Dear viewer, these subtitles were generated by a machine via the service YouTube and therefore are (very) buggy. If you are capable, please help us to create good quality subtitles: https://c3subtitles.de/talk/2483 Thanks!
[Music]
so the next talk is about ancient
history or at least ancient history as
far as computers are concerned a long
long time ago there was a company called
Sun Microsystems and then they got bored
by Oracle and that destroyed a lot of
great Hardware but it also destroyed or
nearly destroyed an interesting code
base the code base that in the end
became Libra office Tor and B are here
to tell you about what happens when your
code based gets bought by a multi well
by a huge giant it co uh
company and how you survive
that it's actually about uh being bought
by lawn mower as the uh as the saying
goes so the uh the company with the uh
mission of uh destroying open source
projects um right so we got somehow I
think we we ner sniped you into actually
attending uh a talk about bit of a
history um of open office and Libra
office welcome
everyone say quick introduction who's
talking
today um first of all me um my name is
toon um I've been with the open Office
project for I don't know more than 20
years so I started at Sun um I got out
um before Oracle um bought the company I
was then working for suso and I was
working for another company um who was
serving the uh the limox project for
city of Munich I founded my own company
some 3 years ago and I'm still happily
uh contributing and working on the old
cat base that used to be open Office
it's now called Libra office and the
great thing about open source is that
you can change your job um and take your
work with
you yeah hi um I'm beond that's me um
and uh I joined uh the open Office Team
at Sun in 2008 and I was a very happy
camper back then because I was in Sun
that was
wonderful and then this evil empire
bought them and um yeah so shortly after
uh libber office was founded and I
quickly did exactly what tson said I uh
did the same job just for a different
company namely canonical and started
with uh working on Liber office shortly
after um and I became a member of the
board so I um from the start when we
founded the foundation behind libber
office uh just like toron um and uh I
even stayed on the board after
um after I quit the job at canonical and
was only a volunteer contributor to uh
um to Libra office where I was just
hacking in the evening in my free
time okay so um I I heard that um people
are slightly exhausted from the Heat and
everything and there lots of great talks
and now there's this here so we thought
we make it a little bit more interactive
so um if you have lots of questions ask
them during the talk like there comes a
slide you have a question or you have a
comment make it we will come run running
around with the microphone there will be
time for questions afterwards but not
that much so first question who has been
um Affiliated or working with one of the
many projects that Oracle
asked yay one two three at least four
five that's a decent number okay so um
let's start with uh some um how to
bootstrap um out of oracles grip so bit
of History um well the C base is ancient
well not that ancient the idea is from
1985 when there was a Dos application so
but the the actual cat base is from the
1990 literally the first commit and that
old cat base is from
I think March
1990 uh so it's really quite ancient
C++ um timeline um overall so open
Office started in 2000 so that's also 23
years ago um there was lots of like tiny
little Forks or semi Forks Over the time
of that uh coday so and and quite
relevant I might be biased there but
it's it's one of the largest open source
projects still around it was a great
thing that sun back in the day open
sourced it almost I think as significant
as Netscape open sourcing um Mozilla and
and that Cod base um yeah so history
whatever
um Sun releases that um some changes
down license um so the first license was
U relatively commercially friendly so
you um IBM at the time took the
opportunity to Fork that and ter Al and
not contribute back so for the project
of that size and and that relevance I do
believe that license matters um and in
this case Sun agreed and changed the
license uh to um lgpl which actually
then requires contributing back and then
certainly they cut a site deal with IBM
um so IBM could continue to use the uh
proprietary version under a special
license which In the End Community
community members didn't like that much
so so pretty much from not not from day
one but probably from 2004 or
five there was some unhappiness in the
community um uh there was also some
promises for an independent open Office
Foundation uh that that that never came
uh came to pass so so there was some
some bit of grumbling there and and of
course the project itself was was very
um single vendor so there was son and
then there was a very large gap to the
next contributor in terms of size then
again it was very successful like in in
in gaining traction and gaining support
and being ported to ano any number of
platforms yeah last um major release was
2008 and then this
happened uh so so was this announcement
that well sun was not doing well for a
number of reasons um and there was a
number of companies being uh paraded um
as potential biders and in the end uh
