Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon [LWN.net]

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 17, 2012 0:44 UTC (Thu) by rcweir (guest, #48888)
In reply to: Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon by JoeBuck
Parent article: Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

And many (most in fact) of the Apache OpenOffice folks used to be OpenOffice.org people. So your argument fails to really get started.

But I'm still trying to grok your conspiracy theory. When Apache OpenOffice first started, the theory was that IBM wanted to suck in free OpenOffice code so we could integrate that with our proprietary Symphony. They heory was that IBM would not contribute any code or developers. We were just there to take and hoard.

Then, after IBM put in a bunch of developers to work on Apache OpenOffice, the conspiracy theory changed from IBM not doing anything, to IBM was to do much. We were going to dominate and control the project. But that didn't turn out to be true either.

And then now, when we end the fork and contribute the Symphony code, what is the new conspiracy theory? That we're trying to get others to develop Symphony for us? Really? Is that the best you can think of? Take a few more days and think it over. I know that we'll be adding more developers to the Apache project, so you might want to spin the FUD in exactly the opposite direction, especially if you want to keep a few steps ahead of reality.

to post comments

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 17, 2012 2:50 UTC (Thu) by SEJeff (guest, #51588) [Link] (7 responses)

Curious... You say we as though you are a member of the Symphony team yet I didn't see an obvious link. Are you an IBM employee? If so, do you work on Symphony? Oracle donating OO.o to Apache was (imo) sheerly political. Not to say there isn't merit in working on open source code or contributing proprietary code as open source, but it does seem like LO has a lot more traction and development effort in comparison to AOO.

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 17, 2012 10:30 UTC (Thu) by thumperward (guest, #34368) [Link]

To be fair to IBM, I'm not sure it was "purely political". The way things have panned out is unfortunate, and IBM could certainly have handled things better, but there are certainly reasons for it.

I think the real sticking point here was that IBM, being IBM, wanted to preserve the right to support their existing customers under exactly the same terms. Previously, they licensed the code from Sun / Oracle, and as such could do what they wanted with it. When Oracle ditched OOo, IBM were left in the position of either buying the copyright outright or else somehow persuading Oracle to release the code under a sufficiently liberal license to continue to allow IBM to ship code minus any source to their own clients. Swapping out an "under license from Oracle Corp" note for an Apache license isn't very disruptive, but switching to the MPL may have been because of its weak copyleft.

Assuming that this is the case (rcweir is probably the one here with the most information on exactly what happened), I'm sure the larger community would have been okay with it if IBM had been up-front about it. Unfortunately, they instead decided to astroturf it by using Apache as a proxy.

But what's done is done. Short of another huge relicensing drive from LibreOffice, there are going to be two code bases for the foreseeable future. Due to owning the trademark and, crucially, the domain name, AOO is going to continue to attract significant interest from the wider public, but so did Netscape for years while Mozilla and later Firefox emerged. That may or may not change in the years to come. The history of competing liberally-licensed and copyleft seems to suggest that the majority of independent contributors will strongly favour the copyleft code base, so I doubt LibreOffice is going to go away. Meanwhile, IBM has done the free software community a great deal of good by orchestrating the release of such a massive amount of code.

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 17, 2012 10:56 UTC (Thu) by Trelane (guest, #56877) [Link]

rweir is presumably Rob Weir (http://www.robweir.com/blog/) an IBM employee.

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 17, 2012 14:40 UTC (Thu) by jensend (guest, #1385) [Link] (4 responses)

No offense, but if you don't know who Rob Weir (Grand Poobah of AOO) is, your understanding of what's happened with OOo/LO/AOO is pretty seriously incomplete, and trying to get into debates with him or anyone else who's actually involved without becoming better informed first would be a waste of everyone's time.

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 17, 2012 15:05 UTC (Thu) by SEJeff (guest, #51588) [Link] (3 responses)

No offense, but don't be a dick. I was asking the user who clearly had an attachment to AOO to add a disclaimer of their affiliation. I can google as well as anyone but that doesn't mean lwn user rweir is the same person of AOO.

It might be biased, but I do keep up with Michael Meeks's blog (head of LO more or less) and don't really care either way so long as the community ends up with a quality OSS office suite.

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 17, 2012 17:18 UTC (Thu) by jensend (guest, #1385) [Link] (2 responses)

Excuse me, there's no reason to start name-calling and personal attacks. I was not being impolite in any way.

I wasn't asking you to google his name. I was saying that if you had to google to find out who he was, there's little point trying to debate these people about it until you understand the situation better. It's impossible to have a clear picture of this without knowing about the people involved; a lot of how this whole thing has played out is due to the personal interactions between developers and the bad blood that has ensued. There have been dozens of turning points at which people could have found ways to cooperate more, for the better interest of all parties involved, but instead ended up slinging mud, epithets, and incivilities and going their separate ways.

I'm not placing blame on any one party. There are real causes for disagreement, negotiation and coming to workable agreements can be very hard tasks, and these people are engineers, not trained diplomats, so perhaps sometimes nobody should be blamed for not finding how to cooperate. In the cases where there really is blame to be assigned, though I'd guess that Weir has hurt his own cause more than most other folks, I for one am not in a position to judge.

When you talk to people about the split, they will talk about licenses and corporate interests and committer counts and consumer choice and unity. If you aren't aware of a little more of the background you're missing a lot of subtext, and if you debate these people about it you'll just be talking past each other.

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 17, 2012 19:43 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (1 responses)

As I see it:

SEJeff is clearly curious and asks for more information. You used nice words to say that he should stay out of the discussion (though "waste of everyones time" is not really nice). This resulted in a more emotional reaction.

