Its been five years since Sun Open Sourced the StarOffice suite they purchased from German company Star Division.  Today OpenOffice has released version 2.0 which represents a very significant re-engineering of the 1.0 codebase.

OpenOffice.org 2.0 is the productivity suite that individuals, governments, and corporations around the world have been expecting for the last two years. Easy to use and fluidly interoperable with every major office suite, OpenOffice.org 2.0 realises the potential of open source.

With new features, advanced XML capabilities and native support for the OASIS Standard OpenDocument format, OpenOffice.org 2.0 gives users around the globe the tools to be engaged and productive members of their society.

ZDNet Coverage: 

Version 2.0 brings some significant new features, and Google has pledged to help distribute OpenOffice through a high-profile pact with Sun. But perhaps more significant, OpenOffice.org uses the standardized OpenDocument format that stands in stark contrast to Microsoft's proprietary formats.

Massachusetts has required support of OpenDocument, and Bob Sutor, IBM's vice president of standards and open source, has urged computer users to pressure software companies, governments and corporations to support OpenDocument.

Well I just had a really nice write-up regarding Google's Summer of Code Program, but I lost it do to buggy htmlarea javascript crashing my browser.

My main point was that it was a very smart move by google. On the surface its a benevolent outlay of 1 million dollars in stipends for students to help out Open Source projects. Underneath is an very smart campaign building up google's relationship with the Open Source community and future employees. A chance to find talent at high schools and Universities... a sort of real-time interview (note all code needs to be publicly available). A chance for Open Source projects to get new talent and some nagging tasks/feature requests done. A chance for students to have something meaningful to work on, and even be mentored by open source project representatives. Real work, real deadlines, real rewards in a non-threatening way.

But its a win-win for all parties really, the open source community, the students, and google. Smart. Marketing and PR can be used innovatively with some real value.

A university can learn from such a campaign.... IT departments should establish such a relationship with their Computer Science departments, for many of the same reasons.

As OpenOffice 2.0 gets closer to being finalized, they have started to release preview release snapshots. Of greater interest to me at this point is a nice list of new features.

So why the jump from 1.x to 2.0? Here are the things that stood out to me:

1. Switch to OpenDoc XML format from the Oasis Open Standards Group
2. Native widgets on Windows XP, Gnome, and KDE
3. Improved MS Office import/export
4. Export XHTML 1.0 Strict from all modules

If you have ever seen the export of html from Microsoft Word, then you will be especially excited about #4. Sure running things through htmltidy works, but think about the joy of having someone post web pages or content snippets using strict xhtml 1.0 from a word processor.

"Companies have gotten comfortable with Linux, and they're scratching their heads and saying, 'The argument for Linux was total cost of ownership and skills, and our developers like it and applications are supporting it,'" says Pierre Fricke, an analyst at D.H. Brown Associates. "Then they start thinking, 'What about this thing called JBoss. Doesn't it offer some of the same things?' And it does."

Network World Fusion article, Open source products grab corporate attention, explains why National Leisure Group moved their J2EE infrastructure from BEA Weblogic to JBoss. The broader Open Source topic is discussed with some interesting insights into corporate backing as well as appropriate cautions....