[CW] OT But free

[Gene Buckle]

On Fri, 24 Dec 2010, D.J.J. Ring, Jr. wrote:

> Gene,
>
> As I said before that download will soon stop being free.  Oracle owns the
> intellectual property contained in OpenOffice.
>
I've seen nothing that leads me to think that Oracle is going to close up 
OpenOffice.  Keep in mind that due to the licensing, I can grab the 
installer and put it online for anyone to download and there isn't a damn 
thing Oracle can do to stop me.  It's perfectly legal according to the 
license.  Of course, they could take a snapshot of OpenOffice, change the 
license and put the installer behind a paywall.  It would be monumentally 
stupid, but it's certainly possible.

With respect to what Oracle "owns" in OpenOffice... well they own the 
trademark to "OpenOffice" and _some_ Copyrights to the code, but no "IP". 
Keep in mind, because the OpenOffice source code is licensed under the 
LGPL, _anyone_ can rename it and do whatever they like with it as long as 
they provide the source code for the "new" version to anyone that asks.  I 
could download the sources & docs, change every instance of OpenOffice to 
GeneOffice and create a new installer that I charge $500 for.  As long as 
I've got a link to the source code that's _outside_ that paywall, I'm 
fully compliant with the license.

> However there is a fork called LibreOffice which I found out is going to be
> open source and free to use.
>
LibreOffice isn't "going to be", it already IS open source.  LibreOffice 
is essentially OpenOffice with some feature patches applied.  It carries 
the same license as OO does.

> Their web site says their version is not stable and recommended for use on
> production machines.
>
It says "This version of LibreOffice is a "release candidate". This means 
that it is largely finalized, but there are still some issues that we are 
currently addressing. Please remember that a "release candidate" is not 
intended for use in situations in which an unexpected problem would cause 
you serious inconvenience (it is not yet "production-ready"). For 
"mission-critical production use", please wait for the final version."

It does in no way imply that it's "unstable" and I'm very curious to 
understand why you would think that it is.

g.

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