I just finished reading this article on the Register, and I'm almost ready to cry. Oracle acquired Sun. Sun was the main developer of OpenOffice.org, with help from IBM, Novell, and a host of other organizations trying to break the M$ stranglehold on office productivity suites. Oracle is asking OpenOffice.org developers to develop for their new, proprietary platform JavaFX. Think Microsoft Java, but the goose's sauce apparently doesn't apply to the gander!
In 1998 Sun sued M$ over licensing violations, saying that M$ shouldn't be allowed to change the Java systems and code so that they run better on Windows, but ONLY on Windows. Now it appears that Oracle may be trying to corner OpenOffice.org so that it runs best ONLY on JavaFX, their propreitary system that you would have to BUY.
I'd rather lose Oracle than lose OpenOffice.org. I don't directly use or recommend any Oracle products, and I'm willing to bet you don't either. Indirectly you use their products in most any financial or business transaction, but don't let that worry you. It's inevitable - if you boycotted anything that was connected to Oracle you might want to look up the Kaczynski family and see if they have a cabin for sale.
I'm just sayin . . .
3 comments:
You are a moron.
Oracle so far has:
- Confirmed that work on the new Java 7 and Java 8 versions will be
contributed back as open source, as part of the OpenJDK project
(@mreinhold on Twitter)
- Is backing Netbeans with lots of investments (despite the fact that
Oracle had another, propietary IDE, Oracle JDeveloper).
http://java.dzone.com/articles/oracles-roadmap-sun
- Says it will release JavaFX 2.0 as open source when 2.0 is completed
(without the MPEG4 codecs that are patent-encumbered by the MPEG-LA).
http://www.drdobbs.com/blog/archives/2010/09/javafx_open_sou.html
- Is backing the open source Glassfish J2EE server, with two new
releases planned for next year.
- Is backing OpenOffice and integrating JavaFX into it. (see above
abonut JavaFX 2.0 to be released as open source).
FC
Thanks for the valuable insight! I appreciate the additional information.
Did you read the Register article that I referred to? Do you also get the impression that the author is questioning Oracles guidance of OO.O?
I'm happy to hear the Oracle has and will continue to be a good steward of an awesome project!
Thanks again!
And just over a year later, well... now we have LibreOffice. XFree/x.org part deux anyone?
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