Re: What is GNOME office?

[bruce perens com (Bruce Perens)]

From: Sam TH <sam uchicago edu>
> If Sun still has the copyright, they could continue to release
> OO as a GPL app, but use that code in other, closed source applications.

Right. IMO this is no worse than code with BSD or NPL licensing,
and many people don't have a problem working on that. I admit to
being more comfortable with the GPL myself.

> As far as I can tell, Sun plans to give away StarOffice, and sell
> StarPortal.

I don't think the ASP model for office suites has much going for it once
there's a good free office suite. Sun has probably realized this by now.
Certainly we aren't seeing Corel push its Java WordPerfect Office any
longer.

> 1) Providing their release of StarOffice, linked with closed
> source additional libraries, as they plan to do. See the KDE=20
> fiasco.

Dual copyrights are possible. They can keep the copyright to their
own thread of the software and give away a copyright.

> If tommorow the source for Solaris was available under the GPL
> and Scott Macneally donated his life savings 

I seem to remember that they paid a large amount for StarDivision,
possibly even as much as Scott's personal holdings :-)

Sure, I am not asking you to trust them as much as FSF.

From: Maciej Stachowiak <mjs eazel com>
> I think Sun ought to be talking to the Board of Directors at this
> point, and the Board is moving in that direction.

Right. If the recommendation I sent the board won't satisfy some
developers, what do you think we should change?

	Thanks

	Bruce