OpenOffice.org 3.0 goes to LGPLv3

The change has been announced last week, but I think it’s important to read Simon Phipp’s comments on its relevance.

This quote sums it up:

OpenOffice.org’s license will change to LGPLv3 as part of a broader set of changes intended to improve the OpenOffice.org community for everyone. Those changes also include a switch to the latest version of the standard Sun contributor agreement, with an addendum specifically tailored to the needs of the OpenOffice.org community. There’s increased latitude for documentation writers to publish their work on OpenOffice.org. And in future, plugins for OpenOffice.org may host their source code directly on the community site without copyright being shared, helping collaboration within the community.

In order to understand the complete picture about software patents and all the related issues I think it’s important to read what Simon has written in may 2007 about patent covenants.