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Sun Microsystems Your Rights Online

OpenOffice Goes LGPL 185

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the good-news-for-the-written-word dept.
Motor writes "According to the OpenOffice.org site, Sun has decided to relicense OpenOffice under the LGPL alone and retire its Sun Industry Standards Source License (SISSL). Sun supporters claim that it's part of Sun's move to reduce the number of open source licenses. Of course it could just be PR, since Sun stirred up a lot of bad publicity with the introduction of the CDDL for the release of Solaris. Either way, it's good news for OpenOffice."
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OpenOffice Goes LGPL More

OpenOffice Goes LGPL

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  • Comparison of terms? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ari_j ( 90255 )
    Is there a good comparison of the terms of the two licenses? I am not even going to RTFA, much less both licenses side by side. It's Saturday, people.

    • Re:Comparison of terms? (Score:5, Informative)

      by tmasssey ( 546878 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @01:48PM (#13471645) Homepage Journal
      The biggest difference is that if you contribute and distribute your changes to an (L)GPL project, you must make your source publicly available. Under the SISSL, you could distribute binary-only versions of the project.

      The difference between the GPL and the LGPL is that LGPL projects assume that others will create projects that interface with the original LGPL project, but that are not strictly part of the original project. Under the GPL, such items would need to be made available under the GPL themselves; under the LGPL, they can be licensed however the copyright holder sees fit.

      • The biggest difference is that if you contribute and distribute your changes to an (L)GPL project, you must make your source publicly available. Under the SISSL, you could distribute binary-only versions of the project.

        While it is true that the SISSL allowed binary-only distributions, it allowed them only if you provided documentation of any changes that you made to file formats or other standardized items. This is still a Free license, because full source code is considered sufficient documentation, so it

    • Re:Comparison of terms? (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "It's Saturday, people."

      I don't want to read that stuff either on my own time either. I'll wait until I get back to work and get "paid" to read it.
  • Now how about the JDK? :D

    • Re:Fantastic ... (Score:1, Insightful)

      by hungrygrue ( 872970 )
      Exactly. It pisses me off to no end that my college has moved from teaching C/C++ for introductory courses to teaching Java. If it were an open standard, there would be no problem. But as it stands right now they are teaching a single vender proprietary language for general purpose programming courses. Given the vast number of projects and companies which depend on Java, I would love to see Sun release their implementation under the GPL and create an independant organization to control the future standa

      • Re:Fantastic ... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Richard_at_work ( 517087 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @02:12PM (#13471807)
        Why should Sun GPL their implementation. Seriously, why? The damand for Sun to do so seems to stem from slashdotters, and I havent yet seen a good reason *WHY* they should give away their Java implementation under the GPL. The specification I agree with - put it under the control of a independant standards body, but Sun should keep their implementation and everyone can still implement their own. Why is it that theres a rather vocal number of slashdotters who seem to demand that companies (not just Sun) give away their code? Write your goddamn own.

        • Re:Fantastic ... (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Billly Gates ( 198444 )
          Well whats good for Sun is not good for users and the future of the language.

          Java is falling behind because it frankly has no way to update itself despite upgrades from Sun itself. Hell, even IBM is having trouble making their version of Java better. Mainly because its considering proprietary because its not from sun.

          Java is designed to write portable apps to all platforms. You can not write your own java api and have that same app work on another system. So its a mute point.

          C#.net is better as a language a
          • s/mute/moot/

          • Re:Fantastic ... (Score:4, Insightful)

            by jiushao ( 898575 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @02:56PM (#13472077)
            I see no problems with the current situation. While no one but Sun has really dared touch the core language and bytecode there is a very lively OSS community surrounding Java. Considering that the language and bytecode are really a rather small part of the platform as a whole it is probably a good thing for the community that they are kept relativly fixed.

            Personally I get a bit worried when people talk about "falling behind" for a language (or major library for that matter). Java gets updated, in major ways, every few years. Since the language is the very basis for applications it cannot however run around and change all the time, it is supposed to be the vehicle of delivery for applications. If the language is so completely wrong that is needs to be changed in a major way one might as well instead create a new lanaguage.