Oracle was outbidding everybody else and
that pretty much from day one um was um
um causing concerns so so Oracle was
known already at the time to be very
bottom line focused it was very obvious
at the time with a um staff of more than
100 I think 110 120 people um at the uh
Sun Microsystems open Office Team that
was looked pretty unsustainable under uh
Oracle uh rule so um I think at least in
I think late 2009 early
2010 uh all over the world Community
people started looking into um serious
looking into what are we going to do so
what so there was already kind of
community support and communication
channels being asked and being
increasingly hard to get someone to
commit to something inside uh the the
open Office Team so so the writing was
essentially on the wall what's going to
happen um there was a history of Oracle
um there was other open source projects
that were under Sun maintainership that
had similar concerns um I think at the
time when early 2010 already one was
already I think under in serious Peril
so yeah so overall people started to um
be concerned and started to think about
what to do and I think this is one of
the first ingredients that you need if
you want to try uh and break away you
need critical mass you need critical
mass at the end for users to matter and
you but first of all you need a critical
mass of people of contributors that that
matter if you don't have that probably
don't do it yet so um there was the time
before 2009 there was some people who
were considering um putting some
pressure on sun or going their own going
at their own um I think ultimately
probably all of all of those opportunity
all of those attempt would have failed
because as I said you need a critical
mass of contributors you need most of
the the co-contributors for something
like libber office or fire fox or
something else you need a number of of
knowledgeable people who can actually
maintain your Cod base otherwise don't
do it so so that was suddenly um there
was this opportunity so so there was a
way with lots of people in the community
being concerned that's an ingredients um
number one
then one one example question I I would
like to ask the audience who here uh
knows and uses Hudson
C
example um who uses Jenkins or he knows
about
Jenkins okay uh Jenkins is just Hudson
um without the trademark name um because
uh that Hudson was in Project by an Sun
employee who did that mostly in their
free time and uh they fired him I if I
remember correctly and afterwards told
him uh your project has to do this that
and this in that those ways after they
fired him um otherwise you can't use our
trademark and then Hudson became a new
name uh which was Jenkins so that was a
bit of a foreshadowing for things to
come right so and that's the second
ingredient so if you are end user Focus
you bloody need a name and you if you
don't have a name you very quickly need
to make your name so and then there was
another one of the problems that
actually actually uh Sun at the time and
then Oracle uh hold held the trademark
rights for open Office so so that was
out um right so that caused quite some
headache and um and some some planning
there so so so you need you need
critical mass you need a name and you
need something actually that the people
can at the day um when you when you
announce that you need something
actually there you need some some bits
some binaries to
download so um
all of that taken together um what
happened then was that um all those
people around the world are were coming
together there was very conveniently
there was an very last open Office
conference um in September 2010 and
everybody was there anyway um and it was
my first conference and I was very happy
to be there and be at this huge event it
was my first open Office conference and
these guys did other things than talking
about Open Office
yeah so well we were there but we wanted
to meet like privately but it was this
kind of Oracle run event so we all had a
stomach ache one
evening and we didn't go for the river
cruise but everybody like surprisingly
everybody had a stom EG there was
nothing wrong with with the food but
yeah we came we all came up with with
the same excuse so we met um in budha
ped um for some uh conspira uh dinner
and hashed out and hashed out the uh um
yeah not not the final
supper you knowe that I'm not in there I
didn't know well except for everyone
having a stomach stomach ache uh I
didn't know about what they were doing
but clearly they were doing
something yeah so so we we actually we
we hashed out the so we launched on uh
September 27 so there was like like
looking each other into the eye and like
committing to it like yeah we're going
to do that and and we had people from
Linux distributions we had lots of
volunteers there so we had quite some uh
um critical mass I would say at the time
and I yeah we we sat there for dinner
had some good good meal and some wine
and we looked each other in the eye and
said yeah we're going to do that we go
live and then prepared everything like
yeah whatever lots of uh nights hacked
and websites um um prepared and um and
downloads uh PR binaries prepared and we
set up a mirror system so that when we
hit the go button that we wouldn't like
when like I don't know all those 20
people start downloading Liber office uh
