OpenOffice 2.0 and Java

[Craig Adams]

Hi Mark, All,

As a representative of the OpenOffice.org project, and the Southern
African representative for the project, I will add a few comments here.

Without going into details regarding the differences wrt Open Source and
Free Software and the positions certain parties take, lets grab the
squirrel by the proverbial nuts.

The biggest single contributor to the code base of OpenOffice.org is Sun
Microsystems. Sun, like all technology companies have certain
preferences, views of technologies, and ways of doing things. This
results in Java playing a major role in the product.

Until there are enough independent developers contributing to
OpenOffice.org, the Sun way of doing things will prevail. Simply put,
until the code contributions from Sun are sufficiently outweighed by
other developers, their preferences, methods and mindset will prevail.

Other significant contributors such as Novell focus on selling
commercial distributions which almost always include the Sun JRE. For
these organisations this is very much a non-issue, as they can market
their product offerings as being more capable and feature rich than the
Free (both freedom and beer) focused distributions.

Personally, I would prefer that either Sun release the various Java
components as Free Software (probably will not to happen in the
foreseeable future) or the Java dependencies be replaced by other code
(possible, depending upon the efforts of independent developers).

Kindest Regards

Craig A. Adams


On Tue, 2005-03-29 at 18:14 +0100, Mark Shuttleworth wrote:
> I wonder if we shouldn't put together an open letter to the 
> OpenOffice.org team, asking them to work a Free java option into their 
> build process so that they at least preserve the ability of people to 
> use upstream OO.o without putting non-free software on their systems.
> 
> Matthew Revell wrote:
> 
> > With OpenOffice 2.0 relying on Java more than ever, what does this 
> > mean for Ubuntu? I read Matt's comments in the Newsforge article 
> > (http://software.newsforge.com/software/05/03/22/204244.shtml?tid=93) 
> > but I was wondering if there had been any further discussion.
> >
> > --
> > Matthew Revell
> > www.understated.co.uk
> > Skype: matthewrevell
> > LugRadio: www.lugradio.org
> >
> 
>