IBM abandons OpenOffice fork Symphony

[v.laurie]

IBM says it is no longer going to develop Lotus Symphony but will support OpenOffice instead.

This will also likely be the last release of IBM's own fork of the OpenOffice codebase. Our energy from here is going into the Apache OpenOffice project, and we expect to distribute an "IBM edition" of Apache OpenOffice in the future.

[J_L]

What was so special about Lotus Symphony anyways?

[Anupam]

So OpenOffice will continue to develop after all. Did Oracle manage to get IBM in? Because many of the OpenOffice developers went away and created LibreOffice.

So, this "IBM edition" will be another fork of OpenOffice?

[Concerned User]

Originally Posted by Anupam

So OpenOffice will continue to develop after all. Did Oracle manage to get IBM in? Because many of the OpenOffice developers went away and created LibreOffice.

So, this "IBM edition" will be another fork of OpenOffice?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01...office_apache/

http://www.edbrill.com/ebrill/edbril...-now-available

Our energy from here is going into the Apache OpenOffice project, and we expect to distribute an "IBM edition" of Apache OpenOffice in the future.

So yes, looks like Oracle did get IBM team up with them.

If IBM had supported the Libre office team, that would have been great.

[Concerned User]

http://arstechnica.com/business/news...very-month.ars

Interesting...

[hellfire695]

Originally Posted by Anupam

So OpenOffice will continue to develop after all. Did Oracle manage to get IBM in? Because many of the OpenOffice developers went away and created LibreOffice.

So, this "IBM edition" will be another fork of OpenOffice?

Oracle dumped it on apache a while ago, apache had it in there incubator, So I imagine ibm grabbed it from there.

[Anupam]

Originally Posted by hellfire695

Oracle dumped it on apache a while ago, apache had it in there incubator, So I imagine ibm grabbed it from there.

True... I remember reading the same somewhere.

[leland.w]

I think Oracle wanted to create instability in the Open Office community when they dumped Open Office to the Apache Foundation. Still I hope maybe the two groups can work together now that Oracle is out of the way. IBM also donated all the code they created for Lotus Symphony to the Apache Foundation and is dedicating some personnel to working on Open Office. I look forward to seeing what comes of it. It would be nice if the two forks could merge again at some point or at least work together and share some code. Only time will tell the full story though...

Leland