TDF Community Blog

The Internet, June 1st, 2011 – The Document Foundation constitutes a global team of hundreds of developers working together to improve the LibreOffice product for the benefit of all users. We are governed by an open, and meritocratic community headed by a diverse interim Steering Committee, and a vendor neutral Engineering Steering Committee overseeing development.

Today we welcome Oracle’s donation of code that has previously been proprietary to the Apache Software Foundation, it is great to see key user features released in a form that can be included into LibreOffice.

The Document Foundation would welcome the reuniting of the OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice projects into a single community of equals in the wake of the departure of Oracle. The step Oracle has taken today was no doubt taken in good faith, but does not appear to directly achieve this goal. The Apache community, which we respect enormously, has very different expectations and norms – licensing, membership and more – to the existing OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice projects. We regret the missed opportunity but are committed to working with all active community members to devise the best possible future for LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org.

On the bright side, one benefit of this arrangement is the potential for future-proof licensing. The Apache License is compatible with both the LGPLv3+ and MPL licenses, allowing TDF future flexibility to move the entire codebase, to MPLv2 or future LGPL license versions. The Document Foundation believes that commercially-friendly, copy-left licensing provides the best path to constructive participation in, and growth of the project.

Thus, the event is neutral for The Document Foundation, which – as always – remains open to every company, individual or foundation that wishes to participate in co-development. There has never been a better time to get involved and advance the state of the art in free software office suites.

TDF is therefore willing to start talking with Apache Software Foundation, following the email from ASF President Jim Jagielski, who is anticipating frequent contacts between the Apache Software Foundation and The Document Foundation over the next few months. We all want to offer corporate and individual users worldwide the best free office suite for enterprise and personal productivity.

Finally, TDF continue executing on our time-based release plan for LibreOffice 3.4.0, due out this week, while continuing work on our bug fix release train, with 3.4.1 due in a months time, as well as ongoing feature development for our 3.5 release.

About The Document Foundation

The Document Foundation has the mission of facilitating the evolution of the OOo Community into an open, meritocratic and democratic organization. An independent Foundation is a better reflection of the values of our contributors, users and supporters, and will enable a more inclusive, effective, efficient and transparent community. TDF will protect past investments by building on the achievements of the first decade, will encourage wide participation within the community, and will co-ordinate activity across the community.

Media Contacts for TDF

Florian Effenberger (Germany)
Mobile: +49 151 14424108 – E-mail: floeff@documentfoundation.org
Olivier Hallot (Brazil)
Mobile: +55 21 88228812 – E-mail: olivier.hallot@documentfoundation.org
Charles H. Schulz (France)
Mobile: +33 6 98655424 – E-mail: charles.schulz@documentfoundation.org
Italo Vignoli (Italy)
Mobile: +39 348 5653829 – E-mail: italo.vignoli@documentfoundation.org

I have not been subscribed to the OpenOffice.org marketing list for months, but due to Louis’ recent Cc, I was made aware of the discussion going on — so, as a representative of TDF, but also as someone for whom personally the community means a lot, let me say a few words.

I indeed see the current situation as an ideal basis for uniting things. The diversity the Community is in now doesn’t help anyone. If you now think we, TDF, are happy and get satisfaction out of the current situation, you are terribly wrong. Even if we expected something like that to happen, our intention was to safeguard the project from this eventuality, not to profit from it.

We all have similar goals: a free office suite, available to everyone. So let’s not discuss about the past, about what has happened and about the reasons that led to this, but rather focus on the future.

I want to openly repeat our invitation to everyone to join The Document Foundation and the LibreOffice Community. Why do I think that we are the right place to continue the work?

In yesterday’s blog post, we summed up where we stand, and reading it will help to understand the current situation:

http://blog.documentfoundation.org/2011/05/24/updates-on-the-foundation/

1. We are vendor neutral. I am sorry that I have to object to Louis’ statement of us being a proxy for Microsoft — nothing can be further from the truth. I must confess, that by statements like these, I feel even personally insulted. I spend many hours per day on a pure volunteer basis, and if anyone can point on those of my doings that are proxying for Microsoft, I would be interested to hear them. Otherwise, I’ll ask to stop spreading those wrong assumptions — as they are simply that: wrong.

2. We have a strong legal backing, not only by the German nonprofit “Freies Office Deutschland e.V.”, but also by the Software in the Public Interest (SPI), and we are on track with establishing the Foundation as a legal entity. Even right now, we have all options needed for dealing with legal aspects, accepting and spending money. We already can and do maintain trademarks, brands and other assets.

3. We have an independent infrastructure that works and is not controlled by nor depends on a single entity. In addition, as we are not using a fixed web framework, we are very flexible in what we do.

4. We have not only gained a lot of momentum, but also a strong developer base of more than 200 volunteers, amongst them 40 who contribute on a very regular basis. Yes, of course, any contribution corporations with paid developers do are highly welcome and help a lot — but already right now, we are in a status where we could drive the project without them, if the worst case would occur. This is something we never managed to achieve in ten years’ of OpenOffice.org.

When I first read the Oracle announcement from April, talking about an independent, noncommercial entity, my first thoughts were — and still are — “this is exactly what TDF is doing”. I have seen proposals of setting up another foundation, or moving to an existing foundation that is not TDF. Honestly, this does not make very much sense to me. It would again lead to a diversity, would require many efforts, and would continue to irritate the market at large.

Why reinvent the wheel? OpenOffice.org is already very special in many of its processes. Having it under the umbrella of another, existing entity, would require lots of changes to fit in there. TDF has, from the very beginning, been shaped as a new entity with processes that fit to what we have accomplished the last years. We changed things that didn’t work, and improved things that do work — isn’t this the best basis to build on? Let’s not waste energy in once again trying to fit under an umbrella, but rather work jointly together on our future.

I am not saying that TDF does everything right and 100% perfect. We are giving our best, and I think we do a fairly good job. I’ve seen comments that TDF is missing big corporate support, and that the whole ecosystem is at risk. Again, I consider this terribly wrong. Of course, we would love to have much more support from corporations already, but building this up needs time, requires trust and confidence, and after all, support is growing rapidly. If anyone thinks by setting up a new foundation or by doing a few phone calls you can get big corporate support, I must say that almost sounds illusionary. And does it really make sense that in the future, two entities will try that out? Wouldn’t it be much better to speak united, with one voice?

In my letter of resignation last October (http://www.mail-archive.com/dev@marketing.openoffice.org/msg11691.html), I’ve said that I am looking forward to talking again about options to cooperate. I feel that time has come now.

So, I would be really interested of what actually prevents from cooperating with TDF, and uniting once again. Are there any valid reasons? Let’s leave out what happened in the past — a lot of bad words have been said, but digging into that does not help.

What compelling reasons are there to not work together again, in one Community?

TDF is there, TDF is open, and to me, it would be the ideal home of a united Community. The decision about that requires no leader, but you, anyone of you, can make it on your own.

Our future can be bright. Let’s make it together.