Time was, OpenOffice.org was the centerpiece of Sun Microsystems’ push into the consumer space. Personally speaking, I owe my college degree to the free, open source productivity suite and Microsoft Office competitor. But now the leadership of the OpenOffice.org project has announced that 10 years and an Oracle acquisition later, it’s time to move on and form their own foundation — The Document Foundation. Here’s the scoop.
According to the newly-minted The Document Foundation’s press release, OpenOffice.org and its leaders underwent this organizational change to better promote its agenda of developing and publishing a truly independent, truly community-driven alternative to proprietary productivity products.
Interestingly, Oracle, which now owns the OpenOffice.org name and other organizational assets after the Sun acquisition, has been invited to donate the name back to The Document Foundation and join as a full member — but for the indefinite future, the suite’s been renamed to “LibreOffice.”
The VAR Guy has to question the timing: while nothing about the formation of The Document Foundation or the name change to LibreOffice seems especially odd, the fact that Oracle’s previously come under fire for “perverting the open source spirit” makes us wonder if this move was spawned from sour grapes.
All the same, just as The VAR Guy keeps an eye on cloud alternatives to Microsoft’s products, it’s worth watching The Document Foundation and LibreOffice closely, so stay tuned. And we’ll also be watching to see if Oracle’s emerging Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) will somehow incorporate either Open Office or LibreOffice.
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“According to the newly-minted The Document Foundation’s press release, OpenOffice.org and its leaders underwent this organizational change to better promote …”
Parts of the community decided to fork OOo, not “OOo and its leaders”. That is nonsense. That completely neglects that Oracle is itself part of the community and in many respects its largest contributor *and sponsor*. People were dissatisfied with how the existing community (which includes Oracle) handles things, so they decided to split up. Fair enough. Why the arrogance to think they replace the OOo project or community?
“Interestingly, Oracle, which now owns the OpenOffice.org name and other organizational assets after the Sun acquisition, has been invited to donate the name back to The Document Foundation”
Why would Oracle donate it “back” to a foundation that has never owned it. Mind you, there is still an OpenOffice.org project *and* a community existing, although the fine gentleman from TDF are creating lots of FUD to create a different perception.
Frank: The VAR Guy thanks you for weighing in. Is it fair to say you think The Document Foundation was off base here?
-TVG
Lets say they view it from a particular angle which is arguable. The situation is complex and both sides have their points. I just don’t like the black-and-white, big corp = dark side, independent contributor (not all of them actually are independent) = jedi knight
@Frank:
My understanding is that The Document Foundation sees themselves as the legacy of the Open Office community, so they feel that they originally held the Open Office brand as the community, which is why they ask Oracle to donate it *back* to them.
I hope this is the beginning of a much better model of development for Office suites on the desktop, as I personally don’t trust the cloud for anything important (I only rely on the cloud when absolutely necessary).
Frank@3: Thanks for coming back to clarify your views. The VAR Guy will avoid the temptation to post a rant comparing the original trilogy (Episodes IV to VI vs.) vs. the newer trilogy (Episodes I to III).
Jordan@4: Why such distrust for the cloud? Seems like the cloud is more reliable than The VAR Guy’s laptop hard drive…
-TVG
I view this fork as similar to when XFree86 was forked into X.org a few years ago. Back then, XF86 was the default for just about every Linux distro, just as OO.o is now,, but there was growing distrust of the governing committee of XFree86, and then license changes. X.org forked and committed to modularizing and moving forward faster. Within a year, just about every major Linux distribution was using X.org instead of XFree86. Most agree it was good long term. There are relatively similar stories to be told for the “fork” of Firefox from Mozilla Seamonkey, the true and many forks of the Compiz family, and others.
Time will tell if the same thing happens to LibreOffice. Forking is a natural part of FLOSS and what makes it immune from what could happen with OO.o after the Oracle buyout of Sun. “Just fork the last public version and move forward.”
Daeng Bo: So, are you an OpenOffice user or just an observer?
-TVG
I haven’t been a Windows uset since 1998 so I’m definitely an OO.o user, but I tend to go with Google Apps whenever I can get away with it. OO.o has always been too slow, too bulky, and behind where it should have been, mostly because it never got a community behind it. Sun’s stance on contributions contributed to that problem. Hopefully, LO will develop a strong community and momentum.
Daeng Bo: The CVAR Guy thanks you for the additional insights. And yes, The VAR Guy will continue to watch how LibreOffice evolves.
-TVG