I look forward to coming back to Apache and participating in this continuation of OpenOffice. It was a great experience then, and when the opportunity came to add my name to the OpenOffice incubation proposal I did not hesitate. I was a committer in the Apache Xalan project many years ago (1999-2000). I’ve experienced much of this first-hand. The Apache Software Foundation deserves a lot of credit for pushing to do more to tackle software patents in a license, and implementing an effective strategy in the Apache License.Īs you can tell, when it comes to Apache I’m a fan.

You can tell it’s important by the way that other free software licenses work to cooperate with it: the drafting processes for GPLv3 and the Mozilla Public License 2.0 named compatibility with the Apache License 2.0 as a goal from day one. It’s a well-established, mature license that users, developers, and distributors alike are all comfortable with. The Apache License 2.0 is the best non-copyleft license that does what a copyright license can to mitigate threats from software patents. I’d point out in particular that the Apache 2.0 open source license was recently blessed by the Free Software Foundation: These diverse projects are run according to meritocratic development process, a tried and tested governance model, strong shared technical infrastructure, a pragmatic, commercially-friendly open source license and a set of social conventions known as the “Apache Way”.

I’m hoping that soon, as OpenOffice transitions to Apache, they will be able to claim 6 of the top 10! All said Apache is custodian of nearly 170 open source projects, including 5 of the top 10 open source downloads. And if you don’t know about Apache Hadoop yet, then please do your résumé a favor and study up on it. If you work with XML you know about Apache Xerces, Xalan, FOP and Batik. If you are a developer you know about Ant, Maven and Subversion. If you are a web developer or server admin, then you of course know about the eponymous Apache http server and Tomcat. I recommend also the insights of my colleagues Ed Brill and Bob Sutor.įirst, we should all be excited to see OpenOffice move to a foundation with the stature and track-record of Apache. I’d like to offer you my own thoughts on this new opportunity and what it means.

Libreoffice vs openoffice apache