And So The Exodus Begins – 33 Developers Leave OpenOffice

[zridling]

[via Digitizor]
Happy to see the Oracle cancer excised from one open source project as developers are fleeing OpenOffice. Long live LibreOffice!
http://digitizor.com/2010/11/01/and-so-the-exodus-begins-33-developers-leave-openoffice-org/

After Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems, OpenOffice.org fell into the hands of Oracle, as did a lot of other products. So, last month a few very prominent members of the OpenOffice.org community decided to form The Document Foundation and fork OpenOffice.org as LibreOffice, possibly fearing that it could go the OpenSolaris way. They invited Oracle to join The Document Foundation and to donate the brand “OpenOffice.org.” LibreOffice was chosen as a temporary name until Oracle agrees to donate the brand. Oracle was not pleased and asks those who founded The Document Foundation to leave OpenOffice.org citing “conflict of interest.” As Oracle had given them no choice, they left OpenOffice.org along with 33 other developers.

LibreOffice has already got backing from Google (ChromeOS), Novell (openSUSE),  Red Hat (Fedora), Canonical (Ubuntu), et al. Mark Shuttleworth had even said that it may replace OpenOffice.org in future Ubuntu releases. So, the future looks bright for LibreOffice and The Document Foundation.

____________________________
It's nice to know a corporation can't kill an open source project.

[Curt]

Link to LibreOffice 3 Beta 2: http://www.documentfoundation.org/download/

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[joke]
Features:

Filters for the legacy StarOffice binary formats are missing.

[/joke]


Okay, in Real Life the headline was "known issues being worked on:"

[40hz]

Pity Oracle decided to turn a simple disagreement into a fight, then come out of the gate swinging. Not at all surprising considering it's Oracle. But a pity just the same.

Wait for the inevitable legal threats, FUD mongering, and ill-considered lawsuit to follow about 12 months down the road.

It ain't over yet kiddies!

[superboyac]

Hey!  40hz is back!  Welcome back, buddy.

I've heard so many bad things about Oracle, but I don't understand it because I just haven't been following.  So why does Oracle have such a bad reputation?  I have to deal with oracle reps here at work sometimes.  I've been let down recently.  I asked for a business process diagram tool (see my other threads) and they assured me they have something.  I asked him to show me an example of documentation other companies have created.  i DON'T want to hear a sales pitch or a demonstration.  i actually want to just see an example of what some other company created.  They never got back to me.  I know the guy too, he says he hasn't forgotten.

[f0dder]

superboyac: it's because of Oracle's tradition of lies, backstabbing, deceit and being just generally despicable. Sure, that's pretty much something you expect from any big corporation, but Oracle just... seems to be worse.

I'm sure somebody else can give some decent examples - I haven't kept links, just cringed every now and then after reading various tech RSS feeds

[superboyac]

I see.  Wow.  That's unfortunate.

[zridling]

superboyac: it's because of Oracle's tradition of lies, backstabbing, deceit and being just generally despicable. Sure, that's pretty much something you expect from any big corporation, but Oracle just... seems to be worse.

True, and because Oracle is one of the quickest companies to sue everyone in sight at the drop of a hat (or a perceived patent encroachment). In other words, Oracle doesn't make the world a better place. Cisco is another company that's similar -- they repeatedly steal open source code and then try to pawn it off as their own until they get taken to court under the GPL.

[superboyac]

superboyac: it's because of Oracle's tradition of lies, backstabbing, deceit and being just generally despicable. Sure, that's pretty much something you expect from any big corporation, but Oracle just... seems to be worse.

True, and because Oracle is one of the quickest companies to sue everyone in sight at the drop of a hat (or a perceived patent encroachment). In other words, Oracle doesn't make the world a better place. Cisco is another company that's similar -- they repeatedly steal open source code and then try to pawn it off as their own until they get taken to court under the GPL.

Yeah, that's pretty horrible.  Two of the biggest names in enterprise technology...shame.  What does that mean?  You have to be an asshole to be really successful??

[VincenzoAI]

Yeah, that's pretty horrible.  Two of the biggest names in enterprise technology...shame.  What does that mean?  You have to be an asshole to be really successful??
[/quote]

heh - no you don't HAVE to be.  Many though CHOOSE to be and think that they are somehow 'winning'. And sycophants are attracted to the superficial 'winners' which only leads to some sort of positive feedback loop that just grows bigger...until some meaner and uglier take them down.  "It's only business - nothing personal".