back to article OpenOffice files Oracle divorce papers

Open sourcers have seized control of the OpenOffice project and product and declared their independence from database giant Oracle. The OpenOffice.org Project has unveiled a major restructuring that separates itself from Oracle and that takes responsibility for OpenOffice away from a single company. Oracle had been OpenOffice …

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  1. ScottME
    Big Brother

    Perhaps IBM could sponsor it?

    IBM has a relatively piss-poor fork of OO.o underpinning its Lotus Symphony offering. Perhaps they could be persuaded to adopt and sponsor the mainstream project. It should have some appeal as a relatively simple way to irritate Larry, given that Oracle and IBM probably see each other as their main rival.

  2. mhenriday
    Linux

    I'm very much hoping for the success of the LibreOffice project

    (don't at all find the «temporary name that bad), as even the most myopic should be able to see that OpenOffice.org will soon get the final shaft from open source's friends and allies at Oracle. I install the Swedish-language version of OOo on the computers of retirees who have the wisdom to refuse to pay the Microsoft tax for an office suite ; in order to able to use LibreOffice instead, the language problem (only English-language versions are available at present) would have to be addressed. For my own part, I should want to see deb versions ; as «the old rang» indicated, most of use can find better uses for our time than converting RPM files. But I'm hopeful that the Document Foundation people will shortly get 'round to dealing with these problems - let us hope that the community will support them in their efforts !...

    Henri

  3. Baggypants
    Badgers

    For Forks Sake?

    So why did they feel the need to set up a whole new fork and not join go-oo which is what ubuntu and the like have been using for years because Sun were too closed source?

  4. OffBeatMammal

    so Oravle bought and killed a competitor

    nasty behaviour... effectively killed a competing database to their existing products, and then an Office Suite that would have made their entry into the market harder.

    Looks like they have MS firmly in their sights (Larry probably hates the fact that BillG is still way cooler than he is)

  5. DrXym

    Good for OpenOffice

    Oracle has shown itself to be an uncaring and unsympathetic steward of open source projects. If OpenOffice can cut itself loose it may find itself enjoying a new lease of life.

    Perhaps this move was even motivated by layoffs or rumours of further layoffs in Oracle. I wouldn't be surprised at all if Oracle were to conduct a serious cull of the former Sun workforce & projects.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    re: "Why you trying to make me pay for this? It's free!"

    Why do people pay Redhat/Suse/etc?

    One word: Support - it goes both ways. We support Redhat and they provide techsupport to us.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Jobs Horns

    Open Orifice?

    I will take OO.o or LO seriously when they and their forum fudging twats, implement the embedding of ones own fonts in ones own documents and creative works.

    Whoever gets this up and running - be it Oracle or LibreOffice; they will be the one who gets their software used.

    Until then, their jerk fest of non transferable formatting and artwork, from the production machine to anything and anyone else's work station, printing or publishing company OR archived for safe storage - is basically worthless.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    Does a fork really help ? I don't think Oracle OpenOffice will go away anytime soon

    Most of the people who have backed this fork are Oracle competitors, not some sort of freedom movement.

    I suspect we will see a re-branded office suite in some Linux distros, but are most Openoffice users Linux users ? More are windows users looking for a free as in beer office suite with little interest in free as in speech, the Openoffice.org brand is strong and is still owned by the Oracle side of the Openoffice split.

    Oracle is not the evil empire some of these people are making out - on their own the are the 6th biggest Kernel contributor - how many lines of code did Ubuntu/Canocial contribute to the average Linux distro - how many did Oracle / Sun ? Who is writing a decent filesystem for Linux - Oracle not Red Hat ( what did happen to Sistina after they were swallowed by Red Hat ? ).

    Where did most of the OpenOffice code come from it was not these vocal few, but was bought by Sun and freed or written by Sun engineers, who are still doing much work as Oracle employees.

    I guess we will end up with two office suites, the best will survive, but you could argue the real winner is Microsoft, who will have two weaker competitors.

    In the long run Open source will loose out, as the next company who thinks about buying a huge product and opensourcing it, simply won't bother. Given the contribution Sun made to this project perhaps it is fair for Sun ( and now Oracle ) to have a reasonable say in its development ? Novell, Redhat and Google et all would never have written it from scratch.

    Linux in the data center owes much to Oracle, anyone who works in the business knows they played a huge part in getting Linux taken up as a credible OS. Be careful Red Hat, as companies buy apps and wanted cheap hardware, don't kid yourself your OS is any Solaris - they wanted X86 not Red Hat Linux complete with restrictive support agreements. Anyone know where I can free Red Hat binaries and updates ? They make Oracle look pretty free and easy don't they ?

    If Larry is sat in Oracle towers considering whether to spend his money on Opensource Linux or Solaris you may just help him define his investment priorities with actions like this. Even the OpenSolaris thing has been blown out of all proportion - 99% of the contributions to Opensolaris came from Sun/Oracle and they are still willing to make their Source avaiable after Solaris 11 comes out, quite reasonable, unless you are Nexenta trying to get a competitive advantage for your NAS over Oracle by using largely Oracle developed code.

    Google are being sued because Oracle ( and Sun before them ) believe they have not played by the license and copyright rules - Linux guys would be quick to come after those who break the GPL.

    Perhaps you might think I hate Linux and Opensource, you are very wrong, as I am pro both - but the way some "community" members are claiming the moral high ground will do neither any favours. Trust me Red Hat, Google, Novell are commercial organisations and are all about making money - are they a little scared of Oracle ? Yes, but is Oracle any worse than IBM, HP or any other big corporation - I think not.

    Sometimes people should look at what they have been given, not scream and shout because they want more ......

  9. energonic

    My Office

    You know MS uses 'My Computer'... so lets take 'My Office'.

  10. Rex Alfie Lee
    Linux

    Not fair...

    It hardly seems fair does it. Oracle bought Sun Microsystems & now you've taken OpenOffice away from them. Diddums! Again I say diddums...

    Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch except perhaps Apple & Microsoft. They all belong in the same box. A-holes!

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