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LibreOffice isn’t an OpenOffice fork… yet

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Many people are assuming the Document Foundation’s LibreOffice is an OpenOffice fork. It’s not. Not yet anyway.

I agree with almost everyone that it’s highly unlikely that Oracle will join up, although it is possible. Oracle has very little interest in anything that doesn’t contribute to the price of fuel for one of Larry Ellison’s jets. That means that Oracle’s main focus will be its server software stack.

Ellison does have some interest in OpenOffice. Back in June 2009, not long after Oracle purchased Sun, Ellison proposed that OpenOffice developers quit using C++ for OpenOffice and switch to using JavaFX. That idea went over like a lead balloon.

Even before Ellison proposed that developers dump their ten-plus years work for an unpopular language, OpenOffice programmers weren’t happy. Getting new features or just bug-fixes through the OpenOffice organization was a long and painful process, whether it was controlled by Sun or by Oracle.

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