OpenOffice.org has been accepted as an Apache Incubator project and will now begin its development as a "podling" – the Apache name for projects in the incubator. An open public vote on the Apache Incubator list saw a solid majority of both binding and non-binding votes for accepting the project...A reference implementation could be used by other projects, beyond OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice, and help establish the ODF document formats more widely in both open source and proprietary software.

The document as we know it — static and one-sided — has disappeared. Documents today are no longer stand-still and no longer offer only one view. The old model doesn’t work for today’s social and always-connected business. Business communication has evolved to become more fluid, dynamic and collaborative and is now an integral part of business processes.

Oracle has decided that the best way forward for Open Office is to turn it back into a community-led project. Oracle had taken control of what was widely regarded as the most complete rival to Microsoft's Office business suite after it purchased Sun Microsystems. At the time Oracle's involvement with Open Office led to the creation of The Document Foundation and its Libre Office project in case Oracle turned Open Office into a closed source project.

"Ideally, all software of the same genre would use the same format to save work. Then every program could open and work on a file, save its changes and pass the file to another program without any loss of the integrity of the file contents.

Don’t for a second underestimate the importance of document freedom. It sounds dull - not just mundane, but the forgotten esoterica of the mundane - but it’s a crucial driver in the dominance of major software vendors. If the other elements of our Digital liberty are to be allowed to unfurl in their natural order, we need document freedom.

Read the complete article by Simon Phipps in Computerworld UK.