AU of the Free Software Foundation, appears to be a common trait between the erstwhile XFree86 Core Team and the ASF.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 9:13 UTC (Fri) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]

It's interesting to see how many of the people proposing to save AOO have ~15 years of IT life — they left uni for proprietary coding about when Linux became a serious option for pretty much anyone that minded about systems, marginalizing BSDs.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 13, 2016 19:08 UTC (Tue) by jg (guest, #17537) [Link] (3 responses)

It was the XFree86 license change away from the MIT license that triggered (the last straw on the camel's back) the XFree86/X.org fork. (From as permissive as you can get to slightly less permissive, but incompatible with the (L)GPL). This would have made many who had mixed code bases more than a bit unhappy, particularly (L)GPL application users.

Fundamentally, changing a license (without active permission/cooperation by those who contributed to the code base) in effect disenfranchises those who invested in the code base under the original terms, and is often very problematic.

Jim Gettys

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 13, 2016 20:42 UTC (Tue) by branden (guest, #7029) [Link] (2 responses)

Perfectly true and well-said, Jim.

Copyright licenses are almost infinitely flexible, but there is a reason we have only a handful of stable points around which FLOSS licenses, as actually used, accumulate. Shifts among these points are meaningful and require effort, not just from the putative owners of copyrights but from the communities around them.

I view both the XFree86 and AOO relicensing decisions as essentially ideological, even though they moved different directions on the permissiveness spectrum.

In hindsight I think the XFree86/X.Org split proceeded relatively painlessly because David Dawes and David Wexelblat were fairly open and frank about not wanting most of the community that had grown up around the code base, even if they refused to openly acknowledge that the license change was their primary means of ridding themselves of that community.

By contrast, AOO proclaimed itself the rightful heir of community leadership, but made relicensing one of the first things on their agenda.

Those familiar with the story of King Canute commanding the waves could easily predict the outcome.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 15, 2016 16:27 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> In hindsight I think the XFree86/X.Org split proceeded relatively painlessly because David Dawes and David Wexelblat were fairly open and frank about not wanting most of the community that had grown up around the code base, even if they refused to openly acknowledge that the license change was their primary means of ridding themselves of that community.

Notably, the community they wanted shot of included the person who had written most of the code over the previous few years ...

Cheers,
Wol

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 15, 2016 16:28 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> Those familiar with the story of King Canute commanding the waves could easily predict the outcome.

Actually, I think those who know the story well would come to the opposite conclusion ...

King Knut was fed up with all his sycophants, so he took them down to the beach and said "Watch how powerful I am!". He knew what would happen ...

Cheers,
Wol

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 8, 2016 20:57 UTC (Thu) by jimjag (guest, #84477) [Link] (11 responses)

There seems to have been many things that people forgot about when following the previous thread (https://lwn.net/Articles/699047/ and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12411747), which I hope to relate here:

1. The whole issue was an open and honest DISCUSSION. Many people took this as an indication that AOO was dead. I fear that my own response to Dennis' post on-list went a bit too far in reinforcing that (mis)belief but the lack of (perceived) developer energy was the basis for the whole discussion. Dennis did not say "AOO is dead, what should we do" but rather that the AOO community should discuss, as a contingency plan what a retirement would look like.

I may plan or discuss my funeral (or final wishes), but that does not mean I am dead or dying. :-)

But think about this: what other project would be so open and candid? Such openness, and the true appreciation that discussion be done in public is a core part of the Apache Way. It's also a core part of what open source work.

2. Because of this "publicity", the AOO has been overwhelmed by lots and lots of offers of support, which have been graciously and thankfully accepted.

3. People have also forgotten that choices, even in FOSS, are a Good Thing. LibreOffice is very successful, and they should be congratulated for their success. But certainly there is room for other players in this game, and certainly room for one (or more) that are under a permissive license. The thing is is that they don't have to be clones; they can have different audiences, different "missions" so-to-speak.

4. It is sad when we in the FOSS community degrade ourselves to simple, base license-wars. There are good, solid reasons for permissive, weak copyleft and strong copyleft, and I've contributed to them all.