            The basic thing here is that while end-user applications should evolve as much as possible lower-level libraries and languages can not. There are probably billions of lines of Java out there, there are tools that parse Java code, there are languages targetting the JVM, there are libraries in turn relying on Sun's libraries. Changing the playing rules (even without breaking backwards compatibility) would invalidate a lot of work down the line.

            I for one rather hope that Sun does not plan to add as major changes in 1.6 as they did in 1.5. This is not a hunt for some glorified ultimate language, there is real work being done that should not be constantly disturbed.

            Some people might now just say "so stick to one version of Java and let the rest of us have new features". The problem is that doing so will fragment the language badly. People will have to not just learn one revision, they will have to learn a new one for each job they do, and then typically juggle the differences in their minds. Making the actual situation much more complex than the language appears to be when only considering each revision by itself.

            Now of course there is .NET, which is a fine platform as well. I don't see that much need to update Java any more in response to it however, 1.5 added the most important bits. Doing anything more major soon would just make the relationship between Java 1.4 and 1.6 meaningless, people could just as well switch to .NET as go to another completely different platform.

            • Re:Fantastic ... (Score:2, Informative)

              by farble1670 ( 803356 )
              I for one rather hope that Sun does not plan to add as major changes in 1.6 as they did in 1.5 ... they will have to learn a new one for each job they do

              your 1.2-4 bytecode will continue to run on a 1.5 jvm, and in general your 1.2-4 .java files will compile with a 1.5 compiler. there are cases where things get deprecated in the std libraries, but in that case you get a warning of one major release ... and the things that get dropped always have clear alternatives.

              so what's the problem? you don't have t

        • Re:Fantastic ... (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Taladar ( 717494 )
          Of course they see no reason to do this. That would require seeing themselves as incompetent in maintaining a language as the rest of the world (excluding people knowing one programming language or less) does.
        • Well, by giving Java a GPL (or preferably LGPL) license, Sun could have users port Java to other platforms as needed. For instance, I could compile it for Linux PPC, and have a functional JVM on this computer. Or rather, I could just install it from Debian's archives, like I do with the rest of my applications. AFAIR, one of the great things about Java was supposed to be its portability, but the fact is that there are other languages with better portability. Sun could compete with these if they gave Java a

      • Re:Fantastic ... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by jadavis ( 473492 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @02:18PM (#13471849)
        If it were an open standard...

        It is an open standard!

        The simple reason that there are no comparable open source implementations is that no open source developers have invested as much time to write the standard libraries. Let's not kid ourselves.

        However, GCJ/GIJ are great. That project has made huge advances on an open implementation.

        • However, GCJ/GIJ are great. That project has made huge advances on an open implementation.

          So, what is the legal status of such projects ? Can Sun shut them down ? I'm not asking if it is profitable for Sun to do this, I'm asking if it is possible for them to do this ?

          In short, is it safe to begin new projects in Java, or should I look into Ruby or something ? Or should I just stick to C and forget all about this current fad of object-orientation ?-)

          • Re:Fantastic ... (Score:5, Informative)

            by jiushao ( 898575 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @02:41PM (#13471987)
            It is completely and in every way legal. The only real restriction that Sun has is that the implementation has to pass their certification to be able to use the Java logotype and be called "a certified Java implementation".

            It is more than a bit expensive to pass the certification however so the open source projects will probably never do so (though some company might push through one specific version at some point). It is not really an all that important point however, the technology and specification is all legal to implement.

          • Re:Fantastic ... (Score:4, Insightful)

            by jadavis ( 473492 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @03:17PM (#13472197)
            So, what is the legal status of such projects ? Can Sun shut them down ? I'm not asking if it is profitable for Sun to do this, I'm asking if it is possible for them to do this ?

            It's legal. It's just that Sun has made a sophisticated product very carefully with very high quality standards, and it is difficult for open source developers to match that in a fully-compatible way.

            In short, is it safe to begin new projects in Java, or should I look into Ruby or something ? Or should I just stick to C and forget all about this current fad of object-orientation ?-)

            Sun will be there, and Java will be there. And if not, some open product will likely suit your needs (GIJ and GCJ are very good actually, they just haven't reimplmented the entire standard library). Or IBM. Remember, the standards are open.

