OpenOffice files Oracle divorce papers
Uncertainty breeds mistrust — Open sourcers have seized control of the OpenOffice project and product and declared their independence from database giant Oracle. — The OpenOffice.org Project has unveiled a major restructuring that separates itself …
Context & Ripple Effects
Oracle's acquisition of Sun put OpenOffice.org under a steward the community never chose, and doubts surfaced quickly: analysts had already warned readers not to count on Oracle to keep OpenOffice.org alive at Sun's level of investment. That skepticism landed in the same season Oracle filed suit against Google over Java patents — litigation that signaled how hard the company intended to squeeze value out of its Sun inheritance.
The project's answer, confirmed on September 28, 2010, was structural rather than rhetorical: a major restructuring that separates the OpenOffice.org project and product from Oracle outright, with open sourcers seizing control of both. It is a governance mutiny triggered by ownership change, not by any single product decision.
First-order effects
- OpenOffice.org contributors now set the project's roadmap and control the product independent of Oracle, ending the company's role as sole steward of software it acquired with Sun.
- Oracle loses day-to-day influence over one of its highest-profile open-source assets just as its Java patent suit against Google fuels perceptions that it treats inherited Sun projects as litigation and licensing levers.
Second-order effects
- Enterprises, distributors, and downstream packagers who shipped OpenOffice must decide which lineage to follow — the community-controlled project or whatever Oracle retains — splitting an installed base that competes with Microsoft Office.
- Every other Sun-acquired community, watching Java become a lawsuit and OpenOffice walk away, has fresh evidence that Oracle stewardship carries governance risk, raising the odds of parallel independence moves across the former Sun portfolio.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, corporate acquisition becomes a trigger event for open-source governance resets: communities pre-position trademarks, foundations, and forks so that a hostile or indifferent acquirer cannot hold the project hostage.
- For vendors weighing open-source acquisitions, the episode raises the price of stewardship — buying the code buys neither the contributors nor the brand loyalty, weakening the strategic case for absorbing open-source projects purely for their assets.
The trend: When acquirers reprioritize inherited open-source assets, communities increasingly respond by restructuring governance around themselves, decoupling projects from corporate owners.