LOOL is about to be archived

Hi Paolo, all,

Hi all,

(...)

is important to look at the past to try to correct eventual mistakes
and avoid repeating them.

If you want to change the status quo, I suggest you pledge your case
to the current board, with arguments not attacking an old vote, but
why the actual change would be needed.

I believe that's what Andreas has been trying to do.

Sometimes it is also important to understand what led to a specific
situation to evaluate the measures that should be implemented to
correctly deal with issues and proposals.

its the responsibility of the current board to review past decisions, at
least if the board gets a hint, that there has been a not declared /
overlooked CoI of one participant.

There is no space for closing eyes and proceed further.

Regards,
Andreas

Hi Gustavo,

BTW, my previous proposal can be seen as the first draft proposal from OSSII. I’ve discussed with them then proposed it in the list.

Now we’re waiting to see if anyone is interested in that.

Franklin

Gustavo Buzzatti Pacheco 於 2022/7/9 11:23 寫道:

Hi Franklin!

I think your proposal is fantastic. My impression is that you, in Taiwan, are having a momentum like we had in Brazil around 2002-2011, but much stronger than ours.

Here, in the OpenOffice.org times, when we had a big adoption, the Brazilian government didn’t work enough to create and improve the local ecosystem neither contribute to the project, just focused on installation and use.

FMPOV, we should go ahead. Seems a possible way to reach some non-commercial & non European markets (better explained by Sophie in some last mails).

My question is: as details can be discussed with OSSII, who is the key person to start it? Could OSSII do the first step with a formal proposal to TDF, for example?

Best,
Gustavo

On Fri, Jun 24, 2022 at 1:48 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

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

Hi Gustavo,

Gustavo Buzzatti Pacheco 於 2022/7/9 11:23 寫道:

Hi Franklin!

I think your proposal is fantastic. My impression is that you, in Taiwan, are having a momentum like we had in Brazil around 2002-2011, but much stronger than ours.

Here, in the OpenOffice.org times, when we had a big adoption, the Brazilian government didn't work enough to create and improve the local ecosystem neither contribute to the project, just focused on installation and use.

FMPOV, we should go ahead. Seems a possible way to reach some non-commercial & non European markets (better explained by Sophie in some last mails).

My question is: as details can be discussed with OSSII, who is the key person to start it? Could OSSII do the first step with a formal proposal to TDF, for example?

Best,
Gustavo

For OSSII, Kevin Lin, the GM of OSSII, also a TDF member and a LibreOffice Migration Consultant will be the key person.  Jeff Huang who is now his employee  is also a TDF member.  They both can represent OSSII for discussing reliving LOOL using OxOOL as a base and further cooperative mode.

For technical part, AFAIK the relived LOOL is still under TDF not any commercial ecosystem member; and OSSII will backport their improvements (both for commercial or bugfixes)  as they think them worth doing, but not directly maintaining LOOL repository. Details can be discussed with them.

The main obstacles  will be language barrier and also some unknown political issues.  I'm not sure how much I can help with these but I'll see what I can do.   At least as long as any of you are interested in this proposal / this way to relive LOOL I can help you contact with OSSII.

Besides, Daniel R. has several years running OxOOL in his school.  He can be a good one to participate in the discussion too.

Regards, Franklin

Hi Franklin!

I think your proposal is fantastic. My impression is that you, in Taiwan, are having a momentum like we had in Brazil around 2002-2011, but much stronger than ours.

Here, in the OpenOffice.org times, when we had a big adoption, the Brazilian government didn’t work enough to create and improve the local ecosystem neither contribute to the project, just focused on installation and use.

FMPOV, we should go ahead. Seems a possible way to reach some non-commercial & non European markets (better explained by Sophie in some last mails).

My question is: as details can be discussed with OSSII, who is the key person to start it? Could OSSII do the first step with a formal proposal to TDF, for example?

Best,
Gustavo