Apache OpenOffice: who knows where the time goes?

Apr 05, 2012, 12:03 (1 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Richard Hillesley)

[ Thanks to Linux User & Developer magazine for this link. ]

"There has been a lot of speculation about IBM?s role in Oracle?s donation of the OpenOffice.code to the Apache Software Foundation, and its decision to follow the code to Apache, rather than work with the community on LibreOffice. It is usually suggested that the decision was driven by licensing issues. A liberal licensing regime, such as the Apache licence affords, allows the office suite to become a repository of useful components for web office, system management and data warehousing tools that reach far beyond the scope of a stand alone office suite, and there is no obligation to give changes back to the community.

"The unhappy result is that there are now two versions of the most successful open source office suite, a community fork, developed primarily by SUSE and Red Hat engineers, and an Apache fork, which is effectively run by IBM engineers."

Complete Story

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• The Apache Software Foundation Statement on Apache OpenOffice.org(Oct 15, 2011)
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