            Next, the language is different from the programming approach. Use object-oriented thinking when it makes the most sense. Use procedural or functional programming when those make more sense. And then just pick the language based on where you see the project going and what features of the language you think will help. A java program is not necessarily object-oriented, it just provides the tools in case you are thinking that way while programming.

            • It depends what you want to do with your project.

              I was writting a program to download then parse text, then build graphs and compute some metrics on the graphs. I knew java, C/C++ but I was looking for something that would allow me to get my problem into code faster, so in a week I learned Python and then I wrote the whole thing in Python. Why? Because the language and its libraries had what I was looking for. For example hashes (dictionaries) and lists are base types. To add a string to a hash using a key

              • It depends what you want to do with your project.

                What depends? Are you answering his post or mine?

                The downside is that my program runs much slower than if it had been written in C++.

                It sounds almost certain that your application is I/O bound. I would guess that writing it in C++ would not see a performance improvement.

                • "It sounds almost certain that your application is I/O bound. I would guess that writing it in C++ would not see a performance improvement."

                  Some parts of it are I/O bound (net downloading, reading/writting/searching a 4Gig database), but it also has computational components to compute various graph transformations and metrics.

                  The speed improvement will certainly be there even for I/O bound procedures, as I have to perform a complex operation for many rows from the database. So for each row it gets it fr

  • change of name too (Score:3, Funny)

    by jshaped ( 899227 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @01:45PM (#13471615)
    and they're changing the name of OpenOffice to:

    OOMLA!!!!!

  • This is news? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Mad Merlin ( 837387 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @01:47PM (#13471633) Homepage
    Maybe it's just me, but from the looks of it [dyndns.org], OOo is already LGPLed.

  • Just so you all know.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by tpgp ( 48001 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @01:48PM (#13471641) Homepage
    OpenOffice.org is not "going" LGPL - it was already LGPL and SISSL.

    It is now just LGPL. I don't see how this is "good news" for OO at all - maybe good news for OSI or others who would like to see less of a proliferation of Open Source licences.

    • Which was the intention all along, according to the summary if not TFA.

    • Re:Just so you all know.... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Motor ( 104119 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @02:01PM (#13471741)

      OpenOffice.org is not "going" LGPL - it was already LGPL and SISSL.

      The article summary has this bit: "Is relicensed under the LGPL alone."

      I submitted the article with the title: "OpenOffice single license: LGPL". One of the editors changed it to: "OpenOffice goes LGPL" -- which is extremely misleading.

      • Re:Just so you all know.... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Motor ( 104119 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @02:11PM (#13471797)
        Additional: the reason I think it's good for OpenOffice is that dual licensing is a messy business. It confuses both users and developers... now the situation is a lot clearer. Plus Michael Meeks (a OO and GNOME developer) believes that it will help stop certain abuses [eweek.com] that have been happening under the SISSL. I don't see how this can't be good for OpenOffice.
        • Hi there Moto,

          I agree that the license change will be good for Sun. Workplace using OO derived code without the improvements going back to Sun was wrong, but SISSL did allow that.

          As for dual licensing being a messy, confusing business; I'm not so sure. MySQL, [mysql.com] Trolltech [trolltech.com] (the makers of QT) Mozilla [mozilla.org] all use dual licenses.

          Trolltech puts it best:

          This is how it works: In return for the advantages you realize from using a Trolltech product to create your application, we require that you do one of the following:
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Ofcourse they can, they just have to make the sourcecode available, which it already is via openoffice... the only reason staroffice was based from a slightly different codebase was because some of the components used in the original staroffice weren't owned by sun and couldn't be open sourced.. Now that those parts have been replaced, there's no reason sun can't make staroffice completely using openoffice sourcecode.
        • But maintaining StarOffice as a fork of OpenOffice if it's all just going to be LGPL anyway is just a waste of time; hence the thought that they might just kill off StarOffice and then just have OpenOffice.
      • Sun has always required copyright assignment to their branch of OOO. This was one of the reasons they could dual-license the codebase in the firstplace. A copyright holder can release derivatives under any license he likes. This doesn't have to affect Star Office one bit. Come to think of it, Sun hasn't gone from 2 licenses to 1. They've gone from 3 to 2. You can use the codebase as proprietary Staroffice binaries with some added templates and other features or you can use the LGPL derivative.