Seems bit like tit for tat game. Suggest both just stop.

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 18, 2012 0:44 UTC (Fri) by jensend (guest, #1385) [Link]

I certainly wasn't saying he should stay out of the discussion, I was saying he shouldn't try to debate AOO/Symphony devs about it, especially not Rob Weir. If someone really wants to try their hand at convincing the Grand Poobah of AOO that Oracle, IBM, etc really should have acquiesed to TDF in the first place, they'd better have a pretty darn good hand.

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 17, 2012 11:01 UTC (Thu) by Trelane (guest, #56877) [Link] (42 responses)

Since you're clearly a subject matter expert, what would you describe IBM's motivation for creating *Apache* OpenOffice instead of collaborating with the already-extant LibreOffice?

Perhaps it's better to, instead of describing what you believe someone believes the underlying motivations were, describe what you know to be the underlying motivations. :)

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 17, 2012 12:08 UTC (Thu) by rcweir (guest, #48888) [Link] (38 responses)

I gave a presentation a few weeks ago explaining our motivation for investing in OpenOffice. You can view it here:

http://plugfest.opendocsociety.org/lib/exe/fetch.php?medi...

I'm not going to go into details about why Apache was favored over LO other than to say it was not a decision based on only a single factor. To go into the full analysis would necessarily come off looking like I was beating up on LibreOffice and The Document Foundation, and I'm not going to do that.

There are probably over 1 billion people out there who need office applications. It is absurd to think that a single vendor, Microsoft, is producing the solution that is optimal for everyone. It is equally absurd to think that a single open source suite is optimal for everyone. There was a time, not too long ago, when we had choice in this market, and not just choice from 2 or 3 alternatives. We had true choice. You might want to refresh your memory here: http://www.robweir.com/blog/2010/05/odf-5-years.html

I'd recommend this TED Talk as well, which is relevant to consumer choice and the non0optimality of thinking that a single variety will satisfy everyone: http://www.ted.com/talk/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sau...

This should not be about creating a single editor that is good for 1 billion people for all situations. The and combining efforts to create a massive hoard effort that creates the single one monster application that does it all. If I suggested that a single programmers editor should suit everyone (or even a single programming language) or a single Linux GUI should be created and existing efforts combined, I'd be laughed out of the room. We don't do that anywhere else in industry, so why should we do it here?

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 17, 2012 12:40 UTC (Thu) by Thanatopsis (guest, #14019) [Link]

Looks like they moved Malcolm's talk.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/malcolm_gladwell_on_spag...

should work.

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 17, 2012 13:24 UTC (Thu) by keithcu (guest, #58738) [Link] (4 responses)

I read your presentation. It was mostly about features in code that already existed. That is far from a justification for why you should invest in AOO. In fact, it is completely irrelevant to the topic.

At some point you will need to make an accounting for why you didn't join LibreOffice right from the start. When I add up all the pluses and minuses, it isn't even a close call, so I think it will be useful to document your thinking so that others can learn from it.

It is not absurd to think that you could have joined LibreOffice. It only still sounds absurd because you never gave it enough thought. Instead of helping LibreOffice, you are hurting it. You plan is as absurd as arguing you are going to fork the Linux kernel.

No one is suggesting we never have multiple versions of code. Just in this instance, with this 10M lines of code and given the fact that LibreOffice had just built everything you need and has a bigger and better team. You tend to justify your decisions in this situation by comparing it to other hypothetical situations. No one here is arguing for one GUI toolkit. You argue straw men rather than facts.

I wrote down a list of reasons why this Apache OpenOffice plan is a bad idea:
http://keithcu.com/wordpress/?p=2567

In general, there are a lot of naive people who don't understand what is going on, and so getting the facts out can help minimize the damage. IBM could have come up with a much better plan. Brains != common sense

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 17, 2012 22:41 UTC (Thu) by ingwa (guest, #71149) [Link] (3 responses)

I'm sorry to say this, but this is exactly what I was talking about in my original note.

IBM wants the Apache License, the LibreOffice people can only accept MPL/(L)GPL. Right there is enough reason for them not to join the LibreOffice project. And if I may add a personal reflection, I would also be reluctant to join a project whose members have done nothing but trash talking me.

Your comment reeks of a sense of entitlement. You try to tell IBM that you know their motivations better than they do. Your sentence "you never gave it enough thought" shows that clearly. And "Instead of helping LibreOffice, you are hurting it" is another gem. What makes you think they care about LibreOffice? There seems to be some collective idea that people are out to hurt the LO project. I have no proof in any direction but I sincerely doubt it.

What I really wonder is why you think you have the right to comment the way you do about the other project. Live and let live is a cliché, but actually a good way to lead your life. Especially since we are all part of the bigger ODF community. The hostility that is shown in this comment and other similar writings is hurting the community much more. Instead of infighting we should join our forces in the ODF world.

Finally, may I suggest that "the community" is not only comprised of the LO developers? I know several other communities and part of the former OOo community is now working on LO; part of it is working on AOO. The "we are the community and you need to work for us" sentiment needs to stop. It is arrogant and damages the real community.

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 18, 2012 0:02 UTC (Fri) by ewan (guest, #5533) [Link] (1 responses)

"IBM wants the Apache License"

OK, but why? If IBM wanted the Apache licence so they could keep going with proprietary Symphony, that would make sense. It doesn't matter whether I like it or not, it does makes sense. There's a clear argument there for why it would be in IBM's interest, if not anyone else's, to take the hit of having two separate forks of basically the same codebase.

But they're not keeping proprietary Symphony, they've just freed the lot. So, once again - what's the need to insist on an Apache licensed project?

