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OpenOffice.org forsakes Oracle, forms new foundation and fork

By | September 28, 2010, 6:22am PDT

It comes as no surprise that longtime backers of OpenOffice.org are taking control over the open source project from Oracle, its new owner.

On Tuesday, the OpenOffice.org community announced the formation of the Document Foundation and the re-release of OpenOffice code under a new brand name — LibreOffice.

OpenOffice was originally founded and sponsored by Sun. Oracle acquired Sun and its OpenOffice assets earlier this year.

The creation of the Document Foundation is backed by leading Linux distributors Red Hat, Novell, Google (Android) and Canonical as well as many international concerns and nations, including Germany, Italy, Brazil and France — hence the name LibreOffice.

The move comes just weeks after Oracle announced it would stop development on another open source project it acquired as part of Sun — OpenSolaris. (a new entity known as Illumos has assumed control of the open source project).

At the time, I asked Oracle if it also intended to scrap OpenOffice development but the official response was ‘No Comment.”

Michael Meeks, a distinguished engineer at Novell who is very active with OpenOffice.org, said he was initially lulled into the view that Oracle would become a strong force in open source development following its purchase of Sun but said that hasn’t panned out. “

His views weren’t all that different when Sun had control over OpenOffice. Still, the new ownership exacerbates his concerns. “Copyright assignment discourages external contributions, and that current control of the project inhibits developer initiative,” Meeks said in a recent press release.

He noted that Oracle may own rights to the OpenOffice trademark but the code is released under a free and open license. In the press release issued today, the Document Foundation urged Oracle to join the foundation and donate the 10-year-old OpenOffice brand name and trademark to the organization.

The Document Foundation will be led in initially by a steering committee of OpenOffice developers. The LibreOffice software is available in beta version at www.libreoffice.com.

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Topics

Oracle Corp., Sun Microsystems Inc., Oracle Forms, OpenOffice.org, LibreOffice Software, OpenOffice, Open Source, Office Suites, Software, Paula Rooney

Paula Rooney is a Boston-based writer who has followed the tech industry for almost two decades.

Disclosure

Paula Rooney

Paula Rooney owns no stock in the companies that she covers. She holds a 401K that is managed by Morgan Stanley.

Biography

Paula Rooney

Paula Rooney has covered the software and technology industry for more than 20 years, starting with semiconductor design and mini-computer systems at EDN News and later focused on PC software companies including Microsoft, Lotus, Oracle, Red Hat, Novell and other open source and commercial software companies for CRN and PCWeek. She received a silver award from the American Society of Business Publication Editors in 2005 for her profile on Linus Torvalds and edited and co-authored "Partnering With Microsoft," a book about Microsoft's channel published by CMP Publishing in 2004. Rooney graduated from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1997. In her off time, she enjoys scuba diving, sailing, sun worshipping, running, reading, surfing (the net) and hanging out with her family. She resides on the shores of Scituate, Massachusetts.

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nitinkhare246 20th Mar
thesis writing service
I really don???t think anyone has put it that way before!. Your blog is definitely worth a read if anyone visit it with need. I???m lucky I came here because now I???ve got something useful here.
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0 Votes
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Good news
Economister 28th Sep 2010
I do not trust Oracle any more than I trust any other mega corp. They will do whatever they can to regain control and squeeze revenue out of it. This may be their right and duty to the shareholders, but the world's open SW community does not need to sit idly by and let it happen unchallenged.

I am still running an old version of MS Office, which is still supported and meets my needs. When that changes I would like to have other options available to me.
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RE: OpenOffice.org forsakes Oracle, forms new foundation and fork
Li1t 28th Sep 2010
@Economister Lol... Mega corp? Jack-out for a minute, buddy. The word you're looking for is Corporation. Sure, they're big, they bought Sun, but they don't really figure on the scale of megacorp.
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What would you call a megacorp, then?
daftkey 28th Sep 2010
@Li1t - Oracle is more than just "Big". Best Buy is "Big", Safeway is "Big". Oracle is pretty friggin' huge.

By your reasoning, the only thing that counts as a "mega corp" would be Microsoft and Exxon.
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RE: OpenOffice.org forsakes Oracle, forms new foundation and fork
danishvet 28th Sep 2010
@Li1t
Mega means Micro(soft) as well?
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Then OpenOffice would be like a Time Machine for You!
i2fun@... Updated - 28th Sep 2010
@Economister Open..... er LibreOffice until Oracle decides to get with the program and donate the Trademark, is not only faster but more robust and usable than even an old version of MS Office. I converted years ago and have never looked back. Boots of quick and only runs processes when you need it. It's very slick and fast along with being able to use any format you want. In fact I don't know anyone that has switched, that doesn't love it on whatever platform you're using from Macs, Linux to Windows!

