Why is OpenOffice "profoundly sick"?

OpenOffice.org developer and Novell employee Michael Meeks calls OpenOffice "profoundly sick" and chides Sun for retaining too much control over the project for its own good. He's right, and here's why.

First, though Meeks thinks it's critical that the raw numbers of OpenOffice volunteer developers be high, this isn't necessarily true. He writes:

In a healthy project we would expect to see a large number of volunteer developers involved, in addition - we would expect to see a large number of peer companies contributing to the common code pool; we do not see this in OpenOffice.org. Indeed, quite the opposite we appear to have the lowest number of active developers on OO.o since records began: 24, this contrasts negatively with Linux's recent low of 160+. Even spun in the most positive way, OO.o is at best stagnating from a development perspective.

Well, no. OpenOffice could actually be thriving from a development perspective in light of a decrease in the sheer number of contributors. Why? Because all significant open-source projects depend on a small-but-committed core of developers that do 85 percent of the development. The idea of a global, free-flowing (and freely coding) pool of open-source developers actively contributing significant code to projects is largely a myth. It always has been.

The important thing, therefore, is for that committed core to be...committed. But in the case of OpenOffice, Sun is both the gatekeeper to commitment and contribution, as Meeks intimates, and Sun's commitment to writing code seems to be dwindling:

It is clear that the number of active contributors Sun brings to the project is continuing to shrink, which would be fine if this was being made up for by a matched increase in external contributors....

Sun and Novell have long been the dominant contributors to OpenOffice, but Sun is apparently cutting back on its contributions without opening up the project to outside contributors. This is the big problem in OpenOffice. Or, rather, one of them. The other? OpenOffice is such a complex, monolithic piece of code that outside, would-be contributors struggle to know how to quickly become productive and contribute.

The answer isn't to start focusing on AbiWord or other open-source alternatives, as TechRepublic's Jack Wallen suggests. The answer is for Sun to turn OpenOffice into a foundation, similar to Eclipse, and get out of the way.

This won't resolve OpenOffice's code problems, but it just might resolve its code commitment problems. Until the latter is resolved, there's little hope, precisely because there's little incentive, for fixing the former.

[deepwave]

Part of the reason stems from OOo's horrifically convoluted codebase. And Sun acting as picky gatekeeper doesn't help either.

[hutchike]

Simon Phipps at Sun has responded to this article on his blog here: http://blogs.sun.com/webmink/entry/link_roundup_to_devember_23#comments

[odubtaig]

Looks like Simon doesn't want to admit Novell wouldn't be 'needling and stirring' if they weren't so contrary as to want to retain the copyright on their own OOo contributions.

Now that Sun has buried StarOffice, maybe they could stop expecting free no-strings-attached labour?

[mal_icious]

This is why CNet is losing readership. Because they're trying to lower their payroll expense by "hiring" bloggers from private sector companies, who use CNet to flog their own views of the marketplace. This kind of stuff really peeves me - Novell, the master of open source hypocrisy, criticizing Sun, and Matt Asay lauding them. Jesus. CNet, now you know why folks like me are leaving in droves. Your brand is crap, someone should tell the publishers.

[Jaden1138]

What about Go-oo? http://go-oo.org/

It's based on the OpenOffice codebase but free from the reigns of Sun. It's actually part of several Linux distributions by default, as spoken of in this article: http://www.linux.com/feature/154364

[odubtaig]

With Sun's insistence (as can be seen again with the solver example) on every contributor handing over ownership of the code the only thing that surprises me about Go-OO is that it didn't happen sooner.

Good to see.

[Seaspray0]

The problem for coding open source is it doesn't put food on the table. You really need corporations willing to front the paycheck.

[factotum218]

Nice agenda you got going there. Nothing like the smell of freshly baked hype.