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 18, 2012 0:25 UTC (Fri) by Trelane (guest, #56877) [Link]

> But they're not keeping proprietary Symphony, they've just freed the lot. So, once again - what's the need to insist on an Apache licensed project?

I think the answer at this point is perfectly clear. Rob's reluctance to even discuss the origins of the decision to go with Apache over other projects makes the intent even more explicit.

They release OOo under Apache so that proprietary forks can be made. Then they release Symphony under the Apache license so that proprietary forks of their proprietary application can be made. This is for one reason and one reason only.

Only a proprietary fork can contain a back door that can be used for spying on users. Who would want to read all Symphony ODT documents badly enough for super-secret meetings with IBM to start all these wheels a-turning?

I'll connect the dots for you:

Aliens. Want. To Read. Your. Email.

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 18, 2012 2:05 UTC (Fri) by keithcu (guest, #58738) [Link]

IBM's preference for the Apache license is a reason for the fork. Unfortunately, it is not a good reason. Bradley Kuhn has explained:
http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2011/06/01/open-office.html

I don't claim to know IBM's motivations for why they didn't join LO right from the beginning. However, when Rob uses the phrase above "absurd" when talking about working together in other situations, it suggests that he at least sort of thinks that joining LibreOffice was instinctively a bad idea. Some good ideas sound absurd until they are thought through more. His choice of words and analogies suggests motivations and that things weren't thought through.

There is evidence that the OO fork is hurting LibreOffice. Not many people talk about it or think about it, but it is there. At the very least, I can say that this AOO project causes stress for the LO team. Does stress not hurt?

I agree we should be working together. However, forks and social engineering can prevent that from happening. Being nice is helpful, but creating situations that allow people to work together is also very important. This discussion is about the latter. The pleasantries were first exchanged many months ago.

I didn't suggest that AOO needs to work "for" LO. I want them to work "with" not "for". Having worked in Microsoft Office, and spent a lot of time in OO/LO I can say it will take a lot of you. Firefox and the Linux kernel are good enough for basically everyone. LO / OO are not yet, and it needs a lot of help, and to work effectively and efficiently.

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 17, 2012 21:57 UTC (Thu) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359) [Link] (23 responses)

I liked the spaghetti talk - thanks.

When I try to apply the lessons back to office suites it doesn't suggest - to me - that we need multiple separate suites.
The difference is the gap between the raw components and the finished product. Each spaghetti source is made from the same general ingredients, with some careful selection, mixing, cooking etc.
However with an office suite there are multiple levels of abstraction between the system libraries (libc, widget library, etc) and the final product. Two independently developed office suites are likely to put a lot of effort into being much the same as everyone else before they have enough of a base to put their special-sauce on.

I think the variability you see in spaghetti sauce is more like the variability in skins that can all be put on the one core platform.
So if we had one group creating the core office engine (call them the tomato growers) that every can use, and then different groups taking components from that and mixing into the perfect office suite for tech-heads, or CEOs, or mobile or web or ...., then that might follow the spaghetti sauce model quite well.

Linux provides core functionality that others can wrap into desktop, or server, or mobile, or stable, or hackable or whatever distributions and that seems to work rather well. X11 provides core functionality that multiple widget sets can use. I wonder if the same thing could be done for office suites.

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 18, 2012 0:10 UTC (Fri) by rcweir (guest, #48888) [Link] (1 responses)

Neil, It might be worth glancing at the graphic I made on this blog post:

http://www.robweir.com/blog/2010/11/the-legacy-of-openoff...

As you see, OpenOffice.org acts as something like a "core" application that is widely modified and/or repackaged. In some cases it was simplified (OOo4Kids) and in some cases it was extended (EuroOffice).

Getting Apache OpenOffice to be more modular, to support even more differentiated derivatives is something I really want to see. However the ancient & haunted code does not make this very easy. So most 3rd party customization is currently done via extensions.

Ancient diversity graphics ...

Posted May 18, 2012 8:12 UTC (Fri) by mmeeks (subscriber, #56090) [Link]

I hesitate to get involved with this thread; however, I addressed some of the weaknesses in this apparent diversity of re-use graph by truncating the time-line to relevant / recent memory; ie. since 2010 - a while ago. That rather changes the picture. So for an alternative (now also out-of-date) graph see: http://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2011-11-18-graphs.html

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 18, 2012 8:11 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (4 responses)

As someone who contributed a lot on LWN to discussions about Sun OpenOffice, who uses LO, and has their name on the developer credits, I would take strong issue in "two independent suites are likely to put a lot of effort into being the same".

I am well known and on record as hating Word, and LO/OO writer by association (as a bit of a clone). So why do I use it? Because I feel I no longer have any choice. I'm a WordPerfect fan, and if I could get a paid-for copy that would run on my system (gentoo linux) I would buy it (if I could afford it, I'm currently unemployed :-(

And unfortunately, the feature that locks me in to WordPerfect is a feature that cannot be added to LO without *massive* engineering effort. Don't say "well, learn LO/OO better, then". That feature is also a *massive* *time* *saver* for me, and more experience with Word or Writer won't help. It's the feature that lets me look at a document - ANY document whether written by me or anyone else - and lets me work out, *in* *seconds*, WHY the document is doing what it's doing. How often have you had a document with odd formatting and you've been unable to fathom out why? That just doesn't happen in WordPerfect for me.

In case you haven't guessed that feature, it's called "reveal codes". I guess I could emulate it by dissassembling a Writer document and reading the raw html ...

