● 12.12.06

●● Everyone Apologize to PJ

Posted in Fork, Formats, GNU/Linux, GPL, Interoperability, LGPL, Microsoft, Novell, Office Suites, Open XML at 2:19 pm by Shane Coyle

●● Novell OpenOffice.org is a Fork.

There was much furor over a recent Groklaw headline regarding Novell forking OpenOffice.org, with even Miguel De Icaza taking the time to respond, albeit in a somewhat "fast and loose" manner. Everyone said, "Novell forking Open Office? No way."

During Stafford Masie’s Question and Answer session at the CITI forum, he explained how Novell has two streams of Linux products – "FOSS" and "OSS", with OpenSUSE and OpenOffice.org being "FOSS" and SLE(S|D) and Novell OpenOffice.org being "OSS" Masie goes on to say that in their version of Novell OpenOffice, they add extra interoperability, backward compatibilty and testing, in addition to licensed fonts and graphic rendering engines. These differences are in addition to the Open XML support and even more controversial VBA support, which may or may not be accepted into OOO’s main branch.

So, Novell OpenOffice.org is a fork, it has been for some time, its okay and you don’t need to deny it. Correct me if I am wrong, but OOO is LGPL and as long as you do it right, you can have a version linked with proprietary stuff, Novell.

Now, it is just a question of how closely OpenOffice.org wants to follow their lead into Microsoft’s embrace, or branch off towards Freedom, that will determine just how much of a fork Novell’s OpenOffice.org becomes.

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