[native-lang] Re: [releases] Common ground or Conflict of Interest? [was: Problem with QA tests ...]

Hi Martin, all,

your comments are worth reading and thinking about, but as I want to 
reply to one single point, I skip the major part of it (for people not 
reading the releases list, i strongly recommend to read the full mail [0])

Martin Hollmichel schrieb:
>   On 10/17/2010 05:44 AM, Caio Tiago Oliveira wrote:
>    
>> What's the difference? Why is there conflict of interest with TDF and
>> there is not COI with Oracle?
>>      
> OpenOffice.org was so far the smallest common ground of all the
> OpenOffice.org derivatives, so we have a lot of people working on their
> derivatives coming together in the OpenOffice.org community. [...]

> We need to understand ourselves what the
> smallest common ground now is (or should be) and we need (if we come to
> a conclusion) to explain this to the world outside.
This can't be done without talking to each other - and respecting each 
others position and reasons to do the moves done with good faith.

Actions like Louis - the Oracle employed OpenOffice.org Community 
Development Manager - did during the last chat of the OpenOffice.org 
governing board don't help at all to reach a common ground:

Replacing Charles in his position as Native Language Confederation Lead 
and forcing a deadline for the Community Council members until Tuesday 
is not only a obvious breach in the OpenOffice.org Guidelines [1] and 
the Community Council Charter [2], it disrespects the way the Community 
Council wants to solve the problems: with direct contact and discussion 
between Cor Nouws and you (having both the respect of all community 
members) trying to reach exactly this common ground.

I don't know if Louis' action has been coordinated with Oracle 
management - if not it would be necessary for the lead of the 
OpenOffice.org related Business Unit at Oracle how they want to proceed 
with the OpenOffice.org Community.

The last press release might be understood as if ignorance of the needs 
and goals of a relevant part of our community would be the way to go.
Finding a common ground by talking to each other as you and others (here 
- and all the relevant people at The Document Foundation over there) 
prefer might not have any chance if Louis action shows that Oracle 
management has already decided...
> Right now the world
> outside of our community understand this as a competition between OOo
> and LO or they don't understand this at all.
>    
So we need to help them to understand the difference between 
OpenOffice.org as community and OpenOffice.org as community based 
product on the one hand, The Document Foundation as community based (to 
avoid discussions I could add "relevant parts of the community") 
foundation and LibreOffice as product released by the foundation (thus 
being community based as well). And Oracle Open Office as proprietary 
distribution (with possible trademark problems if the trademark would be 
held on behalf of the community).

There is an open point in the necessity for the Copyright Agreement - 
but this can be solved during discussion.

I strongly hope that this will be the way all the people interested in 
surviving and growing of our community can agree upon - we are the ones 
to create the best office suite in the world. Companies and foundations 
help us on this way - nothing more (but nothing less as well)!

I don't want to choose about the importance of one or another help with 
regards to future developments. Both are important if their goals can be 
subsumed under the community's goals.

Best regards

Bernhard

[0]: http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=releases&msgNo=16165
[1]: http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/guidelines.html
[2]: http://council.openoffice.org/councilcharter12.html