OpenOffice.org to become OpenSource in every sense of the word

This bold move by Oracle is music to the ears of the OpenSource community. The move will attract some of the brightest minds in the free software community and we may see some welcome additions to the OpenOffice software and/or, probably more than likely, the packaging of OpenOffice with other free software packages.


Steven Finch writes in Crenk:

Oracle has just announced that they intend to move OpenOffice.org to a purely community based open source project and no longer offer a commercial version.

“Given the breadth of interest in free personal productivity applications and the rapid evolution of personal computing technologies, we believe the OpenOffice.org project would be best managed by an organization focused on serving that broad constituency on a non-commercial basis,” said Edward Screven, Oracle’s Chief Corporate Architect. ”We intend to begin working immediately with community members to further the continued success of Open Office. Oracle will continue to strongly support the adoption of open standards-based document formats, such as the Open Document Format (ODF).”

Oracle has been a very closed company for some time, but they have also invested heavily in Linux and MySQL. It will be interesting to see if the community really jumps onto the OpenOffice bandwagon.