| OpenOffice.org 2.0 release delayed |
Oct. 12, 2005
Although OpenOffice.org was intent on releasing the final 2.0 version of its open-source office suite on Oct. 13th -- the fifth anniverary of the organization's founding -- Ziff Davis Internet learned Wednesday afternoon that the group has decided to hold off due to a "show-stopping" problem with the software.
Instead, OpenOffice.org will make available a third release candidate, probably by Friday, community manager Louis Suarez-Potts said. No date has been attached to the final release, but Suarez-Potts said it could be ready as early as next week or as late as the end of the month.
OpenOffice.org released Beta 2 of version 2.0 on Sept. 1.
Suarez-Potts said he didn't know exactly what the "show-stopping" issue was and that he learned of this development just after he stepped off a plane in Toronto after giving a presentation in Stockholm.
"We have to support a lot of levels of use -- corporations, languages, regional groups," Suarez-Potts said. "It is our responsibility to make sure everything is right before it's released. A lot of things can happen at the last minute. That's the way of open source -- you don't release it until it's ready."
OpenOffice.org 2.0 will be the first stable version of the open source office suite able to produce the new XML-based standard OpenDocument format (ODF), sanctioned internationally only last May by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS).
It also will feature improved interoperability with Microsoft Word formats and a fully accessible relational database for use with financial applications, Suarez-Potts said.
The OpenDocument format is an XML-based OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) international office document standard used to store data from desktop applications, such as word processing, presentation and spreadsheet software. It is meant to enable the free exchange of data between OpenDocument-compliant software packages.
OpenDocument is also supported by Sun Microsystems's StarOffice 8, IBM, the KDE Project, and Red Hat Inc.
ODF is not directly supported by Microsoft Office software. Third-party software is required to share Microsoft Office and ODF documents.
Although the OpenDocument standard was approved only last May by OASIS, it already has garnered government support. The state of Massachusetts's CIO, Peter Quinn, declared as of Jan. 1, 2007, all electronic documents created by state employees could be saved in only two format types: OpenDocument and Adobe's PDF (Portable Document Format).
On Oct. 5, Sun Microsystems Inc. and Google Inc. announced a new partnership to distribute each other's products. Part of that work will include Google helping to distribute OpenOffice.org. Google CEO Eric Schmidt said: "We'll work to make the distribution of it more broad," he said.
OpenOffice.org will be endowed with a Google search box -- assuming the open-source community that develops it can be persuaded, to add it -- Sun President Jon Schwartz said. That persuasion shouldn't be too hard; Sun, which made the decision to release the source code for what now is OpenOffice, still has heavy involvement in the project.
Sun Chairman Scott McNealy said Google will become involved in Sun's open-source OpenSolaris. "There's a huge alignment strategy with research and development, (involving) Open Document Format, OpenOffice and OpenSolaris," he said.
If you found this eWEEK.com article by Chris Preimesberger informative, be sure to check out eWEEK.com's Linux & Open Source Center for the latest open-source news, reviews, and analysis.
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