Problem davanja doprinosa OpenOffice.orgu

[foxbunny]

OpenOffice.org u kojem Sun Mycrosystems “stvara i poseduje kod, i donosi sve bitne odluke u vezi sa njim”.

”What’s the biggest threat to the success of OpenOffice.org? Is it Microsoft Office? Is it the simple fact that Dell doesn’t offer it with computers? Not according to some participants in the ‘open’ source project itself, they say the biggest problem with OO.o is the fact that Sun codes, owns & makes all key decisions for the project when it should be more community oriented. A professor who participates in the project itself said ‘enough developers are frustrated by both the technical and the organizational infrastructure at OpenOffice.org’ and cites this as ‘a real problem that is weighing on the project.’ Other members of the community agree like Michael Meeks who asked ‘At what fraction of the community will Sun reconsider its demand for ownership of the entirety of OpenOffice.org?’ Hopefully with IBM’s entrance into OO.o participation we will see the product become more community controlled & accessible. Has anyone else experienced this when developing for OO.o or another ‘open’ source project? Is it a good idea to criticize a company when they’ve put so much effort into a project that is technically open source and completely free? Is Sun trying to control OO.o like Java? Do they have good reasons or evil underlying intentions?”

Na sreću (?), Novell je već (?) forkovao OpenOffice.org[/url]…

Zašto? Zato što:

Very disappointed to read Kohei’s blog. Sun re-writing a contributor’s code because they refuse to accept the licensing terms they give to other people: the LGPL; saddening. Sun chooses the licensing for OO.o; why choose a license they won’t accept themselves ?

Sam Kohei, na svom blogu daje detalje tog incidenta[/url] uz istorijat parčeta OOo-a koji je on pisao.

U međuvremenu, Novellov Go-oo.org za sebe kaže:

The go-oo version of OpenOffice.org is designed to give a foretaste of new features in development and includes functionality not yet accepted up-stream.

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BTW, ceo “proces” davanja doprinosa OOo zajednici je bio napljuvan od strane čoveka koji je sam spoljni doprinosliac:

Good grief – so, the existing stock string in the Sun builds (on my XP
machine) is pretty terrible, however – since you think the existing,
shipping *Win32* quick-starter is ‘finished’ (and after-all it does have
a tiny mention in a specification) let’s look at it:

+ “Load OpenOffice.org During System Start-Up”
1. this far and away the ugliest string I’ve seen in a
  popup of this type: cf. attached screenshot.
+ it bloats the menu to an incredible width, all
  other items are < 1/2 the length + aesthetically - this is rather unpleasing + the capitalisation is unfortunate, as you pointed out 2. the string is basically inaccurate + for me, this gets started on login, + -perhaps- if this was a single user machine,   it might get started "during system start-up" Of course - fixing this is the matter of changing 1 string and committing to HEAD right ? [ i18n will asynchronously notice the new string & translate it ] 😉 but no; wait - I have to: + create a CWS (5 minutes) + commit the string change (20 secs) + find the specification (1 minute) + find where it lives in CVS (~N minutes) + check that out + update the spec. + take a new screenshot + translate the string to German (Babelfish?) + re-validate the change with User Experience, and i18n + N month delay. + commit the spec. + fiddle with EIS + build on 2 platforms + find a QA person + get them to download the spec. + ... This is a -very- heavy process for fixing 1 string, that (I hope) we can all agree is broken. So - the net result is, small changes don't get done - and we have all these mini eye-sores, user-interaction rough edges and pain-points lying all over the place - and they simply don't get fixed. Of course, it's easy to laugh off 1 long string, but there are a number of other nice examples catalogued in IZ of a similar nature.[/quote] Podseća me na raspravu o razvoju Windowsa.... Kohei dalje kaze o toj raspravi: [quote]What I was quietly hoping to see out of this discussion was that we could finally abolish this painful specification process, but that unfortunately didn’t happen. (In retrospect, I was probably a bit too naive to have expected that from Sun. I should have known better.) So, I was back to having to write a specification. This time on the wiki, but the same process nonetheless. After that thread had settled, I already told Michael that, after finishing the integration of the CWS, I did not want to go through the pain of upstreaming again, and that I would like to continue my work in ooo-build only. But deep down, I even had little motivation left to continue at that point, and I was more or less thinking about what I was going to say as my last word to the project, though part of myself was still wanting to stay with the project (after all, I loved hacking the OO.o code). I was torn. For the record, I tried to write a specification even under that kind of mental state, but my fingers would refuse to move, and I found myself sitting in front of my computer not doing a thing.[/quote] Šta se dalje desilo između Koheja i Suna? [quote]I simply don’t know, but one thing is clear. If Sun insists on rewriting all the work I’ve already done just to ensure that they own all the code in OO.o, even though it is legally permissible to integrate my code under a pure LGPL license as an external component, then perhaps I need to re-think my relationship with the project. Because that would be a clear sign that the goal of this project is no longer to work with community developers (i.e. those who contribute code, not talk) and create a vibrant open-source project where contributors feel they are making a difference, but to take advantage of free labor to further the corporate goal of Sun Microsystems, by protecting vigorously Sun’s total ownership of the code base as well as the development process in their entirety.[/quote]

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