LOOL is about to be archived

Board Discuss
#1

Hi all,

just a heads up in case the community would like to come up with proposals in regards to LibreOffice On-Line.

As you might be aware LOOL's repository has been frozen since the major code contributor decided to move it to GitHub and not contribute back to TDF's repository.

At the time there has been a debate about it but then nothing actionable seems to have been proposed by the community since then.

Recently an ex-member of the ESC proposed to the ESC to archive LOOL [0] and during the following ESC meeting no concerns were expressed for doing so [1].

The "Attic Policy" [2], that has been written to archive obsolete projects, states that the Board will need to vote on the archival process to confirm ESC's choice.

It is likely that the board will need to vote on it soon so if the community would like to do something with LOOL there might be a small window of opportunity to have your preferences on what to do with it heard.

If nobody comes along proposing to look after it and update if so that it could be brought back into an usable form for the community then the board might have to vote for having LOOL archived.

Ciao

Paolo

[0] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-June/088982.html
[1] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-June/089018.html
[2] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Policies/Attic

#2

Hi all,

only a short info that I'm currently working on an update of the LOOL
source code with the latest patches. Because I have an issue with my
newly bought hardware I had to migrate my environment (etc.) to another
hardware (will need some hours of spare time). Thus I was not able to
finish my work during this week.

If someone wants to join me, feel free to send me an email.
Once the necessary bits are done, I'll come back and try to make a
proposal for the further process to get LOOL back under the TDF umbrella.

Regards,
Andreas

#3

Hi Andreas,

thank you for letting us know that you are working on it.

Ideally it would be great to have a few developers working on it, especially to fix known security issues, and sufficient activity to make it viable.

It is true that LOOL has been in a kind of limbo. The repository has been frozen "temporarily" but it kind of became a permanent situation.

In your opinion, would reopening the repository for 12 months provide enough time for a community to form around it?

It would require warnings until all the security bugs have been fixed and that it might not be well maintained until we see constant and sufficient activity but it could be an option to make it up for the longer than expected temporary freeze of the repository.

If after 12 months we don't see much activity then we could be certain that the community is not really interested in working on LOOL.

It would be great to know if others have other takes/options/alternatives on this subject.

Ciao

Paolo

#4

Hi Paolo, all,

my work on this topic is an offer to the LibreOffice community. I had to
put some work in the update of the source code because a commercial free
software company made some name changes in the source code of their fork
to make it more difficult for the LibreOffice community.
That is a behavior I'd not expect from a good citizen of a free software
community. And if I look over the fence into another open source
community they work more collaboratively and don't raise such barrier.
But the difference may be that there is not only one big player in the
room and more diversity in the development community (and among the free
software companies).

I'm curious if other want join me in my efforts and like to share some
ideas how to proceed LOOL further.
In my opinion the online version with collaboration features is a
necessary development line for the future of LibreOffice and its
community. If TDF drop this line it will decline the importance of
LibreOffice and its community further (with appropriate consequences
e.g. in donations).

Regards,
Andreas

#5

Hi Andreas, Paolo, all

Hi Paolo, all,

my work on this topic is an offer to the LibreOffice community. I had to
put some work in the update of the source code because a commercial free
software company made some name changes in the source code of their fork
to make it more difficult for the LibreOffice community.
That is a behavior I'd not expect from a good citizen of a free software
community. And if I look over the fence into another open source
community they work more collaboratively and don't raise such barrier.
But the difference may be that there is not only one big player in the
room and more diversity in the development community (and among the free
software companies).

Have to say Thank You for your work and also for sharing those serious issues.
I do agree with your take about needing a more diverse development community. That idea was raised in the last term and received a "non-coders can't talk" almost inmediately, glad to know people doesn't see pink elephants flying.

I'm curious if other want join me in my efforts and like to share some
ideas how to proceed LOOL further.
In my opinion the online version with collaboration features is a
necessary development line for the future of LibreOffice and its
community. If TDF drop this line it will decline the importance of
LibreOffice and its community further (with appropriate consequences
e.g. in donations).

The pandemic placed great emphasis on the need for an alternative to proprietary tools. And TDF should not be left out.

Regards,
Andreas

Hi Andreas,

thank you for letting us know that you are working on it.

Ideally it would be great to have a few developers working on it,
especially to fix known security issues, and sufficient activity to
make it viable.

IMO, an open repo will attract several people from all around the world.

It is true that LOOL has been in a kind of limbo. The repository has
been frozen "temporarily" but it kind of became a permanent situation.

In your opinion, would reopening the repository for 12 months provide
enough time for a community to form around it?

It would require warnings until all the security bugs have been fixed
and that it might not be well maintained until we see constant and
sufficient activity but it could be an option to make it up for the
longer than expected temporary freeze of the repository.

If after 12 months we don't see much activity then we could be certain
that the community is not really interested in working on LOOL.

The community will certainly show their love & passion for LO.

It would be great to know if others have other
takes/options/alternatives on this subject.

Every organization needs a tool that provides solidity while responding to daily needs, but above all that allows it to collaborate in its development without any limitations or impediments. So, do you know any organization commited to eliminate the digital divide in society by giving everyone access to office productivity tools free of charge, to enable them to participate as full citizens???

#6

Hi,

Here I have a proposal: to have LOOL respository sync to another LOOL-derived suite:

https://github.com/OSSII/oxool-community

OxOOL is developed by OSSII in Taiwan, derived from LOOL. It has commercial version, which is several versions advanced to community version, while the community version is also open sourced. Currently National Development Council Taiwan, the main dominant unit of ODF policy in Taiwanese government, uses (forks) this community version into “NDCODFweb”:

https://github.com/NDCODF/ndcodfweb

which is also mainly supported by OSSII.

