![]() The Document Foundation serves the long-standing need for a more inclusive culture around the project. There are a lot of unanswered questions about Oracle's plans for OOo and there are well-founded concerns about the extent of Oracle's commitment to openness. There was obviously already some support for the idea of forking the OOo code base before Oracle acquired Sun, but the acquisition substantially increased the need for community-driven governance and helped to build swift consensus among independent stakeholders. Several major Linux distributions ship Novell's version instead of Sun's because it offers superior desktop integration, a richer feature set, and better performance and stability. ![]() Novell has maintained its own variant of the program called Go-OOo which includes a number of patches that Sun was unwilling to accept for various reasons. Some prominent contributors, like Novell's Michael Meeks, have long argued that the OOo ecosystem would be healthier and more attractive to corporate and community contributors if it was managed by an independent nonprofit foundation. One of the most controversial issues was Sun's requirement that participants assign copyright to the company. Critics complain that Sun's bureaucratic development process impeded progress, made it difficult to get patches merged, and discouraged some independent developers from taking a more active role. It's worth noting that IBM's Lotus Symphony product is based on OOo code.ĭespite the significant community enthusiasm for OOo, Sun's leadership and central role in the project have created challenges for other contributors. Several other major companies are involved heavily in development, including Novell and IBM. The project received considerable attention and is among the most widely-known open source applications. ![]() Sun opened the source code and invited the open source software community to participate in the project, but sold a closed, commercial version alongside. ![]() OOo was originally based on StarOffice, a product that Sun obtained in its acquisition of StarDivision in 1999. Their goal is to liberate the project from Oracle's control and create a more inclusive and participatory ecosystem around the software. A group of key contributors to the (OOo) project have formed a new organization called the Document Foundation to manage a community-driven fork of the popular open source office suite. ![]()
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