Stuff Michael Meeks is doing

Up early, took babes to school with some triumphent six to nine times-tables; perhaps they are finally getting them.
Prodded mail, triaged meego bugs, Clarity, admin, read news.
Thrilled to read that Intel finally did the right thing, and dropped the requirement for (C) assignment (of whatever form) to be able to contribute to clutter - making it a truely open project; nice ! I feel a sudden urge to contribute, something, anything now it belongs to us all.
It seems the H open published an interview based on a not completely separated pastiche of some new bits with some rather older quotes from around the web.
- To me, the most interesting thing about OO.o that needs fixing - is the developer community. That is still predicated on the Sun guys perceiving that it might be nice to work together with others to build one, and considering careful compromises to help make that a reality.
- To recap - the problem is that Sun (and some other corporates) simply refuse to include code under the LGPLv3 (which would be our preferred solution) unless they can avoid it's terms by owning the code: nasty.
- My favorite awful compromise of the month (that retains the well known barrier to entry, distrust breeding ground etc. that is assignment) - but might at least make some progress would be to: (wait for it) - assign everything to Oracle ! so they can own it and do what they like with it - but - only on condition that majority non-Sun written code modules are continued to be made available to others under LGPLv3 plus a more lax license: perhaps MPL/CDDL, Apache, BSD (in order of increasing laxness). That would effectively remove the value of the exclusive ownership of code written by others (for unseemly back-room arm twisting), while at least for the forseeable future, not impacting the proprietary value of the bulk of the code-base.
- Clearly, by far the best approach is to pick a license you can accept, with a suitable license steward, and go eclectic ownership - letting creativity flourish: the Mozilla approach. This is also -clearly- in the spirit of the (pure) Marketing around the 'Shared' nature of the 'Shared' Copyright Assignment (SCA) : if it is truly shared (it is not), then why not allow it to be available under another license ? And again, it is regrettable that they will not accept code simply under the terms of the LGPLv3; our problem is not with the license - but the assymetry between it and outright ownership of our code.
- I still hate (C) assignment with a fear and loathing; and continuing it for OO.o drives away the developer help we need; but perhaps this compromise might help re-unite the wider OO.o community, and at least having the bigger corporate contributors working together can't hurt to start with.
Printed out a gear and (at great length) a new geared extruder housing, which (hopefully) will improve the reliability of the beast, as/when I can knurl the M8 studding involved.

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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.

Stuff Michael Meeks is doing

2010-06-21: Monday.