Cheers,
Wol

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 18, 2012 16:45 UTC (Fri) by teknohog (subscriber, #70891) [Link]

I remember using reveal codes in WP back in the day. Now I just use LaTeX ;)

I imagine this could be one reason why few people want reveal codes in word processors any more. Those who like to think in code will use LaTeX and other markup systems. (Thus enabling things like generating reports from simulation runs, which is hard to imagine if you are stuck with a word processor.) There are intermediate solutions like LyX, which is a GUI frontend to LaTeX, but as such it is not comparable to what we call word processors.

Re: "Reveal Codes"

Posted May 20, 2012 4:12 UTC (Sun) by ldo (guest, #40946) [Link] (1 responses)

No modern word processor has a "reveal codes" feature. You know why? Because no modern word processor does its formatting by embedding formatting codes in the text stream.

I’ve hit this in my brief dalliances with WordPerfect, where you might be deleting text immediately after a run of, say, bold text, and you start deleting into the bold text, and because you have deleted the "turn bold off" code at the end of that run, suddenly all the text from that point on to the end of the document has turned bold.

No modern word processor suffers from this problem.

Re: "Reveal Codes"

Posted May 20, 2012 15:40 UTC (Sun) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

Microsoft Word does have this functionality.

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 21, 2012 16:04 UTC (Mon) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]

Actually since modern word processing formatting is done much the same way as html (some code soup + separate styling), there is no reason except for developer time that one could not inspect the formatting off an odf document the same way they can inspect a web page formatting in a modern browser like firefox via the style inspector.

In the past years, the html world stopped trailing word processing formatting and word processing is now trailing html world

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 18, 2012 18:08 UTC (Fri) by keithcu (guest, #58738) [Link] (15 responses)

Warning, the spaghetti talk is totally unrelated to the AOO / LO fork. People can already tweak LO: customizing the menus, toolbars and keystrokes, creating new templates, etc. These products are customizable at their core. To equate spaghetti sauce to 10Mloc of powerful code is to be highly confused.

Malcom Gladwell might have some good ideas, but they don't relate to this situation.

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 19, 2012 0:55 UTC (Sat) by chithanh (guest, #52801) [Link] (14 responses)

So tell me, how can you customize LO in order to restore old behaviour for empty spreadsheet cells:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=37860

If you can't, then the spaghetti talk applies.

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 19, 2012 14:43 UTC (Sat) by keithcu (guest, #58738) [Link] (13 responses)

There is so much customizability for free software that allows a user to create ODF documents. The fact that you can download the source alone greatly increases your ability to do your own thing, and yet the product itself allows you to create very rich documents, or read ones that others have made if you want. Have you spent time using these LO?

The bug discussion you cite is exactly the sort of situation that could take place in AOO as well. Your solution of separate teams won't fix your problems. Your best hope for good behavior overall is to get lots of good people working together where the collective wisdom and size gives you the resources to do the right thing. If programmers upset current users, angry emails and bug reports will come in. Sometimes it takes a while to add a feature, and yet do it in a way that doesn't upset people who are used to some aspect of the old behavior. But it will usually get there.

I again repeat that comparing LO to spaghetti sauce is dangerously wrong. Malcom Gladwell isn't incorrect, only those who try to compare it to a reason for the OO / LO fork. It is scary that someone important would make this comparison.

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 19, 2012 21:47 UTC (Sat) by chithanh (guest, #52801) [Link] (12 responses)

I don't claim that there needs to be more customizability. I just say that there is an audience for functionality beyond what LO offers.

Maybe AOO will follow LO in imitating Excel for the empty cell behaviour or not. I wouldn't be surprised for either outcome. But the important point is that it's only one decision of many, and this is very much the spaghetti sauce lesson: a "one size fits all" product can never be as successful as a variety of competing products.

I fully expect that AOO and LO are going to diverge. AOO will start integrating Lotus Symphony code and possibly become more "enterprisey". LO has demonstrated a web frontend and collaborative editing which show a path in direction of the cloud.

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 20, 2012 7:54 UTC (Sun) by keithcu (guest, #58738) [Link] (11 responses)

You claim there is an audience for different functionality beyond LO, but the evidence you presented of the LO bug doesn't support you. When I demonstrate why, you then just repeat your assertion as if it can still be true without your data to support it.

Your next argument is theoretical: that different teams will by definition diverge and therefore produce something that meets more people's needs. However, this idea is also flawed. What if someone wants a version with a mix of LO and OO functionality? Each place of divergence creates a potential for someone to become unhappy with either project. Instead of meeting more people's needs it can meet less. What you want is a version with the best work from everyone. You can work through these issues, adding options to allow for custom behaviors.

You also assume that both teams are healthy. What about the situation where one is a good, big team, and the other is new, small and floundering, mostly redoing the work of the older, bigger team, and never able to catch up? Would you not suggest in that situation those teams work together?

You continue not to realize that a codebase like LO is already deeply customizable. It has 10M of code which enable all manner of this. The whole point of this product from a user's perspective is to build custom documents. Every character you type and picture or formula you insert makes LO more personal. The best way to make it even more customizable is to add more code, not more teams.

You conclude by asserting new evidence for a good reason for divergence. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to ask such questions as whether LO wants more enterprise features like you imagine OO will add. Hint: here is a page from their wiki (http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Enterprise...)

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 20, 2012 10:01 UTC (Sun) by chithanh (guest, #52801) [Link] (10 responses)

Assume there was an office suite where the _only_ difference to LO was the behaviour from that bug. The audience would be those people who commented in the bug and complained about the change. Obviously, given the choice, they would use the other suite.

But that bug was only one example. The developers must make decisions all the time, and many have the possibility to make the software more palatable to one group and less palatable to another group of users. It is inevitable.

In the Apache meritocracy model, AOO will likely be dominated by IBM and their business partners, and TDF/LO is dominated by Linux distros. It seems preposterous to assume that the two won't diverge.

