How a software fork escaped corporate control to reach 200 million users
When Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems in 2010, the open-source community feared for the future of OpenOffice.org. Instead of fading away, a group of developers launched a fork that would eventually outpace its predecessor, creating a massive, community-driven ecosystem for global productivity.
The origins of LibreOffice lie in a complex lineage of corporate acquisitions and community rebellions. It began as StarOffice, a proprietary suite from the German company Star Division. In 1999, Sun Microsystems acquired Star Division for $59.5 million—a move reportedly cheaper than paying Microsoft Office licensing fees for their 42,000 employees. Sun later released the source code as OpenOffice.org, but as Oracle took control of Sun in 2010, developers grew wary of Oracle's history with open-source projects.
In response, The Document Foundation (TDF) was formed on 28 September 2010, introducing LibreOffice as a fork of OpenOffice.org. While Oracle declined to join the new foundation, major industry players like Google, Red Hat, and Canonical shifted their support to the new project. This independence allowed LibreOffice to thrive through a unique commercial ecosystem. Unlike Apache OpenOffice, which has struggled to maintain active development since 2015, LibreOffice benefits from commercial partners like Collabora, who drive much of the development through enterprise support services.
Today, the software is a global standard, supporting 120 languages and estimated at 200 million active users as of 2018. The suite utilizes a dual-release strategy: 'Fresh' for the latest features and 'Still' for stability. While TDF focuses on individual and non-profit users, the heavy lifting of enterprise-grade cloud integration and mobile editing is handled by partners, ensuring the project remains a robust, cross-platform alternative to proprietary giants.
Source: LibreOffice
