[DC LoCo] Oracle gives up on OpenOffice after community forks the project

[Michael Haney]

On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 9:06 AM, Kevin Cole <dc.loco at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2011/04/oracle-gives-up-on-ooo-after-community-forks-the-project.ars
>

The OOo - LibreOffice Saga I think should act as a warning to other
Open Source projects which are run by a tyrannical leadership.  Anger
the community enough, they'll fork the project and leave the original
to languish in obscurity until it dies.  There are many issues facing
Canonical which could trigger the same things happening to Ubuntu
(actually, a Gnome 2-only fork of Ubuntu 11.04 has already been
started).  One of them is the whole saga with Unity, and the other is
the lack of a monitor type selection option in the screen resolution
preferences window.  That one alone has made it impossible for
literally thousands of new users to give Ubuntu serious consideration.
 If they can't find an easy way to make Ubuntu work properly with
their monitors because the auto-detection didn't detect their hardware
properly then to them its not worth bothering with.  I've posted bug
reports about this issue and every time nothing is done to resolve the
issue and what I mostly see in the discussions is people throwing
blame onto someone else for the problem.  Instead of toss the blame
around it would have served the community better if Canonical had
simply put the feature back where it belongs in the first place.  But,
no they didn't, so now I have to replace the xorg.conf file every time
I want a fresh install of Ubuntu to work properly with my monitor.

Unity is a whole other pickle.  I accept the fact that the release in
between LTS releases are meant to perfect new technologies for the
next LTS release, but a drastic change in UI such as Unity should be
voluntary rather than compulsory, and Canonical should give incentives
to use Unity so the community can find where its lacking and make the
necessary improvements so when the next LTS release comes around Unity
will be a robust and rock solid desktop UI.  The point is, the Ubuntu
project isn't being run based on its core philosophy of "humanity
towards humans", and is being run more like a meritocracy where only
the voices of a chosen few make any difference and the community as a
whole doesn't have any say.  This I think is Canonical's greatest
failing, and I fear it will eventually come to haunt them in the end.

-- 
Michael "TheZorch" Haney
"The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking
of morality by religion." ~ Arthur C. Clarke
"The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion and
politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there is no place
for it in the endeavor of science. " ~ Carl Sagan

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