A Titan of Free Software
For much of the 2000s, OpenOffice.org was a giant. As the open-source successor to StarOffice, which Sun Microsystems acquired in 1999, it was the go-to free alternative to Microsoft's expensive suite. Governments, schools, and businesses adopted it worldwide.
It was proof that a community-driven project could produce a world-class, complex piece of software. Development was stewarded by Sun, which employed many of the core programmers. The community of volunteer developers was significant, but the project's fate was tied to its corporate backer. This dependency would soon become a critical vulnerability.
A Community's Crisis of Faith
In 2010, the ground shifted. Tech giant Oracle acquired a struggling Sun Microsystems. For the OpenOffice.org community, this was alarming. Oracle had a reputation for aggressively monetizing and controlling its software properties, and many developers feared for the project's future. Their fears seemed justified when Oracle's engagement with the community felt distant and non-committal. In response, a significant portion of the core developers and community members decided to act preemptively. In September 2010, they formed The Document Foundation and created a 'fork' of the code—a new, independent version they named LibreOffice. This move forced a hard split, creating two competing versions from the same original source code.
The Permissive Path vs. The Copyleft Compact
The following year, Oracle, seemingly uninterested in continuing the project, donated the OpenOffice.org code and brand to the Apache Software Foundation. Apache re-licensed the project under its permissive Apache License 2.0. Meanwhile, LibreOffice opted for a 'copyleft' license—a dual LGPL/MPL. This seemingly obscure legal distinction became the single most important factor in the projects' futures. The permissive Apache license allows anyone to take the code, modify it, and even use it in a proprietary, closed-source product. The copyleft LGPL, however, ensures that any modifications or improvements made to the code must also be shared back with the community under the same open-source terms. This created a one-way street for innovation.
How a License Shapes a Community
The consequences were immediate and profound. Because of license compatibility, LibreOffice was legally able to incorporate any new features, bug fixes, or improvements made in Apache OpenOffice into its own codebase. However, Apache OpenOffice was legally prohibited from taking code from LibreOffice. For developers, the choice was clear. Why contribute to a project where your work could be taken by a commercial entity without giving anything back? Most of the active community, from individual coders to major Linux distributions like Ubuntu and Fedora, threw their support behind LibreOffice. It received the vast majority of developer momentum, leading to a massive effort to modernize the old code and a rapid release schedule of new features.
A Tale of Two Office Suites Today
Today, the divergence is stark. LibreOffice is the de facto successor to the original OpenOffice.org, actively developed with multiple major releases each year and bundled as the default office suite on most Linux systems. It boasts better compatibility with modern Microsoft Office files and a vibrant community. Apache OpenOffice, by contrast, has seen its development slow to a crawl. Its last major release was in 2014, with only minor maintenance updates since. While the name 'OpenOffice' still has brand recognition, the project itself has become largely stagnant, a living museum of what it once was.
