A group of key OpenOffice.org (OOo) contributors and community members recently decided to fork the project and establish The Document Foundation (TDF) in order to drive forward community-driven development of the open source office suite. Oracle has responded to the move by asking several members of TDF to step down from their positions as representatives on the OOo community council.

During an OOo community council meeting last week, council chair Louis Saurez-Potts told the TDF members who also sit on the OOo community council that their participation in both organizations constituted a conflict of interest and that their involvement in the new LibreOffice fork should preclude them from holding leadership roles in the OOo community. Saurez-Potts is Oracle's OpenOffice.org community manager, a role that he also held at Sun prior to the acquisition. His position suggests that Oracle views LibreOffice as a hostile fork and will not join TDF as some had hoped.

"Your role in the Document Foundation and LibreOffice makes your role as a representative in the OOo CC untenable and impossible. [I]t causes confusion, it is a plain conflict of interest, as TDF split from OOo," he told TDF members during a council meeting that took place on an IRC channel. "If the TDF members do not disassociate themselves from the [Document Foundation] then they must resign by Tuesday."

OOo council members who also hold leadership roles in TDF include Charles-H. Schulz, Christoph Noack, and Cor Nouws. It's unclear how they will proceed now that they have been handed this ultimatum by Oracle.