Michael Meeks, famous hacker and LibreOffice advocate, replied to my earlier post giving his perspectives on many different subjects related to LibreOffice development.
Having read his views with great attention – and keeping in mind his long coding experience with OpenOffice.org, as well as his ability to dig deep into complex subjects like copyright assignment – I want to take a chance to go deeper into some points.
Only if this is the case, from now on.
Consip – the Italian public stock company owned by the Ministry of the Economy and Finance and responsible for the rationalization of Public Purchases – is hosting an event about electronic purchase of open source services.
The event, that is part of the Open Source Focus Group for Public Administrations series, will be focuses on how the award-winning Italian Public Administration Electronic Marketplace (MEPA) can ease open source procurement processes.
I look forward to moderate the final round-table to stimulate a discussion about ongoing actions and perspectives.
The will be Document Foundation is out from a month, and it is now time to share some thoughts about past, present and future actions taken around subjects like copyright, the legal and governance structure and the code development process.
Mettila così: openoffice non stava andando da nessuna parte, da qualche anno a questa parte il tasso di innovazione, che in un software opensource dovrebbe doppiare il corrispondente commerciale, era pari a zero. In più Oracle sembra tutto tranne che os friendly.
Un cambiamento era necessario. Quelli di DF saranno anche dei casinisti ma almeno sono volenterosi.
Roberto said:
“How to contribute is well explained, but unfortunately some not-so-innocent requests for contributions are not without risks.”
No change is without risk. That been said, a clean code reduce the risk of changes. So these ‘cosmetic’ changes are in fine lowering the overall risk by removing unnecessary complexity, inconsistencies, that accumulated over time.
If you want an illustration of that phenomena, I invite you to browse some source files in the binfilter module. That illustrate how unloved decade-old code end-up looking like. and a lot of it is indeed cosmetic, but cosmetic matter when one try to parse a multi-millions-line code-base to figure out how to fix a multi-year old bug…
Roberto said:
“Discussing and elaborating development guidelines should be a priority, probably more important than enabling people to make cosmetic changes.”
One doesn’t preclude the other.
And bear in mind that these ‘cosmetics’ change:
1/ Are low-risk and accessible way for new people to get used to the process
2/ Are an excellent way to gain some familiarity with the code, it’s structure, it’s quirks
3/ Allow the more senior developer to benefit from the clean-up without having to spend the significant amount of man-power that some of these clean-up require (that is why most of these haven’t been done. not because they are not important, but because the cost/benefit ratio was not perceived to be high enough to percolate on the top of the priority list, and because quite a few of these changes are dull hard work that more senior dev can escape by finding more technically challenging things to do)
4/ Allow the project to detect and groom new contributors…
Roberto said:
“While individuals may prefer to avoid the burden of copyright agreements, corporations and companies tend to like them more.”
Of course they do. Copyright assignment is a way for corporation to turn ‘volunteers’ work’ into ‘developers’ work for free’. In other words converting ‘free as in freedom’ into ‘free as in beer’.
And – as far as I am concerned – it is not a problem of ‘burden of assignment’, it is a matter of principle: I will share my work, but if you want to own it, you need to pay for it.
And finally an editorial detail:
Roberto said:
“Other decisions are considered even riskier by expert developers,”
Blind quotes are not very productive. Unnamed experts referencing unspecified risks is indeed very hard to address or refute.
Hi Norbert,
thank you to join the conversation. As I clarified later cutting bridges with the upstream project is a very sensitive decisions, something in my opinion should be discussed and agreed by stakeholders before it is implemented. That’s why I called it a priority.
In fact these non functional changes are not a way to get people acquainted with the code – that is something that require time and dedication – but maybe a way to make more complex integrating upstream contributions.
About copyright there are many different opinions among LibreOffice developers, and I firmly believe that potential corporate sponsors may have an opinion on this. Taking similar decision without a public and transparent process (Ã la GPLv3) is a choice, only time will tell if it was the right one, though.