that um the the miror infrastructure
wouldn't actually break down it wasn't
bit more than uh than 20 actually we
might quite a splash and so that's
probably so so when you get when you
have critical mass probably you have
some people um with some marketing
experience with some press contacts and
for something where you need to make
your name that's the fourth ingredient
that really matters so from day one you
have to be in the press for a while
because nobody knows you so you people
need to read about you for a little
while um right so so we went on um and
um we actually ask ourselves the
question is this a DOT so is this going
to fly or not um and of course not it's
a fork and a successful one um so um
yeah we we went on announced um went
live had some I think I don't know
some I think the first month I don't
know I don't have that number but it was
not shy of of a million not not much
lower than a million downloads I think
in the first month um and yeah for
something end user like give the people
something to play
with okay um going on um I'm going to
speed this up a little bit so so anybody
remember those days like so so we
actually were quite lucky like everybody
remembers like Heiser writing about
that yeah that's great so so I think
that's um so we're super super lucky
there um and and of course it was like
fitting The Narrative like Oracle bat
and so so it was kind of helpful to be
at at that moment but that's that's
probably the fifth ingredient like use
the moment you will know when the moment
has come and then jump and don't
hesitate just [ __ ] do
it um right so so then well actually
then we did it and then then actually
the problem started and the work started
so before that was all kind of theoreti
and and but then actually we had to
start working and we had to change from
uh something that was um Sun uh funded
Sun promoted Sun owned and then Oracle
owned um to something that was
completely Community run so from this
umbrella there's some someone holding
the umbrella and paying the bills to
something where you actually are thrown
into the cold water and you have to run
it
yourself um and um yeah trying to
actually make it difference um and using
this momentum that we had from that day
um and the momentum was actually also on
the development side that was
essentially 10 years of pented up demand
where people people wanted to change
something and some said ah no
whatever and our engineering quality
standards um prohibit us from doing this
so um yeah I don't know like sun was
kind of still bit corporate and this was
community and people just wanted to
break free and hack and that's what they
did um right um so so that's a bit of
the commit history there so you see this
um um pretty much coming up from Z zero
um the the blue top there that's uh
that's Oracle uh open Office commit so
you there's almost nothing else when we
started so almost all development was
actually done uh by Sun Engineers Oracle
engineers and then you see this
explosion uh this Cambrian explosion
there of of people uh starting to
contribute you see Christmas that's when
people take a
break but it recovers from there on
um yeah so lots of things that we did um
that led us to um being on every Linux
distribution um that let the trade press
likes us because we had lots of feature
releases I could write something about
us um and and also this uh Release Train
thing is quite important to actually lay
a different foundation for the uh for
the community or the contributors
because in the release trame everyone
has like the same influence uh on when
something is released uh namely not at
all because it will be released by a
specific time and at Sun Oracle it was
always yeah I spoke to a release
engineer once at Sun and he said well I
always take vacation on the release date
because I know that it's not going to be
released on that date so because it
would always be delayed um so there was
a privileged in Sun Oracle to set the
release date at whatever they wanted and
all the others didn't have uh any
influence and the uh Release Train
actually uh made all contributors equal
and their influence equal you had to get
your feature in by a specific date and
if not uh well then in the next either
in the next release in half a year or in
a uh feature fix release just like
everyone else so there was was no
special treat treatment there that's
quite important
actually and then orle threw us a curve
ball um that one there so so they they
shut down um the uh the open Office Team
and contributed the project to the
community which had already moved on so
they found another Community uh to
contribute that too um and donated it to
the Apache Foundation um the upside of
that was that um Liber office could
relicense so the code was then suddenly
available under uh uh the um Apache
license
and and also Oracle uh also Oracle had
fired everyone working in their like
everyone that was working on open Office
just five people were rehired by ABM but
that's just a side note so yeah they
donated the project after firing
everyone they yeah right they fired
everyone and then they donated the
project and um so it was kind of so we I
think we did like in in hindsight we did
the right thing with uh forking of
course it would have been nicer um to
agree let's say beforehand so there
wouldn't be too competing
