Glyn Moody's analysis of the LibreOffice fork from OpenOffice is a good guide to the resilience of free/open software projects, and the pitfalls awaiting corporations (like Oracle) that seek to compromise or shut down their open projects:
That is, LibreOffice has moved beyond just a bold idea to doing stuff, including boring stuff like setting up infrastructure to carry the project forward. The significance of this goes beyond the fact that it provides users with a free alternative to OpenOffice (which has also just released its latest version.) Choice lies at the heart of free software, so that's certainly good news, not least because of the way LibreOffice handles copyright, which I discussed previously.
But I think that LibreOffice possesses an additional importance because it represents a conscious strike against Oracle's handling of its open source portfolio. Sadly, the discontent that drove people to make that stand extends well beyond those working in the field of office suites.
As is becoming apparent, Oracle's behaviour towards the open source community seems to be going from bad to worse. This is nicely summed up in this characteristic post from Marc Fleury. As the founder of Jboss, and one of the real innovators in terms of business models based around open source, he certainly knows what he is talking about when it comes to managing open source coders in a corporate context, which makes comments like these particularly significant – and ominous for Oracle…
The Deeper Significance of LibreOffice 3.3
(via The Command Line)
