Stuff Michael Meeks is doing
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This is my (in)activity log. You might like to visit my employer
Novell which is an amazing company, and also
Dell who in days of yore provided me with a
free laptop for Gnome development / conferences.
Also if you have the time to read this sort of stuff you could enlighten
yourself by going to Unraveling Wittgenstein's net or if
you are feeling objectionable perhaps here.
Older items:
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legacy html
- Up early, poked mail. Filed expenses, an expensive process.
Lunch, team meeting.
- A nice, well researched write-up: Novell is not forking OO.o
by Bruce Bryfield, a journalist that actually bothered to call, talk
and check his facts, good on you Bruce. Perhaps more than can be said
for the latest
Groklaw piece from Charles Schutz, to which I reply:
- Firstly, Charles is extremely generous with his advice
on how people should license their code: yet it is not clear to me
that he has ever written or contributed any himself, has he ?
Secondly though he is well up for other people assigning their
code to Sun, his explanation of why this is great falls
horribly foul of the speculation that riddles his work: how does
he know whom Sun has licensed other people's code to, and under
what terms ?
- We also have an LGPLv3 conspiriacy (emphasis mine):
So far Sun should be credited with having been extremely reasonable in
regard of the license. In the future for instance, OpenOffice.org can
switch to the (L)GPL version 3 quite easily. That could not happen
without Sun's joint ownership, but for that matter, Michael Meeks'
reaction was less than warm.
This is easy to rebut; here's what Novell says about the GPLv3.
I'm happy for OO.o to move to the LGPLv3 as/when/if Sun
decides to do that (but ultimately it's only Sun's decision).
As I said in my
first post, I'm personally a fan of the LGPL for OO.o, my
concern is that there should not be one company that
doesn't have to accept the terms of the license. Also, a lovely
excluded middle: of course, it's possible to re-license without Sun
owning everything - there are at several solutions: eg. ownership by
a foundation, or using the "LGPLv2.1 or later" language of the LGPL.
- Wrt. why we changed view on the JCA, I addressed that
yesterday: and yes, I was wrong to encourage people to sign
all their rights over to Sun, sorry; mea culpa - obviously I learn
only slowly & by experience.
- Now, we come onto the real barn storming speculation
(soon to become recieved wisdom) - real vintage groklaw journalism:
Novell ... is also developing an OpenXML export filter
that won't be available in OpenOffice.org that is, if you choose to
use OpenOffice.org and not "Open Office, Novell Edition". And since
these export filters are supposedly developed in collaboration with
Microsoft, this technology would logically include Microsoft's
sacred intellectual property that Sun and many others don't want
to see covered by the JCA.
Simply stunning, he knows of an effort going on in secret
inside my team that I'm unaware of myself ! - more details much
appreciated. Categorically, as of now, this is false; we're
not actively working on native export filters to match the import filter.
Furthermore my concerns wrt. Sun's ownership should be transparently
free-standing, and are
emphatically unrelated to Microsoft, in any way, whatsoever.
It is also interesting to remember that Sun also has several
well known agreements with Microsoft, around OO.o (or StarOffice).
As for knowingly injecting other people's IP into OO.o that is a
pretty repulsive accusation, and one
rebutted before.
- Wrt. my apparently
odd questions - I'm was interested in exploring options to
hinder the use of GPL code in proprietary products, is that
bad ? Interestingly my interlocutor there Allen Pulsifer
has made his views on Sun's recent moves
rather plain.
- Summary - vintage groklaw: conspiriacy theory dressed
up as fact; with a strong pro-Sun bias. My problem with the JCA
is around balance, equity, and proprietary licensing, not choice of
license [ something over which as has been pointed out we have
~no real say ].
- Sigh, another wasted afternoon. J. out, put the children to bed,
read stories, poked at the net. More expense filing, Oracle's web thingit is
so much sweeter than XMS via Citrix to Provo.
In case it's not painfully obvious: the reflections reflected here are my
own; mine, all mine ! and don't reflect the views of Novell, The
Lithuanian Gov't or Arnold Schwarzenegger. It's also important to
realise that I'm not in on the Swedish Conspiracy.
Occasionally people ask for formal photos for conferences,
bio.
or fun.
Michael Meeks (michael.meeks@novell.com)