Mega Corp.. haha..... there is only a few Mega Corps in Mobile Electronics at the moment either on the software side or the hardware side. The only one that deserves that title is Samsung Group. They are bigger than most countries and their Electronics Division alone.... is the largest in the World. Along with being #20 Top 100 Brands compared to #40 Apple. Which unlike Samsung relies on Samsung to make most of it's parts for it's devices. It's a full monopoly top to bottom dominating the chip market over even Intel. They also makes Software Products on top of it all and that's what completes the MONOPOLY scale of their size.

Supply side Market Dynamics Favor those that can compete end to end from design to parts and device production as well as marketing and distributing those devices with Mega Corp Authority and that describes Samsung to a "T"!

btw.. like your old version of MS Office? Yozo Office is like MS Office reborn.... it's one Sweet Office Suite. But it's pay for like MS Office!
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RE: OpenOffice.org forsakes Oracle, forms new foundation and fork
tonymcs@... 28th Sep 2010
@i2fun@...

Nice parallel universe you seem to live in. In the real world OO is slow and clunky, has trouble formatting the new Word formats and generally performs like a slightly shaky clone of Office 97. If that's all you need then fine, but no need to try and put lipstick on a pig.
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OpenOffice would be like a Time Machine
DavidBassPlayer 29th Sep 2010
@i2fun@...
I used MS Office Professional versions 2000 through 2003, I still have 2003 installed. I have used OpenOffice.org versions 1.1 through 3.2.1, which is the current version, OO.o and MS office on the same hardware. I assure you it is faster and easier to use for letters, documents, and newsletters than any version of MS Office I have used. If this is using a "Time Machine" bring it on. I have saved many thousands of dollars and have software that works faster and easier.
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OpenOffice
aeriform 18th Oct 2010
@i2fun@...
Open Office is slow and doesn't catch all of MS new formats. But MS has issues with different versions of it's own software. I have had formatting issues with various versions of Word and have had ppt files from 2007 version that will not open at all in PPT 2010.
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RE: OpenOffice.org forsakes Oracle, forms new foundation and fork
linasmith 24th Aug
@i2fun@... way always trust Libreoffice Oracle is also here. custom essay | custom term paper | buy research paper
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RE: OpenOffice.org forsakes Oracle, forms new foundation and fork
Stan57 28th Sep 2010
@Economister

And just why should anyone trust this Libreoffice? We all know about Oracle but the only thing this has proven is that they can copy a program well.
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Key Members Are Former OpenOffice.org Developers
CFWhitman 30th Sep 2010
@Stan57
The key members of the LibreOffice development team are from the OpenOffice.org development team. It's basically the same people behind LibreOffice, except for the ones that are still employed by Oracle. Most of the support besides Sun/Oracle for OpenOffice.org is now behind LibreOffice instead.

Basically, unless Oracle decides to lend their support to the Document Foundation and the two projects become one again, then OpenOffice.org will be left to stagnate while LibreOffice becomes the main project.
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RE: OpenOffice.org forsakes Oracle, forms new foundation and fork
linasmith 24th Aug
@Stan57 yes you right i research on it then i think that what's the truth. Assignment Help | Custom Dissertationt
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Try OOo alongside MS Office to compare?
Tom6 28th Sep 2010
@Economister

I recommend trying OpenOffice, or if you only use Word then switch to any of the many other alternatives such as the very very much lighter AbiWord or the heavier KOffice.

M$ Office is very heavy and quirky. Having taught it and dealt with things other people have produced in it i find that people's work often swtches into different dictionaries (usually en-us) or fonts and tab-stops keep changing randomly without the user really being in control. Nowadays people are used to reading documents with bullet-points that keep changing size and not lining up and numbered lists where numbers get repeated or missed out in the middle of lists. In excel formulas often miss numbers in rows or columns that were inserted late at the beginning or end of sums.

With MicroSquish Office there is a whole range of quirky behaviour that people just accept or have learned to work-around or just "put up with" poor results or blame the user.

By comparison OpenOffice and others produce a very much higher quality result with much less effort. If you really want to make it look like a Word document you can add the mis-alignments yourself.

