IBM is donating the code of its Symphony office suite to the Apache Foundation Software so that it can be re-integrated with OpenOffice.org.

The free-for-download office application suite, IBM Lotus Symphony, originated as a fork from OpenOffice.org 3.0 but now, at its own Version 3, has a sleek and polished user interface.

News that IBM wants to hand it over to Apache so that the code can be folded into the OpenOffice.org open source project was given a post to an Apache email list by  Rob Weir who starts with:

I'm sending this with my IBM "hat".

and explaining that he will be making announcements at ODF Plugfest on 15 July.

Commenting that the "fresh start at Apache is a good opportunity" Weir says that as well as contributing Lotus Symphony IBM will work with members of the community to integrate various components into the OpenOffice.org platform.

Weir also discloses that IBM will be proposing a new incubation project at Apache, for the ODF Toolkit, explaining:

These Java libraries enable new kinds of lightweight document processing applications. We think this would work well as an Apache project, and we look forward to moving that into incubation and developing that complementary project forward.

Oracle's decision to hand over OpenOffice.org was encouraged by IBM and Rob Weir welcomed its acceptance by Apache as a positive outcome for the ODF standard. This move further reinforces his proposal for using ODF as the basis for interoperability among competing application suites.

Related articles:

OpenOffice.org voted into Apache Incubator

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