IBM has joined theOpenoffice.org development communityto give the open source productivity software a boost in
the marketplace.
IBM said it 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.
IBM will also use Openoffice.org technology in its own products.
Rich Green, executive vice-president for software at
Sun Microsystems, said, "In the seven years since Sun founded
the project, Openoffice.org has fuelled and filled the need for
document data and productivity tools that are open and free.
"We invite others to join us in the community and participate in
building the future as Openoffice.org and ODF continue to gain
popularity."
ODF is the open source document format used in the suite, and
competes against
Microsoft's OOXML document format which recently failed to gain ISO
accreditation.