Bullshit in regard of Openo...

Hmm ... long time ago i´ve subscribed a Google news alert about "Sun Microsystems". Sometimes it gathers really excellent articles at locations i wasn´t aware of before. But most of the time it gathers pure bullshit. On of this "pure bullshit" articles is this one: "OpenOffice bound for orphanage?" written by Mr. Barlow.

At first: Openoffice wasn´t developed by volunteers the last 20 years. The earliest versions were written at by Star Division in Hamburg. In 1999 Sun acquired Star Division. We opened up the code in October 2000 and since this time there is OpenOffice and StarOffice (an enriched version of OpenOffice). Many Staroffice developers paid and pay their bills by working for Star Division or Sun.

About the orphanage thing: I have a good insight into that topic ... i´m working in the Sun Office in Hamburg. Staroffice Development and the Sun Office are in the same building. At a part even in the same floor of a multi-floor building. And i don´t see any sign of orphanage ...

I won´t comment on the other bullshit in the text. So, dear Mr. Barlow, please just don´t comment on things without doing any basic research (a short search on wikipedia would be sufficient). But i don´t think that was his intend ... i smell a pro-Microsoft agenda in this text.

BTW: The article "Measuring the true success of OpenOffice.org" referenced by Mr. Barlow is written by a Novell guy working on a code-fork of Openoffice and he is promoting it in his text. Hmm ... i´m not that deep into the openoffice development structures, so i will leave it to a fellow blogger from the Staroffice Development to comment that article. But some parts reads as a Novell vs. Sun thing at some parts. Obviously it´s a pain in the a... for Novell that the sole usable Office suite for their flagship product SuSE Linux is a product of a development community lead by Sun. But that is just my impression.