You can tell it’s important by the way that other free software licenses work to cooperate with it: the drafting processes for GPLv3 and the Mozilla Public License 2.0 named compatibility with the Apache License 2.0 as a goal from day one.

It’s a well-established, mature license that users, developers, and distributors alike are all comfortable with. The Apache License 2.0 is the best non-copyleft license that does what a copyright license can to mitigate threats from software patents. I’d point out in particular that the Apache 2.0 open source license was recently blessed by the Free Software Foundation: These diverse projects are run according to meritocratic development process, a tried and tested governance model, strong shared technical infrastructure, a pragmatic, commercially-friendly open source license and a set of social conventions known as the “Apache Way”. I’m hoping that soon, as OpenOffice transitions to Apache, they will be able to claim 6 of the top 10!

All said Apache is custodian of nearly 170 open source projects, including 5 of the top 10 open source downloads. And if you don’t know about Apache Hadoop yet, then please do your résumé a favor and study up on it. If you work with XML you know about Apache Xerces, Xalan, FOP and Batik. If you are a developer you know about Ant, Maven and Subversion. If you are a web developer or server admin, then you of course know about the eponymous Apache http server and Tomcat. I recommend also the insights of my colleagues Ed Brill and Bob Sutor.įirst, we should all be excited to see OpenOffice move to a foundation with the stature and track-record of Apache. I’d like to offer you my own thoughts on this new opportunity and what it means.

Track changes apache openoffice writer