  • This will clear up some legalese and speed adoption of OpenOffice.org. Bravo! The LGPL [fsf.org] means that perhaps other application can make use of some of the tasty spell check and spreadsheet functionality.
    • As far as I understand, they could already. OOo was already licensed under the LGPL, although it was just one of two alternatives. Now, it's the only license. If anything, that reduces what you can do with the software (e.g. redistribute it with changes in binary-only form).

  • the less, the better (Score:2, Insightful)

    by c-reus ( 852386 )
    IMO, the less software licences, the better.

    Although one can invent his own unique licence for every piece of code he writes, I don't see how it would be a smart move.

    Licence your product under GPL or BSD licence (or a known commercial one), then at least I know (approximately) under what terms you have released the product.
    To be honest, I really don't want to read the whole licence before installing some program just to make sure I have the right to use it.

    4 or 5 licences would be enough IMO. Well, of cour

  • Please, slashdot law geeks (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bogaboga ( 793279 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @01:55PM (#13471679)
    This is my request to Slashdot law geeks:

    Please explain to a lay man (myself), how LGPL is different as compared to the GPL. A side by side explanation on key terms and points would be very useful and much appreciated. Thanks.

  • CDDL != Evil (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cpuh0g ( 839926 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @01:56PM (#13471687)
    Why is there so much damn whining about CDDL just because its not GPL? There are some very legitimate business and legal reasons that Sun could not use GPL which have been explained, ad nauseum, in other forums. It's not as if they just arbitrarily chose it to piss of the Stallman's diciples.

    • Re:CDDL != Evil (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The CDDL is yet another vanity MPL variant. It does nothing that half a dozen other MPL variants do... or the CPL for that matter. Sun employees defend it as being an attempt to *reduce* the number of MPL variants -- when in fact, it has multiplied them, and was introduced solely to wall off Solaris code from everything else out there and create a pocket of "Sun-brand" open-source.
    • Why is there so much whining? Over the last decade, Sun has released "open" source code, and even documentation, under some licenses that are quite evil: licenses that forbid you to work on related projects, licenses that force you to give whatever you do to Sun, licenses that force reciprocal patent agreements on you. And Sun has misrepresented what they were doing. Nobody has time to keep track of how Sun wants to mislead people today with language hidden deep inside complex license agreements.

      Therefor

    • CDDL == EVIL because: (Score:4, Insightful)

      by hummassa ( 157160 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @08:04PM (#13473677) Homepage Journal
      It's Yet Another Copyleft GPL-incompatible License. As if we need more of those. Come on, if you're going copyleft, choose GPL. Or LGPL. Please.

      It's not intrinsically free. I.E., individual applications of it may be, with a liberal interpretation, or may not be, with a lawyer one. Notably it's capable of failing Debian's Dissident test, and to boot it contains a choice-of-venue provision, which can be a HUGE burden on a licensee. It also has a number of weasel-worded lawyer clauses that could be used in nasty ways (especially around the patent section; probably this license is not adequete to avoid patent-controlled software).

      One would have to analyse each license declaration that invokes this thing. Maybe somebody could formulate a sample declaration that always forms a free license, but otherwise...

  • A Great Product is Now Fantastic (Score:3, Funny)

    by virtigex ( 323685 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @01:58PM (#13471707)
    I think that Sun should get a pat on the back for this. OpenOffice 1.9 is really "in the zone" when it comes to a productivity application. This just makes a great product a fantastic one. In these days of tight budgets, any company, large or small, should think twice about paying $300+ for a productivity suite that you could get for free (in both senses of the word) in OpenOffice.

  • Ximianized openoffice merging? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Zarhan ( 415465 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @02:27PM (#13471898)
    As far as I have understood the Ximian version of Openoffice (http://go-oo.org/ [go-oo.org]) was born out of the fact that some developers did not want to license their code under Sun's terms. Is there any comment on whether the Ximianized OO will be merging with the main one now?

