We all knew that it would come to this and it has finally happened - 33 developers have left OpenOffice.org to join The Document Foundation, with more expected to leave in the next few days.

The History

Here is a brief history of what happened for those of you who do not know.

After Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems, OpenOffice.org fell into the hands of Oracle, as did a lot of other products. So, last month a few very prominent members of the OpenOffice.org community decided to form The Document Foundation and fork OpenOffice.org as LibreOffice, possibly fearing that it could go the OpenSolaris way.

They invited Oracle to join The Document Foundation and to donate the brand "OpenOffice.org". LibreOffice was chosen as a temporary name until Oracle agrees to donate the brand.

Oracle was not pleased and asks those who founded The Document Foundation to leave OpenOffice.org citing "conflict of interest".

And They Choose To Leave

As Oracle has given them no choice, they left OpenOffice.org along with 33 other developers.

This is what Jacqueline Rahemipour, Co-Lead, OpenOffice.org Board, wrote:

Although it has been stressed several times that there will be collaboration on a technical level, and changes are possible – there is no indication from Oracle to change it's mind on the question of the project organization and management. For those who want to achieve such a change, but see no realistic opportunity within the current project and are therefore involved in the TDF, unfortunately this results in an “either / or” question.

The answer for us who sign this letter is clear: We want a change to give the community as well as the software it develops the opportunity to evolve. For this reason, from now on we will support The Document Foundation and will – as a team - develop and promote LibreOffice.

LibreOffice has already got backing from Google, Novell,  Red Hat, Canonical etc. Mark Shuttleworth had even said that it may replace OpenOffice.org in future Ubuntu releases. So, the future looks bright for LibreOffice and The Document Foundation and it looks gloomy for OpenOffice.org.

Further Readings:

1. Every end is a new beginning

2. Oracle Asks Founders Of The Document Foundation To Leave

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