Monetizing FLOSS is far beyond the capabilities of the combined ability of the Fortune 500, much less any single specific company, or division of a company that is on the Fortune 500.
Controlling the distribution of FLOSS is also beyond the capabilities of the combined ability of the Fortune 500, much less any single specific company, or division of a company that is on the Fortune 500.
The Apache Software Foundation has specialized in providing tools. More specifically, tools that provide basic functionality for other things. One of the major things that the Internet, and most intranets run on:
- AAMP: Android Apache MySQL Perl/Python/PHP;
- BAMP: BSD Apache MySQL Perl/Python/PHP;
- LAMP: Linux Apache MySQL Perl/Python/PHP;
- SAMP: Solaris Apache MySQL Perl/Python/PHP;
- WAMP: Windows Apache MySQL Perl/Python/PHP;
The Mozilla Foundation is geared towards front office software. It does have experience with consumer software.
Did The Mozilla Foundation/OpenOffice.org partnership permanently sour The Mozilla Foundation? To those on the fringe of both projects, nothing about that partnership was clear. http://www.oreillynet.com/windows/blog/2004/08/openofficeorg_partnership_with.html is perhaps the clearest statement about that partnership. That bastion of knowledge, both accurate and inaccurate, manages to omit all reference to the OOo/Mozilla partnership.
Luke Kowalski (Vice President of Oracle Architecture Group) made an interesting statement:
Jim Jagielski (President of The Apache Software Foundation) had an equally interesting statement:"Donating OpenOffice.org to Apache gives this popular consumer software a mature, open, and well established infrastructure to continue well into the future. The Apache Software Foundation’s model makes it possible for commercial and individual volunteer contributors to collaborate on open source product development."
"We welcome highly-focused, emerging projects from individual contributors, as well as those with robust developer communities, global user bases, and strong corporate backing."
If Oracle really wanted OOo to go to an organization that was "mature, open, and well established infrastructure to continue well into the future", then The Mozilla Foundation would have been far more appropriate. I'm wondering if Jim Jagielski is subtly pointing out that OOo is being inflicted upon The Apache Software Foundation.
Measuring the True Success of OpenOffice.org provides a rough indication of the number of programmers working on OOo. That data implies that the number of active programmers had decreased from a peak of 70 in 2004. At one point in time, IBM bragged about having 35 coders that would be committed to Symphony, and OpenOffice.org. I don't know what the fruits of that were, but IBM, as is par with their commitment to the accessibility community, has broken every promise it made about accessibility in OpenOffice.
LibreOffice Contribution Stats shows 60 code contributors. Unfortunately, it has not made any changes in accessibility. (One big obstacle with A11Y is patents. The USPTO routinely grants patents on things that are nothing more than mathematical algorithms.)
There is a major contrast between Open Meetings Proposal and the
OpenOffice.org Proposal when it discusses developers.
The OpenMeetings proposal lists the number of developers, and how many are paid.
The OpenOffice.org proposal provides a detailed history of some --- perhaps as many as a quarter --- of the projects that were spawned by OOo.
In terms of specifics about developers, the best it can do is: "The initial set of committers include people from the community of OpenOffice.org Technology projects." A statement that ignores the fact that virtually all of the community developers shifted to LibreOffice.
Under salaried developers we have: "The initial group of developers will be employed by IBM, Linux distribution companies, and likely public sector agencies. Localization resources are expected to gravitate to the new project, as well. Ensuring the long term stability of OpenOffice.org is a major reason for establishing the project at Apache." Trouble is, all of the Linux distros are using LibreOffice. More pointedly, prior to LibreOffice, they were using the Go-OO variant, not the Sun variant. The "likely public sector agencies" are unknown. Unless this funding and support is from a black budget item, the odds are that no code, or funding will materialize from a public agency.
This sub-section also ignores that there is a current foundation, that is shipping the successor to OOo.An organization that is based on merit, and is developing standards-based infrastructure and related components. A foundation that understands both the OOo user, and the OOo community.
Finally, as if determined to prove that the writer of the proposal understands neither the OOo community, nor the way OOo mailing lists have historically been set up, we have: "Note: a users mailing is not being requested at this time. It is anticipated that users will interact with the community through existing OpenOffice.org systems."
Oracle, unlike its namesake at Delphi, has shown a complete inability to communicate with the community that was beholden to it. More pointedly, Oracles actions have repeatedly demonstrated that it holds the community in utter contempt.
In reading the general@incubator.apache.org it appears that IBM is as contemptuous of the OOo community as Oracle is. On second thoughts, IBM would have to decrease its contempt of the OOo community by several thousand orders of magnitude, simply to be as contemptuous of the OOo community as Oracle is.