IMO, what's next for Apache OpenOffice is what the Apache OpenOffice community decides; it sounds as if this whole kerflunkle has served as a kick-in-the-arse to the AOO team: they see how important AOO still is to numerous people, and they have loads of new volunteers offering to help. A 4.1.3 release is forthcoming so that is good news and a step in the right direction.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 8, 2016 21:22 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link]

AOO is not important to people; AOO actively hurts their users because they haven't fixed a security issue for a very long time. This has is NOT acceptable and this has been made very clear. Despite all of that, NOTHING has been done. To get a post like yours questioning the criticism: all your arguments can be swept away until you actually _do_something_! Stop hurting your users!

Whenever I go to some conference I get the positive energy. I go back, then fail to do anything that I really want to do.

Regarding your points:
1. Other people joined the discussion and hoped AOO would finally stop/merge with LO
2. "Soon we will do something" is what AOO had said years
3. You cannot even put out a security fix
4. That's specific to AOO itself

At least AOO finally stopped attacking LO in the LWN comments.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 8, 2016 22:21 UTC (Thu) by glaubitz (subscriber, #96452) [Link]

You should really just give in and admit that AOO is now a dead end. Trying to paint the current situation as if there was still hope in getting AOO back on track does not help anyone but it just delays the inevitable.

We are not talking about a small text editor here that can be maintained by 1-2 developers easily, we are talking about an office suite, one of the most complex and largest software projects currently imaginable and unless a miracle happens and a huge amount of very talented and motivated developers is suddenly going to join AOO, there is absolutely no chance that a project of that size can be successfully maintained and developed in the future.

As the old saying goes, "Rather a calamitous end than an endless calamity."

Adrian

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 8, 2016 22:46 UTC (Thu) by pr1268 (guest, #24648) [Link]

3. People have also forgotten that choices, even in FOSS, are a Good Thing.

Agreed, but having a choice implies there are two (or more) actively supported and admired competitors. This applies to both FLOSS and proprietary software. (Case in point: Remember how MS stalled IE at version 6 for five years? Firefox [and a few other web browsers] emerged victorious.) AOO's reticence (or outright lack of resources) to fixing security flaws speaks volumes about its "active support" (or lack thereof), and, IMO, LO won admiration from many more users than AOO after the fork, especially for its aggressive release/update schedule (acrimonious flame wars and berating by a certain few individuals notwithstanding).

4. It is sad when we in the FOSS community degrade ourselves to simple, base license-wars.

Also agreed. But, FLOSS license wars are nothing new here. In fact, having witnessed the whole debacle from the sidelines, I wasn't aware that this was a serious bone of contention with regards to AOO vs. LO. I will even defend AOO here in saying that there is no reason to assume a licensing row has anything to do with LO's greater success (or perception thereof). Quite often, having a different, incompatible license is a feature (as some have pointed out here regarding AOO).

For the record, I do use LO. Have done so since 2012. But I sincerely wish continued success for AOO. I also hope the AOO project gets "back in the saddle" with regards to active development and releases. I, for one, really want some worthy competition!

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 1:09 UTC (Fri) by bunk (subscriber, #44933) [Link] (4 responses)

> 3. People have also forgotten that choices, even in FOSS, are a Good Thing. LibreOffice is very successful, and they should be congratulated for their success. But certainly there is room for other players in this game, and certainly room for one (or more) that are under a permissive license. The thing is is that they don't have to be clones; they can have different audiences, different "missions" so-to-speak.

What "audiences" and "missions" do you have in mind for AOO, that would differ significantly from what LO is currently doing?

> 4. It is sad when we in the FOSS community degrade ourselves to simple, base license-wars. There are good, solid reasons for permissive, weak copyleft and strong copyleft, and I've contributed to them all.

Jim, you are the only one who is harping the license topic all the time.

The only "license-war" seems to be AOO people complaining that the AOO license change makes it impossible to take code from LO to AOO.

The AOO license change was after LO was started, so for me as bystander this doesn't look like something where anyone could blame the LO developers.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 14:38 UTC (Fri) by jimjag (guest, #84477) [Link]

>Jim, you are the only one who is harping the license topic all the time.

Even a cursory review of the various related thread show that this is simply untrue.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 15:26 UTC (Fri) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link] (2 responses)

> > 4. It is sad when we in the FOSS community degrade ourselves to simple, base license-wars.

This dicsussion is not about the license. Not primarily, anyway.

> Jim, you are the only one who is harping the license topic all the time.

