[tdf-discuss] Oracle sends belated birthday wishes

For those not on the ooo-announce, mailing list, I am forwarding this 
message just posted by Louis Suarez-Potts, who is the Community 
Development Manager for OOo, employed by Oracle.

First, I find it telling that Oracle's happy anniversary message about 
the open sourcing of StarOffice was a *belated* one, while LibO got the 
timing and the message right.  Second, the reference to the so-called 
momentum of a growing OOo community did not ring true for me -- from 
what I can see, the OOo community has moved en masse and is now the LibO 
community.  I think OOo and LibO will both be willing to incorporate 
each others code where it makes sense, but inevitably LibO is on a new 
path now, free from Oracle, and with the community firmly behind it. 
Congratulations to the TDF steering committee on having the courage to 
free us from Oracle, and in a way that was so graceful, and so 
thoughtful, that virtually the whole community is still together, now 
under the banner of LibO!

     ----Jon

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [ooo-announce] Ten Years: OpenOffice.org
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2010 14:55:22 -0700
From: Louis Suarez-Potts <luispo@gmail.com>
Reply-To: announce@openoffice.org <announce@openoffice.org>
To: announce@openoffice.org <announce@openoffice.org>

All, a belated happy birthday!

Ten years ago, on 13 October 2000, Sun released the source code to 
StarOffice under open-source licenses. Formidable in size and complexity 
and positioned against a seemingly overwhelmingly dominant competitor, 
OpenOffice.org was seen as at best, foolish, at worse, boring, fit only 
for office drones. Browsers, it was said, have more fun.

But we, the OpenOffice.org project community, showed these skeptics to 
be wrong. We showed the world that a free office productivity suite 
using open standards, especially what later came to be known as the 
OpenDocument Format (ODF), is more desirable, more powerful, and more 
transformative than any browser could be. We, the OpenOffice.org project 
community, gave the world a set of tools that allows all to participate 
as equals in the fields of commerce, science, education, government, to 
name but a few.

We have given the world the tools to do things and to work together. 
With OpenOffice.org, people produce - and their productions are theirs 
to keep and do with as they will. That is real freedom.

It is a freedom that today perhaps 100 million people enjoy. In some 
regions, our product's usage is greater than 20 percent of the office 
suite userbase. How have we done this? And without spending the expected 
billions on advertising and other marketing efforts? To a great extent, 
OpenOffice.org, the application made by us, the community, sells itself, 
and its good news is spread through word of mouth, not via billboards 
and the like. Its professional quality and performance is tremendously 
persuasive. OpenOffice.org works on all platforms and in over a hundred 
languages, and perhaps most important, it also works well with other 
suites: our code and our use of the ODF means there is no vendor 
lock-in. Users, from those in government offices to individuals at home, 
are free to choose what is best for them without the anxiety they'll be 
stuck with something they do not much like but costs a lot.

They have chosen OpenOffice.org, and we are sure they will continue to 
do so in even greater numbers over the next ten years. They choose it 
today it not simply because it costs them nothing to download from our 
site, but because of its professional quality and flexibility - as well 
as its reassuring consistency. Over the last ten years, we have 
regularly released small and large versions incorporating new features, 
functionality, and design, all tested and qualified for any user 
environment. This fall, we are releasing OpenOffice.org 3.3, and the 
beta is available for community testing. Expect more releases-and also a 
lot more extensions.

With extensions, there is virtually no limit to what the application can 
do, and every day the community makes more available under a variety of 
licenses. These address individual, as well as enterprise, needs. 
Support, services, and training, offered by Oracle and other large and 
small companies, is globally available in a host of languages; these all 
complement the free community support and constitute a portion of the 
large and growing OpenOffice.org ecosystem.

And our momentum is building, as the size and complexity of the 
community contributing to the project grows and as more see in 
OpenOffice.org a future they want to be part of. It's a future of 
freedom that we commit to, as a community that includes Oracle as well 
other enterprises, and countless thousands of independent contributors.

Our first ten years have proven the strength of our vision and 
technology against every imaginable challenge; the next - well, who can 
say? Only this: we commit to making the tools of productivity,  growing 
the community, and improving the product - open to all to inspect, use, 
improve, distribute, and we invite the world to join us in our commitment.

Happy Birthday, OpenOffice.org!

On behalf of the OpenOffice.org Project,

Louis Suarez-Potts
Community Development Manager
OpenOffice.org


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