[de-announce] Statement about Oracle's move to donate OpenOffice.org assets to the Apache Foundation

The Document Foundation

Statement about Oracle's move to donate OpenOffice.org assets to the 
Apache Foundation

The Internet, June 1st, 2011 - The Document Foundation constitutes a 
global team of hundreds of developers working together to improve the 
LibreOffice product for the benefit of all users. We are governed by an 
open, and meritocratic community headed by a diverse interim Steering 
Committee, and a vendor neutral Engineering Steering Committee 
overseeing development.

Today we welcome Oracle's donation of code that has previously been 
proprietary to the Apache Software Foundation, it is great to see key 
user features released in a form that can be included into LibreOffice.

The Document Foundation would welcome the reuniting of the 
OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice projects into a single community of 
equals in the wake of the departure of Oracle. The step Oracle has taken 
today was no doubt taken in good faith, but does not appear to directly 
achieve this goal. The Apache community, which we respect enormously, 
has very different expectations and norms - licensing, membership and 
more - to the existing OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice projects. We 
regret the missed opportunity but are committed to working with all 
active community members to devise the best possible future for 
LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org.

On the bright side, one benefit of this arrangement is the potential for 
future-proof licensing. The Apache License is compatible with both the 
LGPLv3+ and MPL licenses, allowing TDF future flexibility to move the 
entire codebase, to MPLv2 or future LGPL license versions. The Document 
Foundation believes that commercially-friendly, copy-left licensing 
provides the best path to constructive participation in, and growth of 
the project.

Thus, the event is neutral for The Document Foundation, which - as 
always - remains open to every company, individual or foundation that 
wishes to participate in co-development. There has never been a better 
time to get involved and advance the state of the art in free software 
office suites.

TDF is therefore willing to start talking with Apache Software 
Foundation, following the email from ASF President Jim Jagielski, who is 
anticipating frequent contacts between the Apache Software Foundation 
and The Document Foundation over the next few months. We all want to 
offer corporate and individual users worldwide the best free office 
suite for enterprise and personal productivity.

Finally, TDF continue executing on our time-based release plan for 
LibreOffice 3.4.0, due out this week, while continuing work on our bug 
fix release train, with 3.4.1 due in a months time, as well as ongoing 
feature development for our 3.5 release.


*** About The Document Foundation

The Document Foundation has the mission of facilitating the evolution of 
the OOo Community into an open, meritocratic and democratic 
organization. An independent Foundation is a better reflection of the 
values of our contributors, users and supporters, and will enable a more 
inclusive, effective, efficient and transparent community. TDF will 
protect past investments by building on the achievements of the first 
decade, will encourage wide participation within the community, and will 
co-ordinate activity across the community.

*** Media Contacts for TDF

Florian Effenberger (Germany)
Mobile: +49 151 14424108 - E-mail: floeff@documentfoundation.org
Olivier Hallot (Brazil)
Mobile: +55 21 88228812 - E-mail: olivier.hallot@documentfoundation.org
Charles H. Schulz (France)
Mobile: +33 6 98655424 - E-mail: charles.schulz@documentfoundation.org
Italo Vignoli (Italy)
Mobile: +39 348 5653829 - E-mail: italo.vignoli@documentfoundation.org

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