This week, the picture got even more complicated when Apache OpenOffice announced a long-awaited update.

"With the donation of OpenOffice.org to the ASF, the foundation, and especially the podling project, was given a daunting task: re-energize a community and transform OpenOffice from a codebase of unknown intellectual property heritage, to a vetted and Apache-licensed software suite," said Jim Jagielski, ASF president and an Apache OpenOffice project mentor, in the official .

"The release of Apache OpenOffice 3.4 shows just how successful the project has been: pulling in developers from over 21 corporate affiliations, while avoiding undue influence which is the death-knell of true open source communities; building a solid and stable codebase, with significant improvement and enhancements over other variants; and, of course, creating a healthy, vibrant and diverse user and developer community," Jagielski added.

Outside reactions haven't been quite so cheerful, however.