Sun Defends Open Source Cred Badly
According to The Register, Simon Phipps, an evangelist from Sun, is trying to portray the company as a friend to open source. The article includes this lovely line:
Phipps cites OpenOffice.org and the Sun Java Desktop as example of the vendor’s support of the open source movement.
Has something changed or has no one informed Mr. Phipps that his company has thrown OpenOffice in the path of destruction? I’d love to see a direct quote as to what Phipps actually said in reference to OpenOffice.
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Do tell me what you’re alluding to and how your view is authoritative (the link you provide to yourself is broken).
My sources (involved in the litigation first-hand) tell me that nothing has changed with regard to OpenOffice.org and liability - like all open source projects it has no defence from patent claims and there was nothing Sun could do to force Microsoft to create any haven outside the bound of a corporation - not really a surprise since anything & anyone could have taken haven in it once created, as far as they are concerned. Someone commented that “you get what you negotiate for” but that’s only true if what you negotiate for is actually possible.
Far from throwing OpenOffice.org in the path of destruction, Sun has invested in a rewrite that makes community involvement much easier, has created import filters for the Office XML formats to release into the LGPLed source and is ensuring the OpenOffice.org file format is standardised and widely used in government so that any attack by a patent farmer looks ridiculous. If you have other realistic views about how to solve the disgusting problem that software patents place in the path of F/OSS I would be pleased to hear it.
I have fixed my link, but I first discovered this in the Seattle P-I article on the subject. LinuxElectrons points out the language used in litigation. I have yet to see a retraction or correction from the Seattle P-I on the subject. I refer to LinuxElectrons simply to see the language itself.
Far from omitting language about OpenOffice in the litigation at all, it is specifically singled out as not being protected beyond a certain date. This doesn’t play well into a ‘there was nothing Sun could do’ defense. Clearly, Sun did do something and it was to clarify the future vulnerability of OpenOffice in relation to the safety secured for Sun’s other initiatives.
I have no doubt that OpenOffice will roll along for some time, but if it should ever become a threat in the marketplace to other commercial solutions, the ability to bury it legally has been aided by Sun’s agreement.
The language is there because Sun had been suing Microsoft for anticompetitive behaviour concerning Office, and this is part of Microsoft’s settlement of the case. You are entitled to your opinion on that, which I don’t share because it’s based on an attempt to use general thinking on a technical document, but you should equally weight the commitment Jonathan Schwartz made to stand by the OpenOffice.org community in his reply to a journalist making a similar assertion (misinterpreted by Michael Tiemann as an attack on himself and people like him).