IBM adds support to Apache OpenOffice

[FJCC]

Donald Harbison posted a lengthy message on the Apache Dev list yesterday announcing that IBM is ending the independent development of Lotus Symphony and moving the entire development team to Apache OO

Notably, IBM announced it is ending its Symphony fork, the downstream fork
of OpenOffice, if you prefer to think of it that way. With the July 15,
2011 announcement that IBM will contribute its Symphony source code to the
Apache OpenOffice project, it makes no sense to continue a separate
development effort. Instead, the entire Symphony development team will now
be focused on working in the Apache OpenOffice community.

I don't know enough about the politics of all this to have much of an opinion. I'm sure some will see this as a big corporation taking over the project. I hope it also means more developers and better QA. We shall see.

[henke54]

...it makes no sense to continue a separate development effort...

if ALL those 'stubborn donkeys' would 'point their head' to ONE DIRECTION, and call it OPEN LIBRE OFFICE or something , things would really 'start off' ...

[acknak]

... I'm sure some will see this as a big corporation taking over the project. ...

Hmm... would this be any different than the last two big corporations that were running the project?

[Hagar Delest]

It seems to me that the development of Symphony was more active with IBM than the development of OOo with Oracle and even with Sun perhaps.
So I think that's a good news.

[vea1083]

I think this has happened for two reasons; the first, IBM is deeply invested in the Apache OpenOffice project as it served as an adviser in the transition from Oracle to Apache; the second, IBM is now pushing for the cloud-based IBM Docs office suite to complete with Office 365 and Google Docs. I read somewhere that IBM docs was based off the OpenOffice.org codebase, but I am not sure.

Otherwise, I think this decision by IBM in pledging its full support for the Apache OpenOffice project and eliminating Symphony, allows the AOO project to be enriched in a more effective way.

[RGB]

I read somewhere that IBM docs was based off the OpenOffice.org codebase

It is not. On the same email reported by FJCC you can read:

There is no OpenOffice source code in IBM Docs.
...
IBM Docs uses the Apache ODF Toolkit to manage
conversion services from ODF to Web standards needed to perform the editing
capabilities.

[kingfisher]

IBM calls time on Symphony OpenOffice fork In tune with Oracle Apache plan

[PGAGA]

February 1, 2012

I am also a Lotus Symphony user - although a rare user because LS had hit a wall with its dependence on Eclipse. As a Canadian, LS lacked support for Canadian English and as a result had problems opening a ODF file created in OOo or its variants. When I read the Lotus announcements, the support for AOO seems to come from the LS language limitations, which has expanded to include other languages.

Please note the error in the above article.

LibreOffice, rather than OpenOffice, has become the default productivity suite for Ubuntu, SuSE Linux, openSuSE, Fedora, Mint Linux.

LibreOffice has replaced GO-oo.org rather than OOo as the productivity suite.

Phil

[robweir]

I don't know enough about the politics of all this to have much of an opinion. I'm sure some will see this as a big corporation taking over the project. I hope it also means more developers and better QA. We shall see.

Initially we heard complaints that IBM will never contribute to OpenOffice, that we'd just hoard our code and develop Symphony. Now that we announce that we're all in with Apache OpenOffice, we hear complaints that we're contributing too much. It might help if someone would tell me how many developers from IBM is the exact number that will make everyone happy

It is all about balance. Not too much, not too little. Of course, perception and reality may be two different things. For example, would it surprise you to know that in the month of January, 90% of commits made to the LibreOffice core came from employees of SUSE and RedHat? For all the claims of great diversity, the effort there is very much in corporate hands. I think this is hard to avoid in a project of this kind. Our one blessing is that OpenOffice is at Apache, which has over 10 years experience helping project balance tensions between corporate sponsored and volunteer developers, and ensuring that no one party dominates.