Oracle 'donates' OpenOffice to Apache

Software giant, Oracle has given up control of the OpenOffice.org code base to the Apache Software Foundation Incubator project, reports Cnet.

OpenOffice.org is the most popular free productivity suite, and a major rival to Microsoft Office.

Oracle says it's “donating” the open source code so as to "demonstrate its commitment to the developer and open source communities."

ZDnet states that the Document Foundation forked the OpenOffice.org project after Oracle took over Sun Microsystems, the project's proprietors, last year.

Oracle Corporate Architecture group chief Luke Kowalski says: “Donating OpenOffice.org to Apache gives this popular consumer software a mature, open, and well established infrastructure to continue well into the future.

“The Apache Software Foundation's model makes it possible for commercial and individual volunteer contributors to collaborate on open source product development."

The Register says the move cuts off the coders who, in September 2010, unhappy with Oracle's treatment of the project, created LibreOffice under the aegis of The Document Foundation.

At the time, Novell, Red Hat, Canonical, the Open Source Initiative, the Free Software Foundation, and Google backed LibreOffice and The Foundation.

LibreOffice is a fork of OpenOffice formed by core OpenOffice community members. They created the project - and The Document Foundation - out of their frustration with Oracle's unwillingness to relinquish control of the project, which the database giant inherited as part of its purchase of Sun Microsystems.