Surely it is possible to install OpenOffice and try it out without getting rid of your existing MS Office? Why wait until some crunch date when you may well be up against deadlines. The trick is "Save As ..." "unsafe MS .doc format" or
Tools - Options - Load/Save
and roll 1 or 2 back to keep using the unsafe MS formats.

Regards from
Tom happy
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RE: OpenOffice.org forsakes Oracle, forms new foundation and fork
tonymcs@... 28th Sep 2010
@Tom6

Taught Office lately Tom? Office 2010 is so far ahead of any other office suite, it's hard to take you seriously, especially since I've actually used OO.
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RE: OpenOffice.org forsakes Oracle, forms new foundation and fork
theo_durcan 28th Sep 2010
@Tom6 you're right, MSOffice is mediocre, inconsistent, you never know what stupid formatting bring it from nowhere, it keep changing for not reason or not accepting your input.
with OO you make a tab & it lands where is expected, another & again, IT WORKS the way it should, isn't amazing, MS for 20 years were building that function -tabs & indents and never got it right.
And that is just scratching the surface of how bad MSOffice performs in very simple tasks, take for ex insert image in PPT, you need to make around 8 cliks & selections, just compare to QuarkXPress (a very good & solid program), the routine is shortened to the minimum, just the way it should be. OOffice is way better (at least it was before Oracle acquisition, I installed the last version & didnt like it).
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RE: OpenOffice.org forsakes Oracle, forms new foundation and fork
ITOdeed 29th Sep 2010
@Tom6
Right on Tom. Glad you mentioned the misalignment problems with MS Office. I thought it was just me.
MS Office is like Windows 7, has lots of small bugs that need to be fixed. Windows 7 Pro 64 has some serious USB conflicts.
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QuarkXpress vs. PowerPoint
daftkey 29th Sep 2010
@theo_durcan -

Totally agree with the PowerPoint vs. QuarkXpress comparison! The last time I tried building a newspaper using PowerPoint, I had a heck of a time getting images to work, and when I could, the resolution wasn't right, I couldn't position it accurately enough, and the columns of my articles didn't line up properly.

I converted to QuarkXpress years ago and didn't look back! Now if only they could get the Slide Show feature to work properly, I'd never need PowerPoint again!
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You're joking.
Zc456 1st Oct 2010
@All
Yeah... fighting over which office suit is better then the other. Really productive.
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Awesome Move
cyberslammer 28th Sep 2010
I think this is great, and it should show the open source world that Ellison is not to be trusted.

Kudos to Open Office!!!
0 Votes
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Actually, you're confusing cause with effect.
Jeff Dickey 28th Sep 2010
@cyberslammer I believe this came about because Ellison had already "show[n] the open source world" that his/Oracle's motives and interests are orthogonal to theirs. He and Oracle have their reasons for doing things their way, and the rules of the system they live in require them to do things that way. Sun had the same problem, really; they just sucked up "the open source Kool-Aid" (as one analyst put it) in the belief that increased demand for software would sell more hardware. But they never (should have) let altruism get in the way of profits. Ellison and Oracle have made crystal clear that they're not even going to go through the motions. Sun having MySQL, OpenOffice and OpenSolaris was a well-intentioned mistake. Oracle buying Sun, without stipulating that the OSS bits be spun off first, was at best a disaster, if not malice aforethought.
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RE: OpenOffice.org forsakes Oracle, forms new foundation and fork
gnufreex 29th Sep 2010
@Jeff Dickey

"But they never (should have) let altruism get in the way of profits. "

Sun didn't do that, you are really trying to rewrite history here. Sun was opensourcing their software because it didn't make any money when was proprietary. Open sourcing increased software revenue and stopped decline of hardware revenues. It worked good, but not as good as it could if they were more open and less control freaky.

