If Collabora developers will stop contributing directly to LibreOffice, will there be a free version of Collabora Classic? Can fixes/new features in Collabora Classic be picked up by LibreOffice developers (through GPL)? Or does this mean abandoning Collabora Classic and focusing entirely on Collabora Onine and the new Collabora Office?
So Collabora Office Classic is important for a number of our customers and we expect to continue to support that for years ahead; currently I don’t believe we have plans to offer more than a demo version as a free download. Who takes what feature or fix and from where is a complicated topic that is hard to predict. It is clear that our main development focus and excitement is around the new Collabora Office and Online which are based on the OpenOffice then LibreOffice heritage too of course - I hope that helps.
Hi Michael (@mmeeks )
Thank you for the quick answer and clarification. Looking forward to see the upcoming development of Collabora Office and Online. Now more than ever, a transparent, fully functional European alternative to MS Office is badly needed. As is supporting Open Document files instead of chasing around the elusive MS file formats! Thanks!
1 Like
Like I understand licensing, even with open-source license like Mozilla Public License v2.0 (MPL for short), source code owner of the code can relicense source code anytime owner wants for new version of the file.
Sample 1:
- Alice created new file and writes source code in it and license the file with MPL. Alice holds copyright of this file. Lets say this is version 1 of the file.
- Now Alice makes a change to the file, lets say this is version 2 of the file. Because she is copyrigh owner of the file, she can relicense the file with some other license even e.g. proprietary closed source license.
- What Alice can NOT do is change file version 1 license. But if Alice changed a file a lot in version 2 and combined it with other files with MPL and we have proprietary solution.
Sample 2:
- Alice is owner of file with version 1.
- Bob makes a changes to first file and now changes must be applied according to MPL license.
- Alice can no longer relicense version 2 of the file, because she is not the copyright owner of the whole file. She can ask Bob to allow relicense a file, but Bob may not agree. Another option would be that Bob sings contract to give copyright rights to Alice - Alice could for example license the code so, that is required copyright transfer of the code.
- If there is healthy open source project with multiple users changing the same files, then it is virtually impossible to relicense the multiple times modified file to some other e.g. proprietary license.
That is what worries me… If some copyright owner modifies only few of the files and relicense the files, product solution can quickly become e.g. proprietary software.
This is probably the down size of MPL license. MPL only requires that individual files are licensed MPL. GPL would probably be more protective license. Because if copyright holder relicenses a source code file to some other e.g. proprietary license, he can not combine that code with the rest of the GPL code if the rest of the code was coded by multiple users.
I hope dispute between Collabora Productivity and The Document Foundation does not go deeper, to the destruction level, because then one or other side can do some relicencing of there copy right holded files.
Don’t forget Apache OpenOffice uses Apache license and LibreOffice uses MPL license. This means that LibreOffice can take the code from Apache OpenOffice, but Apache OpenOffice can not legally take code from LibreOffice.
You see both products are using open-source license. But subtle change of license and code changes can fly only one way, but not another.
Good to see you here for the first time. You ask a complicated question, luckily it has a rather simple answer 
Collabora is an Open Source company and all of our code is 100% open-source.
Also - we have no plans to change the license. While today TDF is behaving aggressively, it may be more reasonable in the future - there is always hope of future collaboration.
It seems there is benefit in keeping the door open for future reconciliation by continuing to use an compatible license. For now we will be doing our work, with our own focus in our own gerrit (cf. Distributed by
Design) but also contributing to LibreOffice where it makes sense; it is easy to over-think the change here.
I hope that helps
Michael.
2 Likes
Apache Office decided to use Apache license. LibreOffice decided to use MPL license. LibreOffice can pull code from Apache Office, but Apache Office can’t pull from LibreOffice because of license restriction.
Similar could be one of Collabora or LibreOffice changes license from MPL to GPL and another one does not want (for what so ever reason) to change a license and code pull can only be one sided.
