How a corporate acquisition birthed a free software revolution
In 1999, Sun Microsystems bought a proprietary suite for $59.5 million. Instead of hoarding the technology, they did something radical: they released the source code for free. This move birthed OpenOffice.org, a project that challenged the dominance of Microsoft Office and changed the landscape of productivity software forever.
The origins of OpenOffice.org lie in StarOffice, a proprietary suite developed by the German company Star Division starting in 1985. When Sun Microsystems acquired Star Division in August 1999, they faced a choice. To save on licensing costs for their 42,000 employees, Sun opted to open-source the software. On July 19, 2000, at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, Sun announced this shift, officially releasing the source code in October 2000. This initiative aimed to create a community-driven, international office suite capable of running on all major platforms.
The project's impact was immediate and structural. By 2004, OpenOffice.org had achieved 14% penetration in the large enterprise market. Beyond just providing a free alternative to Microsoft Office, the project pioneered the OpenDocument Format (ODF). Originally based on Sun's XML file format, ODF was submitted to the OASIS standard and eventually ratified as ISO/IEC 26300 in 2006. This helped move the industry toward more transparent, machine-processable data interchange, reducing reliance on proprietary binary formats.
However, the project's journey was marked by significant friction. Following Oracle Corporation's acquisition of Sun in 2010, development slowed. Tensions rose when Oracle demanded that Community Council members involved in the new Document Foundation step down, leaving the council composed only of Oracle employees. This led a majority of contributors to fork the project in 2010, creating LibreOffice. While Oracle eventually donated the codebase to the Apache Software Foundation in June 2011, the community had already begun migrating to the more collaborative LibreOffice ecosystem.
Source: OpenOffice.org
