"Given the breadth of interest in free personal productivity applications and the rapid evolution of personal computing technologies, we believe the OpenOffice.org project would be best managed by an organization focused on serving that broad constituency on a non-commercial basis," said Oracle Chief Architect Edward Screven in a statement.

Oracle will "begin working immediately with community members to further the continued success of Open Office" and plans to continue supporting standards like ODF (Open Document Format), he said.

Screven went on to confirm Oracle's commitment to other open-source technologies, such as Linux and MySQL. "Oracle is focused on Linux and MySQL because both of these products have won broad based adoption among commercial and government customers," he said.

Oracle's decision suggests the company has had difficulty selling many Open Office licenses since it acquired Sun Microsystems, which sold the software under the name Star Office. Its move is apparently effective immediately; a related to Open Office were dead on Friday.

Although Oracle didn't specify so, the future of its also seems in question. Website links for Cloud Office were also dead on Friday.