The OpenOffice.org (OOo) community has declared independence from Oracle as members have joined the LibreOffice project, a fork of the open source office suite. In an open letter published on the OOo mailing list, a group of over 30 contributors affirmed their intention to abandon Oracle's code base in favor of LibreOffice. They say that the fork's more inclusive environment and community-driven management offer a powerful opportunity to advance the software.
The LibreOffice project launched last month amid concerns that Oracle would not rectify the long-standing problems with the OOo development process and governance model. The fork was backed by The Document Foundation, a newly formed organization that includes Linux heavyweights Red Hat, Novell, Google, and Canonical among its supporters. The group initially hoped that Oracle would agree to participate, but the enterprise software giant appears to have no interest in finding a middle ground. Oracle insists that participating in both projects poses a conflict of interest and responded to the fork by forcing TDF members who have seats on the OOo community council to step down from their elected roles in OOo leadership. Oracle's uncompromising attitude has now instigated a mass exodus of OOo community members as independent contributors flock to LibreOffice.
"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," the open letter says. "For this reason, from now on we will support The Document Foundation and will—as a team—develop and promote LibreOffice. We hope that many are going to join us on this path."
Oracle intends to continue actively developing OOo itself, with or without the support of the community. The LibreOffice developers will continue to merge Oracle's improvements wherever possible, but statistics published recently show that a bulk of the project's code is coming from completely new contributors. As LibreOffice attracts more developers, it seems unlikely that OOo will be able to keep pace. Novell's Michael Meeks highlighted some recent LibreOffice enhancements—such as improved RTF export functionality—in a recent blog post.
Oracle made it clear that contributors had to choose between OOo and LibreOffice. Faced with that choice, it seems that many contributors are opting for LibreOffice.
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