IBM Joins OpenOffice.org Community
The OpenOffice.org community - responsible for the leading free software alternative to Microsoft Office - today welcomed IBM as a community member. IBM has announced immediate code contributions and ongoing engineering support to the community, and will leverage OpenOffice.org technology in its own products.
Edinburgh, UK (PRWEB) September 10, 2007 -- The OpenOffice.org community today announced that IBM will be joining the community to collaborate on the development of OpenOffice.org software. IBM will be making initial code contributions that it has been developing as part of its Lotus Notes product, including accessibility enhancements, and will be making ongoing contributions to the feature richness and code quality of OpenOffice.org. Besides working with the community on the free productivity suite's software, IBM will also leverage OpenOffice.org technology in its products.
"This is great news for the tens of millions of users of OpenOffice.org and the thousands of individual members of the community", said John McCreesh, OpenOffice.org Marketing Project Lead. "We welcome IBM's contributions to further enhancing the OpenOffice.org product. But equally important is IBM's future commitment to package and distribute new works that leverage OpenOffice.org technology supporting the ISO OpenDocument Format standard. ODF is a once in a generation opportunity for the IT industry to unify round a standard, and deliver lasting benefit to all users of desktop technology."
"In the seven years since Sun founded the project, OpenOffice.org has fueled and filled the need for document data and productivity tools that are open and free. Open source software and ODF are having a profound impact around the world, with numerous communities and organizations coming together to support these initiatives and governments, and corporations and schools standardizing on the software. We look forward to working with IBM and the other members of OpenOffice.org to ensure that this momentum continues. We invite others to join us in the community and participate in building the future as OpenOffice.org and ODF continue to gain popularity across the planet," said Rich Green, Executive Vice President, Software at Sun Microsystems, Inc.
"IBM is very pleased to be joining the OpenOffice.org community. We are very optimistic that IBM's contribution of technology and engineering resources will provide tangible benefits to the community membership and to users of OpenOffice.org technology around the world," said Mike Rhodin, General Manager of IBM's Lotus division. "We're particularly pleased to be teaming with the community to accelerate the rate of innovation in the office productivity marketplace. We believe that this relationship will improve our ability to deliver innovative value to users of IBM products and services. We also believe that the collaboration will lead to an even broader range of ODF-supporting applications (ISO 26300) and solutions that draw from the OpenOffice.org technology."
Others involved in the project or distributing the code were equally enthusiastic about IBM's step.
Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Ubuntu, a leading Linux distribution, said: "We are excited about IBM joining Sun and other contributors to the OpenOffice.org community in pushing development of OpenOffice.org and the OpenDocument Format. We are firmly committed to help set, drive and promote open standards like the ODF world-wide to free all users from any dependency on single vendors and proprietary software. The OpenOffice.org community is showing that it is possible for large, competing companies to collaborate and deliver extraordinary value to all of their users." OpenOffice.org is distributed with Ubuntu.
And Hu Caiyong, CEO of Beijing's Redflag Chinese 2000 Software Co., Ltd., whose company contributes significant resources to OpenOffice.org, stated: "We acclaim IBM as a welcome contributor to the OpenOffice.org community! It's great to have such a strong partner on our side, one which, with its extraordinary technical expertise and marketing power, will help drive this project so important to free software and open standards. We are looking forward to a truly productive partnership and harmonious collaboration with IBM, Sun and other contributors on OpenOffice.org."
Scott Crenshaw, Red Hat's Vice President of Enterprise Linux, agreed: "IBM continues to show their commitment to the proliferation of open-source software and we applaud them on joining the OpenOffice.org community. We look forward to continuing our strong relationship with IBM as we work toward a common goal of bringing value to our customers and fostering the adoption of open standards and ODF."
OpenOffice.org® is the leading open-source productivity suite. It includes word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing, database, and other modules; it uses the ODF as its native file format as well as fully supporting other common file formats (including Microsoft Office). The software runs on all major platforms, including Microsoft Windows (including Vista), GNU/Linux, Solaris, and Mac OS X, and is available in over 100 languages. OpenOffice.org is fully interoperable with other popular suites and may be used free of charge for any purpose, private or commercial; the license is LGPL.
Since the project's creation by Sun Microsystems in 2000, nearly 100 million have downloaded the product; thousands contribute to it. As an international team of volunteer and sponsored contributors, the OpenOffice.org community has created what is widely regarded as the most important open source project in the world today. The OpenOffice.org community acknowledges generous sponsorship from a number of companies, including Sun Microsystems, the founder and primary contributor.
Press Contacts
Louis Suarez-Potts (GMT -04h00)
OpenOffice.org Community Manager
Chair, Community Council
Louis.Suarez-Potts @ Sun.COM
+1 (416) 625 3843 (mobile)
+1 (416) 531-9513 (landline)
John McCreesh (GMT +01h00)
OpenOffice.org Marketing Project Lead
Member, Community Council
jpmcc @ openoffice.org
+44 (0)7 810 278 540
Michael Azzi (GMT -04h00)
IBM Emerging Technologies & Global Communications
+1 (914) 766 1561
azzi @ us.ibm.com
Terri Molini (GMT -07h00)
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
+1 (408) 404 4976
terri.molini @ sun.com
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Read more about OpenOffice.org software
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