Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

It is unfortunate to say that Open Office is a program made by Orcale, and even though this program wishes to use the full power of an "Open Source" project, Oracle is at this very moment suing Google for alleged "copyright infringements" for using the open source "platform" Java. Oracle has recently bought out Sun Microsoft and taken ownership of Java, and is now hoping to make a quick buck by taking extreme measures by lawsuit for Google's new Andriod phone. If the lawsuit continues, it will greatly hurt the public relations for Oracle. I used to recommend Open Office to everyone I met, and now I will hardly do so due to the recent actions this company has taken. I do not support Oracle in this matter, nor will I have anything to do with Open Office in the future. Larry Ellision, the CEO of Oracle, must not feel secure with having accumulated over $28,000,000,000.00 in his lifetime and being the 6th richest person in the world, and therefore must look for ways in which to steal from trusted and honorable companies, such as Google.

Do not donate to or support Open Office in anyway, unless you agree that shady companies such as Oracle have the right to stampede around and take advantage everyone and everything they interact with.

While I have similar distrust of Oracle's motives, I don't see how OOo "belongs" to Oracle, or anyone else. Contributing to OOo benefits all OOo users, including Oracle. What purpose does it serve to stop supporting all OOo users just because one particular user is acting badly?

Life is much easier if you divide people into Good Guys and Bad Guys
Bad Guys wear black hats, have facial hair, consort with harlots and often speak with non-American accents.
Good Guys wear white hats, are clean shaven, speak with a midwestern or western American accent and are faithful to their horse and their blond, chaste girlfriend.
Larry Ellison has facial hair and it appears he doesn't even OWN a horse, but a has a boat. You can't get more evil than that.

Oracle is obviously more focused on making money than Sun was. Let's remember that Sun was losing money at a huge rate. I don't know how much they spent on supporting their open source products, but it seems likely that they weren't making enough from those products to cover the development and production costs. If so, something had to change. It is easy to conclude that the suit against Google is motivated by just pure greed, and I'm certainly suspicious of Oracle's motives, but I'd like to mention a few things.

There is nothing necessarily wrong with Oracle defending its patents. I know patents can be abused when they are overly broad. I have worked for companies that where threatened by patent trolls. But patents also are important for allowing inventors to profit from their work. Do any of us here have the knowledge to pass judgment on the merits of this case?

I don't see how Google is so pure. Don't they sell sponsored links to web sites that have been called fraudulent on this forum? Let's see how they react to the pressure put on them by the move towards mobile devices with their "Apps". It is easy to talk about community and sharing when your stock is soaring.

Oracle may be using the patent suit for other purposes. Here is one opinion Forbes Blog. I don't know if that guy is crazy or not, but it is certainly possible that there is more to the situation than the patent dispute.

I'm worried about the future of Oracle's open source products too, but I don't think taking the opening statements in a lawsuit seriously is wise. They have as much connection to the future as a politician's campaign speech.