Design of the new UI has been going on for the past nine months, led by OpenOffice.org's main contributor, Sun Microsystems Inc.

According to an update by Sun in July (), the still-rough overhaul aims to "create a user interface so that OpenOffice.org becomes the users' choice not only out of need but also out of desire."

Judging by the vast majority of the 500-odd comments at , the new UI caused many to recoil at its strong association with Microsoft.

"This would be a killer feature for not using OpenOffice.org.... Don't implement this," wrote 'e7'.

"The Office ribbon sucks. Please don't copy it," wrote Robert Hicks.