According to this article “Measuring the true success of Openoffice.org” by Michael Meeks, the beloved OpenOffice is sick, sick because of  Sun.

“…the statistics show a picture of slow disengagement by Sun, combined with a spectacular lack of growth in the developer community. In a healthy project we would expect to see a large number of volunteer developers involved, in addition – we would expect to see a large number of peer companies contributing to the common code pool; we do not see this in OpenOffice.org. Indeed, quite the opposite we appear to have the lowest number of active developers on OO.o since records began: 24, this contrasts negatively with Linux’s recent low of 160+. Even spun in the most positive way, OO.o is at best stagnating from a development perspective.”  (extracted from the article “Measuring the true success of Openoffice.org” by Michael Meeks)

The tight hold Sun has on OpenOffice makes it difficult for developers to to just jump on board and contribute. Contributing code requires that developers commit thier code’s rights over to Sun making it the sole owner of OO’s code-base. Less control from Sun and more freedom and power for the developers and the Opensource community appears to be the only way forward for the OpenOffice project. 

Read in full: “Measuring the true success of Openoffice.org” by Michael Meeks
Read also:  What Meeks means by OpenOffice being sick at zdnet.com

Technorati Tags: Michael Meeks, OpenOffice, OpenSource, Sun

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