Besides NDCODFWeb and some other Taiwanese government units, OxOOL is also used in different companies and products. For example, it is integrated into ASUS cloud Omnistor Office (https://www.asuscloud.com/omnistor-office/), OpenFind SecuShare Pro (https://www.openfind.com.tw/taiwan/secusharepro.html). It is migrated into Pou Chen Group (https://www.pouchen.com) and some other big anonymous companies. Also, it is deployed in UNAU (https://www.unau.edu.ar/la-universidad/ ).

OxOOL v4 will be released in a month and can be a good and useful base to LOOL, also good to the LibreOffice community.

I’m not a representative of OSSII, but the GM of OSSII told me that they are happy to share the community version.

In this proposal there are two ways to relive LOOL:

  1. To sync current LOOL with patches from OxOOL community v4, which may technically take more time and efforts.

  2. Start a new repository from OxOOL community v4, which I’ll say that it is actually a “fast forward” from current status since OxOOL is also derived from LOOL, though a bit far before. It will be technically easier than 1., just that maybe some community people may feel uneasy or unhappy with this way.

Both ways are okay for me, as long as LOOL can be relived. However no matter which way, IMO TDF needs to employ in-house developers (independent from any ecosystem member) for rerunning LOOL. The second option, which is my prefer option, is a lot easier technically and in-house developers would just need to (cowork with community members and OSSII to) maintain LOOL repository.

Features in OxOOL commercial version are mostly (customized) requests from customers and hence may not necessarily need to be backported (to community version), but the GM of OSSII also promised that OxOOL Commercial version functions (which they think good / necessary to be back ported) and bugfixes will be back ported to LOOL (and OxOOL community version too).

Of course, after reliving LOOL all developers are welcomed to contribute to LOOL.

Details can be discussed with OSSII.

Regards,
Franklin

Paolo Vecchi 於 2022/6/21 20:15 寫道:

Hi all,

just a heads up in case the community would like to come up with proposals in regards to LibreOffice On-Line.

As you might be aware LOOL’s repository has been frozen since the major code contributor decided to move it to GitHub and not contribute back to TDF’s repository.

At the time there has been a debate about it but then nothing actionable seems to have been proposed by the community since then.

Recently an ex-member of the ESC proposed to the ESC to archive LOOL [0] and during the following ESC meeting no concerns were expressed for doing so [1].

The “Attic Policy” [2], that has been written to archive obsolete projects, states that the Board will need to vote on the archival process to confirm ESC’s choice.

It is likely that the board will need to vote on it soon so if the community would like to do something with LOOL there might be a small window of opportunity to have your preferences on what to do with it heard.

If nobody comes along proposing to look after it and update if so that it could be brought back into an usable form for the community then the board might have to vote for having LOOL archived.

Ciao

Paolo

[0] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-June/088982.html
[1] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-June/089018.html
[2] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Policies/Attic

#7

Hi Franklin,

thanks for the great proposal.

As the LOOL archival discussion is planned for Monday I’ll ask the board to modify the agenda to start discussing your’ and Andreas’ proposal.

There is a lot that needs to be evaluated with the community to see if and in which way we can make LOOL available for the community again.

Ciao

Paolo

On 24/06/2022 06:37, Franklin Weng wrote:

Hi,

Here I have a proposal: to have LOOL respository sync to another LOOL-derived suite:

https://github.com/OSSII/oxool-community

OxOOL is developed by OSSII in Taiwan, derived from LOOL. It has commercial version, which is several versions advanced to community version, while the community version is also open sourced. Currently National Development Council Taiwan, the main dominant unit of ODF policy in Taiwanese government, uses (forks) this community version into “NDCODFweb”:

https://github.com/NDCODF/ndcodfweb

which is also mainly supported by OSSII.

Besides NDCODFWeb and some other Taiwanese government units, OxOOL is also used in different companies and products. For example, it is integrated into ASUS cloud Omnistor Office (https://www.asuscloud.com/omnistor-office/), OpenFind SecuShare Pro (https://www.openfind.com.tw/taiwan/secusharepro.html). It is migrated into Pou Chen Group (https://www.pouchen.com) and some other big anonymous companies. Also, it is deployed in UNAU (https://www.unau.edu.ar/la-universidad/ ).

OxOOL v4 will be released in a month and can be a good and useful base to LOOL, also good to the LibreOffice community.

I’m not a representative of OSSII, but the GM of OSSII told me that they are happy to share the community version.

In this proposal there are two ways to relive LOOL:

  1. To sync current LOOL with patches from OxOOL community v4, which may technically take more time and efforts.

  2. Start a new repository from OxOOL community v4, which I’ll say that it is actually a “fast forward” from current status since OxOOL is also derived from LOOL, though a bit far before. It will be technically easier than 1., just that maybe some community people may feel uneasy or unhappy with this way.

Both ways are okay for me, as long as LOOL can be relived. However no matter which way, IMO TDF needs to employ in-house developers (independent from any ecosystem member) for rerunning LOOL. The second option, which is my prefer option, is a lot easier technically and in-house developers would just need to (cowork with community members and OSSII to) maintain LOOL repository.

Features in OxOOL commercial version are mostly (customized) requests from customers and hence may not necessarily need to be backported (to community version), but the GM of OSSII also promised that OxOOL Commercial version functions (which they think good / necessary to be back ported) and bugfixes will be back ported to LOOL (and OxOOL community version too).

Of course, after reliving LOOL all developers are welcomed to contribute to LOOL.

Details can be discussed with OSSII.

Regards,
Franklin

Paolo Vecchi 於 2022/6/21 20:15 寫道:

Hi all,

just a heads up in case the community would like to come up with proposals in regards to LibreOffice On-Line.

