This morning, Oracle announced that they are submitting the OpenOffice.org codebase to the Apache Software Foundation Incubator. At IBM, we see this as a strong validation of open source, open document formats, and market choice and flexibility in the office productivity arena. Since we launched Lotus Symphony in 2007, IBM has been an active participant in the OpenOffice.org community, and with the move to Apache, we plan to increase our efforts through human and code contribution.
IBM is no stranger to work with Apache Foundation projects, or other open source initiatives such as Eclipse.org and, of course, Linux. The new project at Apache strengthens IBM's ability to continue to offer our own distributions of productivity tools based on the OpenOffice code base and make our own contributions to reinforce the overall community.
Ultimately the goal is to further advance the adoption of office productivity suite alternatives. Over the long-term, we plan to work with other Apache contributors to extend the vision of productivity beyond documents. We are learning much more about the semantic web through our additional work on LotusLive Symphony, and the vision in the research and lab teams has to extend productivity into new realms. Meanwhile, the Apache community can be expected to accelerate adoption of ODF as a primary set of document formats, and to drive ODF compatibility in other products and solutions in the future.
In the short term, you can expect to see the team that develops Symphony take a more active role with the OpenOffice.org project. We have done a bunch of innovative things and one-plusses on top of the OO.o codebase, including accessibility work, the data pilot engine, and Office 2007 file format compatibility. We have a number of new pieces of innovation under development for future releases that could fit well in the open source version of the product. The team has been thinking hard on how to add value to the project quickly.
We are looking forward to the opportunity to further our leadership in this space, and welcome the expected (and unexpected) participation in OpenOffice.org efforts that will start to materialize shortly. Clearly, in the Apache world, projects move forward out of the will of individuals, not companies. But we have some really smart individuals in this space, as do some of the other marquee software players who already work on Apache efforts. This should make the whole space a lot more interesting in the months ahead. I'd like to think that, if this plays out right, we could find that OpenOffice.org reaches the ubiquity of other projects like Linux, with multiple established vendors and upstarts all taking the project forward individually and collectively. Now that would be truly liberating.
Link: ibm.com: IBM to Contribute to New, Proposed OpenOffice.org Project >
Link: Statements on OpenOffice.org Contribution to Apache >
Link: Rob Weir (IBM STSM): OpenOffice and Apache >
Link: Bob Sutor (IBM VP): Some remarks on OpenOffice going to Apache >
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- 3
Jack | 6/2/2011 12:57:00 AM
"Good news for the desktop productivity market"
actually good news only for IBM and Symphony, but not for the OOo community. Symphony is not open source so every change in the code won't go automatically to OOo code. IBM can use the community to improve Symphony without give back any improvement.
- 4
Pete | 6/2/2011 5:51:03 AM
"Open" if we want to undermine competitors proprietary product...
If our product's making good money thank-you very much... then sorry, it won't be "Open"
Pete
- 6
jake http://critical-masses.com/jakeofalltrades | 6/2/2011 8:02:05 AM
what of the libreoffice initiative? Where has the Ooo dev community's loyalties landed after the initial split w/Oracle? Will there be a reconciliation? Is IBM confident that its backing the right horse?
- 7
Steve McJones | 6/2/2011 8:28:06 AM
So this is quite the same move Oracle also did after the Hudson/Jenkins fiasco, just that now IBM/Apache are the goofus instead of Eclispe you still try riding the dead horse?
- 9
KeithCu http://keithcu.com/ | 6/3/2011 9:52:33 PM
Any change can be done in LibreOffice.
Consider the massive complexity of this technology, and the amount of work to be done.
IBM could help the community by having the core OO developers work in LibreOffice. Note also that LibreOffice could use this help. The proprietary stuff (Notes, Symphony, etc.) doesn’t matter to "us", but why not build that on LO as well?
-Keith
- 10
Daniel Castano http://www.element.se | 6/7/2011 3:28:35 AM
I had such high hopes for OpenOffice but there is something missing in it, and I tend to not use it as much as I would love to. And let's not talk about neooffice and its sluggish behavior in my mac.
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Chris S | 6/18/2011 6:56:05 AM
Ed,
This is good news and I hope IBM keeps up the investment into Open Office AND Lotus Symphony. We use Lotus Symphony in conjunction with our Lotus Notes/Domino platform and it works very well.
As an accountant/CPA - keep bringing those data analysis features into the spreadsheet product!
Cheers,
Chris
Cool.
Ed, something I've always been curious to know - is there a list somewhere outlining the various resources that IBM has actively donating code to open source projects?
For example: Dojo, OpenOffice, PhoneGap (I just learned that IBM has a developer, per-platform-supported-by-PhoneGap, assigned to fixing bugs,) etc.
These are all really helpful in demonstrating IBM's commitment to the open-platform strategy, and also helps decision makers when trying to stick with an "IBM-friendly" stack.