projects hard to say like alternative
histories um I don't know so I mean as I
said the the the the upside and there is
quite some upsides is that um Liber
office could relicense and so we are now
under MPL
which is slightly better um we think
from a um like how how Liber office like
with extensions and everything is is
built so it's slightly more um um
business friendly so lgpl means you have
to so if you if you add a file you have
to open source that file and MPL it's
like you change the file you have to
publish and if you add something like
new files new functionality then in
theory you can keep that proprietary so
so there are upsides and and of course
the open Office project there's lots of
friendly people there um that we meet
frequently at at conferences but of
course at the time it was quite a
problem um because then of course
there's this well there's now two
projects so who's the the trade press is
going to celebrate and who are the like
if you want to hack an open source
office suite like where are you going to
go um I think in the end um that turned
out quite all right so if you look at
the contributors this is scientific
paper that had a bit of a look there uh
you see quite some overlap so you
actually see people committing on on
both ends um but you also see like how
relatively small that is and for
something as 10 million lines of code or
8 million lines depending on how you
count of course number of committers
actually matters um to make a
difference so in the end it was mostly
this uh where we ended up um I think
both both places H have um have a point
of course um having some nice solar roof
is
nice like to be living on that side um
yeah and finally and um then I will hand
over to to B with a bit of um like
take-home messages and actually like
actionable content like what to take for
your own projects if you want to Fork um
yeah so we we had this little Foundation
thing there so we actually promised to
have a foundation and someone said
foundation in German that means Shong so
let's have Shong and actually that was
nobody ever did that so we had to figure
out how to do that and then we did it in
Berlin was is cool Berlin I love them it
just took one also um this um the lawyer
you see there uh is we can make him an
honorary hacker because he made aong to
be something that was never done before
namely
that uh it uh its leadership is
democratically elected by the
contributors no one ever did that and uh
ban was very huh what's that when when
that came up so it was was like what's
that well actually why not yeah but it
was something uh like something very new
and like done the first time
there right so um um so there's lots of
lots and lots of things to say about
that Foundation thing but I'm not if you
are curious hit me up after the talk so
um let's hand over so so there's lots
lots and lots and lots of numbers and
lots of conferences and actually the
project is actually going strong and
growing uh which is just awesome uh to
be a part of um it's now actually able
to um uh attract about 1 and a half
million euro of donations a year and
with that able to sustain uh substantial
number of people both like hired staff
that that run the foundation and that
run the infrastructure and that run do
the builds and releases and do mentoring
and all of that uh and also like to to
fund uh development um both with
internal developers and with uh um
tenders like tendering that to the uh to
the
ecosystem right and that's that bit um
any questions so far
[Music]
just out of Interest did any of you work
on Star office May 4.0 or something um
because a star office was always a
product like there was always this um
there was single vendor open source you
had open Office and then you had the
proprietary version of that U du a
license if you will so son had had a
computer butal license or copyright
assignment so they were able to sell
Star office under proprietary ter terms
and did that till the last day mhm yeah
I did so too and uh it was wonderfully
harder to build because uh it didn't
have open source cont contributors
making the build even easier back then
so um and Liber off has made it a lot
more easy to for for people to actually
contribute so open Office was already
hard but star office was way hard harder
to use because it was internal and we
can treat our developers like that yeah
I I I don't know if you I mean I I think
many of you are working on software so
so do you do you do you agree with that
difference between if it's open source
and you get contributors actually making
it things easy and nice and fun matters
but internal projects somehow not is
that is that generally the case yeah
yeah yeah I kind of it's interesting so
it's great to I mean that's one of those
great things with open source so go
contribute to open source the fun is
there all right so let's let's go to the
boilerplate and some stuff you might
find uh interesting horrifying and
whatever when you start a fork like
licenses ownership and cont uh CLA
contribution license agreements codes of
conducts Brands statutes and donations
so what of these things are important is
it important to have a
license
you General agreement in the audience is
it important which o the approved
license you
choose
uh I would say not so much actually as
who owns the
code um for example if you contribute or
