"Two weeks ago, OpenOffice.org collaborator Michael Meeks
blogged a message of concern about the project, painting it in not
so rosy terms. He cited numerous statistics to show that, in his
opinion, the code has been poorly maintained, causing many
developers to pull off the project from frustration. This prompted
a reaction from Thorsten Ziehm, quality expert at Sun Microsystems
for OpenOffice and its commercial variant StarOffice. In his "What
was done in 2008" blog," Ziehm followed Meeks's example by showing
supporting graphics and statistics, but this time to refute Meeks's
claims. Whereas Meeks cites an increasing developer withdrawal from
the project, Ziehm points to the "nearly 900 child work spaces"
that were integrated. While Meeks is convinced of Sun's retreat,
Ziehm cites a contrary opinion from Sun VP Jim Parkinson in his
weblog from November 2008: "We are not about to walk away from
OpenOffice.org."
"Florian Effenberger, marketing representative for the project,
also opined in a Linux Magazine Online blog that he was amazed at
Meeks's pessimistic view."
