Oracle A Threat To OpenOffice?

Is Oracle a friend or foe to OpenOffice? Guess it depends on who you are asking. Some will point out that in many ways, Oracle is no friend to open source software due to its collaboration with various proprietary products. Yet others still will remind us that it is Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s “iron fist” that could finally whip OpenOffice into shape enough to become a viable product outside of the freebie circles. Ah, there’s the rub.

OpenOffice, while fantastic for everything I need, is not really something well suited for traditional software sales. Not due to its value, rather because of the fact that people practically wet themselves every time someone tries to legally package and sell it on the open market. No kidding, despite the fact that there are provisions for selling the office suite, some individuals go bananas at the mere thought of someone making money on a project that is, well, largely supported by a corporation! I mean clearly there is a real chance someone might… get the product into store shelves and this must be stopped in the name of freedom! Give me a break.

Here is the short and skinny of where Oo needs to go. Get the code cleaned up, fix the massive formating issues with .docx documents, make available extra Oracle inspired plugins for extra functionality to be added only to the retail version, go to the market. Seems pretty simple to me.