Wrong.

That being said, as of today the permissiveness of the license is (IMHO) the only reason somebody would decide to participate in AOO instead of LO … assuming there's a material advantage of doing so, which I doubt when considering AOO's shortcomings.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 16:27 UTC (Fri) by cesarb (subscriber, #6266) [Link]

> That being said, as of today the permissiveness of the license is (IMHO) the only reason somebody would decide to participate in AOO instead of LO

In the HN thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12456071) I saw another reason: the developer already being used to and comfortable with how the ASF works.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 10, 2016 3:45 UTC (Sat) by zorro (subscriber, #45643) [Link]

It is the opposite for me. Why would I contribute code under a license that allows my code to be taken and sold without any reward or benefit for me?

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 8:58 UTC (Fri) by moltonel (subscriber, #45207) [Link]

I sincerely whish the AOO project to get back on its tracks, even if I find it unlikely to happen. They still haven't managed to do that securityfix release, but they have a feature release in the works, and are tenacious. They're not the greatest Free office suite out there, but that isn't a good reason to kill the project.

But until they do (and it'll take them years to get back on track even in the most optimist projections), having average users directed to AOO is really irresponsible. The users who are not savvy enough to switch projects are also the ones most vulnerable to security issues in their software. And if those users get bitten by an AOO bug hard enough that they look for alternatives, chances are that they'll switch to MS Office rather than LO. It's currently one of the greatest thorn in FOSS's side.

For 5 years people have been waiting for AOO to either suceed (and make the trademark proud) or die off (and return the trademark to LO). Neither has happened or look likely to happen soon, and many people's patience is exhausted. It's really sad when the third option (give/share the trademark to/with LO, and compete on merit without Oracle's spitefull choice of successor mess up the popularity numbers) is technically easy.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 11:19 UTC (Fri) by niner (guest, #26151) [Link]

Why don't you just add a pointer to LibreOffice on http://www.openoffice.org/ with a note that it's a friendly competitor, which is _currently_ better for end-users due to the included security fixes. If your plan is to turn AOO into a common base library, end users are no longer your target audience anyway.

With that single step, you could remove all the bad blood and the basis for all the criticism and all the ranting. And you'd show how you care about your users and about free software. And most of all you'd gain the time needed to re-build your development team. It's a win-win-win.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 15, 2016 13:16 UTC (Thu) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]

> I may plan or discuss my funeral (or final wishes), but that does not mean I am dead or dying. :-)
Sure, but it doesn't mean you're not dying either. And AOO clearly is dying, the numbers are unambiguous. Fyi, I am not and never was affiliated to LO or AOO in any way other than as an occasional user.

> Because of this "publicity", the AOO has been overwhelmed by lots and lots of offers of support, which have been graciously and thankfully accepted.
How many lines of code (or translation, artwork etc.) were committed as a result?

> But certainly there is room for other players in this game, and certainly room for one (or more) that are under a permissive license. The thing is is that they don't have to be clones; they can have different audiences, different "missions" so-to-speak.
So what is AOO's mission compared to LO's? I'll quote myself from here: https://lwn.net/Comments/699409/
In order to justify the existence of a fork with that sort of argument you show some feature that
- cannot be implemented in LibreOffice because of technical reasons, or the direction the project is meant to take, or maintainability concerns etc.
- can be implemented in AOO in principle as the reason doesn't apply there
- can be implemented in practice, i. e. there's somebody willing to do the work
Sometimes that is the case, see for instance the fork of DragonFlyBSD from FreeBSD. But for AOO I haven't seen any such reason.

IOW, perhaps AOO *could* have some sort of mission that is distinct from LO's, but I don't see it, and you haven't presented one. If permissive licensing was one, then hordes of ASL2 fans should rush towards OpenOffice right now and commit tons of useful code. But they don't, meaning that apparently they care more about the technical improvements (build system, code cleanup etc.) that LO made. And I don't see any reason for that to change.

> they see how important AOO still is to numerous people
I suppose that depends on your definition of “numerous”. It certainly doesn't have a meaningful amount of developer mindshare, and while it might be important to some users, that is most likely because they know the brand and haven't realised yet that all meaningful development is done in LO.