    I personally use XOO because it has far better KDE integration than the regular one.

    • Licenses are only part of the problem (Score:4, Interesting)

      by soullessbastard ( 596494 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @04:24PM (#13472580) Homepage Journal

      Disclaimer: I am a Mac OS X OpenOffice.org developer and a founder of the NeoOffice [neooffice.org] project.

      While licensing is part of the spats that have caused these forks in the past (note: RedHat has their own separate "fork"), it's not the only problem. It's the mentality of Sun (a.k.a "OpenOffice.org") developers as a whole. The patch submission process doesn't allow for innovation. Rather, it's a tedious sequence of submitting and resubmitting patches. In general, patches that add functionality for a single platform only are rejected...everything must target the lowest common denominator. Ximan's alpha patches weren't incorporated quickly enough to allow their icon set to work with 1.0.3, so they shipped using a different code line.

      Simply changing licenses doesn't address the fact that if your code patches aren't what Sun wants, they just won't accept them. OOo development needs to move to a neutral body before real progress can happen.

      It doesn't help that Sun, RedHat, and Novell have a secret development board that decides the development direction from OOo without any input from the community. (this is not random accusation...it was revealed to me by someone on the inside). Open source doesn't necessarily help the little guy.

      ed

  • It was already LGPL, but they're dropping the alternate license, which I assume gave Sun additional rights. If Sun is requiring copyright assignment to them for any offically-accepted changes, then Sun can re-release it under any license they want anyway, because they own it.

    This only matters if the SISSL gave rights not available with the LGPL, or if Sun isn't requiring copyright assignment for accepted patches (which would otherwise force Star Office to become LGPL, too).

  • AbiWord & Gnumeric (Score:2, Interesting)

    by anandpur ( 303114 )
    Will there be any merger or code share between Gnome Office and Open office?
    http://www.gnome.org/gnome-office/ [gnome.org]
    http://www.gnome.org/projects/gnumeric/ [gnome.org]
    http://www.abisource.com/ [abisource.com]

    • Re:AbiWord & Gnumeric (Score:3, Insightful)

      by uwog ( 707498 )
      Code is already shared where possible. Take for example the WordPerfect importer. It originally was AbiWord's importer. When it became better and better, we split it off into the libwpd library. These days libwpd is used by AbiWord (naturally), OpenOffice and even KOffice.

  • Two faced. (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Stumbles ( 602007 )
    Ya know there are times I just don't know what to make of Sun. For so long now they have acted at totally psychotic way and with a split personality you never know just what they are up to.

    I'm sure with their "call" to reduce the number of licenses does not include CDDL. And I certainly view this move as a, look we mean what we have said about license reduction.

    If Sun really was interested in reducing the proliferation of licenses, they would have not created CDDL in the first place. So IMV this move,

  • Shot across the bow at IBM (Score:5, Informative)

    by soullessbastard ( 596494 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @02:59PM (#13472096) Homepage Journal

    Disclaimer: I am a developer of the Mac OS X OpenOffice.org port as well as a founder of the NeoOffice [neooffice.org] project.

    If anyone is affected by this, it will most drastically affect IBM. If you look at the original list of Sun Copyright Assignment signers, you'll notice that IBM is listed as one of the original signers. Curiously, this page is no longer accessible (the wayback machine lists it as blocked by robots.txt) and there are few IBM-OpenOffice.org references left [zdnet.com]. Has IBM made any source code contributions to the OpenOffice.org product? No. Why should they...

    They develop IBM/Lotus Workplace. Workplace incorporates OpenOffice.org code directly and provides their Word/Excel style integration with the old Notes environment. Doubtless they have probably made enhancements to the code to support collaboration. Since SISSL allows for binary only distribution, however, IBM never had a need to join the OpenOffice.org project to develop Workplace. They could happily have their own team of engineers working on it and had no obligation to share that work with others under SISSL.

