Here's a funny thing... in October, the same month OpenOffice.org 3.0 was released, Novell's chief OpenOffice.org (OO.o) contributor, Michael Meeks, posted a blog entry that--after a detailed statistical analysis--came to the conclusion that “OO.o is a profoundly sick project.”
This is funny, because the timing of Meeks' statements seems a little off, given that the OO.o 3 had just been released to fairly positive reviews. In yet another odd display of timing, Meeks' comments went largely unnoticed in the general community until they were picked up by Slashdot on December 28. Then again this weekend, when ZDNet Asia ran with the story and got some comments from other industry members... everyone but folks from Sun.
None of this is by way of saying that Meeks' thesis is inherently wrong, just because the idea took a while to catch hold in the community overvoice. If you haven't read the article, please do. It's a solid, detailed look at contributor figures gleaned from OO.o's commit, that highlights one glaring point: that over recent months, Sun's contributions to the project have declined and no one has stepped in to take up the slack.
Hence, Meeks' assertion that OO.o is a “dying horse.”
This is a respectable position; the trend in Meeks' numbers seems clear, and from an outside point of view, it seems like Sun can make more money on stuff like MySQL or openSolaris than on OO.o (a point Dana Blankenhorn made). But here's the thing... the crux of the humorous bit that is making my eyebrow waggle:
Didn't everyone want Sun to back off from the OO.o project?
I know I did, and so too did a lot of other people in the community. Sun, despite being an open source player, has always seemed to have a little bit of trouble giving up control of its projects. People involved with OO.o have been complaining about this particular problem for years. Developers were bending my ear about this 'way back when OpenOffice.org was first launched.
So now that Sun seems to be doing what developers have wanted for years, backing off from dictating what OO.o should be, there's complaints? In July 2008 Der Standard interview, Meeks himself indicated that “Sun dropping out of OpenOffice.org development wouldn't be an entirely negative thing.”
Like I said. Funny.
But there is a serious problem here. While you can argue whether Sun is deliberately leaving OO.o, or just simply languishing its contribution rate due to shift in resources, if the company that started the OO.o project is suddenly absent without any sort of transition plan, then there will indeed be a vacuum within the project, and Meeks' diagnosis will be very accurate.
In other words, Sun decreasing its OO.o presence is not the bad thing. Sun decreasing its OO.o presence without announcing some sort of planned reduction strategy is the real problem.
For my own sake, I think the reports of OO.o's illness are a bit on the pessimistic side. There have been bumps in the road before with OO.o, particularly with shortages of developers. I think Meeks' blog entry has some solid points, and should serve as a heads up that one of the best pieces of office suite software out there is in need of some help. All you have to do is dive in.
