Stuff Michael Meeks is doing
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This is my (in)activity log. You might like to visit
Collabora
Productivity a subsidiary of Collabora focusing on LibreOffice support and
services for whom I work.
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.
Failing that, there are all manner of interesting things to read on
the LibreOffice Planet news
feed.
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legacy html
- Up early, go-oo down mid-morning (and they did so well
getting slashdotted), prodded support.
- Amused to read Simon's take on this.
Incidentally, I have the greatest respect for Simon & I'm certain
that he would have an easier job, if people listened harder to him
inside Sun:
- Community Norms: it's great to hold up
Apache, as a community norm; I'd love to see OO.o on that
template: a vendor neutral, level playing field for all to
contribute, and look: there is a very wide & dynamic
base of contributors. What about all those eclectic ownership
situations, where there is no single owner - those seem quite
norm-al too. [Update 2012-05-31 - if politics is the
art of the possible, then wresting views from the deep past and
applying them today is the art of misleading people.]
- Contributor Agreements: - again, the analogy
between the FSF and Sun as good stewards of software
ownership is a huge stretch. One is an incredibly dedicated
champion of software Freedom; and the other is a for-profit
company. It is easy to imagine situations where Sun's duty to
shareholders mandates them acting to harm OO.o. And it's
particularly easy to believe it, given Sun's rejection of code only
on the grounds of wanting to retain complete ownership.
- Non-surrender of copyright: - as I said yesterday,
it all sounds nice - until any 2nd entity commits a few lines to
the code, then the only rights holder is Sun.
- Defending the copyright: - IANAL, and horribly
inexpert in this area, so forgive my rambling. I think Danese
blogged in 2005 with this line of reasoning (though last I heard
she was a staunch advocate of a foundation for OO.o). Is it really
true ? Does Sun need to own everything so it can defend
everything ? It seems rather convenient to assert that "The reason
all the little guys have to assign rights to this big corporation
is only so it can defend your rights", what if you want someone else
to defend your rights, or do it yourself ? Also, how can you know that Sun
hasn't licensed your code to this supposed infringer anyhow under some
secret terms ? What about this (apparent) 51% rule ? it sounds
nonsensical to me: if I copy Windows and Linux and OO.o onto a
million DVDs and sell them - am I immune from copyright infringement
law-suits, because no 1 company owns >51% of the thing, that would
be extraordinary, is it so ?
- open source covenant: - what Simon says
sounds really great:
"There is an "open source covenant" - Sun promises that any
contributions that get used will always remain as Free software
wherever else they may end up, so that proprietary-only forks
are impossible."
but is that really what the new sca
(do read it!) actually says ? [ not that OO.o actually uses it ]
or am I missing something, is it this clause:
Any Contribution that Sun subsequently makes available under any
license will also be made available under a suitable FSF- or
OSI-approved license.
surely this is fulfilled just by having your
'Contribution' (defined term) in a Sun funded Revision Control
System: ie. it safeguards your right to always get your own code
back again (much like a backup tape). I really don't see how
that makes proprietary only forks impossible - I must be
missing something: what ?
- So ... if a major concern here is defending copyrights,
there are clearly far simpler & less hazardous ways to do this.
And Sun is no FSF.
- Finally got back to reading through the configmgr code, and
analysing Stefan's extension related crash trace, so many problems in
the stack-trace, hard to know which might be the cause; fixed several
issues.
- Report writing. Chat with Caolan, realised the layout
slides
were not on-line; up-loaded a hacked about version: some exciting
work in there, though the slides don't do it justice really. Hopefully
Ricardo will knock up some nicer content - wrt. the editor soon to whet
people's appetites. With some improved UI / toolkit infrastructure (if
it is accepted up-stream (under JCA of course)) we can really start to
make OO.o look lovely. Even little things like being able to put stock
icons on buttons, make a huge difference when done consistently.
My content in this blog and associated images / data under
images/ and data/ directories are (usually)
created by me and (unless obviously labelled otherwise) are licensed under
the public domain, and/or if that doesn't float your boat a CC0
license. I encourage linking back (of course) to help people decide for
themselves, in context, in the battle for ideas, and I love fixes /
improvements / corrections by private mail.
In case it's not painfully obvious: the reflections reflected here are my
own; mine, all mine ! and don't reflect the views of Collabora, SUSE,
Novell, The Document Foundation, Spaghetti Hurlers (International),
or anyone else.
It's also important to realise that I'm not in on the Swedish Conspiracy.
Occasionally people ask for formal photos for conferences
or fun.
Michael Meeks (michael.meeks@collabora.com)
