More Oracle Open Source Fallout

[richard.pieri-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org (Richard Pieri)]

So, some of you have already seen the LibreOffice/OpenOffice story on /. this morning.  In a nutshell, some of the OOo folks forked off LibreOffice, and then asked Oracle to donate the OpenOffice name to them, with Oracle retaining the Star Office trademark.  In response, Oracle has asked the LibreOffice folks to step away from the OOo community due to "conflict of interest".

I don't want to discuss whether Oracle is legally right or wrong, because that isn't important right now.  What is important is Oracle's actions regarding Open Source.  When Sun released Star Office as Open Source it promised (and fulfilled that promise) to create an independent foundation to maintain it.  This is the OpenOffice Foundation.  Now Oracle is telling the same foundation members that they are not part of an organization independent from Oracle, that OpenOffice belongs to Oracle, and that supporting a fork of OpenOffice is contrary to Oracle's interests.

I read this action as similar to the dissolution of the OpenSolaris Governance Board.  Oracle is asserting legal ownership of its Open Source properties in a manner that is destructive to the members of the respective communities.  Oracle has turned hostile on its supporting Open Source communities three times the past year so far: Java, OpenSolaris, and now OpenOffice.  Can we really trust Oracle not to do the same with MySQL, VirtualBox and btrfs?

I think not.

--Rich P.