OpenOffice Lives, More Involvement Needed

Two weeks ago, OpenOffice.org collaborator Michael Meeks blogged a message of concern about the project, painting it in not so rosy terms. He cited numerous statistics to show that, in his opinion, the code has been poorly maintained, causing many developers to pull off the project from frustration. This prompted a reaction from Thorsten Ziehm, quality expert at Sun Microsystems for OpenOffice and its commercial variant StarOffice. In his "What was done in 2008" blog," Ziehm followed Meeks's example by showing supporting graphics and statistics, but this time to refute Meeks's claims. Whereas Meeks cites an increasing developer withdrawal from the project, Ziehm points to the "nearly 900 child work spaces" that were integrated. While Meeks is convinced of Sun's retreat, Ziehm cites a contrary opinion from Sun VP Jim Parkinson in his weblog from November 2008: "We are not about to walk away from OpenOffice.org."

Florian Effenberger, marketing representative for the project, also opined in a Linux Magazine Online blog that he was amazed at Meeks's pessimistic view. He even saw the current polarization as evidence of the project's vitality: "The differing viewpoints prove only that the project continues to be active, that it lives, that many are thinking about it and take it close to heart. There's no better way of showing how full of life it is." As evidence he pointed to the 50 new extensions enhancing OpenOffice that were added in December.

The Linux Foundation is showing its own concern. Foundation VP Amanda McPherson sees OpenOffice.org as the great alternative to Microsoft and that the 28 million downloads for the last OpenOffice version as undoubtable proof of its success. Even the vaguest notion about a questionable future could prove fatal. In her weblog she writes, "I worry that we would be beholden to the same proprietary forces that have shaped the desktop market. We shouldn't rely on Sun to save us here. In fact it may be counter-productive to do so."

All seemed to agree that OpenOffice lives and will continue to do so with more participants involved. Ziehm summarizes with, "we need more people in all areas and projects – User Experience, QA, L10N, Development or any other project on OOo – to get dreams fulfilled."