Many projects are born, others die, and then there are those that serve as a platform for something better. The case of OpenOffice could fit into that third category. After Oracle acquired Sun in 2010, development efforts on OpenOffice plummeted, and not even its transfer to the Apache Foundation changed things. The lack of contributors, combined with the great momentum that LibreOffice is experiencing, could lead to the definitive closure of the well-known project.
Those who want a copy of LibreOffice can download the latest builds of the Fresh and Still variants, published on August 3. In contrast, the situation of Apache OpenOffice is very different: its latest stable version is more than ten months old, it suffers from security problems, and as if that weren't enough, it doesn't have enough contributors, who either abandoned the project completely or shifted their efforts to LibreOffice. That said, it's time to ask some tough questions, and the first was Dennis Hamilton, the volunteer vice president of the Apache OpenOffice project, who reports his progress (or lack thereof) to the Apache Foundation. The header of his email says it all: What would the retirement of OpenOffice entail?
According to Hamilton's point of view, there aren't enough developers with the ability and willingness to keep a project afloat that currently has about half a dozen volunteers. No decision has been made yet, but the total retirement of OpenOffice has become "a serious possibility". In July, OpenOffice published an alert about a vulnerability with the potential to generate DoS attacks and provide code execution, and the corresponding patch took more than a month to appear, when in reality work had already been done on its code in March. In other words, the effective delay was five months. Due to these issues, the Apache Foundation now requests monthly reports from the project.
What would OpenOffice's retirement look like? Basically, its code would remain available to anyone who wishes to use it, but no further changes would be accepted. The binaries would remain in storage without updates, and the announcement mechanism used by updates would be modified to recommend users alternatives that still have support. All the social aspect of OpenOffice (Facebook, Twitter, mailing lists, etc.) would be taken down, except for an email address for the Apache Foundation in case a third party wants to license the name OpenOffice. Several developers have spoken out against retiring the project, and statistics indicate it had almost 30 million downloads last year. Retire or revitalize? OpenOffice is a well-known name, but the code doesn't write itself...