    So is this a good thing? Who knows. IBM very well may just stick with the last version of source released under SISSL for Workplace. OOo 1.x/2.x is "good enough", so unless future LGPL only versions have some type of major advantage, there's no need for IBM to contribute back their Workplace enhancements.

    This is really ironic, though, since LGPL was actually thrown into the original OOo license as an afterthought (I think by Joerg, but may be mistaken). The afterthought has won out!!

    For me personally, this is a good thing since it legitimizes GPL-only forks like NeoOffice [neooffice.org] and hopefully can help them stop accusing us of stealing OpenOffice.org [openoffice.org] and engaging in illegal activities when all we do is exercise our rights under the LGPL license.

    ed

    • To me it seems you got it wrong.

      As far as I can tell, they are just annoyed that you are not helping with updating your own patches.

      This would improve the speed with which the X11 Mac version is released and thus could also benefit the neooffice project.

      The steal part is in quotation marks since the author doesn't believe you are stealing (or for that matter doing anything illegal), but rather because he looks upon what you are doing as a sorts of a free ride.

      Of course you are free to disagree with him on t
    • IBM very well may just stick with the last version of source released under SISSL for Workplace.

      I dunno, IBM could just use the provisions of the LGPL and distribute their "secret sauce" as binary.
  • that sun owned the copyright on openoffice.

    i thought they only owned staroffice.

  • This is about IBM, and IBM alone. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 03, 2005 @03:35PM (#13472292)
    This has nothing to do with reducing license proliferation. It has everything to do with the continuing spat between IBM and Sun.

    OO has always been available under both the LGPL and Sun's BSD-ish SISSL license. Much to Sun's annoyance (and the annoyance of some community members), IBM forked the 1.x code and used it as the basis of their document clients in the closed-source IBM Workplace product. IBM hasn't released one line of that code, much of which involves modularization and could've been of great value to the community. Thanks to the SISSL terms, they don't have to.

    Is IBM doing wrong here? Well, they are 100% within their legal rights, even if it wasn't the most community-friendly move. Sun set the rules and IBM is following them. Sun has now decided to change the rules of the game so that IBM cannot do this again. They can continue with their forked 1.x codebase, but if they want to move up to the improved 2.x code they're going to have to play nice with the community under the terms of the LGPL - and release their code changes.

    Sun's situation with StarOffice is unchanged, because they remain the copyright holder of the mainline OO code (all contributors must sign a joint copyright agreement). They never needed SISSL in the first place. As owner of the code, Sun can still make proprietary changes to OO without releasing the source - they can do exactly what IBM is doing - but without SISSL, IBM cannot.

    License proliferation is not and has never been a serious issue for Sun. It's complete hogwash and I'm surprised to see Slashdot seem to buy it hook line and sinker. Folks, this is the company that - just months ago - rather than suggest improvements to the MPL or adopt one of the dozens of other existing licenses that might be suitable, instead hand-crafted the new CDDL license for their own use. This is the company that just recently reshuffled all the semi-open and academic Java licenses once again. None of which is necessarily wrong or bad (CDDL, for example, is a perfectly fine open source and free software license - yet another one) - but all of which shows that this is a company that doesn't really care about the license proliferation problem. This move was targeted at hurting IBM and IBM alone. The license stuff is spin.

    Will IBM rise to the challenge, adopt the 2.x codebase for future Workplace revisions, and help the community by releasing code? Or will they continue with their SISSL fork? We'll see.

    • Re:This is about IBM, and IBM alone. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      OO has always been available under both the LGPL and Sun's BSD-ish SISSL license. Much to Sun's annoyance (and the annoyance of some community members), IBM forked the 1.x code and used it as the basis of their document clients in the closed-source IBM Workplace product. IBM hasn't released one line of that code, much of which involves modularization and could've been of great value to the community. Thanks to the SISSL terms, they don't have to.

      I can say with certainity that the reason this code has not be
  • I think cutting back the number of licenses is a good thing to clean up the mess that you see at opensource.org: they list more than 50 licenses, some of which might not be mutually compatible due to some minor details. Why not go for the creative commons approach: have a very limited set of licences, with mightbe some optional clauses that can be used on a case by case basis.