As you might be aware LOOL’s repository has been frozen since the major code contributor decided to move it to GitHub and not contribute back to TDF’s repository.

At the time there has been a debate about it but then nothing actionable seems to have been proposed by the community since then.

Recently an ex-member of the ESC proposed to the ESC to archive LOOL [0] and during the following ESC meeting no concerns were expressed for doing so [1].

The “Attic Policy” [2], that has been written to archive obsolete projects, states that the Board will need to vote on the archival process to confirm ESC’s choice.

It is likely that the board will need to vote on it soon so if the community would like to do something with LOOL there might be a small window of opportunity to have your preferences on what to do with it heard.

If nobody comes along proposing to look after it and update if so that it could be brought back into an usable form for the community then the board might have to vote for having LOOL archived.

Ciao

Paolo

[0] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-June/088982.html
[1] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-June/089018.html
[2] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Policies/Attic

#8

Hi Franklin,.

Why is this better than working with the version Collabora (who actually contribute to TDF’s work) maintain? Why should TDF hire developers to maintain code for the Taiwanese government?

Sincerely.

Simon

On Fri, Jun 24, 2022 at 5:47 AM Franklin Weng <franklin@goodhorse.idv.tw> wrote:

Hi,

Here I have a proposal: to have LOOL respository sync to another LOOL-derived suite:

https://github.com/OSSII/oxool-community

OxOOL is developed by OSSII in Taiwan, derived from LOOL. It has commercial version, which is several versions advanced to community version, while the community version is also open sourced. Currently National Development Council Taiwan, the main dominant unit of ODF policy in Taiwanese government, uses (forks) this community version into “NDCODFweb”:

https://github.com/NDCODF/ndcodfweb

which is also mainly supported by OSSII.

Besides NDCODFWeb and some other Taiwanese government units, OxOOL is also used in different companies and products. For example, it is integrated into ASUS cloud Omnistor Office (https://www.asuscloud.com/omnistor-office/), OpenFind SecuShare Pro (https://www.openfind.com.tw/taiwan/secusharepro.html). It is migrated into Pou Chen Group (https://www.pouchen.com) and some other big anonymous companies. Also, it is deployed in UNAU (https://www.unau.edu.ar/la-universidad/ ).

OxOOL v4 will be released in a month and can be a good and useful base to LOOL, also good to the LibreOffice community.

I’m not a representative of OSSII, but the GM of OSSII told me that they are happy to share the community version.

In this proposal there are two ways to relive LOOL:

  1. To sync current LOOL with patches from OxOOL community v4, which may technically take more time and efforts.

  2. Start a new repository from OxOOL community v4, which I’ll say that it is actually a “fast forward” from current status since OxOOL is also derived from LOOL, though a bit far before. It will be technically easier than 1., just that maybe some community people may feel uneasy or unhappy with this way.

Both ways are okay for me, as long as LOOL can be relived. However no matter which way, IMO TDF needs to employ in-house developers (independent from any ecosystem member) for rerunning LOOL. The second option, which is my prefer option, is a lot easier technically and in-house developers would just need to (cowork with community members and OSSII to) maintain LOOL repository.

Features in OxOOL commercial version are mostly (customized) requests from customers and hence may not necessarily need to be backported (to community version), but the GM of OSSII also promised that OxOOL Commercial version functions (which they think good / necessary to be back ported) and bugfixes will be back ported to LOOL (and OxOOL community version too).

Of course, after reliving LOOL all developers are welcomed to contribute to LOOL.

Details can be discussed with OSSII.

Regards,
Franklin

–

#9

As Franklin mentioned, the university where I work (UNAU) is using OxOOL since 2020. And works like a charm have to add.
Would love to have it’s features as LOOL base.

El 24 de junio de 2022 1:37:32 a. m. GMT-03:00, Franklin Weng franklin@goodhorse.idv.tw escribió:

Hi,

Here I have a proposal: to have LOOL respository sync to another LOOL-derived suite:

https://github.com/OSSII/oxool-community

OxOOL is developed by OSSII in Taiwan, derived from LOOL. It has commercial version, which is several versions advanced to community version, while the community version is also open sourced. Currently National Development Council Taiwan, the main dominant unit of ODF policy in Taiwanese government, uses (forks) this community version into “NDCODFweb”:

https://github.com/NDCODF/ndcodfweb

which is also mainly supported by OSSII.

Besides NDCODFWeb and some other Taiwanese government units, OxOOL is also used in different companies and products. For example, it is integrated into ASUS cloud Omnistor Office (https://www.asuscloud.com/omnistor-office/), OpenFind SecuShare Pro (https://www.openfind.com.tw/taiwan/secusharepro.html). It is migrated into Pou Chen Group (https://www.pouchen.com) and some other big anonymous companies. Also, it is deployed in UNAU (https://www.unau.edu.ar/la-universidad/ ).

OxOOL v4 will be released in a month and can be a good and useful base to LOOL, also good to the LibreOffice community.

I’m not a representative of OSSII, but the GM of OSSII told me that they are happy to share the community version.

In this proposal there are two ways to relive LOOL:

  1. To sync current LOOL with patches from OxOOL community v4, which may technically take more time and efforts.

  2. Start a new repository from OxOOL community v4, which I’ll say that it is actually a “fast forward” from current status since OxOOL is also derived from LOOL, though a bit far before. It will be technically easier than 1., just that maybe some community people may feel uneasy or unhappy with this way.

Both ways are okay for me, as long as LOOL can be relived. However no matter which way, IMO TDF needs to employ in-house developers (independent from any ecosystem member) for rerunning LOOL. The second option, which is my prefer option, is a lot easier technically and in-house developers would just need to (cowork with community members and OSSII to) maintain LOOL repository.