Anyway, I honestly hope that you'll be able to stop deluding yourself soon. It's dead, Jim.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 8, 2016 21:14 UTC (Thu) by orcmid (guest, #74478) [Link] (8 responses)

I am not going to join in on the projections on what should be done.

I am commenting to commend the balanced treatment of the article itself.

I do have one factual correction. The Board has been attentive to the state of the project as long as I have been the Chair and have prodded the Project Management Committee to have the state of the project visible to and understood by the project's public.

There have been two marked progressions over the last year or so.

1. It has been made clear that the animosity to any other project is inconsistent with the principles of the Apache Software Foundation as a charity that provides free software as a public good. While participants have their personal grievances, whatever the circumstances -- real or imagined or feared -- those are not expressions of positions of the Apache OpenOffice project. In fact, they are not the business of the Apache OpenOffice project. At the same time, we must be tolerant about the diversity of opinions that are expressed on our mailing lists, keeping in mind that the ASF Code of Conduct does apply to all users of the list.

2. There is more reporting of actual facts about the state of various elements of the project where there is no requirement for confidentiality. The recent discussion about what retirement would involve, as well as the discussion on how to re-invigorate the project are all part of that.

The greatest challenge is to suppress fears about criticism and disparagement and deal transparently and responsibly with the challenges the project faces. I trust that will continue. There will obviously be disagreement, especially around what some perceive as political matters. It is important not to shrink from that.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 8, 2016 22:15 UTC (Thu) by luya (subscriber, #50741) [Link]

Speaking as an outsider observer. The real problem is the AOO board failed their works with that maxim: actions speak louder than words. By simply tracking Apache openoffice.org website and the bug reports, it becomes clear the project is no longer viable for many years since IBM dropped their support.

  1. By looking even at the AOO mailing list itself, the animosity is caused by some AOO contributors themselves. The lack of proper response when it comes to critical vulnerability is appalling and the fact virtually not a single fix was implemented show that the entire project must drop for the sake of millions affected users by simply redirect to the healthy alternative: LibreOffice.
  2. The reality strikes, it is too late to re-invigorate AOO project. It would be wise to focus on LibreOffice as part of active contributors. As user, I don't understand why AOO board failed to grasp the current condition that keeps hurting their own reputations for over five years.

Constructive valid criticism pointed the failure of AOO project as a whole as seen publicly. Majority of plan suggested by AOO are already done on LO so why not joining the force. LO team are willing to admit mistake as well but AOO must realize their own actions already tarnished OpenOffice.org and they need to do the logical decision: redirect openoffice.org to libreoffice.org. That way, their legacy will be restored.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 0:48 UTC (Fri) by simosx (guest, #24338) [Link]

> 1. It has been made clear that the animosity to any other project is inconsistent with the principles of the Apache Software Foundation as a charity that provides free software as a public good. While participants have their personal grievances, whatever the circumstances -- real or imagined or feared -- those are not expressions of positions of the Apache OpenOffice project. In fact, they are not the business of the Apache OpenOffice project. At the same time, we must be tolerant about the diversity of opinions that are expressed on our mailing lists, keeping in mind that the ASF Code of Conduct does apply to all users of the list.

Judging from http://www.mail-archive.com/dev@openoffice.apache.org/msg...
it looks like the bad behaviour of Rob Weir is being swept under the carpet.

In there, it says:

> Still, I have to say that even though Rob wrote questionable posts on his own blog (never speaking for Apache or OpenOffice) and even though his bad temper is not under discussion, he also was an outstanding contributor and a decent community member.

Oh, he was not speaking for Apache or Apache OpenOffice when talking publicly about Apache OpenOffice and LibreOffice?
He was trying to bitch-talk against LibreOffice from his blog, attacking individual LibreOffice contributors, just to score points in favour of Apache OpenOffice.

The Apache Software Foundation should have known better; they are run by volunteers. If you are a volunteer, there is nothing that compels you to accept crap like that emanating from Rob Weir.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 5:18 UTC (Fri) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link] (5 responses)

Welcome measured words.

But the Apache Foundation has bigger problems even than AOO. Count the ghits for "Apache is where projects go to die". This is a pervasive problem in project governance, with the condition of AOO just an especially visible symptom.

Sometimes projects deserve a dignified death. ASF could perform a service by helping to direct remnant users of dying or dead projects to active alternatives, instead of tricking people into staying dependent on them. (Certainly Xerces-C passed its sell-by date many years ago. My first project at each of two employers in 200x was getting them off it.).