About your editorial notes, if you followed all the links you know I have been pointing to few existing public sources, everytime it was appliable. As soon as I’ll get a public reference for that I’ll be happy to share it.
Hi Norbert,
a very short comment:
Norbert said:
”
And finally an editorial detail:
Roberto said:
‘Other decisions are considered even riskier by expert developers,’
Blind quotes are not very productive. Unnamed experts referencing unspecified risks is indeed very hard to address or refute.
”
It was me that around the middle of October, in a private mail, exchanged some thoughts with Roberto on the matter.
At that time I noted that changing the code will end in some difficulty in keeping it in sync with OOo that at the
time I thought of as a sort of “upstream”.
That was the ‘risk’ I thought about.
Then I was referring to this change as an example:
But now, after three weeks, I believe OOo will be no longer the “upstream” version of LibO, it’s just a starting point.
So, in the future, merging OOo code into LibO will matter less, being LibO something different.
Thank you Giuseppe for having joined this conversation. You are the second person here talking about LibO as something different, wondering if it is sustainable to consider merging OOo code into LibO a minor issue, though. Apparently 90 code hackers already joined Libo, let’s see in six months from now what this would mean to end users.
Deploying Open Source Scale-Out Storage – Gluster sponsors a webinar outlining how service providers can increase service offerings and add new revenue streams by adopting cloud computing. Gluster will be joined by industry experts Terri McClure, senior analyst with the Enterprise Strategy Group, and Reuven Cohen, founder and CTO of Enomaly.
Wednesday, November 3 from 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm EDT. (More …)
AISL, the Italian Association of Free Software companies, recently debuted at the SMAU exhibit, the Italian leading ICT to discuss items related to digital technologies for business.
As results clearly from the FAQ, AISL is born to bring under the same roof Italian IT companies promoting, creating and selling free software-related services. AISL will participate also to the very next event of the “Open Source Focus Group” series, dedicated to electronic purchase of open source services via the Public Administration Electronic Marketplace.
That’s awesome I think it’s hightime for Greek companies to form a similar association….
Comparing ODF documents – ODFDiff compares ODF documents, and is available as an extension as well as a stand alone program.
(More …)
ICT EU-funded projects during dissemination and exploitation phases conduct both online and presential activities, but most of the times they lack of being relevant in terms of outreach. This blog entry is aimed at giving some basic tips and hints to plan an overall strategy that extends from creating (yet another) website to the metodization of social media activities.
Valid thoughts for all FP7-projects. I made some comments from my viewpoint here: http://www.sail-project.eu/sailorsinn/2010/10/online-dissemination/
Hello there, just became alert to your blog through Google, and found that it is truly informative. I’m gonna watch out for brussels. I will appreciate if you continue this in future. A lot of people will be benefited from your writing. Cheers!
Android: Opportunity and Complexity – A Case Study in Open Source Compliance Management – In this webinar Hal Hearst, Karen Copenhaver and Mark Radcliffe will review:
• The Android project, its structure and the components it comprises
• The implications of typical development and integration decisions
• The associated legal obligations
Wed, Oct 27, 2010 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM EDT
(More …)
SOS Open Source has been launched just six months ago, and since then both open source vendors and large customers asked for evaluations and comparison assessment reports.
Since we have been asked to qualify more community-led projects, starting from this month will publish every month a new report about one of them.
To know more about SOS Open Source read also today’s Dana Blankenhorn blog post.
The upcoming European Commission Future Networks concertation meeting next week will host an “Open source & Research” panel (agenda), and I’m honoured to have been invited to join it.
Having been writing about EU-funded open source research for a while now – sometimes interacting with running projects, other times helping them to be more visible, but also criticizing some for not being effective or to produce poor deliverables – I am very much willing to address the sustainability aspects of open source projects and the commercial viability of open source from framework programme projects.
