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Oracle is not to blame for Sun’s open source failings
Matthew Aslett, April 18, 2011 @ 9:56 am ETOracle announced on Friday that it is to discontinue its commercial interest in the OpenOffice.org project, prompting a barrage of criticism from the open source faithful with regards to its approach to the open source applications project, and community in general.
The company was accused of being community-hostile, for example, and comparisons were also made to Colonel Gadhafi, while a translation of the press release into “plain English” apparently shed new light on the announcement.
In truth though, the language used in Oracle’s statement is hardly ambiguous:
“We will continue to make large investments in open source technologies that are strategic to our customers including Linux and MySQL. Oracle is focused on Linux and MySQL because both of these products have won broad based adoption among commercial and government customers.”
If an open source project is clearly of commercial value to Oracle it will invest in it. If not, it won’t. Why should it be any other way? Oracle is under no obligation to continue any of Sun’s products, open or closed, unless they are seen to be delivering value to the company.
It is certainly not obligated to clear up the mess left by Sun’s mishandling of the various open source projects it created, in particular the promises it made and then failed to keep.
Simon Phipps has categorised Oracle’s announcement under “betrayals”. Exactly who is being betrayed, how, and by whom is unclear.
Simon, as many people will be aware, was formerly chief open source officer at Sun, the company that created OpenOffice.org and promised (originally in 2000) to create an OpenOffice Foundation to run it.
Sun’s failure to relinquish control over OpenOffice.org during the ensuing 10 years led directly to the creation of the LibreOffice project and The Document Foundation in September 2010.
Could Oracle have better managed its dealings with the OpenOffice.org community since it closed its acquisition of Sun in January 2010 and avoided the split between OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice? Perhaps.
Certainly the company is in a position now to ensure that in transferring OpenOffice.org to a community-based project it seeks to unite the community rather than causing increased fracturing. [Update: The Document Foundation has issued a vague statement that appears to suggest it is not interested in reunification with OpenOffice.org.] Oracle should be judged on how it handles that challenge rather than previous challenges that were beyond its control.
Oracle has had 15 months to improve the relationship between the OpenOffice.org community and its corporate owner. Sun had 10 years. Some of those now pointing their fingers at Oracle would do well to remember that.
Comments (19) Categories: Software
Many good points in the article, but you’re glossing over the events that led to the libreoffice formation. That was 100% Oracle, 0% Sun.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libreoffice#History
It was only 100% Oracle, 0% Sun if you completely ignore the ten year history of Sun’s relationship with OpenOffice.org, as that Wikipedia entry does.
“Betrayals” was actually intended as the heading for the Daily Links item I posted about the Brazil copyright reform reversal. All the same, I’m a little surprised that you have forgotten the approval process Oracle went through with the European Commission and how dependent it was on assurances relating to Open Office.
Oracle was not capable or not willing to take Open Office to the next level. Perhaps, Sun didn’t champion the software, either. More business opportunities for the rest of us!
Taking “StarOffice” off the table, how will Oracle be judged by presumed winners like Java or MySQL or OpenSolaris? Sun was no angel over 2 decades, but I don’t think they’ll ever accomplish Oracle’s blunders in these 2 years.
The key difference, it seems to me, is this: Oracle is still in a position to do something about past blunders. Sun, not so much. A focus on Sun’s contribution to the mess may be academically interesting, but isn’t likely to fix anything. The odds that Oracle will respond favorably to community out-cry may not be great, but I gotta believe they’re better than Sun’s odds, at this point!
[...] Oracle getting a bad rap for admitting defeat with OpenOffice.org already? Matthew Aslett seems to think so. While Aslett is right that Sun had the ball much longer, Oracle shouldn’t be held blameless [...]
Too little, too late. Oracle just face the facts, you’re not needed anymore
How many forks existed during those 10 years? How many forks under 9 months of Oracle?
Oracle was unwilling to work with the Community, LibreOffice was created to Oracle’s failures. Not Sun’s. Any idea why Gosling left as well?
