Did they beat Oracle to the punch or go off half-cocked here?
What many claim is the worlds most popular open source software, OpenOffice, delivered a preemptive blow to Oracle today. They have changed the name of OpenOffice.org to The Document Foundation. While they have invited Oracle to become a member of the foundation as the successor to Sun, they have also made it clear that they will be one of many in a true “meritocratic organization”. Further since Oracle evidently owns the openoffice.org domain, the group is prepared to change the name of the suite to LibreOffice.
This move by some of the leaders of the openoffice.org community raises lots of questions.
1. What prompted it? My guess is they weren’t going to wait around and be the next victim of Oracle and Mad Larry’s assault on OSS. They moved at their own time, rather than being forced and while they had some leverage.
2. Is this just a fork of OpenOffice? I don’t know, could be. Looking at the people involved, there are certainly some of the leaders of the community involved, but it has a very heavy European and especially German leadership. This is pure speculation on my part, but it looks like this coup d’etat was lead by folks on the right side of the pond.
3. Does this mean that a group here in North America could still continue under the OpenOffice.org banner with the backing of Oracle? In the immortal words of Curly of the Three Stooges, “why certainly”. Of course it would be sort of be like the Vichy French government that was a puppet for the Nazis, to some at least anyway.
4. What was Oracle going to do to OpenOffice.org? My guess is absolutely nothing. I think they think of it as a nice thorn in the side of Microsoft and for that reason alone Larry would keep it around. But I don’t think they would put big money or time into continuing to see it grow. They don’t see a path to profits and in Oracle World, no profits, no resources.
It appears that several large Linux-Open Source proponent companies like Red Hat, Google (no surprise that they would take a shot at Oracle now) and Novell have expressed support for the move. Clearly the open source community at large is ready to move beyond Oracle and not allow themselves to be hurt by Oracle’s love-hate relationship with OSS.
On the other hand, was this move necessary? I don’t have all the behind the scenes dirt, but it does appear a little pre-mature. Was Oracle making noises or any type of moves that would indicate anything was a foot? If you know, please comment.
What can Oracle do now? I think they have some serious work ahead of them to mend fences and win back the trust and support of the open source community. They could make a serious step in that direction buy donating the openoffice.org name to the new Document Foundation. Otherwise, my bet is that we will see a further eroding of their relationship with the OSS community. This will most certainly have an effect on Java and its community support too.
The worst thing Oracle can do is try to fight this. Creating a schism in the OpenOffice.org world will only hurt OpenOffice.org and the millions of its users around the globe. Then again, maybe Oracle doesn’t care.
One thing is for sure. Right now Oracle is public enemy number 1 in the open source world.