Features in OxOOL commercial version are mostly (customized) requests from customers and hence may not necessarily need to be backported (to community version), but the GM of OSSII also promised that OxOOL Commercial version functions (which they think good / necessary to be back ported) and bugfixes will be back ported to LOOL (and OxOOL community version too).

Of course, after reliving LOOL all developers are welcomed to contribute to LOOL.

Details can be discussed with OSSII.

Regards,
Franklin

Paolo Vecchi 於 2022/6/21 20:15 寫道:

Hi all,

just a heads up in case the community would like to come up with proposals in regards to LibreOffice On-Line.

As you might be aware LOOL’s repository has been frozen since the major code contributor decided to move it to GitHub and not contribute back to TDF’s repository.

At the time there has been a debate about it but then nothing actionable seems to have been proposed by the community since then.

Recently an ex-member of the ESC proposed to the ESC to archive LOOL [0] and during the following ESC meeting no concerns were expressed for doing so [1].

The “Attic Policy” [2], that has been written to archive obsolete projects, states that the Board will need to vote on the archival process to confirm ESC’s choice.

It is likely that the board will need to vote on it soon so if the community would like to do something with LOOL there might be a small window of opportunity to have your preferences on what to do with it heard.

If nobody comes along proposing to look after it and update if so that it could be brought back into an usable form for the community then the board might have to vote for having LOOL archived.

Ciao

Paolo

[0] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-June/088982.html
[1] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-June/089018.html
[2] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Policies/Attic

#10

Hi Daniel,

thanks for sharing your experience with OxOOL!

We definitely have to look at it in more details.

LOOL is in the agenda for Monday’s BoD meeting, please come along to comment about it.

Ciao

Paolo

On 24/06/2022 12:00, Daniel A. Rodriguez wrote:

As Franklin mentioned, the university where I work (UNAU) is using OxOOL since 2020. And works like a charm have to add.
Would love to have it’s features as LOOL base.

El 24 de junio de 2022 1:37:32 a. m. GMT-03:00, Franklin Weng franklin@goodhorse.idv.tw escribió:

Hi,

Here I have a proposal: to have LOOL respository sync to another LOOL-derived suite:

https://github.com/OSSII/oxool-community

OxOOL is developed by OSSII in Taiwan, derived from LOOL. It has commercial version, which is several versions advanced to community version, while the community version is also open sourced. Currently National Development Council Taiwan, the main dominant unit of ODF policy in Taiwanese government, uses (forks) this community version into “NDCODFweb”:

https://github.com/NDCODF/ndcodfweb

which is also mainly supported by OSSII.

Besides NDCODFWeb and some other Taiwanese government units, OxOOL is also used in different companies and products. For example, it is integrated into ASUS cloud Omnistor Office (https://www.asuscloud.com/omnistor-office/), OpenFind SecuShare Pro (https://www.openfind.com.tw/taiwan/secusharepro.html). It is migrated into Pou Chen Group (https://www.pouchen.com) and some other big anonymous companies. Also, it is deployed in UNAU (https://www.unau.edu.ar/la-universidad/ ).

OxOOL v4 will be released in a month and can be a good and useful base to LOOL, also good to the LibreOffice community.

I’m not a representative of OSSII, but the GM of OSSII told me that they are happy to share the community version.

In this proposal there are two ways to relive LOOL:

  1. To sync current LOOL with patches from OxOOL community v4, which may technically take more time and efforts.

  2. Start a new repository from OxOOL community v4, which I’ll say that it is actually a “fast forward” from current status since OxOOL is also derived from LOOL, though a bit far before. It will be technically easier than 1., just that maybe some community people may feel uneasy or unhappy with this way.

Both ways are okay for me, as long as LOOL can be relived. However no matter which way, IMO TDF needs to employ in-house developers (independent from any ecosystem member) for rerunning LOOL. The second option, which is my prefer option, is a lot easier technically and in-house developers would just need to (cowork with community members and OSSII to) maintain LOOL repository.

Features in OxOOL commercial version are mostly (customized) requests from customers and hence may not necessarily need to be backported (to community version), but the GM of OSSII also promised that OxOOL Commercial version functions (which they think good / necessary to be back ported) and bugfixes will be back ported to LOOL (and OxOOL community version too).

Of course, after reliving LOOL all developers are welcomed to contribute to LOOL.

Details can be discussed with OSSII.

Regards,
Franklin

Paolo Vecchi 於 2022/6/21 20:15 寫道:

Hi all,

just a heads up in case the community would like to come up with proposals in regards to LibreOffice On-Line.

As you might be aware LOOL’s repository has been frozen since the major code contributor decided to move it to GitHub and not contribute back to TDF’s repository.

At the time there has been a debate about it but then nothing actionable seems to have been proposed by the community since then.

Recently an ex-member of the ESC proposed to the ESC to archive LOOL [0] and during the following ESC meeting no concerns were expressed for doing so [1].

The “Attic Policy” [2], that has been written to archive obsolete projects, states that the Board will need to vote on the archival process to confirm ESC’s choice.

It is likely that the board will need to vote on it soon so if the community would like to do something with LOOL there might be a small window of opportunity to have your preferences on what to do with it heard.

If nobody comes along proposing to look after it and update if so that it could be brought back into an usable form for the community then the board might have to vote for having LOOL archived.

Ciao

Paolo

[0] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-June/088982.html
[1] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-June/089018.html
[2] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Policies/Attic

#11

Hi Simon,

thanks for bringing up those points.

On 24/06/2022 11:49, Simon Phipps wrote:

Hi Franklin,.

Why is this better than working with the version Collabora (who actually contribute to TDF’s work) maintain?