ASF's concentration on Java projects still gives me hope that Java will go that way too.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 8:41 UTC (Fri) by branden (guest, #7029) [Link]

Wow, ncm. That final sentence is deserving of a Hitchens Award.

(That's a good thing, in my book. ;-) )

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 9, 2016 11:27 UTC (Fri) by jimjag (guest, #84477) [Link]

You are quite welcome to your opinion.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 13, 2016 16:59 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (2 responses)

I note that, though your comments are undeniably true and with the exception of a very few projects (Hadoop, HTTPD, SpamAssassin, anything else?) Apache's reputation as a dustbin for moribund projects is surpassed only by SourceForge, jimjag's entire response was a single snide sentence.

It's fairly clear that the Apache Board is doing an excellent job in one area: playing ostrich and denying problems until it is much too late to fix them.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 14, 2016 20:55 UTC (Wed) by oever (guest, #987) [Link] (1 responses)

Apache has lots of active goodies for Java programmers such as Lucene, POI, FOP, Jena, Tomcat, Ant.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 14, 2016 23:56 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Yeah, true; I was mentally misled by the sheer number of moribund Java projects it also has. But it does have a lot of live stuff in that area too...

Graciousness - Do not become what you hate

Posted Sep 9, 2016 13:48 UTC (Fri) by martin.langhoff (subscriber, #61417) [Link] (14 responses)

Jimjag has been notably gracious towards LO in some of his recent statements. I'm sure some of his other statements still grate; but remember: Nothing is ever perfect.

Build the bridge that can be built now.

In many of the posts from LO supporters I see the glimpses of a bitter truth: if you are not careful, you can become what you hate. Your grievances have been voiced plenty. We've heard them. Today is the day you once thought of as a faraway future; it's here now... but only if you let go of the past.

Step away from the anger. Onwards and upwards...

Graciousness - Do not become what you hate

Posted Sep 9, 2016 15:07 UTC (Fri) by bunk (subscriber, #44933) [Link] (13 responses)

Can you give examples for what you call hatred?
This is a quite civilized discussion here.

And for reaching the LO people Jim is building his bridge on the wrong place.

Graciousness - Do not become what you hate

Posted Sep 9, 2016 15:20 UTC (Fri) by martin.langhoff (subscriber, #61417) [Link] (12 responses)

There's a ton of "na na na, you failed", "own every utterance from rcweir", etc. That is not productive; and to be honest, it's off-putting, just as rcweir's attacks were.

Jimjag suggested _on AOO's mailing list_ to put a links or redirect to LO. I never thought I'd see that. Jon Corbet pointed it out. It's a hint at a direction. What will be more productive, finding olive branches to counteroffer or raking him through the coals?

"What would {someone unhelpful} do? Nitpick, complain, divide. How can I do _the exact opposite_?"

Graciousness - Do not become what you hate

Posted Sep 9, 2016 15:44 UTC (Fri) by bunk (subscriber, #44933) [Link] (11 responses)

> There's a ton of "na na na, you failed", "own every utterance from rcweir", etc. That is not productive; and to be honest, it's off-putting, just as rcweir's attacks were.

You seem to confuse a pretty civil discussion on the internet with actual hate.

> Jimjag suggested _on AOO's mailing list_ to put a links or redirect to LO. I never thought I'd see that. Jon Corbet pointed it out. It's a hint at a direction. What will be more productive, finding olive branches to counteroffer or raking him through the coals?

You missed that Jim's "olive branch" had a pretty hefty price tag attached.

You should read his whole email, including the last section:
https://lwn.net/Articles/699110/

The stated purpose of this olive branch was to move part of the LO development to the ASF.

Graciousness - Do not become what you hate

Posted Sep 9, 2016 15:55 UTC (Fri) by martin.langhoff (subscriber, #61417) [Link] (1 responses)

Just search for "fail" in this and the prev LWN article :-) -- and tell me how that talks about "what's _next_?"

> You missed that Jim's "olive branch" had a pretty hefty price tag attached.

Yeah, I get it. But take it as the start of a conversation, instead of as a take/leave offer.

