
IBM Lotus Sympony joins Apache OpenOffice.org - grobmeier
http://www.grobmeier.de/ibm-lotus-sympony-joins-apache-openoffice-org-14072011.html
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CrazedGeek
I've got a question for anyone more intimately involved in the OO.o community
than I: What's the current situation with Apache and the Document Foundation?
Are they planning on collaborating, taking the suite in different directions,
or what?

~~~
mindcrime
_What's the current situation with Apache and the Document Foundation? Are
they planning on collaborating, taking the suite in different directions, or
what?_

That's still more or less "TBD." The Apache OOo project is still working on
getting the original OOo code imported into ASF SVN, getting a working build,
straightening out dependencies, etc. I expect that more talk about the exact
relationship between Apache OOo and LibreOffice - and any other spinoffs of
OOo - will heat up once that happens.

That said, the relationship between the LibreOffice folks and the Apache folks
strikes me as a little bit delicate at the moment. I think some LO / TDF
people are still a bit annoyed at Oracle, and/or suspicious of IBM, and aren't
necessarily leaping with joy at the thought of collaborating with the Apache
project. But there doesn't seem to be any outright hostility either, from what
I've seen, and most of the people who are talking are at least willing to talk
about collaboration. But I think it's going to take a fair amount of diplomacy
and tact and patience to see the day when the two projects really have a
strong, collaborative relationship.

Regardless of the extent of collaboration and friendship between the two, I am
guessing the two suites will drift apart at least a little. TDF and the LO
project, for example, seem interested in reducing, if not eliminating, the use
of Java in LO, and using Python instead. But nobody on the Apache side is
really saying "Oh yeah, cool, we want to do that as well." And given the
history, the influx of IBM people, etc., etc., I think most observers are
expecting that Apache OOo will continue to utilize Java in those areas.

Disclaimer: Nothing I'm saying here is meant to be any sort of official
statement from the Apache OOo project. I am a committer and on the PPMC, but
what I'm saying here is just my observations, guesses and hunches. I don't
have a long history of being part of the OOo project prior to it moving to
Apache either, some my awareness of some of the history here could be off.

------
cdibona
Honestly, I wish that IBM would release smartsuite. It contained a solid word
processor...

