Off the Beat: Bruce Byfield's Blog

When LibreOffice first forked from OpenOffice.org, I was unsure how to respond to it. Many of its founders were members of Go-OO, the sometimes controversial not-quite-fork, so LibreOffice looked like simply a continuation of GO-OO under another name. However, since last week, when Oracle donated OpenOffice.org to the Apache Software Foundation, LibreOffice.org is looking more and more like the natural heir of the original OpenOffice.org -- by which I mean the project that will do the free software community the most benefit..

Not that there's no room for two projects working with the same code. And, as Allen Pulsifer suggested, perhaps LibreOffice supporters should to join the new OpenOffice.org to keep track of what it is doing. For most people, the division between the two projects has always been more about governance than personal animosities, so coexistence is almost certainly possible.In fact, Apache representatives have suggested repeatedly that nothing would please them better.

The trouble is, I wonder whether the Apache Foundation is really that enthused about its new proposed incubator project. True, Apache members are methodically going through the motions of setting up the project; after all, they've started dozens of projects in the past. Yet the tone on the mailing lists and public statements suggest to me that Apache members are generally non-plussed about the donation, as though it is something they are dutifully accepting rather than anything they're excited about. Alternatively, perhaps people are restraining themselves because of behind-the-scenes discussions that haven't finished yet.

Either way, so far the new project is small. Doing some simple arithmetic based on the LibreOffice Credits page, I estimate that some 220 people have committed patches to OpenOffice.org in the past, who have not committed any to LibreOffice. So far, though, only 83 initial committers are listed on the incubator wiki. Only 22 indicate previous involvement with OpenOffice.org, either through their email addresses or their affiliation. Of the rest, 6 are connected to Apache, and 1 to Oracle. Another 6 are connected to IBM, which develops the Lotus Symphony fork, and 4 to RedOffice, a Chinese OpenOffice.org fork. This a small number for a code base as large as OpenOffice.org's, especially when less than half appear to have worked with the code before. Apparently, contributors are not exactly flocking to the new project.

From what I am told, the new project's acceptance as an incubator project is almost certain, and so is its eventual acceptance as an Apache Foundation project. But even if all goes well, organization and governance is going to be a distraction for some time. Add the small number of contributors, and the new OpenOffice.org seems unlikely to release a new software version for at least four to six months -- possibly, for as long as a year.

Meanwhile, LibreOffice is developing rapidly, producing code dual-licensed under the Mozilla Public License and the third version of the GNU Lesser General Public Licenses (LGPLv3), which the Apache Foundation regards as incompatible with the Apache License.

By contrast, code released under the Apache License is regarded as compatible with both the Mozilla Public License and LGPLv3.

In other words, LibreOffice will be both months ahead of OpenOffice.org, and able to borrow OpenOffice.org code, and OpenOffice.org behind and unable to borrow LibreOffice code.

Under these circumstances, how can OpenOffice.org ever hope to compete? Unless something unforeseen happens, OpenOffice.org will start from behind, and never have a chance of catching up.

It doesn't help, either, that placing OpenOffice.org under the permissive Apache license is yet another barrier to attracting contributors. Free software contributors will undoubtedly prefer a copyleft license that requires contributions to be released under a similar license. The donation to Apache is widely seen as interference by IBM, which is believed in the community to want the ability to sell proprietary versions of the code as Lotus Symphony.

For many, this abandonment of copyleft is yet another reason for staying away from OpenOffice.org. With the Free Software Foundation endorsing LibreOffice over OpenOffice.org for precisely this reason, licensing is still another barrier against OpenOffice.org's success.

The LibreOffice Advantage

Despite the difficulties that the new OpenOffice.org faces, some people favor it as a more stable home for the code than LibreOffice. Their assumption is often that Libreoffice is a disorganized, small project.

The truth is, it is neither. Far from being disorganized, LibreOffice -- or rather, The Document Foundation that develops it -- is registered as a German non-profit under the name of Freies Office Deutschland e.V, with the long-established Software in the Public Interest (SPI) representing it the United States. Although it has yet to democratically elect a board, The Document Foundation has managed a successful fund-raising campaign without interfering with organization or development.

Nor is it a small project. From the figures on the LibreOffice Credit page, I estimate that it has at least 367 members -- four times the numbers that OpenOffice.org has managed to attract so far. True, only about a third of that number contributed to OpenOffice.org before the fork. But it has managed to attract some 243 new active contributors in the nine months of its existence, more than replacing the 220 contributors to the old OpenOffice.org who have not worked on LibreOffice.

In contrast to OpenOffice.org supporters, the LibreOffice community seems active and engaged in what it is doing. Although the mailing lists are more sedate now than when they were first set up, the LibreOffice community conveys a sense that everything is up for reconsideration -- and that everyone is eager to implement changes. When LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org each released new versions in February 2011, LibreOffice was already the most innovative, and all indications are that it will continue to improve far more rapidly than OpenOffice.org under Apache can ever hope to.

I have nothing against Apache's version of OpenOffice.org -- even though the donation does seem like one last spiteful gesture by Oracle against The Document Foundation. But given the challenges it faces and LibreOffice's head start, I also see little chance of it succeeding

The new incubator project may have the name and the trademark, but it appears to have no future. At best, it seems doomed to hobble along for a few years, falling farther and farther behind LibreOffice until it collapses from irrelevance and neglect.

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