In his post Lohmann provides a brief history about the porting effort for OpenOffice and then indicates that he and another Sun engineers will assist in the porting effort:



"You can imagine my excitement when I first heard about renewed efforts to make an Aqua port reality. And now finally I can spend my paid time to add to this great effort. At first Herbert Dürr and I will contribute to the Mac port, however there certainly will be other Sun developers involved in their areas of expertise when the need arises (e.g. when problems with the build system arise)."



Sun identifies an inrease in Mac use

Lohmann cites an increase in Mac use as a reason that Sun is joining the porting effort when he states:



"Some may ask: Why is Sun joining the Mac porting project? If you look around at conferences and airport lounges, you will notice that more and more people are using Apple notebooks these days. Apple has a significant market share in the desktop space. We are supporting this port because of the interest and activity of the community wanting this port. The new invigorated effort in Mac/Aqua-porting (basically since CWS aquavcl01) is an obvious indicator. I think this is the right way to go to make OOo on Mac as good as or even better than the other ports. Add in the growing Mac community as a whole and suddenly from Sun's point of view Mac has a higher value since our strategy is to be multi-platform capable."



What is OpenOffice?

According to the OpenOffice.org website:

"OpenOffice.org is a multiplatform and multilingual office suite and an open-source project. Compatible with all other major office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute."



You can learn more about the product here.



You can read Lohmann's blog post in full here.

