IBM to Contribute to New, Proposed OpenOffice.org Project

ARMONK, N.Y., - 01 Jun 2011: Continuing its long-standing commitment to
open source, IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced it will take an active,
supportive role in the new OpenOffice.org code base submitted to The Apache
Software Foundation Incubator. As part of today's news, IBM will contribute
staff resources to collaborate with the Apache community during the
project's incubation period to further the Open Document Format standard.
The move will help facilitate the long term viability and new innovation for
OpenOffice.org development in collaboration with the Apache community. IBM
plans to commit new project members and individual contributors from its
global development team to strengthen the project and ensure its future
success.
"Open source and standards are key to making our planet smarter and
improving the way we live and work," said Kevin Cavanaugh, vice president,
IBM Collaboration Solutions. "As IBM celebrates its Centennial, we're
actively investing in projects that will help our clients to collaborate in
an open manner over the next 100 years."
IBM's participation is the latest of many the company has made to open
software development. These include IBM contributing code and staff
resources to Apache projects, the initial formation of the Eclipse
Foundation, and over a decade of working with industry colleagues on Linux.
In 2007, IBM introduced Lotus Symphony, IBM's no charge, on premise, office
productivity suite based on the Open Document Format standard.
The Open Document Format is the standard for document interoperability
across software from many vendors. Advances around ODF, combined with
alternative forms of communication (email, IM, tweets, blogs), cloud
delivery models for business applications, growth in smart, mobile devices,
and economic pressures are all converging to apply pressure to the status
quo of documents. As these industry factors converge, IBM is helping
organizations move towards a model that offers low-cost acquisition of
document tools, coupled with high value and high collaboration solutions
around a document. This news strengthens IBM's ability to continue to offer
our own distributions based on the OpenOffice code base and make our own
contributions to reinforce the overall community.
IBM's contribution to the incubating OpenOffice.org code base at Apache will
further advance the adoption of office productivity suite alternatives.
For more information on IBM's open source initiatives, visit
http://www.ibm.com/opensource.