OpenOffice, one of the more popular free alternatives to Microsoft Office, may be looking at the end as the suite’s lack of volunteer developers mean that it could be retired soon.
Those who are part of OpenOffice’s project mailing list has recently received a mail from Dennis E. Hamilton, Volunteer Vice President for OpenOffice. In the mail, Hamilton mentions that the retirement of OpenOffice is “a serious possibility” due to the lack of volunteer developers. The lack of volunteers have a noticable effect on OpenOffice, mainly in the security vulnerabilities department. Back in July, OpenOffice informed people about a vulnerability, but due to a lack of manpower to work on a patch to fix it, the OpenOffice team has suggested that its users switch to Microsoft Office or LibreOffice instead.
OpenOffice’s manpower problem has been particularly bad ever since LibreOffice was launched. According to Ars Technica, many former contributors to OpenOffice has left to work on LibreOffice. While OpenOffice may no longer have the community of developers that it once had, there are a number of developers that remain loyal to OpenOffice that are looking into keeping OpenOffice relevant. Only time will tell if OpenOffice will be able to overcome this troubling period.
Source: Ars Technica
