Oracle donates OpenOffice to Apache Software Foundation

A few days ago the "concern" or surprise, or who knows what, about the present and future of OpenOffice.org began to circulate on the internet; mainly because there was no answer to certain questions from project collaborators, such as translators.
Added to this was the fact that the planned launch dates had passed and there was no movement.


I do not think it is necessary to recapitulate about Oracle and its movements on Open Source products that Sun Microsystems had before it was acquired by that.

Movements that were never good and generated fears in a group of developers who, finally and, in the case of OpenOffice.org, decided to break through and create The Document Foundation, which today is responsible for carrying out the development of LibreOffice. Office suite that was born as a fork of OpenOffice.org with the hope of continuing to maintain an open source suite.

Despite this, LibreOffice today far surpasses OOo in all aspects, including acceptance among users. To this, we must add the fact that the bulk of OOo developers today are next to LibreOffice, which is synonymous with guarantee.

As is logical to assume, this was frowned upon by Oracle and was a severe blow that led them to announce that OpenOffice.org would be heavily controlled by the community. Movement that I consider unfortunate, since it was the second opportunity to accept their mistakes and let The Document Foundation take up the original project or unify both. Movement that, in addition, did not yield what was expected. For a simple reason, the community in which Oracle wanted to bet, did not bet on them, as a result of mistrust, and ended up betting and supporting LibreOffice to whom that movement even made a dent.

No less was the clash between Oracle and Apache over Java, and you will tell me what does Apache have to do with all this? Simple, Oracle donated the code to Apache.

Faced with a new opportunity to remedy, albeit belatedly, his errors and propose to TDF to unify projects or donate the code to it, he decided to put his suspicions (and why not some business linked to his fetish software, Java) and donate the code to The Apache Foundation.

«With today's proposal to contribute the OpenOffice.org code to The Apache Software Foundation's Incubator, Oracle continues to demonstrate its commitment to the developer and open source communities. Donating OpenOffice.org to Apache gives this popular consumer software a mature, open, and well established infrastructure to continue well into the future. The Apache Software Foundation's model makes it possible for commercial and individual volunteer contributors to collaborate on open source product development. »

- Luke Kowalski, vice president, Oracle Corporate Architecture Group.

Despite this, I think that, although it was not the best way out, a little sanity prevailed and instead of totally annihilating the project, it was decided to donate the code to Apache so that it can continue with development.

As might be expected, fast has been the The Document Foundation's response, who has received the decision in a good way, although they do not believe that it was the best of all. However, they predict a good future for him and leave the door open to a future reunification of the projects.

The Document Foundation would welcome the reuniting of the OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice projects into a single community of equals in the wake of the departure of Oracle. The step Oracle has taken today was no doubt taken in good faith, but does not appear to directly achieve this goal. The Apache community, which we respect enormously, has very different expectations and norms - licensing, membership and more - to the existing OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice projects. We regret the missed opportunity but are committed to working with all active community members to devise the best possible future for LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org.

In addition, in the announcement they say that there have been email exchanges with the president of the Apache Software Foundation in this regard and, in no way, they close the door to a possible reunification.

TDF is therefore willing to start talking with the Apache Software Foundation, following the email from ASF President Jim Jagielski, who is anticipating frequent contacts between the Apache Software Foundation and The Document Foundation over the next few months. We all want to offer corporate and individual users worldwide the best free office suite for enterprise and personal productivity.

Either Oracle had everything premeditated and made a good deal with all this, or it is further proof that foolishness is not a good advisor.


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  1.   HacKan & CuBa co. said

    It was already with OpenOffice.org
    It is to the fart that efforts are divided: that they agree. I think that for now, LibreOffice will be the office suite…. no?

  2.   fer0 said

    Oracle made a carnage with free projects