The LibreOffice open source office project issued a new release today, further demonstrating the viability of the OpenOffice.org (OO.o) fork. The LibreOffice 3.4.0 release comes in the same week that Oracle announced its intention to move OpenOffice to the Apache Software Foundation.
With the move of OpenOffice from Oracle to Apache, the potential for collaboration with LibreOffice could potentially be improved. Though Novell Distinguished Engineer and LibreOffice Contributor Michael Meeks notes that it remains to be seen if the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) will incubate the very large, complex and unwieldy code-base that is OO.o.
Meeks has a positive view of the ASF as an organization with very well designed governance, and a very experienced team, and some excellent licensing for specific situations.
“However, I do not believe the ASF is likely to provide a good home for the OO.o project in the long run,” Meeks said. “They are sufficiently confident and comfortable with their model that attempting to negotiate over changing any core aspect of it (such as the non-copy-left stance) is unlikely to be fruitful work. So – only time will tell.”