Kobo should purchase Calibre

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Jellby

Calibre is GPL, nothing (as far as I know) prevents Kobo from copying it, changing the name to "Kalibre" if they wish, distributing it with their readers (or selling it) and advertising it, as long as they provide access to the source code.

They'd also have to give attribution.

And I doubt they want to release the source code for any derivative works, which would limit them to redistribution of calibre which would be kind of useless.

[pghaworth]

Originally Posted by darryl

Don't lose any sleep over it. Calibre uses the GPL. Even if future versions were to somehow become closed source, the existing code remains open source and available to the community. Having said that, it would indeed be a tragedy to lose the developers to Kobo or anyone else. Kovid and the others working on Calibre and on Calibre Companion have done the whole community an enormous favour with this software.

Well said. Thank you! Calibre is an amazing piece of software and all the developers are equally amazing and helpful. Would never want to lose any of them.

[pghaworth]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

If it were likely that any device maker would want to buy and incorporate calibre... that would imply a level of intelligence such that calibre would never have been necessary.

(This was Kovid's response to my tongue-in-cheek remark that they should take a leaf out of his book regarding recent footnotes support (speaking of which, !))

And I agree Kovid would never do it. Sometimes you can tell, a developer has too much pride in his work to sell out to the monoliths.

[Lynx-lynx]

Originally Posted by tnforpaul45

Just had a crazy thought, please excuse if this has been discussed before.

I think Calibre, obviously the iTunes of the ebook world, is a jewel just sitting out there under the noses of Amazon and Kobo. I know that Kobo has desktop software already, but what an incredible halo effect could be experienced if they purchased Calibre and kept Goyal on as its head of development. Searches in "Get books" could load the Kobo store first, but you could use Kobo's software then to manage all your ebooks and eReaders.

And what a great buy-line: "Already have a Kindle? Converting your eBooks over to your new Kobo is as simple as a click with Calibre by Kobo."

I think its a no-brainer. Any thoughts?

Maybe next time you have a crazy thought it might be better not to post and frighten the life out of others .....

[cct1]

I think Kobo really should focus on reestablishing itself in the U.S.. The question is how, and Calibre could be a part of that.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by cct1

I think Kobo really should focus on reestablishing itself in the U.S.. The question is how, and Calibre could be a part of that.

Oh, it's very easy.

They just start actually selling them here.

Advertising would help too, obviously.

What would calibre do precisely?

[cybmole]

Originally Posted by Lynx-lynx

Maybe next time you have a crazy thought it might be better not to post and frighten the life out of others .....

yes - difficult to "buy" an open source project. The code is out there

[filmo]

I think all ereader brands are greatly improved by and should help support Calibre library management program. This can be with money and giving early access to new firmware versions. We all benefit from davidfor's Calibre plugin for Kobo readers (thank you) and his being part of Kobo firmware beta testing group.

[Ripplinger]

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one that would have nightmares over any one reader brand having control over Calibre. That would exclude the use of the program by people who own other readers. What are non-Kobo users to then use to manage their libraries and collections? What happens for those who own multiple readers? This is really one of the most horrible ideas ever.

Thankfully as I said above I never see this happening for all the reasons already stated.

[Ankh]

Originally Posted by cybmole

yes - difficult to "buy" an open source project. The code is out there

No, it is not. Kovid owns the code, and he can sell that ownership. The CUPS package was bought and is now owned by Apple. Berkeley DB is owned by Oracle. Both are available as GPL-ed code.

When an open source package is bought, the community has the right, granted under the GPL, to fork the code, and that is, precisely, what happened when OpenOffice was purchased. The fork is LibreOffice.

The code is released under the GPL affects everyone except the owner, who is free to strip GPL from the source, create derivative works and sell them as proprietary binaries.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Ankh

No, it is not. Kovid owns the code, and he can sell that ownership. The CUPS package was bought and is now owned by Apple. Berkeley DB is owned by Oracle. Both are available as GPL-ed code.

When an open source package is bought, the community has the right, granted under the GPL, to fork the code, and that is, precisely, what happened when OpenOffice was purchased. The fork is LibreOffice.

The code is released under the GPL affects everyone except the owner, who is free to strip GPL from the source, create derivative works and sell them as proprietary binaries.

That is precisely why it is difficult, because you can only sell newer versions.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

And I agree Kovid would never do it. Sometimes you can tell, a developer has too much pride in his work to sell out to the monoliths.

Even if he does, someone else might fork the last GPL version, and develop Calibre from there under a new name. If that happens, the official, now probably paid-for Calibre might find itself without any users, even though 'new' version will probably be developed more slowly.

Look at OpenOffice. At some point, when Oracle started to jack around with it, it was forked into LibreOffice, which has now become the de facto default. Even donating OpenOffice to the Apache foundation has not turned this back around. Same with (again, Oracle): MySQL. Many Linux distributions have replaced it, or are replacing their default LAMP database with MariaDB, either only retaining MySQL as an option, and sometimes even removing it.

Selling Calibre to one of the big e-book sellers is probably only good for Kovid's purse, but it would be a detriment to open source software and e-reading in general. If it wasn't for Calibre (and Alf), I would probably not even be e-reading by now, apart from the free classics.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Canuck_in_Japan

Kobo would probably immediately remove the ability to strip the DRM of its books.

That can't be done, short of killing the entire plug-in system, which would basically kill Calibre itself. I wouldn't be surprised if Calibre isn't really a standalone program anymore, but more like a framework, requiring plug-ins for actual functionality. (Compare: Eclipse.)

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

That can't be done, short of killing the entire plug-in system, which would basically kill Calibre itself. I wouldn't be surprised if Calibre isn't really a standalone program anymore, but more like a framework, requiring plug-ins for actual functionality. (Compare: Eclipse.)

In fact, calibre is highly modular and all the important bits are listed as plugins.

They are builtins, but still inherit from a list of basic classes for handling ebook formats, or device handling, metadata downloading, etc.

The GUI layout isn't a plugin though, there is that.

[Ankh]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Look at OpenOffice. At some point, when Oracle started to jack around with it, it was forked into LibreOffice, which has now become the de facto default.

Truth to be told, Apple has not only managed not to kill CUPS, but used that project to exercise a bit of a control over the rest of Open Source world. When they decided to go "Bonjour/zeroconf only" and drop the CUPS browsing, there was a fuss in the OSS world, but the we adapted and Avahi was fixed. Apple dropped the CUPS filters that are not of interest for them, they were picked up. In seven years of ownership, CUPS gradually and slowly became the pure Apple property, the middleware that is open sourced to ease the maintenance, but steered where Apple wants it to go. No forks.

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Selling Calibre to one of the big e-book sellers is probably only good for Kovid's purse, but it would be a detriment to open source software and e-reading in general.

I beg to disagree.

What successful takeovers of the open source packages have shown to be the tendency is that the development work becomes funded, albeit steered toward the functionality of interest for the new owner. A drastic and abrupt measures would fracture the community and force a fork, the outcome that is not desirable (OpenOffice) for the new owner.

At the worst case, we will endure a transition to the fork, and lose a developer or two in the process. What is good for Kovid's purse is good for Calibre and, in extension, for its users.