More Oracle Open Source Fallout

[matt-urrlRJtNKRMsHrnhXWJB8w at public.gmane.org (Matt Shields)]

On Sun, Oct 17, 2010 at 10:57 AM, Richard Pieri <richard.pieri-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>wrote:

> 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.
>
>
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Dont' forget OpenSSO, GlassFish.  There are other projects that they have or
are killing.  OpenSSO has been forked already because of Sun/Oracle's
actions.  GlassFish has gone from totally open source to being a free for
limited features, pay for features which once were free in previous
versions.

Don't get me wrong, I understand that companies need to make money.  But
look at RedHat as an example.  They both have commercial products, but at
the same time let people take the source and offer free products based on
their (CentOS, WhiteBox Linux, Scientific Linux, Fermi).  One thing I find
ironic is that Oracle Linux is a derivative of RHEL source.

-matt