"Try as they might, open source desktop apps never gained much
ground against proprietary rivals -- and maybe they never will
"Fans of the open source desktop productivity suite
OpenOffice.org breathed a sigh of relief this week, when a group of
prominent developers announced they're breaking ties with Oracle
and launching a new fork of the suite, to be known as LibreOffice.
The new suite will be managed by an independent organization known
as the Document Foundation. Whether the Document Foundation will be
able to sustain LibreOffice as a significant competitor to
Microsoft Office, however, remains an open question.
"Among the skeptics is none other than the "father of Java"
himself, James Gosling. Like many other former Sun employees,
Gosling left Oracle earlier this year, citing conflicts with the
database giant's management style and culture. Since then he has
been increasingly critical of Oracle and its handling of the
various open source properties it gained through the purchase of
Sun -- in particular, the Java platform itself."