Graciousness - Do not become what you hate

Posted Sep 9, 2016 16:27 UTC (Fri) by bunk (subscriber, #44933) [Link]

> Just search for "fail" in this and the prev LWN article :-) -- and tell me how that talks about "what's _next_?"

Next are between 5 and 10 million more downloads of the latest AOO release that does *not* contain the "released" CVE fix that triggered the whole discussion...

> > You missed that Jim's "olive branch" had a pretty hefty price tag attached.
> Yeah, I get it. But take it as the start of a conversation, instead of as a take/leave offer.

A conversation about what, and with whom?

Here are random people from the internet, not the TDF/LO developers.

Graciousness - Do not become what you hate

Posted Sep 9, 2016 16:29 UTC (Fri) by jimjag (guest, #84477) [Link] (7 responses)

>You missed that Jim's "olive branch" had a pretty hefty price tag attached.
>You should read his whole email, including the last section: https://lwn.net/Articles/699110/
>The stated purpose of this olive branch was to move part of the LO development to the ASF.

Hogwash.

What I said, and I quote, is "I think we will see all players in the OO development eco-system be willing contributors to the new project."

Which means just that, that we see contributions from all players in the OO eco-system. No where does it say death to LO or move part of LO development at all.

The idea is to remove roadblocks and past harm which have prevented cooperation between LO and AOO. That should have been obvious.

It is FUD like this, and people misrepresenting things to bolster their own argument, that caused all this in the 1st place. I am trying to help everyone see a way past this and through this, but some people simply want to perpetuate the hate and the FUD. This is really, really sad... This thread has lost whatever usefulness it may have had.

Graciousness - Do not become what you hate

Posted Sep 9, 2016 17:44 UTC (Fri) by bunk (subscriber, #44933) [Link] (6 responses)

> but some people simply want to perpetuate the hate and the FUD. This is really, really sad...

If there was a misunderstanding on my side, can you stop throwing insults at me and explain here in detail what you were suggesting?

I will be glad to apologize if I misunderstood your intentions.

> The idea is to remove roadblocks and past harm which have prevented cooperation between LO and AOO. That should have been obvious.

Whether you like it or not, the biggest roadblock for that in the future is the licensing of AOO.

> What I said, and I quote, is "I think we will see all players in the OO development eco-system be willing contributors to the new project."

Can you explain how that would look like in practice, considering that LO already has several years of development that cannot get into AOO under the ASF licensing policies?

Rebases on top of Oracle OO were already a pain for the LO developers with Go-oo 6 years ago, and one result of what happened in the past is that you cannot simply put LO on top of some core part of AOO.

To me your email sounded as if you were expecting from the LO developers to change the license of everything they have done in that "core" part to your license in exchange for your "olive branch".

A pretty dead project is not really in a position to demand a license change from a pretty alive project, and even when ignoring all philosophical differences regarding licensing there are close to 1000 contributors who hold the copyright on their respective contributions to LO.

If your new project would not have required changing the license (or throwing away) of existing LO code, then please explain that here.

Graciousness - Do not become what you hate

Posted Sep 9, 2016 18:17 UTC (Fri) by martin.langhoff (subscriber, #61417) [Link] (5 responses)

Hey Bunk - when I point out negative talk about a generous offer, you call it civilized discussion. Don't call it insults now. Let's not become what we hate.

As a third party observer, I'd say Jim can be forgiven for being frustrated. As can everyone. Time to shift gears.

Maybe Jim envisions a smaller AOO, focused on being a library/backend for other projects (maybe not for LO). It is a de-escalation of AOO's ambition; maybe proprietary tools benefit from having a great docx/xlsx parser/engine/writer they can embed under a permissive license. That's a very "small" example -- I am just imagining possibilities.

It's an alternative path for AOO, humbler than being an end-user package, but perhaps useful.

This would in turn get AOO out of the end-user Office package business, and clear the path to the redirect in discussion.

Again, this is an opening for a discussion. Helps if folks bring goodwill and are prepared for an initial positive read of other folks intentions.

Graciousness - Do not become what you hate

Posted Sep 9, 2016 19:12 UTC (Fri) by bunk (subscriber, #44933) [Link] (4 responses)

> ... about a generous offer ...
> Maybe Jim envisions ...

It would be good if Jim (not you) could explain what he had in mind in his email.

