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[News] Novellsoft Wants to 'Hijack' OpenOffice.org from Sun

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"Sun dropping out of OpenOffice.org development wouldn't be an entirely
negative thing"

,----[ Quote ]
| derStandard.at: Coming back to the question of copyright assignment: Isn't 
| Novell doing the same with some of its own projects like Mono? 
| 
| Meeks: That's a really good question. If you look at Mono, it's true that 
| Novell has a stated company policy of requiring copyright assignment for the 
| core - the JIT - which is some tiny proportion of the code, less than 15 
| percent. So Mono is a huge thing, there are the class libraries, there is all 
| this infrastructure, all these pieces are usable in other places. It's the 
| core that is kept LPGL and it's done so for commercial reasons and we are 
| very upfront about that. So if you want to contribute to Mono, you can 
| contribute in 80+ percent of the project without assigning rights to anyone. 
| We'd love that to be the case with OpenOffice.org, honestly.        
| 
| Sun is actually trying to push the problem off to plug-ins, by not requiring 
| copyright assignment there. So the software ships pretty broken and in order 
| to actually open your document you have to be online and download this thing 
| from the public extension repository. And the OpenOffice.org user experience 
| is already bad enough without anyone saying "your are going to have to 
| install this, go to this webpage, look at our advert and then download it".     
| 
| derStandard.at: Which parts are you referring to?
| 
| Meeks: Interestingly there are several pieces which are deliberately not 
| installed by default to drive traffic to the plug-ins-site. There is this 
| thing called "report builder", which is really a key part of the database 
| thing. So as you get where it should be it says "There is something which 
| isn't here, why don't you get it from the plug-in repository" and that's just 
| an appalling user experience, there is no need for that, it doesn't offer you 
| any efficiency wins.      
| 
| derStandard.at: Being fed up with the current situation with Sun, you seem to 
| be pushing harder for your own OpenOffice.org version with Go-oo. 
| 
| Meeks: That's right. 
`----

http://derstandard.at/?url=/?id=1216917892794

Novell is a parasite. It has already infected OOo with OOXML (the deal with
Microsoft forced them to), Mono, Windows, 'advantage' and patent 'deals'.


Related:

Privileged Access on Linux

,----[ Quote ]
| It is the "OpenOffice.org Novell Edition", that is a kind of half fork of the 
| official OpenOffice.org. Novell is pulling the strings to get the Gnome 
| project to adopt its version as the official Gnome OpenOffice. This fork is 
| using the last version of the OOo and adding/changing features to   
| it to create a different product: the "Novell Edition".
| 
| The main difference between the OpenOffice.org Novell Edition and the 
| official version of the project is that the Novell Edition is encouraged to 
| provide import and export to OOXML. Additionally it includes some add-ons 
| that they didn't want to integrate in the official version of OpenOffice.org 
| (indeed they chosed an incompatible license to prevent any kind of 
| integration of their code in the official project). These add-ons can be seen 
| here: http://www.go-oo.org      
| 
| All this strategy of to divide the "instrumental" OOo project probably is 
| under the umbrella of the Microsoft-Novell agreement. 
`----

http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-28990/privileged-access-on-linux


Available Now: OpenOffice.org Novell Edition for Windows

,----[ Quote ]
| Let's consider a couple of the features that you get in the Novell
| Edition but are not likely to have been integrated into upstream OOo yet:
| 
|     * Excel VBA Macro execution
|     * Performance improvements
|     * AGFA fonts
|     * Better Bullets (now in upstream OOo)
|     * Simple Solver
|     * GroupWise integration
`----

http://reverendted.wordpress.com/2007/03/13/ooo-novell-edition-now-available-for-windows/


OpenOffice.org Tipping Point?

,----[ Quote ]
| It's a shame Michael has chosen now - a turning point in OpenOffice.org and a 
| moment when Sun has radically improved the SCA in response to broad feedback 
| from many communities - as a time to mount a fresh challenge to Sun that by 
| implication also harms OpenOffice.org. And when you distill out all the 
| details, that's what this turns out to be even by Michael's admission - a 
| competitive issue, not a community one.     
`----

http://blogs.sun.com/webmink/entry/sca_r_office


Sun Refuses LGPL for OpenOffice; Novell forks

,----[ Quote ]
| Because of Sun's refusal to accept LPGL extensions in the upstream code, 
| Michael Meeks (who recently talked about Sun's OO.o community failings, and 
| ODF and OOXML) has announced ooo-build (previously just for build fixes) is 
| now a formal fork of OpenOffice to be located at http://go-oo.org/.    
`----

http://slashdot.org/articles/07/10/03/1212234.shtml


Questions I'd like to see asked about the Microsoft-Novell deal

,----[ Quote ]
| The questions asked as part of this study were about as open-ended
| and wishy-washy as you could get. Researchers asked customers
| deploying a mix of Windows, SuSE Linux and Red Hat Linux whether
| they were in favor of more vendor interoperability. They asked
| customers if they believed it would be helpful if Microsoft
| worked more closely with Linux vendors. They asked whether they
| approved of the Microsoft-Novell collaboration. And they
| questioned whether users "take responsibility for the
| intellectual property in the products they ship."
| 
| The only question on PSB's list that I found remotely interesting
| was whether users would be any more likely to buy SuSE Linux as a
| result of the Microsoft-Novell deal. Sixty-nine percent said yes.
| (I'm actually surprised this number isn't higher.)
`----

http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=145


Office 2007's Confusion Mode

,----[ Quote ]
| So Microsoft clearly loves multiple Microsoft document formats! (Discuss 
| among yourselves whether this love is amour de soi or amour propre.) But what 
| about other, standard formats?   
`----

http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/09/office-2007s-confusion-mode.html
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