have to contribute all your code to one
company or one entity they can change
the license um and well hashiko did that
recently like last week with terraform
in that case the license isn't that
important because if you're not owning
it anyway they can change it at any time
so um yes it's important to have an um
OSI approved license which one is not
that important uh so just choose one of
the O approved ones yeah I think that
that's that's really one of the many
take- home messages
go with BK standard stuff don't reinvent
anything that does not matter for for
what you really can do which is hacking
on code so so run with one of the three
most prominent uh OSI approved licenses
which one actually does not matter that
much if you want to Fork probably you
can't change the license anyway so just
run with the license you got uh and oh
don't so in hindsight we had we had this
discussion in 2010 in Hind side I don't
think the license fundamentally matters
except for the case that of course your
project needs to agree so so it's more
like the the underlying like basement
like the the how your community
interacts like if you if I contribute
code what am I getting back what are
others getting out of it so so in a
sense it matters but not greatly what
matters is not alienating your
contributors and in that way it does
matter and going Beyond that uh for what
what is true for the license is even
more true for the code of conduct if you
want to write your own your your
contributors will spend two years hat
fighting each other hating each other in
the end and not talking to each other
and not coding so just take one of the
existing code of conducts and use that
the importance is really to to execute
on what is in the code of conduct and
not the sing each single word in the
code of conduct um Brands and donations
that's also uh quite
important if you want to have donations
or if you want to have money and
something on or users then the brands
are important because when Liber offer
started we uh well I say we you you had
the contributors from the first day I
was joining half a year later um but the
users there are still people lots of
people using open Office even though
it's like
it it's it's not even like there's not
even a cow to ride on anymore it's It's
so dead or horse to ride on so um brands
are really important if you if you
depend on the users in some some form or
way and and that's surprising um like I
mean I don't know so so as as a a geeky
person I would always like why does it
matter I mean what does how why why do I
care how the thing is called um is it it
bleeding obvious that this gets more
contribution than that so I'm going for
that um but of course if if you rent
user Focus that doesn't work so so I
mean I don't know if you you made the
experience as well how strong brands are
and how much that matters once you have
an established brand you're up against
but but don't underestimate that also
the the longevity so the opener is still
getting I don't know 100 million a
million dolls or something a month okay
let's go on next slide
so
um we have this wonderful title an aging
organization we fought 10 years ago um
so what did we learn so let's quickly go
to the next slide um 10 years ago
roughly we set sale uh and uh everyone
was agreeing on which direction to go
and it was roughly something like this
yeah we want to promote open source and
should be free this actually the English
translation it says free of charge the
German one says futs which is not
explicitly free uh free of charge so
there's already some things in there
that might be um misunderstood or
understood differently for different
people um and how how many of yeah these
are the words that you can have epic
discussions 10 years after about um and
the interpretation of these words uh are
everyone agrees on the sentence that was
there in the beginning but not everyone
agrees on what they mean and that might
actually uh that means that it's really
important to get a shared understanding
what you're aiming for and uh still have
that uh renegotiated if the environment
changes if something like Cloud
productivity becomes uh a thing and so
on all right so what should you take
care of when you when you do do
something like that you build the ship
of Teo and you exchange things on the
deck well the things you should quickly
exchange is I don't know if you can see
that but it's uh technology and uh being
able to work in different environments
you should also not always like
directors like me should not stay on the
board for 8 years and like you not for
longer but
um but that that's we kind of had the
problem that we don't have enough
candidat Ates but still you should
exchange people and there should not be
single points of failure and people
being like uh uh um having power just
for their role
um but the things that should be Eternal
should be principles like doers decide
uh freedom is important like freedom in
in Freedom as in beer or Freedom as in
Freedom um that you fight lockin and
monopolies and that you want to have
your project sustainable and open and
diverse and and things like that and we
did not succeed in everything uh we say
there I mean they're two white guys
standing on the stage here but um still
it's important to have the the
principles to be there and everyone