My reading of his email was that his "generous offer" was in reality a demand/expectation that the LO developers should change the license of a substantial part of their code to his license in exchange, and then maintain that code at the ASF.

This is not hate, I simply do not see any other way how the contents of his email would make sense from a technical point of view.

Let us stop speculating what he might have thought, and wait whether there will be an answer from Jim that explains it.

Graciousness - Do not become what you hate

Posted Sep 9, 2016 19:16 UTC (Fri) by martin.langhoff (subscriber, #61417) [Link] (3 responses)

> It would be good if Jim (not you) could explain what he had in mind in his email.

He just did. You are talking in circles, and with a very negative perspective.

Graciousness - Do not become what you hate

Posted Sep 9, 2016 20:23 UTC (Fri) by bunk (subscriber, #44933) [Link] (1 responses)

You should learn to question what nice words actually mean.

Take as an example the one sentence Jim repeated from his email:
"I think we will see all players in the OO development eco-system be willing contributors to the new project."

Who are these players in the OO development eco-system Jim is talking about?

LO is picking the few changes in AOO it does not already have in some form.

Can you name a single other player who is currently doing development based on the AOO code?

I do not see any, and the fact that AOO development is dead for nearly a year now after IBM left is also telling.

I fully admit having a negative perspective here, because this sentence from his email he emphasized again sounds a lot less gracious once you understand that you can replace "all players in the OO development eco-system" with "the LO developers" without changing the meaning.

Graciousness - Do not become what you hate

Posted Sep 10, 2016 0:10 UTC (Sat) by JanC_ (subscriber, #34940) [Link]

I think NeoOffice has been taking some code from both AOO & LO in the past, but I'm not sure how much or what (and how recently).

Would be nice to hear from them (and/or any other projects based on AOO).

Graciousness - Do not become what you hate

Posted Sep 9, 2016 23:18 UTC (Fri) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link]

>> It would be good if Jim (not you) could explain what he had in mind in his email.

>He just did.

No he did not, at least not beyond the level of "pipe dream".

I am calling this a pipe dream because some un-answered questions immediately come to mind. Questions which are material to rational discussion of this idea, if only because otherwise people will think they talk about the same thing but actually don't.

* which license? if it's GPL then LO already is at least 95% of wherever this idea is supposed to go – you're done, thanks, would you mind transferring the domains and trademarks to LO? – thus I'll assume something permissive …

* … which immediately begets the question how the massive number of build system infrastructure and bug fixes that are in LO are going to end up in AOOlib. Somebody needs to triage them, ask the LO contributors for permission, port their changes over (and rewrite (or work around) anything written by people who object to re-licensing), and then convince the LO people to switch over to AAOlib. (Without immediately causing another fork, by people who won't tolerate permissive licenses.) Or alternately play this game of catch-up for the foreseeable future.

* All of the above work is at least 250% nonproductive. (100% because you're not adding any new features, another 100% because you're going to introduce hard-to-track bugs you need to fix, and at least 50% by introducting friction and inefficiencies because there are now two bug trackers, versions to keep in sync of, blame to shift back and forth between AOOlib and LOfrontend.) Why would anybody who is not an anti-GPL zealot(+) even think of doing all of this work for no material gain?

(+): Please do not misunderstand. I am not calling you an anti-GPL zealot. I ask why you, presumed to not be one of these zealots, would want to do this.

* Let's face it, you do not have any manpower for this. You may have a number of people who *said* they'd help, but (a) they're probably not sufficiently many and/or don't have the right skill set, (b) we both know that some will end up not willing or able to actually do it. Thus you'll need some company to underwrite the effort …

* … but what is the business case of spending a man-year (source: personal seat-of-the-pants guesstimate, probably on the low side) on legwork for Your Proprietary Feature? Let's assume that said YPF takes a man-month to implement, which is not at all unreasonable. Releasing the source code will never cost you as much revenue as you've just burned creating/integrating/fixing-obscure-bugs-in AAOlib.

* Oh yes: don't forget that you've also placed your product a year behind schedule, the instant you decided on embarking on this endeavor.

Graciousness - Do not become what you hate

Posted Sep 15, 2016 16:36 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> The stated purpose of this olive branch was to move part of the LO development to the ASF.

And if the developers - you know, the people who write the code - refuse to agree to the Apache licence (as sounds likely), where do Apache go then?

