A Brief History Of OpenOffice.org
History, Milestones and Earth Shaking Events
The early years
1986 Marco Börries founds StarDivision after the first version of StarWriter was released in 1985
1990 Development site moves to Hamburg
1995 The release of StarOffice 3.0 marks a milestone in the development. It was a complete redesign of former programmes as a cross-platform office suite for Windows, OS/2 and Solaris Sparc directly competing with Microsoft Office 95. This is the oldest code that is still inside OpenOffice.org
1999 Sun Microsystems, Inc., buys StarDivision
OpenOffice.org 1.0 - Let Freedom Ring
1999
Star Office to become Open Source? (Slashdot)
2000
2000-07-19 OpenOffice.org announced; StarOffice 5.2 code open-sourced under LGPL/SISSL
2000-10-13 OpenOffice.org goes live, with the source available for download
2000-11-24 First port complete: PPC Linux
2000-12 An XML-based file-format specification is published, and used by default - the *.sxw / *.sxc / *.sxi type of files
2001
2001-02 Integration of the new, psprint-based printing system
2001-04 Whiteboard (now Incubator) projects grow; these are community-initiated development projects
2001-04 Source code to Mac OS X port released
2001-04 First Lang (now Native-Lang) project - Francophone
2001-04 Thesaurus announced (en_US )
2001-05 Spell Checking integrated (MySpell)
2001-06 ODK released
2001-07 First community localization - Finnish
2001-07 Marketing (Whiteboard) project created
2001-09 Help system and content integrated
2001-10 Build 638c is released (638c was a milestone release)
2001-10 One Million Downloads!
2001-10 First anniversary
2002
2002-04 10,000 members registered; 4.5 Million downloads
May - Version 1.0
2002-05 OpenOffice.org 1.0 announced
2002-05 6 Million downloads, 2,000 messages posted per week
2002-05-07 Mac OS X (developer) build released, adding to the list that includes all other flavors of Unix, such as FreeBSD
2002-06-30 OpenOffice.org grows to 55,000, adding five thousand new members per week
July - Version 1.0.1
2002-07 Native Lang projects: Deutsch, Español, Italiano, Nederlands, Português do Brasil
2002-08 Community-sponsored development projects include: Documentation, QA, WP, Groupware, Lingucomponent
2002-08 Best Office Productivity Award (Linux Journal)
2002-08 Evolutionary Enterprise Award (Linux World Expo) (picture coming soon)
2000-09 SDK released, superseding the ODK
2002-09 XML Journal Finalist Award
2002-10 New developer builds and ports: 643, Mac OS X11 Public Beta
2002-10-13 Facts:
2002-12 OOoForum.org opens offering user support in English only
- More than 8.5 Million downloads
- Over 70,000 registered members
- More than 30 projects and sub-projects, two of which, Marketing and Documentation are led by volunteer community members; the Porting Project is co-lead by a volunteer member
- Over one hundred developers and contributors working in all the active projects
2003
January - Version 1.0.2
2003-02 OpenOffice.org Software Development Kit released (Beta; now final)
March 20th - March 21st OpenOffice.org Conference - University of Hamburg, Germany
SDK 1.0.2
2003-04 OpenOffice.org 1.1 RC1 released
April Version 1.0.3.1
2003-07 OpenOffice.org Mac OS X (X11) port finalized (GM)
2003-08 Numerous new Native-Lang and Incubator projects
2003-09 The OpenOffice.org Community Council Formed
September Version 1.1, Main new features: PDF Export
2003-10 Awards: Numerous user and editor awards
2003-10-13 Facts:
- More than 20 million downloads
- Over 107,000 registered members
- More than 50 projects, many led by volunteer members
- Sixty localizations achieved or in progress
- Over 270 developers and contributors
- More statistics
2004
April Version 1.1.1
June Version 1.1.2
October Version 1.1.3
September 22nd - 24th OpenOffice.org Conference - Humboldt University Berlin, Germany
December Version 1.1.4
2005
July de.openoffice.info opens offering Deutsch user support
September Version 1.1.5
September 28th - 30th OpenOffice.org Conference - Koper - Capodistria, Slovenia
November www.forum-openoffice.org opens offering Français user support
Evolution - Version 2.0 Arrives
October Version 2.0, Main new features: OpenDocument format, redesign of OpenImpress and OpenBase
December Version 2.0.1
2006
March Version 2.0.2
July Version 2.0.3
October Version 2.0.4
September 11 - 13 OpenOffice.org Conference Lyon, France
December Version 2.1
Adaptation - Extensions, ODF Tools
2007
March Version 2.2
June Version 2.2.1
September Version 2.3
September 14 the first entry at extensions.services.openoffice.org Auto Starter for Presentation documents
18th to 21st of September OOoCon Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain)
November User Services Community Forums English boards open
December Version 2.3.1
2008
March Version 2.4
June Version 2.4.1
October Version 2.4.2
November 5th to 7th OpenOffice.org Conference Bejing China
November 5th The first template is made available at templates.services.openoffice.org 1/4" Cartesian Graph Paper
Maturity and Grace - Version 3.0 Takes the World by Storm
October (2008) Version 3.0, Main new features: Native MacOS X support
2009
May Version 3.1
August Version 3.1.1
November 3, 2009 - November 6 OpenOffice.org Conference Orvieto, Italy
2010
February Version 3.2
May Version 3.2.1
August 31st - September 3rd OpenOffice.org Conference Budapest Hungary
September 2010: Corporate development and community effort. To the tenth anniversary of the project, a new era in the development of OpenOffice.org has commenced. The project diversified and strengthened its activities with the establishment of an independent foundation for OpenOffice.org, "The Document Foundation", comprising of efforts by the Oracle development team, by the OpenOffice.org community, by Go-OO.org, and other third parties. Although Oracle as primary funding organisation of the OpenOffice.org development was not involved in the establishment of the new foundation, it may become member and one of the leading members of The Document Foundation.
