Technology goliath Oracle has handed over control of the OpenOffice code base to the Apache Software Foundation Incubator project, in a move that the firms says demonstrates its commitment to the open source movement.
OpenOffice is an open source alternative to Microsoft’s Office platform, offering word processing, spreadsheets, PowerPoint-style presentations and more. Oracle took control of it when it acquired Sun Microsystems for $7.4bn back in 2009.
Luke Kowalski, vice president, Oracle Corporate Architecture Group, said the move demonstrates Oracle’s, "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."
"We welcome highly-focused, emerging projects from individual contributors, as well as those with robust developer communities, global user bases, and strong corporate backing," added Jim Jagielski, president of The Apache Software Foundation.
The move was also welcomed by The Document Foundation, a body created by members of the OpenOffice.org community not long after the Oracle acquisition and head of the LibreOffice project. The foundation did however add a note of caution.
"Today we welcome Oracle’s donation of code that has previously been proprietary to the Apache Software Foundation, it is great to see key user features released in a form that can be included into LibreOffice," said the organisation in a statement.
"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 statement continued. "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."
