OpenOffice files Oracle divorce papers

[spinynorman]

Open sourcers have seized control of the OpenOffice project and product and declared their independence from database giant Oracle.

 

Oracle had been OpenOffice's principal contributor - a role it inherited thanks to its acquisition of the well meaning but slow-witted Sun Microsystems earlier this year.

 

Driving home the changes, OpenOffice.org project is now The Document Foundation while the OpenOffice.org suite has been given the temporary name of LibreOffice.

 

Oracle, meanwhile, has been humiliatingly invited to re-join the OpenOffice community by applying to the Foundation. It's also been asked to donate the OpenOffice.org brand that it owns to the community.

 

More at The Register.

[ianw1974]

A shame IBM didn't get hold of Sun when it was being sold off. Things would have been a much better place. Three projects here, OpenSolaris, Java and OpenOffice. Also MySQL which has now been forked to MariaDB because of the Oracle thing.

 

Don't forget, IBM have Lotus Symphony which is OpenOffice based.

[neddie]

Is this the year of the forks? :unsure:

 

It sounds like this move will lead to good changes but it'll be unfortunate if they have to change their name. Open Office has already got a good recognition and it's awkward to have to explain that this is kind of the same but kind of different.

 

It'll be interesting to see whether Oracle calls their bluff and continues the Open Office brand on their own, or whether they eat humble pie, donate the name and continue in a back-seat role...

[arctic]

Dunno, if this is the year of the forks, but some forks were imho simply necessary or, let's say, overdue (like e.g. mageia or openindiana).

[ianw1974]

It's a pity that a firm has to do this. It would be much better just to leave it all as OpenSolaris or MySQL or OpenOffice than just make matters confusing.

[Reiver_Fluffi]

Hopefully this means that no one company can dictate the project's future.