By "enterprisey" I do not mean incessantly integrating features that companies are assumed to desire or that IT professionals demand. I mean meeting the checklists of business deciders.

You claim that a version with the best work from everyone is desirable. I don't think it is even possible to create. Much like a spaghetti sauce that is after everybody's taste or a single Linux distro for everyone.

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 20, 2012 13:51 UTC (Sun) by keithcu (guest, #58738) [Link] (9 responses)

I don't really like your assumption of an office suite with only this one feature. I see it possible to add checkboxes in the options dialog to support features that are not enabled by default, or to enable different behaviors. There are lots of checkboxes which are useful to certain audiences.

Furthermore, the problem with generalizing is that you assume that you won't get a situation where users want half of the differences from one suite, and half of the differences from the other. Each difference decreases the likelihood that anyone will be happy. Either an idea is a good one, or it isn't.

The reason AOO and TDF/LO will diverge is because they have separate social structures. They could work through their issues. Both want better UIs, better DOCX support, etc. You should try to consider divergence, and multiple teams re-doing each other's work, as a bad thing rather than something to be celebrated.

Your distinction between the two sorts of enterprise features is nonsense.

If you can't understand the difference in customizability between LO and spaghetti sauce, you are highly confused.

I'll note you didn't respond to a number of my other points. When you consider that the LO team is better and larger, and can grab any changes from AOO, but not the reverse, it really puts into question the point of these separate trees. Anyway, you need to really focus on efficiency issues. This isn't about freedom. This isn't about whether anyone inside LibreOffice is complaining about wanting to create a new organization. When you strip away all your hypotheticals and look at the actual facts, the situation is a lot clearer.

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 20, 2012 15:37 UTC (Sun) by chithanh (guest, #52801) [Link] (8 responses)

> There are lots of checkboxes which are useful to certain audiences.

The assumption was only to show the point that LO cannot and will not satisfy everyone fully. There is no checkbox for the particular feature, and while maybe possible it seems not a priority to implement it.

> Furthermore, the problem with generalizing is that you assume that you won't get a situation where users want half of the differences from one suite, and half of the differences from the other. Each difference decreases the likelihood that anyone will be happy.

I never said that two office suites will satisfy everyone. I just said that (according to the spaghetti sauce example) they have the potential to satisfy more users than a single office suite.

> Either an idea is a good one, or it isn't.

False dichotomy.

> Your distinction between the two sorts of enterprise features is nonsense.

If that is true, then you have vastly more insight into business reality than I have.

> I'll note you didn't respond to a number of my other points. When you consider that the LO team is better and larger, and can grab any changes from AOO, but not the reverse, it really puts into question the point of these separate trees.

Sure they can. But will they follow each of AOO decisions? If there is a decision that makes AOO better for IBM's Windows customers, but makes it worse for everybody on Linux, do you really think that LO will grab this change?

> When you strip away all your hypotheticals and look at the actual facts, the situation is a lot clearer.

If you look at popular open source projects (Linux distros, desktop environments, text editors, programming languages, ...) you will see while superficially they seem to do the same - after all you can code Perl in vim running KDE on Debian as nicely as you can code Ruby in Emacs running LXDE on Slackware - there is a lot of diversity and there are very few high-profile exceptions where one project was able to fulfill the needs of everyone. There is no reason to assume that office suites are different.

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 20, 2012 17:30 UTC (Sun) by keithcu (guest, #58738) [Link] (7 responses)

So to recap, you bring up an example to prove your point, and I shoot multiple holes through it, but you just pretend like the fact that you no longer have evidence supporting you doesn't change the situation in the discussion.

Again, you revert to generalities. I'm not going to argue there is never a reason for a fork. LibreOffice itself is proof that forking make sense sometimes. However, each situation is different. One interesting note is that there is no effort inside LibreOffice where people are complaining and wanting to fork. This is the sort of evidence that is relevant that I doubt you have considered.

You don't seem to understand my point about spaghetti sauce. With two divergent office suites, you could get a situation where people want bits from both suites. This situation can't happen with spaghetti sauce, but it can happen with software. When a software fork happens, it could make both products worse.

You don't need separate teams to add new features. Any good feature can be done in LO. You call this a false dichotomy, but I'm just trying to get you to understand the basic point that software is infinitely malleable, which is why the spaghetti sauce analogy to OO / LO is dangerously wrong. In any case, it is so fricking silly to compare tomato sauce to office software.

Another point you don't seem to realize is given that LO can take anything good from OO, but not the reverse, it will create a situation where LO will in general be provably better than. OO + LO > OO This is simple math. This is already true because LO has a head-start, a bigger and better development team, and the support of the community, but it will remain true over time because of the license agreement. It appears that this is also ignored by you.

You conclude with a totally irrelevant list of other "forks" as proof that this one is a good idea: LXDE vs. KDE, etc. Each situation is different.

In order to believe your ideas, you have to ignore a lot of specific information and think only in irrelevant generalities. You have an interesting perspective and method of reasoning. Your last sentence is illustrative:

"There is no reason to assume that office suites are different."

In other words: Assume I am correct.

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 20, 2012 21:45 UTC (Sun) by rcweir (guest, #48888) [Link] (3 responses)

Keith, I have no idea whether or not you have any experience developing software, so I apologize in advance if this is a review to you or others.

Software is absolutely nothing like how you describe it. You cannot just take an application and say it can be extended to do anything and to meet all user needs. Only someone with no practical experience in software development would claim that.

