The question is whether LibreOffice will ultimately be a continuation of the original OpenOffice or a fork of the open-source development project.Oracle is relinquishing its tight control over A beta version of LibreOffice is available at a placeholder site. "The foundation aims to lower the barrier of adoption for both users and developers, to make LibreOffice the most accessible office suite ever," according to the statement. The foundation will be led by a steering committee of developers and national language project managers. The Document Foundation "is the result of a collective effort by leading independent members of the former community, including several project leads and key members of the Community Council," the organization's statement said. A number of major vendors have products based on the software, including IBM's Lotus Symphony application suite. OpenOffice is one of the most widely used open-source software products and is seen as a leading alternative to Microsoft Office. Sun sponsored the organization through which it offered the application suite as an open-source product, but it also sold a commercial version of the software. OpenOffice was originally based on StarOffice, a product Sun Microsystems acquired from the German company StarDivision in 1999. It will generate increased competition and choice for the benefit of customers and drive innovation in the office suite market." In its statement the Foundation said it "will be the cornerstone of a new ecosystem where individuals and organizations can contribute to and benefit from the availability of a truly free office suite. Our sincerest goal for Open Office is that it become more widely used so if this new foundation will help advance Open Office and the Open Document Format we wish them the best." "With more than one hundred million users, we believe is the most advanced, most feature rich open source implementation and will strongly encourage the Open Office community to continue to contribute through However, the beauty of open source is that it can be forked by anyone who chooses, as was done today. Oracle issued a statement in response to the Document Foundation news."Oracle is investing substantial resources in ," the company said. But the move by the OpenOffice developers further raises questions about Oracle's relationship with the open source community over such technologies as Java and MySQL that Oracle acquired when it bought Sun. Oracle acquired the assets when it bought Sun Microsystems in January for $7.3 billion and has completed new releases of OpenOffice since then. But the foundation also said it has invited Oracle to join the new organization and "donate the brand the community has grown during the past ten years." The new organization, known as The Document Foundation, said in a statement Tuesday that it has tentatively rebranded its own version of the open-source application suite as LibreOffice.
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