Then economic crisis hit and banks stopped buying SPARCs. Growing revenues from open source software and ZFS storage couldn't supplant decline of tape storage and SPARC servers. Sellout to highest bidder. That turned out to be Oracle.
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This just doesn't make a lot of sense..
daftkey 29th Sep 2010
@gnufreex

Where exactly do you get that Sun's software revenues increased when they open sourced everything. The only success stories of commercial projects going open source revolve around somewhat increased market share of otherwise declining software offerings (see Netscape) and seldom translated to increased revenues. I highly doubt Sun really profited all that much from open sourcing anything, other than hardware.
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RE: OpenOffice.org forsakes Oracle, forms new foundation and fork
CFWhitman 30th Sep 2010
@daftkey
Really, it doesn't matter that much. The things that Sun open sourced were not making it any money as proprietary products. It certainly didn't hurt their bottom line to open source these things. It might not really have helped them, but it didn't hurt them either.
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RE: OpenOffice.org forsakes Oracle, forms new foundation and fork
mcleutz 28th Sep 2010
this is a disaster. OpenOffice is terrible and yet another fork wont salvage it. The reason MS Office and now Google Docs have futures is their integration to non document authoring elements like IM, Email, etc. Having a silod suite with no email, no presence is a buggy whip in the digital age.
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RE: OpenOffice.org forsakes Oracle, forms new foundation and fork
zeke123 28th Sep 2010
@mcleutz
>OpenOffice is terrible
Opinions are like rectums: every has one.
We are running OO on 77 stations at work and it works fine here. Maybe you are clueless about how to use it.
Stay away from office suites and scissors please.
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RE: OpenOffice.org forsakes Oracle, forms new foundation and fork
ItsTheBottomLine 28th Sep 2010
@zeke123 yet unlike rectums it looks like peoples opinions hurt and walk all over sore points, when they don't line up with yours. Interesting.
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RE: OpenOffice.org forsakes Oracle, forms new foundation and fork
Shmuel 28th Sep 2010
@mcleutz ,
Using the word 'disaster' is a bit over the top!!! Many users are happy to use this (free) office application and can content with it's 'lack' of integration with e-mail and such.
Being 'bombastic' with the use of words does not get the dialogue anywhere!
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"non document authoring elements like IM, Email"? WTH?
TroyJohnson 28th Sep 2010
Really @mcleutz ? Any more useless features in our "future"? Do you want to use Word as your shell or something? It's obvious you've never tried OO, so try to refrain from commenting on things you know nothing about.
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RE: OpenOffice.org forsakes Oracle, forms new foundation and fork
twoencore 28th Sep 2010
@mcleutz
I"ve been running OpenOffice with no issues for years! What serious bugs are you talking about?
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RE: OpenOffice.org forsakes Oracle, forms new foundation and fork
Stan57 28th Sep 2010
@twoencore

Go here theres plenty to look through

http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/index.php


http://www.oooforum.org/forum/index.phtml?sid=0dc187a0a953bb0c140c4bc6f69fa978

thoses 2 ought to keep ya busy reading for a while
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And Discussion Forums Prove What Exactly?
CFWhitman 30th Sep 2010
@Stan57
Your links just point to discussion forums. What are you trying to point out? There are plenty of forums where people discuss how to do what they want in any kind of somewhat complex software. I don't see what you're trying to prove.
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RE: OpenOffice.org forsakes Oracle, forms new foundation and fork
unclefixer@... 28th Sep 2010
@mcleutz The last time I checked, Google Docs natively supports OpenOffice formats... why would Google do that if the suite sucks so bad?
I've been using it exclusively for 8 years, and have never had a problem with it, and each version gets better.
www.dfwsupergeek.com
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RE: OpenOffice.org forsakes Oracle, forms new foundation and fork
dontfear 29th Sep 2010
@mcleutz
I've heard this argument before, but I don't understand it: can you please give an example of what "integration" to IM and E-mail means, say if I'm typing a document in Writer? Do you mean on-line collaboration, i.e. a group of people editing bits of the same document at the same time?
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RE: OpenOffice.org forsakes Oracle, forms new foundation and fork
Zc456 29th Sep 2010
@mcleutz
*Facepalms* Well, it is open source. So, I dunno, maybe can contribute to it and make it better so it isn't so "terrible."
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Or better yet...
daftkey 29th Sep 2010
@Zc456 - Save your valuable time and spend a bit of money on an office suite that already does everything you want.