I believe that Collabora has been explicitly asked a few time if they were available to contribute back to LOOL but we never received any answer or signs of goodwill.

OSSII has been working on a fork of LOOL for quite a while and is kindly offering to share it back for the community to enjoy it.

They also offer a commercial version so it will be important to set clear rules to avoid the conflicts we have seen in the past.

Why should TDF hire developers to maintain code for the Taiwanese government?

IMHO, unless we are talking about quick fixes, in-house developers should not focus on LOOL.

However there could be opportunities to develop synergies with OSSII and the Taiwanese community on CJK issues as together with RTL bug fixes will enable a couple of billion people to use LibreOffice properly in their own languages.

Sincerely.

Simon

Ciao

Paolo

On Fri, Jun 24, 2022 at 5:47 AM Franklin Weng <franklin@goodhorse.idv.tw> wrote:

Hi,

Here I have a proposal: to have LOOL respository sync to another LOOL-derived suite:

https://github.com/OSSII/oxool-community

OxOOL is developed by OSSII in Taiwan, derived from LOOL. It has commercial version, which is several versions advanced to community version, while the community version is also open sourced. Currently National Development Council Taiwan, the main dominant unit of ODF policy in Taiwanese government, uses (forks) this community version into “NDCODFweb”:

https://github.com/NDCODF/ndcodfweb

which is also mainly supported by OSSII.

Besides NDCODFWeb and some other Taiwanese government units, OxOOL is also used in different companies and products. For example, it is integrated into ASUS cloud Omnistor Office (https://www.asuscloud.com/omnistor-office/), OpenFind SecuShare Pro (https://www.openfind.com.tw/taiwan/secusharepro.html). It is migrated into Pou Chen Group (https://www.pouchen.com) and some other big anonymous companies. Also, it is deployed in UNAU (https://www.unau.edu.ar/la-universidad/ ).

OxOOL v4 will be released in a month and can be a good and useful base to LOOL, also good to the LibreOffice community.

I’m not a representative of OSSII, but the GM of OSSII told me that they are happy to share the community version.

In this proposal there are two ways to relive LOOL:

  1. To sync current LOOL with patches from OxOOL community v4, which may technically take more time and efforts.

  2. Start a new repository from OxOOL community v4, which I’ll say that it is actually a “fast forward” from current status since OxOOL is also derived from LOOL, though a bit far before. It will be technically easier than 1., just that maybe some community people may feel uneasy or unhappy with this way.

Both ways are okay for me, as long as LOOL can be relived. However no matter which way, IMO TDF needs to employ in-house developers (independent from any ecosystem member) for rerunning LOOL. The second option, which is my prefer option, is a lot easier technically and in-house developers would just need to (cowork with community members and OSSII to) maintain LOOL repository.

Features in OxOOL commercial version are mostly (customized) requests from customers and hence may not necessarily need to be backported (to community version), but the GM of OSSII also promised that OxOOL Commercial version functions (which they think good / necessary to be back ported) and bugfixes will be back ported to LOOL (and OxOOL community version too).

Of course, after reliving LOOL all developers are welcomed to contribute to LOOL.

Details can be discussed with OSSII.

Regards,
Franklin

–

Simon Phipps

TDF Trustee

#12

Hi Paolo, Franklin, all,

it would be great, if we could work together on a process to merge both branches together and get the community versions in sync. I think this could be done most easy on Github.

Regards,
Andreas

Am 24. Juni 2022 11:29:16 MESZ schrieb Paolo Vecchi paolo.vecchi@documentfoundation.org:

Hi Franklin,

thanks for the great proposal.

As the LOOL archival discussion is planned for Monday I’ll ask the board to modify the agenda to start discussing your’ and Andreas’ proposal.

There is a lot that needs to be evaluated with the community to see if and in which way we can make LOOL available for the community again.

Ciao

Paolo

On 24/06/2022 06:37, Franklin Weng wrote:

Hi,

Here I have a proposal: to have LOOL respository sync to another LOOL-derived suite:

https://github.com/OSSII/oxool-community

OxOOL is developed by OSSII in Taiwan, derived from LOOL. It has commercial version, which is several versions advanced to community version, while the community version is also open sourced. Currently National Development Council Taiwan, the main dominant unit of ODF policy in Taiwanese government, uses (forks) this community version into “NDCODFweb”:

https://github.com/NDCODF/ndcodfweb

which is also mainly supported by OSSII.

Besides NDCODFWeb and some other Taiwanese government units, OxOOL is also used in different companies and products. For example, it is integrated into ASUS cloud Omnistor Office (https://www.asuscloud.com/omnistor-office/), OpenFind SecuShare Pro (https://www.openfind.com.tw/taiwan/secusharepro.html). It is migrated into Pou Chen Group (https://www.pouchen.com) and some other big anonymous companies. Also, it is deployed in UNAU (https://www.unau.edu.ar/la-universidad/ ).

OxOOL v4 will be released in a month and can be a good and useful base to LOOL, also good to the LibreOffice community.

I’m not a representative of OSSII, but the GM of OSSII told me that they are happy to share the community version.

In this proposal there are two ways to relive LOOL:

  1. To sync current LOOL with patches from OxOOL community v4, which may technically take more time and efforts.

  2. Start a new repository from OxOOL community v4, which I’ll say that it is actually a “fast forward” from current status since OxOOL is also derived from LOOL, though a bit far before. It will be technically easier than 1., just that maybe some community people may feel uneasy or unhappy with this way.

Both ways are okay for me, as long as LOOL can be relived. However no matter which way, IMO TDF needs to employ in-house developers (independent from any ecosystem member) for rerunning LOOL. The second option, which is my prefer option, is a lot easier technically and in-house developers would just need to (cowork with community members and OSSII to) maintain LOOL repository.

