IBM joins the OpenOffice.org

To the collective cheer of “It’s about time”, IBM is now officially supporting the OpenOffice.org project. From the press release:

The OpenOffice.org community today announced that IBM will be joining the community to collaborate on the development of OpenOffice.org software. IBM will be making initial code contributions that it has been developing as part of its Lotus Notes product, including accessibility enhancements, and will be making ongoing contributions to the feature richness and code quality of OpenOffice.org. Besides working with the community on the free productivity suite’s software, IBM will also leverage OpenOffice.org technology in its products.

“In the seven years since Sun founded the project, OpenOffice.org has fueled and filled the need for document data and productivity tools that are open and free. Open source software and ODF are having a profound impact around the world, with numerous communities and organizations coming together to support these initiatives and governments, and corporations and schools standardizing on the software. We look forward to working with IBM and the other members of OpenOffice.org to ensure that this momentum continues. We invite others to join us in the community and participate in building the future as OpenOffice.org and ODF continue to gain popularity across the planet,” said Rich Green, Executive Vice President, Software at Sun Microsystems, Inc.

The accessibility gains here are huge for OpenOffice.org, as it means a foot in the door to some Government procurements that were not previously possible or would have previously run into issues. Stephe also points out the significance of Redflag Chinese 2000 Software’s participation in the press release, along with the potential ODF and UOF harmonization that may occur.

IBM almost certainly would have done this much sooner if Sun wasn’t the primary OO.o backer, but it needed to happen. Andy points out that the recent OOXML setback did impact the IBM decision to do this now. The question is, is this too late. I don’t think so. While it would have been great for ODF adoption if this would have happened earlier, I think we are still at a crossroads right now. OOXML approval is an uncertainty and the market is more open than it has been in a long time. Microsoft has overshot from a functionality standpoint and the emphasis is moving toward other items like Open Standards anyway. An opportunity this large only comes around once in a generation, as John McCreesh, the OpenOffice Marketing Project Lead, sums up well in the press release:

“This is great news for the tens of millions of users of OpenOffice.org and the thousands of individual members of the project”, said John McCreesh, OpenOffice.org Marketing Project Lead. “We welcome IBM’s contributions to further enhancing the OpenOffice.org product. But equally important is IBM’s future commitment to package and distribute new works that leverage OpenOffice.org technology supporting the ISO ODF standard. ODF is a once in a generation opportunity for the IT industry to unify round a standard, and deliver lasting benefit to users of desktop technology.”

For the record, that opportunity is about $15B annually. It’s easy to see why IBM and SUN were able to put their differences aside on this one. Carpe diem!

–jeremy