For most of us, spending a few hundred bucks on software rather than making your own pet project out of an "almost there" solution is generally cheaper.
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Wut...
Zc456 1st Oct 2010
@daftkey
I need an office suit with standard basic functions. I don't want everything. Also, when did a few hundred bucks suddenly become cheaper then free?
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RE: OpenOffice.org forsakes Oracle, forms new foundation and fork
Rahul Mulchandani 28th Sep 2010
Here's one more reason success in the FOSS industry will always be an outlier and with FOSS' focus on rigid ideology over better software, this will continue( Poorly written Linux drivers are a prime example of this)
No one cares if a Software is FOSS or Paid, as long as it works well, it will succeed. Take Firefox for an example, I'm sure a large number of users don't know/care what OSS is, what they know and care is that it works well..
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RE: OpenOffice.org forsakes Oracle, forms new foundation and fork
zeke123 28th Sep 2010
@Rahul Mulchandani

Rigid ideology? What are you babbling about?
There is a system in place through the licenses which allows code to be free and used by others.
Many people dont trust Oracle and companies dont want to contribute to a community project controlled by one company, therefore they have taken that free code and started their own.
I have no idea how ideology comes into play in your brain but the biggest companies in the world like IBM and Intel work very well with FLOSS.
IBM's project Eclipse didnt take off until they created their foundation so it wouldnt just be their project and got more companies to join.

Youre knowledge is weak, you mix up terms and analogies, frankly you seem clueless.

Once you get out of middle school, maybe youll learn more.
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RE: OpenOffice.org forsakes Oracle, forms new foundation and fork
ItsTheBottomLine 28th Sep 2010
@zeke123 I rest my case. - Thank you
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RE: OpenOffice.org forsakes Oracle, forms new foundation and fork
PlayFair 28th Sep 2010
@ItsTheBottomLine

Ha ha ha ha ha. Awesome.
0 Votes
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FOSS or Paid? Are things either big or red?
rarsa 28th Sep 2010
@Rahul Mulchandani

I wish you knew more about FOSS. FOSS and commercial are not opposites. The "F" refers to freedom.

The contrast is "FOSS or Proprietary". Making the wrong comparison shows that we (advocate) still have a long way to go to ensure people understand FOSS along with all its benefits.
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Freedom of what?
Stan57 28th Sep 2010
@rarsa
Freedom of what? What cant i do that i need to do or want to do with the software and OS i use?
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RE: OpenOffice.org forsakes Oracle, forms new foundation and fork
rarsa 29th Sep 2010
@stan

I don't know what you use your computer for, so I don't know how that freedom benefits you directly.

Here are some examples:
Freedom to use your data as you see fit (No proprietary formats)
Freedom to use the application as you see fit
Freedom to share your knowledge to improve it
Freedom to learn from it if you are so inclined

Actually the list is too long. If you google you may find more.
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Some FOSS freedoms that I enjoy...
mrgoose Updated - 14th Oct 2010
@stan57
Good question. Here are some free doms that have saved my business a lot of hard-earned cash - not to mention the free dom from hassle and aggravation.

1. I am free to copy and distribute free open source software (FOSS) as I wish.

2. This means I am free to make copies and give them free ly to students, customers etc.

3. I am also free to make derivative works if I wish. For example, we have created our own Ubuntu variant, called "Goosebuntu". This is now astonishingly easy, using a program called Remastersys. Our own in-house "distro" contains all the software we need, but none of the bloatware that dogs Windows users. It makes setting up a new PC very quick and easy.

4. We are free to distribute our "distro" as we please. We frequently do so on a bootable DVD or USB stick.

5. We are free to deploy this "distro" along with any other FOSS, on as many PC's as we like, without worrying about draconian licensing restrictions or fear of prosecution for theft of intellectual property.

6. We also have a number of PC's, that are more than 10 years old, as do a number of my colleagues. These machines are perfectly serviceable. However, there are no currently supported versions of Windows that will run on them. But there are versions of Linux that will, e.g. Puppy. Thus FOSS gives my business the free dom to use older hardware whilst keeping landfill sites free from our unnecessary toxic waste.

7. We are free to access and use our data on whatever hardware we please, without having to pay what amounts to a tax to a large foreign corporation.

8. Since dumping Microsoft products nearly four years ago, we have remained 100% free from viruses, worms, Trojans, keyloggers, spyware, adware and all the other malware that seems to plague Windows users.

9. We are free from the layer-upon-layer of resource-hogging anti-fungus software that Windows users seem to need in order to protect themselves.

10. We are free from "reauthentication". That is, we free from being forced to inform a foreign corporation in a foreign jurisdiction every time we change a piece of hardware inside one of our PC's.

11. We are free from corporate spyware, such as Sony's infamous CD copy protection rootkit or Microsoft's disingenuously titled "Windows Genuine Advantage". Open source means that the source code of all the software we use is open to public scrutiny, whereas all sorts of nasties can be placed into closed-source proprietary software.