Sure, at a theoretical level you could say that all features could be included and exposed to users who want them, in an infinitely extensible model. But what about opposing priorities? One group wants to add Mono dependencies to LibreOffice while removing Java dependencies, but another wants to remove Mono dependencies and use Java for extensibility? Sure, do it all. It is only an "if" statement, right?

Another group wants to make the product be light fast, with only core features. But maybe another group wants to add new features. No problem, it is only code. We'll do everything.

The problem is doing A+B is not really cheaper than doing just A or just B. And even if you have more cooks in the kitchen to do A+B jointly this will necessarily come at increased complexity, and that increased complexity is the bane of quality, performance and schedule.

Remember, software reuse (and working together on one application is just a form of software reuse) is never free. It always comes with integration and coordination costs. The benefit is not always worth the cost.

If this were not true, then everyone would just be working on LibreOffice. Not just me, but everyone from AbiWord, Gnumeric, Calligra Suite, even Microsoft Office.

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 21, 2012 1:12 UTC (Mon) by keithcu (guest, #58738) [Link] (2 responses)

I have practical experience such as the years I spent as a programmer in Office. I learned at Microsoft various things, such as why free software and Linux continue to lose to Windows. It also helped me understand why the AOO fork was a bad idea. I can say with some certainty that those inside Microsoft who learn what was going on with these 2 forks would laugh at the stupidity of the competition. Forks make sense, sometimes. Not this time.

You make a theoretically valid point that it would be hard if one group of people wanted to add Mono and remove Java, and another group wanted to do the reverse. However, that example is a dumb one for many reasons. The codebase is C++ and will stay that way for some years. Mostly development is about adding little features here and there, and there won't be such diametrically opposing interests. Consider a feature to support a new DOCX keyword. Or make it startup faster. Some users might want the former, and some might want the latter, but you can do both.

Here is a data point: Go through LibreOffice changes and find out how many AOO does *not* want. This is real data as opposed to the made-up reasons you offer. This is something you should have done at the beginning. If you find you want 99% of LO code changes, what does that tell you?

To understand why one team can meet all user's needs, learn about Wikipedia or the Linux kernel. The kernel supports many filesystems, and many other methods of extensibility, but the code is shared. Some want to run it on cellphones and some want to run it on supercomputers, and they've done it in one codebase. Stop me if you've heard any of this before.

Part of the reason why those products worked out so well is because lots of people worked together so the product could be the best of everyone's ideas. Your experience apparently ignores the existence of Linux and Wikipedia.

However, you are actually making a bigger mistake. You are giving made-up reasons for why the AOO project should exist. You are one year into this, and you still can't list actual reasons for what you are doing. Otherwise, you'd have come up with a better one than Java vs. Mono.

Compare your fork to the Ubuntu one. When Mark created Ubuntu, he did it because he wanted features that Debian didn't support. We can argue whether he could have added those features to Debian, but he at least *had* reasons. You apparently still do not.

I have never argued that people working on AbiWord should be working on LibreOffice. This is only about AOO versus LO. You like Chithanh bring up irrelevant facts. You also didn't sufficiently consider all the minuses to your plan. You also didn't retract and refine it when people objected.

The current AOO plan helps Microsoft and hurts LibreOffice. I know you work hard, but unfortunately it is basically a waste of time. It is something like building a house out of sand instead of concrete. You can spend a lot of time working on your sandcastle, but it will still be flawed at the end.

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 21, 2012 13:42 UTC (Mon) by chithanh (guest, #52801) [Link] (1 responses)

> To understand why one team can meet all user's needs, learn about Wikipedia or the Linux kernel. The kernel supports many filesystems, and many other methods of extensibility, but the code is shared. Some want to run it on cellphones and some want to run it on supercomputers, and they've done it in one codebase. Stop me if you've heard any of this before.

I already mentioned previously in this thread "there is a lot of diversity and there are very few high-profile exceptions where one project was able to fulfill the needs of everyone."

Linux kernel is almost an exception, though not even fully. Or why do you think that Debian GNU/kFreeBSD exists? Of course GNU/kFreeBSD does not satisfy everyone either. Some people call it a toy OS[1] even.

Wikipedia is the largest online encyclopedia, but that doesn't mean it satisfies everyone. Their crowdsourcing model is great for accumulating information. It is not so great if you depend on the correctness of a particular piece of information.

[1] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2011-Ma...

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 21, 2012 14:49 UTC (Mon) by keithcu (guest, #58738) [Link]

FreeBSD exists and that is fine, but that doesn't mean the Linux kernel is missing features. I doubt there are many projects out there where FreeBSD would do the job but the Linux kernel couldn't. Your counterexample doesn't prove your point.

Of course Wikipedia doesn't meet all needs yet. It is only 11 years old. And Wikipedia will not be the only resource. But the point is that it was able to incorporate diversity you care so much about.

You argue diversity is a good thing and therefore AOO should exist. It is an analysis so simplistic, it is possibly a tautology.

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 21, 2012 13:16 UTC (Mon) by chithanh (guest, #52801) [Link] (2 responses)

You did not shoot any holes in the example. A decision was made, and this decision made LO more fit for some users and less fit for others. This is precisely the spaghetti sauce issue.

You claim that I said "Any good feature can be done in LO" is a false dichotomy. That is misrepresenting what I said. Saying that an idea is either good one or not it is is a false dichotomy. This is what spaghetti sauce producers have been doing before: trying to achieve some platonic idealism of "best spaghetti sauce". Since being proven wrong, they have embraced diversity.

The problem that people want bits from two different spaghetti sauces does exist and is also described by Malcom Gladwell. Some people like plain and other prefer spicy. Some people large chunks and others like small chunks.

