FOSS Community Petitions Oracle to Release Openoffice.org Assets

On April 15th, 2011, Oracle announced that OpenOffice.org (http://emeapressoffice.oracle.com/Press-Releases/Oracle-Announces-Its-Intention-to-Move-OpenOffice-org-to-a-Community-based-Project-1ca6.aspx), its free-license office suite, would become a community project. Since then, Oracle employees working on OpenOffice.org are in the process of being laid off, code contributions have stopped, and several mailing lists and their archives have ceased to be available. Effectively, after ten years of development, the OpenOffice.org project is dead.

This situation is a major setback for free and open source software (FOSS). It means a loss of expertise and resources that will become increasingly difficult to reverse as time goes by, and weakens the efforts of the community to provide an alternative to the monopoly of Microsoft Office.

The Needed Solution

Under these circumstances, both FOSS and Oracle alike can only benefit if Oracle completes the process it has already began and assigns all code: relicensing under the following license: LGPL v3 + and MPL as well as arrangements for free un restrictive uses by the community of copyrights , logos, trademarks, URLs, online resources, and other material concerning OpenOffice.org to a community foundation. Such a donation will ensure that the work of the previous decade can continue with no further disruption.

The most logical recipient would be The Document Foundation, which produces a version of OpenOffice.org called LibreOffice and includes many formerly involved involved with OpenOffice.org. However, other non-profit organizations such as the Open Invention Network or the Free Software Foundation are also possible recipients as long as they do not serve as alibis for other specific software vendors or do not try to divide further the community by starting development separately from LibreOffice

What matters most is the continued existence of a mature, free-licensed office suite and the ability to draw upon the resources that OpenOffice.org has built up over the years.

What to Do

Under these circumstances, we need to urge Oracle not only to transfer these assets, but to do so as quickly as possible. Given that Oracle no longer plans to sell a commercial office suite based on OpenOffice.org code, making a speedy donation is now the best use that Oracle can make of its OpenOffice.org resources, since the action will give the corporation free publicity and the good will of the FOSS community.

Please let Oracle know the situation and that you support the transfer of OpenOffice.org resources to an organization that can continue to use them. Both FOSS and Oracle can only benefit.