    If there are only 4 or 5 licenses it also becomes much easier to assure compatibility (only in the direction from less restricted t

  • God, you Sun-haters piss me off (Score:5, Insightful)

    by typical ( 886006 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @04:15PM (#13472528) Journal
    Of course it could just be PR, since Sun stirred up a lot of bad publicity with the introduction of the CDDL for the release of Solaris.

    You know, the groundless Sun-bashing on here is just absurd, and is really stupid.

    Sun has done some awfuly nice things for the open-source world that probably wouldn't have happened any time soon without them. They're doing this *despite* the fact that their business is one of the *the most impacted* by the increasing use of open source.

    Sun is out to make a buck. Yes, that's a good thing to keep in mind. They're like Apple, IBM, and Microsoft. However, they, like IBM, have chosen to generally work *with* the open source world, as opposed to attacking it, like Microsoft.

    What I can't figure out is why whenever I see a story about Sun doing something to help open source, about eight-six-zillion people on here immediately start ragging on Sun. You don't like Solaris? Fine. I prefer Linux myself. You think Sun hardware is overpriced? Fine. I agree. But Sun doesn't bully their way into my life a la Microsoft and then spread shitty products all over. Seriously, it sounds like some of the people on here had their parents murdered by Sun or something. Give them a goddamn break already. If they do something like SCO did, then you can start up the hating. But I don't see any reason to Sun-bash when Sun isn't doing anything wrong.
    • If they do something like SCO did, then you can start up the hating.

      Sun expands Unix deal with SCO [com.com]

      Sun paid about $10 million to SCO and received warrants to buy 210,000 shares of SCOX as part of the deal.

      I do agree with you that Sun has also done some awfully nice things for the open-source world. Sun is a friend when it's in Sun's interest (buying StarOffice and releasing the source under GPL) and a foe when that is in Sun's interest (funding SCO).
  • ...now let me me one of many to say, good move, now do the same for Java. Before Java's relevance is destroyed by Microsoft and Novell.

    • Re:It's a start... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by adrianmonk ( 890071 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @07:04PM (#13473440)
      good move, now do the same for Java

      If you want an open-source Java compiler and an open-source Java virtual machine, there is nothing stopping you from writing one. The Java Language Specification [sun.com] is available for free from Sun's web site, and so is the Java Virtual Machine Specification [sun.com]. These should give you enough information to make a GPLed implementation if you wish to do so.

      Sun's JVM and compiler are not the only implementations of Java out there. This is because Java is a standard. This gives you the ultimate freedom, because if you don't like the license of one of the implementations, you can in theory create your own implementation that has whatever license you like. I really don't get why people think Sun needs to open source their Java software. Nobody bitched and moaned when AT&T didn't provide a GPL C or C++ compiler implementation. Instead, people created their own implementation. You may have heard of it; it's called gcc. How is the Java situation any different at all?

      • Re:It's a start... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by eloki ( 29152 )
        How is the Java situation any different at all?

        That's a fair question. To me the difference is that gcc and glibc/libstdc++ are shipped with distros like Debian. You're right in that nothing stops people making their own Java implementation - it's just that the Java library is enormous so it's a a huge job.

        Some people who are against the opening of Java worry that it will produce a thousand slightly incompatible forks, but I think we can do the same comparison with gcc - it hasn't happened there, so I don't

  • OO isn't too bad (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anne_Nonymous ( 313852 )
    I recently purchased a number of new machines for my business and decided to attempt to transition from Excel/Word to Open Office. Although there have been a few file format inconstancies, and the feature set can sometimes be awkward, I'm generally impressed. 1,000 Karma Kredits for the folks at OO and some pecuniary support if I choose to stay with them a year from now.
  • It's perfectly legitimate to question why Sun contimues to use any other open source licenses than L/GPL, now that they clearly are consistent with Sun's strategy and interests. But PR is a perfectly legitimate reason to release source under the L/GPL. In fact, "Public Relations" is not only most of the reason any corporation releases any source. Such a PR release is also probably the best, most legitimate PR any corporation is capable of performing.

    Sun deserves a lot of credit for OpenOffice. They've inves

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