Pro tip: If you're trying to raise awareness of an issue that's important to you, don't lard up your exposition with sarcasm, insider references and incomprehensible innuendo. If all you manage to communicate is that you're unhappy, people may feel sorry for you but they won't know why.
Say what you mean in plain language; explain the issues and why they matter, and let your readers come to their own conclusions.
This exactly sums up my read of this. I have no idea what is going on but it appears to impact a thing I use in my nextcloud so I should possibly care, but damned if I have any idea what is going on here.
- LibreOfficeOnLine (LOOL) was created within The Document Foundation (TDF) but largely developed by Collabora. It was source only and suggested users pay a company to host for them.
- Some within TDF wanted to offer LOOL as a binary offering.
- Collabora moved their contributions to Collabora Online, which they controlled.
- LOOL was archived.
- More recently, LOOL was revived
- Collabora is pissed
- Collabora gets booted from TDF
I suppose this is a fundamental issue with the model of a foundation "owning" a product but a separate for profit company doing all the work. There's always going to be some issue that the two sides disagree on (in this case, how the free version is distributed). The foundation then either has to give in*, and become irrelevant or stand up for their own position, in which case the company is basically forced to pull out their co-operation. It seems unlikely that TDF will be able to make any product progress, and I bet in a few years collabora gets what they want and returns to the fold. TDF will either be cowed forever or this situation will just repeat on the next conflict.
* Like with OpenAI, where the for-benefit part eventually capitulated and became an vestigial organ of a for-profit business.
I wish we would admit that you can't have it all. You can't have a product that is open source with neutral foundation governance and also have that same product be de facto proprietary. People have been pushing this bait-and-switch business model for too long.
As somebody else pointed out, I read the entire article and still can't figure out what the author is actually talking about. That said, this sounds an awful lot like the reddit moderator problem: when you rely on unpaid volunteers, they become activist crusaders.
Apparently TDF wanted to host LibreOffice Online for free, when it had previously been a source-only project. Collabora didn't like that as they did 95% of the development and wanted to be able to sell support for their own version, but they didn't want to be competing against TDF's version at the same time.
I can understand Collabora not being jazzed about it, but is there anything in the license that would prevent a third party who is neither Collabora nor TDF from doing the same? I mean, it's one Dockerfile away from anyone doing it, right? May as well be TDF who distributes an official binary.
This is yet another negative article with LiberOffice/TDF at the centre of it (this time with Collabora freely dragging themselves into the muck). This after attacks on OnlyOffice and OpenOffice for, from a relatively external perspective, "existing as competition".
I appreciate that for those "in the trenches" this may be a rallying cry or a shot across the bow, but for the rest of us it is indicating that we keep the whole thing - LibreOffice and Collabora - at arms length. Which is a shame because I've recommended both to people in the past, as well as happily using both at various points myself.
I'm sure there's a reason for the blog post, and the dude name checks himself so I'm sure he's important. But i have no idea what he's on about other than he's mad.
Pro tip: If you're trying to raise awareness of an issue that's important to you, don't lard up your exposition with sarcasm, insider references and incomprehensible innuendo. If all you manage to communicate is that you're unhappy, people may feel sorry for you but they won't know why.
Say what you mean in plain language; explain the issues and why they matter, and let your readers come to their own conclusions.
> people may feel sorry for you but they won't know why.
Or worse, they'll just think you're a jerk and not feel sorry for you.
This exactly sums up my read of this. I have no idea what is going on but it appears to impact a thing I use in my nextcloud so I should possibly care, but damned if I have any idea what is going on here.
OK here's my understanding:
- LibreOfficeOnLine (LOOL) was created within The Document Foundation (TDF) but largely developed by Collabora. It was source only and suggested users pay a company to host for them.
- Some within TDF wanted to offer LOOL as a binary offering.
- Collabora moved their contributions to Collabora Online, which they controlled.
- LOOL was archived.
- More recently, LOOL was revived
- Collabora is pissed
- Collabora gets booted from TDF
I suppose this is a fundamental issue with the model of a foundation "owning" a product but a separate for profit company doing all the work. There's always going to be some issue that the two sides disagree on (in this case, how the free version is distributed). The foundation then either has to give in*, and become irrelevant or stand up for their own position, in which case the company is basically forced to pull out their co-operation. It seems unlikely that TDF will be able to make any product progress, and I bet in a few years collabora gets what they want and returns to the fold. TDF will either be cowed forever or this situation will just repeat on the next conflict.
* Like with OpenAI, where the for-benefit part eventually capitulated and became an vestigial organ of a for-profit business.
Interestingly, the latest board minutes has a redacted section about a legal situation?
> [REDACTED: 43 lines of discussion about the current legal situation]
https://community.documentfoundation.org/t/board-of-director...
I wish we would admit that you can't have it all. You can't have a product that is open source with neutral foundation governance and also have that same product be de facto proprietary. People have been pushing this bait-and-switch business model for too long.
Conversely, I feel like a company with a cracker jack support team to match their sales team could profitably sell support for ALSA if they wanted to.
As somebody else pointed out, I read the entire article and still can't figure out what the author is actually talking about. That said, this sounds an awful lot like the reddit moderator problem: when you rely on unpaid volunteers, they become activist crusaders.
I'm assuming this is related to the previous drama back in 2020:
https://lwn.net/Articles/833233/
Apparently TDF wanted to host LibreOffice Online for free, when it had previously been a source-only project. Collabora didn't like that as they did 95% of the development and wanted to be able to sell support for their own version, but they didn't want to be competing against TDF's version at the same time.
I can understand Collabora not being jazzed about it, but is there anything in the license that would prevent a third party who is neither Collabora nor TDF from doing the same? I mean, it's one Dockerfile away from anyone doing it, right? May as well be TDF who distributes an official binary.
I don't think so, I think it's more about TDF considering their involvement at that point a conflict of interest.
Is there any other article that actually details what is going on? I feel whiplash from reading this right after the Ruby Central fiasco.
This is ironic timing given the OnlyOffice/Euro-Office drama https://www.heise.de/en/news/Euro-Office-OnlyOffice-accuses-...
This is yet another negative article with LiberOffice/TDF at the centre of it (this time with Collabora freely dragging themselves into the muck). This after attacks on OnlyOffice and OpenOffice for, from a relatively external perspective, "existing as competition".
I appreciate that for those "in the trenches" this may be a rallying cry or a shot across the bow, but for the rest of us it is indicating that we keep the whole thing - LibreOffice and Collabora - at arms length. Which is a shame because I've recommended both to people in the past, as well as happily using both at various points myself.
Haha, imagine it Apache would merge LibreOffice back to OpenOffice, and developers also switched. Would be the circle of the decade.
On a different note, this industry used to have so much more fun - just solving puzzles to herd bits - before it was flooded by politics.
I'm sure there's a reason for the blog post, and the dude name checks himself so I'm sure he's important. But i have no idea what he's on about other than he's mad.
He's a longtime OpenOffice/LibreOffice and now, I guess, CollabraOffice contributor.
https://community.documentfoundation.org/c/board-discuss/26
Looks like there is rebellion in the forums...