First Oracle action regarding OpenOffice? CHARGE USD $100 for the MS Office plugin !!!
Do not pin this on Sun, if you’re an Oracle lover just state so and I we will understand the your bias and leave you alone, otherwise review the facts, this is not Sun’s fault.
Oracle has made mistakes. I didn’t claim they hadn’t. This is not all Sun’s fault. It also isn’t all Oracle’s. I don’t love Oracle but I’m no friend of hypocrisy either
By the way, your categorisation of everyone that’s expressed their doubts about Oracle’s PR spin as “the open source faithful” is not accurate. For example, the “translation” you link to is by a well-known German journalist who is not obviously an open source blowhard.
Ridiculous hair-splitting. Saying that it drew a response from “the open source faithful” is not the same thing as saying that the only people who responded were “the open source faithful”.
That’s your clear implication though, Matthew. Still, I get your message loud and clear, as have many others.
No, that’s your interpretation.
Well, it seemed pretty odd to me as well, though I read it slightly differently than Simon did. To me, it sounded like a bit of a jab at “the open source faithful,” a bit dismissive of the backlash (which was kind of surprising, coming from you). And it’s in a pretty prominent spot in the article. So at the least, it seems to have been unclear.
[...] Oracle getting a bad rap for admitting defeat with OpenOffice.org already? Matthew Aslett seems to think so. While Aslett is right that Sun had the ball much longer, Oracle shouldn’t be held blameless [...]
@Jack Repenning, It wasn’t meant to be derogatory. I suppose it was pretty flippant, but then I was concentrating on the point of the post, which is Sun’s failure to deliver on its promises and the eagerness of some people to pin that failure on Oracle.
As I’ve already implied, the point I am making is nothing to do with Oracle’s “failure”, nor an attempted abdication of responsibility for Sun’s failure, neither of which I’m terribly interested in discussing as I already know we aren’t going to agree. Being named in the item, and given your continuing hostility in the comments, I assume it’s me you’re accusing of hypocrisy; I reject your charge.
Rather, I suggest to you that this might be the outcome they’d expected from the beginning. You’ve resisted any analysis of the situation from the perspective of regulatory approvals. Your distaste for me and for Sun’s approach to business is distracting you from likely insights that could be of real use to your clients in the context of future actions.
Hi Simon,
I have no distaste for you personally, nor do I have any distate for Sun’s approach to business (although clearly there are decisions that Sun took – or in this case didn’t – that I disagree with. I think that would be true for *every* company that I follow).
What I do have distaste for is sweeping generalisations made by people who know better that ignore historical context and encourage confusion, resulting in the sort of misinformed opinion offered by William above.
It was not my intention to single you out, although I can see how it appears that way given the direction the comment thread has taken, and the fact that I didn’t name anyone else. This wasn’t deliberate.
However, since you mention it, I can’t ignore the fact that while bemoaning some of the current issues impacting the OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice community/ies you previously defended Sun’s inability/unwillingness to take the steps that would have avoided those issues.
With regards to regulatory approvals, you know as well as I do that OOo was a minority issue and that Oracle’s plan for OOo http://www.oracle.com/us/sun/038563.pdf was a statement of intent rather than the sort of commitments issued with reference to MySQL. http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/042364
While any statement made by Oracle at that time must of course be taken in the context of the approvals process, had this been as significant an issue for the EC as you suggest it would have required a commitment beyond the simple statement of intent.
Oracle isn’t the first company to change its plan with reference to an acquired asset and it won’t be the last. Your suggestion is that the company hasn’t changed its plan at all but always intended to divest itself of responsibility for OOo and/or to deliberately hobble the project in doing so (I can’t tell if you believe that or not, but it is implied).
I don’t see any evidence of that. In fact Oracle’s actions wrt OOo/LibreOffice over the past few months indicate a complete lack of planning on its part. That, the company can be held responsible for.
[...] originally investigating and moving to open source software more than a decade ago. Regardless of past mismanagement of community and technology, that competitive factor has been diminished greatly since Oracle took [...]