CSCE 121 Culture Report 2

The Open Document Foundation

A recently uploaded video lecture suggests that human beings are not "profit maximizers," but rather "purpose maximizers." Making a difference in the world is our primary motivation for what we do, including our jobs. This theory explains the phenomena of free, open-source software like Wikipedia: why would people spend hours of time on something that will bring absolutely no profit when they already have jobs?—to make a difference in the world by filling a need.

Sun Microsystems, a large supporter of open-source software, was recently purchased by Oracle, and all of the free projects like Java, MySQL, NetBeans, and OpenSolaris were acquired by Oracle. OpenSolaris has been dropped from the project list, but Java, MySQL, NetBeans, etc. will be continued... for now . However, the leaders of the OpenOffice.org team, a group of 21 people, had a different idea. Instead of changing their affiliation from Sun to Oracle, they decided to start their own foundation—The Document Foundation. Their justification for doing so is to "facilitate the evolution of the OpenOffice.org Community into a new open, independent, and meritocratic organizational structure" . This will make it easier for supporters and contributors to get involved, and to avoid the requirements and restrictions of the Oracle company (like product branding). Because Oracle now owns Sun and all of its trademarks, the name "OpenOffice.org" is now their legal property, and it cannot be used by the Document Foundation for its future products. Therefore, the Document Foundation has changed the name of their product from OpenOffice.org to LibreOffice until Oracle lets them use the name OpenOffice.org.

I have been a fan of OpenOffice.org for quite some time (this document was even created with it). Although it does not have all of the features that Microsoft Office (the most widespread commercial office suite in the world), OpenOffice.org provides an excellent free alternative that is compatible with and similar to Microsoft Office. The Document Foundation even boasts that "OpenOffice.org [was] unquestionably the world's leading open-source productivity suite" , and I definitely agree with this statement.

On the other hand, I am not a big fan of Oracle: most of their products are commercial and enterprise-oriented. I fear for the outcome user-friendly community-oriented projects like Java and MySQL: I hope that they will not become different products with the same name. It is highly unlikely that they will be discontinued because of how widespread they have become: Java and its derivatives are some of the most popular development platforms, and MySQL is one of the most common—if not the most common—database system in the world. I am glad to see that OpenOffice will continue its usual development independent of whatever Oracle might want to do with them. My only concern for the new foundation is the new name of their software: “LibreOffice” does not sound as good as "OpenOffice.org." I hope that Oracle will allow the Document Foundation have what is rightfully theirs.