September 28, 2010: The community of volunteers developing and promoting OpenOffice.org sets up an independent Foundation (The Document Foundation) to drive the further growth of the leading free office software, now to be called LibreOffice.org.

According to a press release from TDF, “Oracle, who acquired OpenOffice.org assets as a result of its acquisition of Sun Microsystems, has been invited to become a member of the new Foundation, and donate the brand the community has grown during the past ten years. Pending this decision, the brand “LibreOffice” has been chosen for the software going forward.”

The initiative is being conducted by former members and colaborators of OpenOffice.org, and so far has been suported by important FOSS/Industry players (FSF, OASIS, Red Hat, Canonical, Novel, etc.).

A beta release of LibreOffice supporting several plataforms is already availiable for download.

Oracle, which acquired Sun, and hence StarOffice/OpenOffice brands, has been taking uncertain actions in relation to its support for FOSS assets inherited from Sun, such as the OpenSolaris project.