I don’t yet fully understand (but have read a lot of forum posts) what is main cause of problem. But maybe: LibreOffice and Collabora Online is supplemental product. But… Collabora Office Desktop is competitive product to LibreOffice. If Collabora Office Desktop gains a lot of attention (maybe in few months/years span) number of LibreOffice users may decline.
And vice versa, Collabora has invested a lot in Collabora Online and now wave of sovereignty by multiple organizations and reviving LibreOffice Online may be direct competitor to Collabora Online.
I have installed Collabora Office Desktop to check out what is all hype about and I am really pleasantly surprised how good it really is. Probably this tool is perfectly good for majority of users and like I see it good “free” advertising what can corporate users expect in Collabora Online.
I still prefer full power of LibreOffice. I have been using LibreOffice from the first release which is 16 years ago and previously I used Go-OpenOffice. On Linux desktop this is perfect option. On Windows I use it daily at work. Microsoft Office is de-facto standard, and I use this tool to open sensitive files created in Microsoft Office. But maybe I am lucky I never need to use Microsoft Office to edit files. I use LibreOffice daily, specially Writer for writing documentation and then I do NOT save the file in ODT or DOCX as many users do, but I save the file in PDF/A-3b format, that is guaranteed that any coworker can open this PDF file virtually in any PDF viewer additionally I always embed ODF fine inside PDF file (official name in LibreOffice is Hybrid PDF). If I need to edit PDF, I just open the file in LibreOffice and embed ODF file is opened and I can edit it just like normal ODF file and then I save the file back to Hybrid PDF. Another benefit I see using PDF is, I have written tons of documentation that I need for daily use, and double clicking PDF file opens up instantly in web browser, on the other hand double click on ODF and it takes several seconds to open the file in Libreoffice. Because I am viewing way more then edit, Hybrid PDF is excellent. During my use of LibreOffice over years I have reported near the 100 bugs reports and most of my reports have been fixed over years. One of the last report bug was referenced Hybrid PDF and digitally signed documents and in the latest version of LibreOffice this is finally fixed. I can write document in LibreOffice Writer, export it to Hybrid PDF and digitally signed the document. I can distribute this PDF file to coworkers for reports that must be signed because of external audit is checking for document signing.
I see Collabora Office Desktop as interesting solution, but as I have described I am maybe “power user” with specific needs (Hybrid PDF).
I also use LibreOffice Calc quite a lot. I have written macros few years ago (with help of community), so I can write SQL statement in file and then double click on batch file I have written that opens LibreOffice Calc, imports file, executes macro that transforms the file, make it prettier and saves the file in ODS format. If I need to send spreadsheet to coworker, I save the file with LibreOffice Calc always in ODS format, then recheck the file with Microsoft Office Excel and in 95% of the time Excel can open file just fine and I just send ODS file to my coworkers. In those 5% of the time, there are some strange formatting issue like incorrect colors applied and similar, in this case if I really want correct formatting then in Excel I save the file in Excel format and send to coworkers (I usually don’t have time to dig deeper and I should probably report bug to Microsoft in any case, and I don’t even know how, and I am too lazy to work with such huge proprietary company, because I am small and unimportant).
And for the conflict between LibreOffice and Collabora… maybe new leadership in one or other way, may change collaboration, so now it is maybe the best time to cool down and just not make anything so worse that cooperation would be impossible. Just like life partners get in the disagreement, the best way to handle is to go each one to there own room (or even better for a walk) and cool down, do there own “business” and then somehow everything gets normal, and relationship even better, the growth.
What I see on LibreOffice forum, reading the comments, I see there was some ad hominem attacks, that are childish, one was like: “Mike you always misrepresents the issue.” Classical ad hominem attack, it would be much much better to explain your opinion and not think “I am master of the universe and you all are idiots”, humble opinion is what matters, because in complex situations, we are guaranteed to be wrong in some way or another.
OK, this is just my short notice.