Features in OxOOL commercial version are mostly (customized) requests from customers and hence may not necessarily need to be backported (to community version), but the GM of OSSII also promised that OxOOL Commercial version functions (which they think good / necessary to be back ported) and bugfixes will be back ported to LOOL (and OxOOL community version too).

Of course, after reliving LOOL all developers are welcomed to contribute to LOOL.

Details can be discussed with OSSII.

Regards,
Franklin

Paolo Vecchi 於 2022/6/21 20:15 寫道:

Hi all,

just a heads up in case the community would like to come up with proposals in regards to LibreOffice On-Line.

As you might be aware LOOL’s repository has been frozen since the major code contributor decided to move it to GitHub and not contribute back to TDF’s repository.

At the time there has been a debate about it but then nothing actionable seems to have been proposed by the community since then.

Recently an ex-member of the ESC proposed to the ESC to archive LOOL [0] and during the following ESC meeting no concerns were expressed for doing so [1].

The “Attic Policy” [2], that has been written to archive obsolete projects, states that the Board will need to vote on the archival process to confirm ESC’s choice.

It is likely that the board will need to vote on it soon so if the community would like to do something with LOOL there might be a small window of opportunity to have your preferences on what to do with it heard.

If nobody comes along proposing to look after it and update if so that it could be brought back into an usable form for the community then the board might have to vote for having LOOL archived.

Ciao

Paolo

[0] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-June/088982.html
[1] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-June/089018.html
[2] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Policies/Attic

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#13

Hi Andreas,

it’s great to see this types of cooperation offers.

I might be biased but I would prefer to see the project on TDF’s infrastructure and covered by the appropriate agreements so that we can ensure we invest on a project that will clearly provide long term benefits for the wider community.

Ciao

Paolo

On 24/06/2022 12:23, Andreas Mantke wrote:

Hi Paolo, Franklin, all,

it would be great, if we could work together on a process to merge both branches together and get the community versions in sync. I think this could be done most easy on Github.

Regards,
Andreas

Am 24. Juni 2022 11:29:16 MESZ schrieb Paolo Vecchi paolo.vecchi@documentfoundation.org:

Hi Franklin,

thanks for the great proposal.

As the LOOL archival discussion is planned for Monday I’ll ask the board to modify the agenda to start discussing your’ and Andreas’ proposal.

There is a lot that needs to be evaluated with the community to see if and in which way we can make LOOL available for the community again.

Ciao

Paolo

On 24/06/2022 06:37, Franklin Weng wrote:

Hi,

Here I have a proposal: to have LOOL respository sync to another LOOL-derived suite:

https://github.com/OSSII/oxool-community

OxOOL is developed by OSSII in Taiwan, derived from LOOL. It has commercial version, which is several versions advanced to community version, while the community version is also open sourced. Currently National Development Council Taiwan, the main dominant unit of ODF policy in Taiwanese government, uses (forks) this community version into “NDCODFweb”:

https://github.com/NDCODF/ndcodfweb

which is also mainly supported by OSSII.

Besides NDCODFWeb and some other Taiwanese government units, OxOOL is also used in different companies and products. For example, it is integrated into ASUS cloud Omnistor Office (https://www.asuscloud.com/omnistor-office/), OpenFind SecuShare Pro (https://www.openfind.com.tw/taiwan/secusharepro.html). It is migrated into Pou Chen Group (https://www.pouchen.com) and some other big anonymous companies. Also, it is deployed in UNAU (https://www.unau.edu.ar/la-universidad/ ).

OxOOL v4 will be released in a month and can be a good and useful base to LOOL, also good to the LibreOffice community.

I’m not a representative of OSSII, but the GM of OSSII told me that they are happy to share the community version.

In this proposal there are two ways to relive LOOL:

  1. To sync current LOOL with patches from OxOOL community v4, which may technically take more time and efforts.

  2. Start a new repository from OxOOL community v4, which I’ll say that it is actually a “fast forward” from current status since OxOOL is also derived from LOOL, though a bit far before. It will be technically easier than 1., just that maybe some community people may feel uneasy or unhappy with this way.

Both ways are okay for me, as long as LOOL can be relived. However no matter which way, IMO TDF needs to employ in-house developers (independent from any ecosystem member) for rerunning LOOL. The second option, which is my prefer option, is a lot easier technically and in-house developers would just need to (cowork with community members and OSSII to) maintain LOOL repository.

Features in OxOOL commercial version are mostly (customized) requests from customers and hence may not necessarily need to be backported (to community version), but the GM of OSSII also promised that OxOOL Commercial version functions (which they think good / necessary to be back ported) and bugfixes will be back ported to LOOL (and OxOOL community version too).

Of course, after reliving LOOL all developers are welcomed to contribute to LOOL.

Details can be discussed with OSSII.

Regards,
Franklin

Paolo Vecchi 於 2022/6/21 20:15 寫道:

Hi all,

just a heads up in case the community would like to come up with proposals in regards to LibreOffice On-Line.

As you might be aware LOOL’s repository has been frozen since the major code contributor decided to move it to GitHub and not contribute back to TDF’s repository.

At the time there has been a debate about it but then nothing actionable seems to have been proposed by the community since then.

Recently an ex-member of the ESC proposed to the ESC to archive LOOL [0] and during the following ESC meeting no concerns were expressed for doing so [1].

The “Attic Policy” [2], that has been written to archive obsolete projects, states that the Board will need to vote on the archival process to confirm ESC’s choice.

It is likely that the board will need to vote on it soon so if the community would like to do something with LOOL there might be a small window of opportunity to have your preferences on what to do with it heard.

If nobody comes along proposing to look after it and update if so that it could be brought back into an usable form for the community then the board might have to vote for having LOOL archived.

