ayers's blog
Free Software on a Free Market
Transfering OpenOffice.org to the Apache Software Foundation
Dear Apache Software Foundation,
rumors are emerging that Oracle will be donating OpenOffice.org to you. So OpenOffice.org is finally being transferred to a vendor independent foundation. That is a good thing, actually that is a great thing!
If I understand the process and licensing policy correctly, Oracle must grant you a perpetual patent license which includes downstream licensing. I suppose this will include all patents it currently has access to including the ones that are currently being transfered via the CPTN. Please, pretty please, insure due diligence and secure the Software Freedom together with the source code!
I also assume that you will obtain the OpenOffice.org trademark. I’d expect that you would like to prefix Apache to your version of the product… (possibly “Apache OpenOffice“?) but please insure that you at least obtain the rights to /potentially/ transfer the trademark of OpenOffice.org proper to The Document Foundation.
Of course the most important part would be for you to become a member of The Document Foundation. That way all contractual obligations that are driving this process can be honored while bundling the efforts to evolve the productivity suite which will provide so many individuals, institutions and companies across the world the path to Software Freedom.
Your’s truly,
David Ayers – Fellow of the FSFE