Malcolm Pearson of the Tech4Law site, submitted this question via Twitter:
Why are the updates with OpenOffice such a mission? Is there tight integration with any legal software vendors?
Let’s start with the second question first. While OpenOffice was originally the released code of the old StarOffice by Sun Microsystems, integration with a vendor like, say, Microsoft, has been a slow road, most recently with MS Office 2007, which uses file formats that couldn’t be opened in OOo until Version 3.0.
As for the update process, like many other software packages, improving OpenOffice is an ongoing process. And like other software packages, developing updates are done in different groups.
So, for example, when the OpenOffice team considers updating, it’s broken down into, among other projects, security, word processing, spreadsheet and graphics, which each group having a project lead.
Despite so many people involved in OOo, updated versions have been made available on within 3-6 months, with the newest version, 3.2, projected to be ready for public consumption in November.
More to the point, the process in which the OOo team goes about updating has allowed the package to be as functional a suite as MS Office. So, it would appear that the ability for OpenOffice to be a viable alternative is the primary reason why the process of updating is so complex.