Ciao

Paolo

[0] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-June/088982.html
[1] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-June/089018.html
[2] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Policies/Attic

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#14

Huh, did I say TDF hire developers to maintain code for Taiwanese government? Is it my English so bad or yours?

Simon Phipps <simon@webmink.com> 於 2022年6月24日 週五 17:50 寫道：

#15

Hi Paolo, all,

no objections. I’d Prüfer that too. But we should make developer life mouch more easy and also implement tools like the workflows available on github.

Regards,
Andreas

Am 24. Juni 2022 12:37:54 MESZ schrieb Paolo Vecchi paolo.vecchi@documentfoundation.org:

Hi Andreas,

it’s great to see this types of cooperation offers.

I might be biased but I would prefer to see the project on TDF’s infrastructure and covered by the appropriate agreements so that we can ensure we invest on a project that will clearly provide long term benefits for the wider community.

Ciao

Paolo

On 24/06/2022 12:23, Andreas Mantke wrote:

Hi Paolo, Franklin, all,

it would be great, if we could work together on a process to merge both branches together and get the community versions in sync. I think this could be done most easy on Github.

Regards,
Andreas

Am 24. Juni 2022 11:29:16 MESZ schrieb Paolo Vecchi paolo.vecchi@documentfoundation.org:

Hi Franklin,

thanks for the great proposal.

As the LOOL archival discussion is planned for Monday I’ll ask the board to modify the agenda to start discussing your’ and Andreas’ proposal.

There is a lot that needs to be evaluated with the community to see if and in which way we can make LOOL available for the community again.

Ciao

Paolo

On 24/06/2022 06:37, Franklin Weng wrote:

Hi,

Here I have a proposal: to have LOOL respository sync to another LOOL-derived suite:

https://github.com/OSSII/oxool-community

OxOOL is developed by OSSII in Taiwan, derived from LOOL. It has commercial version, which is several versions advanced to community version, while the community version is also open sourced. Currently National Development Council Taiwan, the main dominant unit of ODF policy in Taiwanese government, uses (forks) this community version into “NDCODFweb”:

https://github.com/NDCODF/ndcodfweb

which is also mainly supported by OSSII.

Besides NDCODFWeb and some other Taiwanese government units, OxOOL is also used in different companies and products. For example, it is integrated into ASUS cloud Omnistor Office (https://www.asuscloud.com/omnistor-office/), OpenFind SecuShare Pro (https://www.openfind.com.tw/taiwan/secusharepro.html). It is migrated into Pou Chen Group (https://www.pouchen.com) and some other big anonymous companies. Also, it is deployed in UNAU (https://www.unau.edu.ar/la-universidad/ ).

OxOOL v4 will be released in a month and can be a good and useful base to LOOL, also good to the LibreOffice community.

I’m not a representative of OSSII, but the GM of OSSII told me that they are happy to share the community version.

In this proposal there are two ways to relive LOOL:

  1. To sync current LOOL with patches from OxOOL community v4, which may technically take more time and efforts.

  2. Start a new repository from OxOOL community v4, which I’ll say that it is actually a “fast forward” from current status since OxOOL is also derived from LOOL, though a bit far before. It will be technically easier than 1., just that maybe some community people may feel uneasy or unhappy with this way.

Both ways are okay for me, as long as LOOL can be relived. However no matter which way, IMO TDF needs to employ in-house developers (independent from any ecosystem member) for rerunning LOOL. The second option, which is my prefer option, is a lot easier technically and in-house developers would just need to (cowork with community members and OSSII to) maintain LOOL repository.

Features in OxOOL commercial version are mostly (customized) requests from customers and hence may not necessarily need to be backported (to community version), but the GM of OSSII also promised that OxOOL Commercial version functions (which they think good / necessary to be back ported) and bugfixes will be back ported to LOOL (and OxOOL community version too).

Of course, after reliving LOOL all developers are welcomed to contribute to LOOL.

Details can be discussed with OSSII.

Regards,
Franklin

Paolo Vecchi 於 2022/6/21 20:15 寫道:

Hi all,

just a heads up in case the community would like to come up with proposals in regards to LibreOffice On-Line.

As you might be aware LOOL’s repository has been frozen since the major code contributor decided to move it to GitHub and not contribute back to TDF’s repository.

At the time there has been a debate about it but then nothing actionable seems to have been proposed by the community since then.

Recently an ex-member of the ESC proposed to the ESC to archive LOOL [0] and during the following ESC meeting no concerns were expressed for doing so [1].

The “Attic Policy” [2], that has been written to archive obsolete projects, states that the Board will need to vote on the archival process to confirm ESC’s choice.

It is likely that the board will need to vote on it soon so if the community would like to do something with LOOL there might be a small window of opportunity to have your preferences on what to do with it heard.

If nobody comes along proposing to look after it and update if so that it could be brought back into an usable form for the community then the board might have to vote for having LOOL archived.

Ciao

Paolo

[0] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-June/088982.html
[1] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2022-June/089018.html
[2] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Policies/Attic

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#16

Hi,

Hi Andreas,

thank you for letting us know that you are working on it.

Ideally it would be great to have a few developers working on it,
especially to fix known security issues, and sufficient activity to
make it viable.

It is true that LOOL has been in a kind of limbo. The repository has
been frozen "temporarily" but it kind of became a permanent situation.

In your opinion, would reopening the repository for 12 months provide
enough time for a community to form around it?

It would require warnings until all the security bugs have been fixed
and that it might not be well maintained until we see constant and
sufficient activity but it could be an option to make it up for the
longer than expected temporary freeze of the repository.

We need not only a security warning, but clear information that the
recommended versions of LOOL are still CODE and Collabora Online (LibreOffice Technology (TM)).