12. All the software we use on all our PC's is 100% free from financial cost.

I see the word "freetard" bandied about on these forums. Presumably this is an amusing play on the words "free" and "retard"? I can only assume this word "freetard" is used in the same way that very tall people are sometimes playfully referred to as "titch". After all, what is retarded about refusing to pay large American IT corporations for products that have incredibly restrictive licensing that prevents us from deploying them as we wish, that pose the risk of repeated malware or corporate spyware intrusions and that will not run on a lot of our hardware anyway?

References:-


Vista woes might lead us to better things
http://www.garfnet.org.uk/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=66&Itemid=16

Remastersys
http://www.geekconnection.org/remastersys/

Sony CD copy-protection scandal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_CD_copy_protection_scandal

Microsoft admits WGA phones home
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/09/ms_wga_phones_home/

A ten piece cybercafe for thirty quid?
http://www.deoss.org/positive/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=42&Itemid=43
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What Are You Talking About?
CFWhitman 30th Sep 2010
@Rahul Mulchandani
This split was done because Oracle is hardly doing anything to promote further development of OpenOffice.org, not because of ideological concerns. Whenever a group or company lets a project whither or makes a decision that means the death of the project, something like this happens, and the new project very quickly becomes the main project.

This fork is basically the revival of OpenOffice.org as LibreOffice. LibreOffice is now the main project. Probably within a year LibreOffice will be in every new distribution of Linux to come out and OpenOffice.org will be nowhere to be seen. It happened with XFree86 being replaced by Xorg. It happened with cdrecord being replaced by cdrtools. These projects were part of underlying infrastructure that most end users never deal with directly, so they are lower profile, but the same thing will happen with OpenOffice/LibreOffice.
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How the Oracle/Sun deal has panned out so far..
daftkey 28th Sep 2010
Oracle: "We're buying Sun. We see a lot of value in Java, Solaris, and the Sun hardware platform."
Freetards: "Oh no - they're going to ruin MySQL and OpenOffice!"
Oracle: "We're bringing Solaris development back in-house, and we're going to leverage Java technology on Sun's hardware".
Freetards: "But Oracle has big plans for MySQL and OpenOffice - to kill them. What will we do?"
Oracle: "We will make a play for the Virtualization market with Sun's VirtualBox technology."

--- And that brings us to today's article:
Freetards: "We're taking our ball and going home!"
Oracle: "Ball?! We were playing checkers!"
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RE: OpenOffice.org forsakes Oracle, forms new foundation and fork
tripolitan 28th Sep 2010
@daftkey Kudos to the "freetards" they were right all along.
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RE: OpenOffice.org forsakes Oracle, forms new foundation and fork
ItsTheBottomLine 28th Sep 2010
@daftkey LOL
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So by calling us Freetards, the statements are wrong?
rarsa 28th Sep 2010
@daftkey :
All the sentences you wrote are accurate.

They're going to ruin MySQL and OpenOffice!"
"But Oracle has big plans for MySQL and OpenOffice - to kill them. What will we do?"
"We're taking our ball and going home!"

Why do you think that by labeling them as "Freetard" make them wrong? On the contrary, using that term reflects more on your (lack of) intelect and rational arguments.

If Oracle wants to play checkers, that's OK. Too bad FLOSS is played with a ball. They can keep the checkers.
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Cart vs. the Horse..
daftkey 28th Sep 2010
@rarsa -

"Why do you think that by labeling them as "Freetard" make them wrong?"

They are not wrong because they are freetards. They are freetards because they are wrong.

Ever since Oracle bought Sun, FLOSS advocates have been barking up the wrong tree as to what open source projects Oracle really sees value in, and what projects are just a tick on a list. OpenOffice and MySQL are both "also rans" on Sun's balance sheet - hence why there really hasn't been any energy spent by Oracle on either promoting or winding down these projects.

Now Java, Solaris, VirtualBox, SPARC - those are technologies that Sun owned that have some kind of value to Oracle. Hell, Oracle was putting a lot of hours into these technologies before the acquisition.

If you are an Open Source advocate and you are concerned about any of the "truly valuable" technologies that Oracle has acquired, then congratulations - you have risen above the "freetard" label.

If you're still skwawking about how Oracle is killing OpenOffice and MySQL and pitchforking babies and creating doom and gloom to otherwise insignificant open source projects, welcome to the short bus.
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niceb blog
nitinkhare246 20th Mar
thesis writing service
I really don???t think anyone has put it that way before!. Your blog is definitely worth a read if anyone visit it with need. I???m lucky I came here because now I???ve got something useful here.

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