Cheers,
Wol

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 10, 2016 9:46 UTC (Sat) by karath (subscriber, #19025) [Link] (5 responses)

The commentary on this article seems to have descended into a wallow of hurt feelings. As a neutral (I'm an MS Office user), I'd suggest, particularly to those on the LibreOffice side, to work out what you really want and what value does it have to you. Then act in a way that is most likely to get what you truly want and avoid any behaviour likely to cause the other side to reject your preferred outcome.

If you want an apology for past insults or something concrete like the domain, then name-calling and finger pointing is not likely to lead in that direction.

If, however, you want to finger-point and name-call then don't be surprised at the result.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 10, 2016 10:27 UTC (Sat) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] (3 responses)

I think what people want is recognition of the work gone into LO, and an end to the perception of "neutral" third parties they're some sort of marginal fork of AOO, or at best some sort of equal to AOO.

The way AOO continues to exploit the good will associated to OO.o (a brand that was largely built by the people that went to the TDF, SUN marketing being abysmal), while letting the codebase rot, is infuriating to many.

Many people there are sick of getting answered "I tried AOO and it was junk" when they state they are proud of what LO accomplished.

AOO does not stand on its own merits. Remove the confusion between AOO and OO.o, and what is left?

Another project, that tried valiantly to survive without claiming a brand that was built by others, would generate very different feelings. There is little continuity between OO.o contributors and past or present AOO contributors.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 10, 2016 10:50 UTC (Sat) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] (2 responses)

So just to be clear from an LO proponent there could be three positive issues:

1. AOO finally does something worthwhile with the OO.o codebase (people are quite sceptical of this given the project past lack of traction and focus on deceptive marketing over coding)
2. AOO makes crystal-clear it's just one of OO.o inheritors, and lets users evaluate each of them on their own merits (ie competes honestly)
3. AOO crashes and burns. Confusion solved.

Frankly, 3. seems the most likely right now.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 10, 2016 16:24 UTC (Sat) by branden (guest, #7029) [Link]

Agreed. AOO can do a very few things to help LO (and AOO's own user community, as it happens), and a very few things which will hurt, albeit very little, and make no difference in the long run.

AOO has already done its worst to LO. The outcome is clear.

Time to see if the Apache board has a sense of community larger than the ASF.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 10, 2016 21:47 UTC (Sat) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link]

Well, continuing to accuse Apache and/or the AOO people of deceptive marketing (I have no idea whether warranted or not, that's not material at this stage) isn't going to be helpful when you want to achieve (2).

That being said, the ball is in their court. A "Hello. If you're looking for an end-user-ready product based on OpenOffice.Org, please go to http://www.libreoffice.org/" type of statement should have been added to the oo.org homepage a year ago, when it became clear that the CVE wouldn't get fixed any time soon.

What's next for Apache OpenOffice

Posted Sep 15, 2016 16:42 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> I'd suggest, particularly to those on the LibreOffice side, to work out what you really want and what value does it have to you.

From my point of view, what *I* want is for us LO people to be left alone on our turf to get on with what we want to do.

The problem, as others have pointed out, is that the Open Office name is well known out there, and LO can't afford to let it be abandoned because they will be badly hurt by the fallout. All this fuss about "hand the Open Office trademark over to TDF" is damage-limitation by the LO people.

Cheers,
Wol

A look at Oracle might have important lessons to teach...

Posted Aug 2, 2017 16:29 UTC (Wed) by nettings (subscriber, #429) [Link] (1 responses)

I was always wondering, given the amazing track record of Oracle to wreck perfectly healthy, ground-breaking open-source projects with stupefying regularity: what is their secret? This latest dung bomb has even had the power to irritate the Apache foundation... Actually, I would love for the combined wisdom of the LWN staff to tackle this question, so that we have a comprehensive list of "how not to do it if you're a company" for posterity. Especially since the interaction between commerce and community is such an important one, and many smaller companies excel at it. I would gladly pay extra for that LWN issue!

A look at Oracle might have important lessons to teach...

Posted Aug 5, 2017 8:51 UTC (Sat) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

Kite is a pretty good case study that's recent and fairly well-documented. Replies seem to have gone through a marketing/PR filter and end up just sounding hollow rather than…human.

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-startup-kite-trie...


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