having a shared understanding about them
and being flexible about the rest uh the
stuff that is more to the right yeah and
and quite indeed and that's like for for
longer term projects the only constant
is change so make sure you can change
there was a bit of a problem there is a
bit of a problem because some things
can't easily be changed for a number of
reasons um once you've set sail and went
on so the ship of Theo is a great
metaphor um just that you can't change
anything that is below the water line
and that's quite a lot for for Libra
offers yeah so what you get is you have
a vision a mission something where you
want to get to and then you have
holographic superpositions which is what
everyone
thinks everyone else agrees upon but
maybe not everyone is agreeing on so how
can that look like and I have one
example the next slide is not by me it's
by Italo who does Liber office marketing
it's an awesome guy um and shows you
like how the Liber office project has
different Str strats of people like the
core people are people who are being
paid to work on that or are working on
it as if they were being paid that's a
core of maybe 40 people and then they
are regular volunteers and occasional
volunteers and a whole lot of people who
are not in here people doing user
experience QA translations and stuff
like that uh so there's different things
and um everyone has different
perspectives on this uh and uh I want to
give you like the Comic version
of uh can you give me the next yeah the
Comic version of a developer point of
view which incidentally might coincident
with my view when I'm uh unconstrained
by being on the board and just talking
for myself and that might be the most
important part is the project I want to
win new contributors more people who do
develop on the code I want to have
Innovation I want to build new things I
want to have Labor office like uh Google
office in the cloud and stuff like that
I want Want to Be Free as in Freedom uh
that is everyone should be able to
innovate on top of it and I want to have
the business stuff that works on it to
be actually in the product like someone
building new things on Libor office
itself like below the line that is
actually part of Libra office and then
you have again a Comic version of
someone who might be further apart from
the developer perspective and that is
something like yeah yeah I want to have
more users for example this is a
perspective of someone who's doing
trainings for Libra office then
obviously that is very important um and
the core product actually doesn't need
to change that much it might just be
well enough to just be uh wellmaintained
and get security fixes and stuff like
that it needs to be free as in beer that
is uh uh it should not be like cost
money and the business cases are built
on top of that so I take Liber off as an
existing product and I sell stuff on top
of that and in the end next slide you
want to have something like this you
want to have uh the community create new
more users from which you can Rec
recruit uh new contributors which again
makes makes the product better and maybe
even create new use cases for the
product which creates more users and so
on so uh you should balance both of
these
perspective uh perspectives and we in
the document Foundation we have a
democratic Pro process where everyone
votes and everyone has the same vote but
uh the thing is you have to balance
these points of view and if you leave uh
10 core developers in in a room they
will come up with one
perspective and you always have to bring
these perspectives together so that you
are not having only one side of uh or
one view on on the project and the
product so that's uh that's really a
challenge uh that grows over the years
with your community getting older and um
seeing more of these um
challenges next
slide yeah so this is the summary within
one in the title
um there are two things here like if you
if you if you want to have users
actually the brand is really important
for Libra office the brand for for for
getting users Libra office as a brand is
hugely important uh it's it's not like
the for the contributors the brand you
you could Fork today tomorrow into
something called something else maybe go
or something and no one would care but
if you uh if you have have a good brand
name that actually gets you the users
and if you care for the users that's
important and the same for the
contributors uh in in a different way
because for the contributors the project
is really uh important like what can I
do um what are my options to grow in
this uh in this thing right so so this
is essentially the um we have one last
sentence this is the essence of it so so
we I I was listing five um five
important things earlier in this talk
but many of them flow out of those two
you need a name if you don't have a name
have the means to make a name like make
a big splash make sure you get lots of
attention um you need contributors of
course so take your contributors with
you if you
can't be be prepared for a rough ride or
have some means to create a new
community those two are the most
important things to have if you don't
have an answer to those two questions
don't
Fork
yes um let me read that because it's I
think not visible um with the sun foring
we can help come and ask us thank you
thank so
[Applause]
