It’s hard to add anything new to the plethora of comments and reviews about OpenOffice.org Contribution to Apache.
I just wanted to react to Luke Kowalski’s OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal:
Localization resources are expected to gravitate to the new project, as well.
Being a free software localizer who spent significant amount of time in the last 12 years on localizing free software on a voluntary basis, I do not find appealing to translate anything for free for a non-copyleft licensed software. I don’t like the business model where large corporations happily take the work of volunteers, who save them a lot of money, and nothing or nearly nothing comes from them in return.
I’m afraid that the new OpenOffice.org Apache project serves no other purpose than IBM can continue their practice: they take code others wrote for free, while keeping their code proprietary and occasionally dumping the unimportant parts to an open core to ease maintenance. I feel reluctant to support this scheme.