Roberto,
I must say it was great the way you preemptively published this post before the actual event. I managed to show it during the meeting, and now many months later I’ve completed a short review post on the event.
http://www.tssg.org/blog/miguelpdl/archives/2010/10/open_source_fp7.html
Thanks again for you input on this.
Miguel.
Hi Roberto.
I have a question for you. Are they allowed to write in a tender dossier in an EU funded project that the software “MUST NOT be made available by the manufacturer under free software license – GPL or similar”. Is this legal?
Thanks,
Andrei
Dear Andrei,
let me answer you bringing some other related issues on the table.
Probably you know that EU projects must have a Consortium Agreement in place, and such consortium agreement regards the internal organisation of the consortium (included IPR) and it doesn’t involve the European Commission.
Now, there are some templates for these Consortium Agreements, a well-known one is the one by EICTA (.doc document). You might want to take note of section 4.2.7.3, especially the excerpts below.
(i) The Parties acknowledge that the use within the Project of Software that is “open source” (as defined at http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php), and/or the release of Foreground upon licence terms associated with such Software, may have benefits for the conduct of the Project and promote the Use and dissemination of the resulting Foreground. However, they also recognise that certain of such licence terms (namely Controlled Licence Terms) may restrict the options that are available for Use and dissemination of the resulting Foreground, and accordingly they wish to regulate, in accordance with this Section 4.2.7.3 the use of Controlled Licence Terms in relation to the Project and Use and dissemination of the results thereof.
(ii) Without limiting the scope of this Section 4.2.7.3, the Parties acknowledge that the use in the Project or introduction into the Project of Background, Sideground or other Work held by a Party pursuant to Controlled Licence Terms [read “open source”, as explained in (i)] may impair or otherwise affect the other Parties’ utilisation or Use of or Access Rights to Background, Sideground, Foreground or other Work. Each Party shall therefore abstain from using in the Project or introducing into the Project any Background, Sideground or other Work in a manner or upon terms that would or might result in a requirement that all or some of the Foreground, Sideground, Background or any other Work must, either generally or under certain circumstances, be licenced under Controlled Licence Terms, unless all Parties have unanimously approved in writing such use or introduction.
(iii) Following the signature of this CA, any Party that is seeking such approval shall provide the other Parties with a written request for approval (“Request”) containing sufficient information, substantially in the format set out in Annex 5 hereto, to enable each of them to assess whether the introduction or use of the Background, Sideground, Foreground or other Work in question, upon the Controlled Licence Terms that are applicable to it, would or might result in any requirement referred to in paragraph (ii) above. Each Party shall inform the Co-ordinator in writing within 60 days from receipt of the Request whether or not it approves the use or introduction for which approval is requested in the Request. Any Party that fails to respond to a Request within the above period shall be notified by the Co-ordinator that it has a further 7 days to respond and in the absense of a response from such Party within such further period it shall be deemed to have approved the Request. As soon as possible after the lapse of such 60 day period (and any further periods as above), the Co-ordinator shall inform all Parties in writing whether or not such use or introduction has been unanimously approved. However, no approval of any Request shall constitute an agreement pursuant to paragraph (b) below that any Foreground may be sub-licensed on Controlled Licence Terms.
As you can see, unless projects members don’t unanimously agree about the use of an open source licenses, it can be cumbersome at best to decide it at a later stage, and this is definitely no good in my opinion. Templates should be more favorable towards the creation, the use (and therefore re-use) of open source deliverables, because is us paying for such research projects.
So said, I don’t think the EU is imposing any restriction in EU FP7 calls or similar tenders, but I guess in some special cases it might legally occur for a reason (e.g. a tender may require some sort of integration with a proprietary product posing specific limitations towards some open source licenses).
Hope it helps.
Roberto Galoppini, 
A. Rebentisch, and 
Johan are discussing. 
Andrei, 
Upstream compatibility is no issue when you are the font.