much thank you TOs and bur for a great
well trip down memory lane but also very
practical information about open source
projects and how to well survive being
bored any questions
thank you have you already thought I
mean before I you have F that F that
maybe open office would be the winner in
the
game so I was at open office at the time
so I had no thoughts in that that regard
so you got to answer that one um yeah as
I said earlier so this is some hindsight
is is 22 um that that's
hypothetically maybe um it could have
changed something at the time we were we
were absolutely convinced that if this
becomes known that orl would would do
play this divide and conquer game and go
to many corporate friends and
say well your database licenses are
priced like that and maybe you want to
change your mind so that that they price
the same tomorrow so were really really
afraid that um they would pick up pick
out those like in particular corporate
sponsors of of the Liber office project
from the early days that actually
contributed a lot of development
resources that they will be not
available or gone or sitting on the
fence but yeah as I
said hard to hard to say but would have
happened
hello yeah did anyone stay in Oracle for
long enough to actually make any friends
there out of all the developers
obviously been there for decades and
maybe tempt some of them over to the to
the bright
side so um so I left on 1st of uh
February I was at canonical 6 weeks
later everyone at canonical was F at
that Oracle was fired so um a lot of
those who were still with the company at
the point that I left were there just
for six more weeks were not allowed to
move over and then red had hired quite a
few of them and became they became
quite uh valuable um core developers in
libber office uh but obviously we could
not uh in the libber office ecosystem
like hire everyone who was just fired we
would have loved to mostly but um yeah
but but actually we managed over the the
course of the years following so so
while we had to start from somewhere and
that was quite constrained but actually
we managed over the course of the years
to to pick a few more uh from those
former um core developers there and so I
mean there is with Oracle I mean so
there are great people at Oracle to this
very day and like very very good open-
source people to this very day so so of
course it's a bit of a um black and
white um uh comic strip villain thing
that we painted here and apologize for
that but it makes for great talk yeah
also it it it uh it's a good idea to
talk to Oracle people if they're at
forem or something like that where you
where you can talk about the projects
and not about the company and they might
be more interested in like the things
you sh
and not the things that like I mean
don't make them defend their company
that doesn't help anyone and me is there
anyone working for Oracle here
um good one last
question so my question is um in recent
days there have been a lot of um mes
from companies against open source
projects um what what what is your take
how could um could these projects like
um how could open source be
more
um uh could be better for the companies
so that they uh share this common Vision
in the future
like how could
this uh so so what incentives would you
have to set that's basically my
question well m it's a bit tricky to see
all of open open source projects but I
think uh um you see quite a few of of
those projects that were open sourced
and were close sourced now or
um uh yeah in some way move towards that
it's um it might have been always the
plan of that company if that's a venture
uh Capital company that wants to grow
big that might always be the plan
because because open source is not a
business model yeah so the thing you
need to do and this is what we were
talking about here too and we had in the
in the foundation statutes is to make
the project sustainable and that means
it it needs to for for also for the
commercial entities it needs to be uh
relevant to be part of that and there
are actually very few projects who did
that um apart from libber office I think
Linux is is one of the comp uh projects
where it's really multiple contributors
from all over the place they all have
very different use cases and that's why
it works so many people have so many use
cases that their um work their shared
work is more valuable than if they would
do their own thing and you need to find
that that thing to make everyone like
have a shared interest in the thing
right so so open source helps
tremendously for for um getting very
very widely distributed like uously
distributed everywhere it also helps
attrac in contributions if it's
accessible if it's well done but it's
not a business model so you need
to yeah as as B said some might think
that for Venture Capital the the idea
was to get onto everybody's machine and
then uh cash out for for libber office
we already had all of that there so we
had existing business models that could
continue we could fine tune that we
could find um spots there and we of
course we didn't have we didn't need to
feed 120 people which was sad at the
time but it also made it slightly easier
uh to keep things going and growing over
the
time thanks a lot T and B thanks for
your insights let's give another round
of applause for T and
[Applause]
B
[Music]