- LibreOfficeOnLine (LOOL) was created within The Document Foundation (TDF) but largely developed by Collabora. It was source only and suggested users pay a company to host for them.
- Some within TDF wanted to offer LOOL as a binary offering.
- Collabora moved their contributions to Collabora Online, which they controlled.
- LOOL was archived.
- More recently, LOOL was revived
- Collabora is pissed
- Collabora gets booted from TDF
I suppose this is a fundamental issue with the model of a foundation "owning" a product but a separate for profit company doing all the work. There's always going to be some issue that the two sides disagree on (in this case, how the free version is distributed). The foundation then either has to give in*, and become irrelevant or stand up for their own position, in which case the company is basically forced to pull out their co-operation. It seems unlikely that TDF will be able to make any product progress, and I bet in a few years collabora gets what they want and returns to the fold. TDF will either be cowed forever or this situation will just repeat on the next conflict.
* Like with OpenAI, where the for-benefit part eventually capitulated and became an vestigial organ of a for-profit business.
So what were the contrived reasons? I navigated getting coolwsd built before, but never quite got my user management layer for Nextcloud perfected to the point of going live... I thought it was a good piece of kit, but was a little bit skeptical of the branding divergence at the time. Something about it kinda just felt like drama waiting to happen. Was that it do you think? Or something else. Will keep an eye on the project regardless.
Not from the board, (implies board of directors), but from TDF membership (board of trustees). This essentially means you have no voting power and no benefits, but you're still free to still contribute by fixing bugs, adding new features, mentoring, code review,... ("community"). This are all the things that would benefit TDF by getting more money from donations (and then use that money for useful things that are mentioned in this TDF blog post).
I read it, and was hoping I would be more sympathetic to their side, but it was essentially 'they violated the rules our newly added non-contributor board members set, and by those rules, we kicked them out'.
Essentially this 100% confirms the Collabora story, just elaborates a bit on how the administrative takeover was done.
Not just this, it the way the vote was announced seems very, very bad. Italo may have found legal issues, but one of the things he said was that legal action was being taken by Collabora. That… doesn’t seem to be the case.
Italo and co removed some very dedicated contributors from the TDF. What an absolute disaster.
I wish we would admit that you can't have it all. You can't have a product that is open source with neutral foundation governance and also have that same product be de facto proprietary. People have been pushing this bait-and-switch business model for too long.
It was not really proprietary though? I don't like Collabora Office at all as a product (sorry, and I have tried) and the branding situation is super messy (sorry but it's true) but all the code is online.
The company in question profits heavily from the open source nature of LibreOffice. They're a big government vendor in Europe, mainly because their codebase is perceived as open source.
Many government services do directly use fees to pay for operating the service. Those services can operate with no government appropriation, and the funds never leave the specific agencies' own accounts.
For me the worst thing in this case is that a JUDGE signed off on an arrest warrant with only a clearview match linking Ms Lipps to the crime.
A judge and the warrant process are supposed to be the safeguard against police doing shady stuff (like relying on an AI hit to decide who commit a crime). But if the judges can't be bothered...
They are putting Carbon Capture into some concept cars and a race car [1]. Some more info in the system at [2]. I don't see any benefit for this technology being in a car vs at a stationary large scale facility.
> LGA Tower initiated a takeoff clearance for an aircraft waiting on 13 when we were only 300 feet high on final for 22. The voice accepting the takeoff clearance, most likely the First Officer, did not seem concerned, but the departing aircraft seemed to hesitate moving for a couple seconds. I believe this was because the Captain of that flight was likely the pilot flying, and was in a position to see how close we were to landing. I think he or she thought twice before starting their takeoff roll. Due to the thick smoky haze from the Canadian wildfires and a possible helicopter in the area, I judged it safer to continue the approach and land around 10 seconds after the departing aircraft crossed our path, instead of suddenly going around and trusting that the helicopter was not near the departure end of 22. The guidance in ATC’s 7110.65 does not seem to give guidance on exactly how close aircraft in this situation can get. Based on today’s and close calls I have seen over the years for Runway 27R/35 at PHL and 22L/29 at EWR, it seems to be a judgement call by the Local Controller. Another concern is that the portion of the runway status light system visible to aircraft departing 13 appears to have been disabled. In the past, this system provided an additional layer of safety to prevent runway incursions. Now, I never see it light up anymore when I am waiting in position on 13 while a plane lands on 22. The pace of operations is building in LGA. The controllers are pushing the line. On thunderstorm days, LGA is starting to feel like DCA did before the accident there. Please do something. At least turn the RWSL for 13 back on.
I think it's misleading to act like this was some kind of whistleblower.
AI can be used to move fast. So management expects us to move at that speed. AI can be used to move even faster if you don't check it's output. The ever ratcheting demand for faster output will make it infeasible to diligently check AI output all the time. AI errors being acted on without due care is inevitable.
From Schlock Mercenary: "Oh, I love aiming. It's my very favorite thing to do before firing."
AI use without checking its output (at least at the moment) is firing without aiming. Sure, you can fire really fast. But who cares if you don't hit what you need to? The point wasn't to just shoot bullets, the point was to hit your target!
I mean, you might make a case that enough of them hit the target that shooting fast is a net win, and accept the occasional friendly fire incident. That might possibly be true. Or it might not. I'm not sure that everyone trying to run fast has really done the calculation, though.
> police deaths during no knock raids vs peacefully served search warrants
Would have to be a randomized trial because right now obviously police only peacefully serve warrants in situations that are already very unlikely to be violent.
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