So if you increase the chunk size you make the spaghetti sauce more palatable to some consumers and less palatable to others. This does not mean that the idea "increase chunk size" is good or bad per se.

Then you say that "you could get a situation where people want bits from both suites. [omg! a generality] This situation can't happen with spaghetti sauce". Of course this can happen in spaghetti sauce too. With the two parameters spice/chunk size you can divide consumers into four (let's assume non-empty) groups according to preference:

1. spicy/chunky
2. plain/chunky
3. spicy/non-chunky
4. plain/non-chunky

With one brand of spaghetti sauce you can only satisfy one group fully. The classic platonic-idealism approach is that you should just go with the largest group.

With two brands however, you can satisfy two groups fully.

The fact that there remain users who are not fully satisfied by either does not disprove the point at all. On the contrary, it indicates that there might be an audience for a third office suite! (call it RedOffice, BROffice, OOo4Kids or whatever).

Whether the trade-off is worth it is a different issue. Your "OO + LO > OO" inequation suggests that you think it is not worth it. The sheer number of decisions that are made during development, and the fact that tastes are clustered according to Mr. Gladwell, makes me think that on the contrary diversity is preferable.

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 21, 2012 14:33 UTC (Mon) by keithcu (guest, #58738) [Link] (1 responses)

I pointed out multiple flaws, including the fact that the same decision could be made in AOO, and the key in real life is to get enough people to figure out the right solution and have time to implement it.

You seem to think that with 2 products, you will make more users happier. You therefore don't understand the idea that people could want some of the AOO unique features and some of the LO. Unfortunately, in the real world of software, it is not possible. This is perhaps the biggest reason why comparing spaghetti to software is a bad idea. Another big reason is that the challenge with LO is not whether it needs more salt, but how are they going to get done everything they want to do. There isn't time to sit and taste the sauce. There are many reasons why I think the spaghetti sauce analogy is confusing you.

It also causes you to not recognize that you can add new features in a way to make the product more customizable. I remind you that Linux supports many file-systems. They don't bother trying to unify them, but they didn't need to make a separate team. You seem to pretend this scenario is not possible either.

Another reason it can be confusing to compare to spaghetti sauce is that people can customize LO to a massive extent already. The major point, however, is that you are arguing about spaghetti sauce because you don't have any real features. You might be able to explain the spaghetti sauce analogy very well, but you appear to be missing many more relevant facts about your own situation. I recommend becoming more curious.

"Whether the tradeoff is worth it" is actually a very big issue. Everything has tradeoffs. Do you believe considering the negative trade-offs is somehow an optional part of decision making? If you consider that your plan has lots of minuses, and that you are building a house of sand, it can also help you realize that thinking about spaghetti sauce isn't helping you.

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 29, 2012 1:40 UTC (Tue) by chithanh (guest, #52801) [Link]

I did not say that two office suites "will" make users happier. I say that they have the potential to make users happier, which is quite a different thing. I then predicted that the divergence of AOO/LO will produce software to address different audiences.

It seems you are still struggling to understand the results from the spaghetti sauce experiment. The premise is the following: A product has certain properties that are decided by the manufacturer and not customizable by the consumer. Some consumers prefer one outcome, and others prefer another outcome.

The hypothesis is that several products, each taking the decisions to meet a different consumer preference cluster, can lead to greater total satisfaction than one product that tries to accommodate everybody.

The data gathered from the spaghetti sauce experiment, and a number of follow-up experiments, supports this hypothesis.

In particular, the following are totally inconsequential (ie. not part of the premise):
1. Whether the products have other unique features
2. Whether any given number of products can fulfill the desires of everyone
3. Whether the decisions are discrete or continuous
4. Whether the products are customizable in other regards

Don't forget that "customizability" itself is a decision that can attract or repel users.

That the premise applies to LO was shown by pointing to the bug about empty spreadsheet cells. That AOO can make the same decision does not invalidate the premise.

If you want to argue against applying the spaghetti sauce results to office software, you have to either say that Mr. Gladwell introduced additional premises that don't apply here, or that the spreadsheet cells behaviour is actually customizable, or that everybody prefers the same behaviour. (For the latter two cases, the counter-argument would be pointing to the next bug of that kind.)

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 17, 2012 23:05 UTC (Thu) by Trelane (guest, #56877) [Link] (7 responses)

> I gave a presentation a few weeks ago explaining our motivation for investing in OpenOffice.

Thanks for the presentation. It doesn't, however, address the core question.

> I'm not going to go into details about why Apache was favored over LO other than to say it was not a decision based on only a single factor.

That's your call, but until you do you're not answering the question I posed either. Let alone providing a sound reason for choosing AOO over LO. In the absence of data, rumors and FUD will abound.

> It is equally absurd to think that a single open source suite is optimal for everyone.

That's fine, but you're not elucidating your reasoning for choosing AOO vs LO (i.e. the question I posed).

> This should not be about creating a single editor that is good for 1 billion people for all situations.

Except that a) that's not what this is about and b) that's still not the question I posed.

On the lighter side...

> If I suggested that [...] a single Linux GUI should be created and existing efforts combined, I'd be laughed out of the room.

You must be new to every Linux discussion about Linux' desktop marketshare. Ever. :)

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 17, 2012 23:59 UTC (Thu) by rcweir (guest, #48888) [Link] (6 responses)

Actually, the parent question was "what would you describe IBM's motivation for creating *Apache* OpenOffice"..." which was what I addressed.

Remember, just because you can grammatically form a question does not mean the question is logical or that it has an answer. For example, I could demand to know why the town of Gary, Indiana, did not vote for a particular candidate for town council in a 5 person race. The question is grammatical, but does it make sense? It errs in the reification of the town, as if it was a unitary mind with a single preference and a single choice. It also errs in thinking that the vote was against a particular candidate rather than a voting process in which one candidate had the greatest support, and the others, by logical necessity, lost.

