Oracle announced that it would contribute its current version of the software for Open Office to the Apache Software Foundation’s Incubator. Apache Foundation Incubator projects start as “podlings” that can graduate to Apache projects if they demonstrate sufficient robustness and community support, in which case they are released under the Apache 2.0 license. As reported by ZDnet, The code contribution was made using the standard Apache contribution agreement (similar to Apache 2.0), but Oracle also assigned its rights in the trademark openoffice.org and related goodwill to the Foundation.
Open Office had recently been forked by the Document Foundation as Libre Office. That code is currently licensed under GPLv3. Re-uniting the two will require some licensing adjustment…stay tuned.
