Open Office & LGPLv3 (Score 1)

I am puzzled by this step. If the concern is MSFT patents, then Sun itself is already protected by the deal it signed with MSFT in 2004. But that deal did not protect downstream users, as was noted at the time.

Nor does putting OO under LGPLv3 protect those downstream, since Sun cannot give away any patent rights that MSFT has.

So a significant effect of adopting the LGPLv3 seems to be that downstream users will now find it impossible to protect themselves by entering into NOVL-style deals with MSFT, because a major purpose of the patent provisions of GPLv3/LGPLv3 was to outlaw such arrangements, even though MSFT-NOVL itself was grandfathered in.

Extending this line of thought -- how does using v3 for OO affect its interaction with Linux? Torvalds does not intend to move to v3, so now there is the possiblity of an OO under v3 operating with Linux on v2. This raises all the problems of coupling incompatible licenses (FSF: "When we say that GPLv2 and GPLv3 are incompatible, it means there is no legal way to combine code under GPLv2 with code under GPLv3 in a single program"). Not impossible, but perhaps troublesome.

A cynic might think that Sun wants the downstream users to be precluded from working with either MSFT or Linux -- perhaps forced to move to Solaris.