The decision to support OpenOffice at Apache was not made by a single person and it was not a decision between only two alternatives. So it is incorrect to say that anyone made a decision not to go with LibreOffice other than by the logical necessity that making any choice eliminates the alternatives not chosen.

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 18, 2012 0:20 UTC (Fri) by Trelane (guest, #56877) [Link] (5 responses)

> the parent question was "what would you describe IBM's motivation for creating *Apache* OpenOffice"..." which was what I addressed.

The full question was

>>>> what would you describe IBM's motivation for creating *Apache* OpenOffice instead of collaborating with the already-extant LibreOffice?

Which you explicitly dodged by saying

>>> I'm not going to go into details about why Apache was favored over LO other than to say it was not a decision based on only a single factor.

And now you say

> The decision to support OpenOffice at Apache was not made by a single person and it was not a decision between only two alternatives.

Yet *something* "favored" and made a "decision" to use your explicit, reifying words. The ensemble of particular actors is completely irrelevant to the decision you explicitly mention.

I'm asking what the reasoning (that you clearly possess since you must have such knowledge from you quote above) was for the decision to go with Apache and not with the already-extant LibreOffice. If you find it to be relevant, please feel free to add the other alternatives that existed. Mentioning two options explicitly does not preclude the existence of other options.

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 18, 2012 0:32 UTC (Fri) by rcweir (guest, #48888) [Link] (4 responses)

Again, the logical fallacy of assuming that because there was a decision there was a consensus reason for that decision. What did Gary, Indiana choose candidate A over B, C, D and E? Voting is one way of making a decision that does not yield an answer to "why?". I'm sure you can think of other decision making processes that have that same quality.

This is my last word on that question.

Anyone have questions on Symphony? Or are we going to listen to the same tired old whining? Sometimes it feels like I'm being stalked by some jilted old girlfriend....

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 18, 2012 0:44 UTC (Fri) by Trelane (guest, #56877) [Link] (2 responses)

> This is my last word on that question.

Fair 'nuff. I will say that I completely disagree with what you said prior to this particular thing and then I'll end it too. :)

> Anyone have questions on Symphony?

Sure. Why now instead of back when it was at Sun?

Will this just be a code drop, or will you continue to work closely to get it integrated into AOO?

Will you be willing to help the LO group integrate it as well?

Do you have a reply to Michael Meeks' posting on this (http://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2012-05-17-symphony...)?

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 18, 2012 1:06 UTC (Fri) by rcweir (guest, #48888) [Link] (1 responses)

> Why now instead of back when it was at Sun?

Again, you make the fallacy of assuming there was a positive decision not to do that rather than simply the lack of a positive decision to do that,

>Will this just be a code drop, or will you continue to work closely to get it integrated into AOO?

What happens to the code is a community decision, not something IBM unilaterally decides. My preference is certainly that we combine the best improvements of Symphony with the great work already ongoing with Apache OpenOffice. There are several technical approaches and ways of doing this. That will be decided among the Committers in the project.

>Will you be willing to help the LO group integrate it as well?

I look forward to receiving requests for help from LO.

>Do you have a reply to Michael Meeks' posting on this

His blog does not seem to allow replies. Regardless, I don't see anything new in his post. He is mainly complaining about past event, right?

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 21, 2012 17:27 UTC (Mon) by simosx (guest, #24338) [Link]

> His blog does not seem to allow replies.

You can use your own blog, by writing a new blog post, in order to reply.

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 23, 2012 2:39 UTC (Wed) by Zizzle (guest, #67739) [Link]

> Again, the logical fallacy of assuming that because there was a decision there was a consensus reason for that decision. What did Gary, Indiana choose candidate A over B, C, D and E? Voting is one way of making a decision that does not yield an answer to "why?". I'm sure you can think of other decision making processes that have that same quality.

And that there is the biggest reason why AOO will fail.

Weasel words from the head honcho in response to a straightforward question.

Not knowing the motivations of the corporate overloads, and seeing them squirm when asked direct questions, does not exactly inspire one to contribute.

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 19, 2012 0:44 UTC (Sat) by chithanh (guest, #52801) [Link] (2 responses)

> what would you describe IBM's motivation for creating *Apache* OpenOffice instead of collaborating with the already-extant LibreOffice?

To my knowlegde, the only concern on public record against joining LibreOffice is that freedesktop.org (which cared for the project before TDF was founded) is decidedly Linux-centric.

There are many more reasons one could imagine (Copyleft, domination by Linux distros, developer egos, ...) so everybody is free to make his own version of the truth here.

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 21, 2012 20:37 UTC (Mon) by simosx (guest, #24338) [Link] (1 responses)

> There are many more reasons one could imagine (Copyleft, domination by Linux distros, developer egos, ...) so everybody is free to make his own version of the truth here.

You do not have a 'money' reason in your list.
If I were IBM, I would like to have the option to eventually make money out of the office suite. The Apache license allows for a fully closed-source office suite. The MPL license (offered in LibreOffice) does not allow for a fully closed-source office suite.

Lotus Symphony code for OpenOffice coming soon

Posted May 21, 2012 23:06 UTC (Mon) by ewan (guest, #5533) [Link]

They had a closed source proprietary office suite, and they just open sourced and freed it, which rather seems to indicate that they don't actually want that.

Which is why there now seems little purpose to insist on the Apache licensed version of the codebase, which is where we came in. If IBM were keeping Symphony closed then AOO would all make perfect sense, but they're not, and it doesn't.