A few months ago my corporate client wasted time and money because they didn't notice on the
TDF site that LOOL is not actively developed. Thanks to the helpfulness of employees of
Collabora Productivity, now they can test its fork with an up-to-date LibreOffice in their intranet, and
started to contribute back to CODE (they have already been one of the biggest contributors
of LibreOffice Desktop).

Why do we need to emphasize that CODE/Collabora Online are the recommended versions (by TDF, too:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/LibreOffice_Online#Current_Status)?
Not only because LOOL was the idea and for the most part, product of Collabora Productivity,
but because the original core LOOL developers still work for Collabora in the spirit of the
free software: CODE is the only actively developed version of LOOL, and this is the only maintained
version which contributes back to LibreOffice actively.

More information: https://collaboraonline.github.io/post/faq/ (by the way, Collabora's description
mentions other maintained versions, like OSSII and Zimbra Docs).

If after 12 months we don't see much activity then we could be certain
that the community is not really interested in working on LOOL.

It would be great to know if others have other
takes/options/alternatives on this subject.

I'm sure, the potential corporate contributors will prefer CODE/Collabora Online, so it's really important to inform them (and every LibreOffice users) correctly, like in https://collaboraonline.github.io/post/faq/.

As CODE/Collabora Online are LibreOffice Technology (TM), and for the healthy long-term LibreOffice development, I would like to see more contribution with Collabora Productivity. In my opinion, as LOOL was, CODE is still the key for the survival of LibreOffice. In the spirit of a successful free software contribution, respecting the decision of Collabora Productivity, TDF must help CODE development, as much as possible, for the sake of LibreOffice! As a first step, we shouldn't hijack future CODE users and as described above, future (and recent) LibreOffice users and contributors with false hopes and misleading information.

Best regards,
László

#17

Hi Laszlo, all,

I'm not sure, if you as a former Collabora staff member don't any
potential CoI in the whole topic.

I'd prefer if only community members without potential CoI share their
opinion on this topic.

I also have no idea why it's not possible to work on a common ground of
LOOL (LibreOffice Online) and why it is/was instead necessary to fork
the code away from the LibreOffice community and rename it.
If I look over the fence into another OSS community there is no such
behavior. Maybe because the license is GPL and there is a contributor
assignment for the foundation in place (or there is more common spirit
in the project and the professional contributors are more divers).

Regards,
Andreas

#18

Hi Andreas,

Hi Laszlo, all,

I'm not sure, if you as a former Collabora staff member don't any
potential CoI in the whole topic.

I'd prefer if only community members without potential CoI share their
opinion on this topic.

I'm not only a former Collabora contractor (near 3 years until 2017), but a former
LOOL developer, too, and still like the term "LibreOffice Online". But now as a
fresh TDF director ȧnd almost fresh full-time LibreOffice developer, I would like
to continue on my 20-year contribution, based on my experience (see the
case of my corporate client with LOOL mentioned in my previous letter).

I also have no idea why it's not possible to work on a common ground of
LOOL (LibreOffice Online) and why it is/was instead necessary to fork
the code away from the LibreOffice community and rename it.
If I look over the fence into another OSS community there is no such
behavior. Maybe because the license is GPL and there is a contributor
assignment for the foundation in place (or there is more common spirit
in the project and the professional contributors are more divers).

I'm sorry about the change, too. I don't know the details, maybe LOOL was
never a core LibreOffice development, but it seems, there was no choice for
Collabora Productivity, only forking. Likely the reason is known for the
former TDF board, and Michael Meeks wrote about it, too, see "Why is
Collabora Online its own project?" in
https://collaboraonline.github.io/post/faq/.

Forking is possible for everyone, but only with renaming. So it was very unfair to write about that renaming is some evil thing, while that was likely a mandatory trade mark issue for Collabora Productivity, too.

The good thing, that CODE/Collabora Online are still "LibreOffice
Technology (TM)" (see https://www.collaboraoffice.com/community-lot/),
so we have the common ground. We must continue to recommend CODE/Collabora
Online, as the best way to use LOOL code base: CODE is the only actively
developed fork of LOOL, and this is the only maintained fork which
associated with active LibreOffice development, while other forks left
alone not only LOOL, but LibreOffice, too.

Best regards,
László

#19

Hi all,

Hi Andreas,

(..)

I also have no idea why it's not possible to work on a common ground of
LOOL (LibreOffice Online) and why it is/was instead necessary to fork
the code away from the LibreOffice community and rename it.
If I look over the fence into another OSS community there is no such
behavior. Maybe because the license is GPL and there is a contributor
assignment for the foundation in place (or there is more common spirit
in the project and the professional contributors are more divers).

I'm sorry about the change, too. I don't know the details, maybe LOOL was
never a core LibreOffice development, but it seems, there was no
choice for
Collabora Productivity, only forking. Likely the reason is known for the
former TDF board, and Michael Meeks wrote about it, too, see "Why is
Collabora Online its own project?" in
https://collaboraonline.github.io/post/faq/.

the faq and the linked info graphic showed the perception of the company
of itself and its view on the LibreOffice community and project.

Forking is possible for everyone, but only with renaming. So it was
very unfair to write about that renaming is some evil thing, while
that was likely a mandatory trade mark issue for Collabora
Productivity, too.

It's not necessary to change the naming of the upstream project or
create a second competing project, if you want to use the code from the
upstream project to develop a (commercial) derivative.

The MPL license is as far as I know open for such derivative work.

Regards,
Andreas

#20

Hi all,

FYI: I wrote a short blog post about my work. And for those who like
visuals, I added two ones.

https://amantke.de/2022/06/25/work-on-revival-of-libreoffice-online/

Regards,
Andreas

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