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. But the foundation also said it has invited Oracle to join the new organization and "donate the [OpenOffice.org] brand the community has grown during the past ten years."
Oracle acquired the OpenOffice.org assets when it bought Sun Microsystems in January for $7.3 billion and has completed new releases of OpenOffice since then. 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 issued a statement in response to the Document Foundation news."Oracle is investing substantial resources in OpenOffice.org," the company said. "With more than one hundred million users, we believe OpenOffice.org is the most advanced, most feature rich open source implementation and will strongly encourage the Open Office community to continue to contribute through www.openoffice.org. However, the beauty of open source is that it can be forked by anyone who chooses, as was done today. 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."
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. It will generate increased competition and choice for the benefit of customers and drive innovation in the office suite market."
OpenOffice was originally based on StarOffice, a product Sun Microsystems acquired from the German company StarDivision in 1999. Sun sponsored the OpenOffice.org organization through which it offered the application suite as an open-source product, but it also sold a commercial version of the software.
OpenOffice is one of the most widely used open-source software products and is seen as a leading alternative to Microsoft Office. A number of major vendors have products based on the software, including IBM's Lotus Symphony application suite.
The Document Foundation "is the result of a collective effort by leading independent members of the former OpenOffice.org community, including several project leads and key members of the Community Council," the organization's statement said. The foundation will be led by a steering committee of developers and national language project managers.
"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. A beta version of LibreOffice is available at a placeholder site, http://www.libreoffice.org.
The question is whether LibreOffice will ultimately be a continuation of the original OpenOffice or a fork of the open-source development project.
related stories
Video
trending stories
sponsored resources

Trend Micro
Managed Security 360

HubStor
Cloud Backup 360

Cysurance
Cyber Insurance 360

Tenable
Cyber Risk 360

Products of the Year Showcase

Dell Technologies
Dell Technologies Cloud Learning Center

Bitdefender
Cybersecurity 360

EPOS
EPOS

Fujifilm
Fujifilm

Application Integration 360

Mimecast
Mimecast

Comcast
Comcast Business Learning Center

Dell Technologies
Dell Technologies Server Learning Center

WatchGuard
WatchGuard

Hitachi Vantara
Hitachi Vantara

Dell Technologies
Dell Technologies Storage Learning Center

Carbonite
Cloud Storage 360

Sophos
Sophos Cybersecurity Learning Center

Webroot
Webroot Learning Center

BlackBerry
BlackBerry Learning Center

NPD
Industry Trends 360

Symantec
Symantec Business Security Learning Center

Channel Chief Showcase

Acer
Remote Workforce 360

Sherweb
Sherweb

APC by Schneider Electric
Digital Services for Edge Learning Center

VMware

StorageCraft
Disaster Recovery Learning Center

Vertiv
Edge Computing Learning Center

Wasabi
Wasabi

Dell Technologies
Dell Technologies Hybrid Cloud Learning Center

Cradlepoint
5g for Business 360

Comm100
Collaboration & Communications 360

Veeam
Veeam

Trend Micro
Trend Micro Learning Center

eSentire
Managed Detection and Response 360
