UPDATE - OpenOffice runs out of steam

The launch of the next 2.0 version of the free productivity suite OpenOffice has been postponed because the project lacks developers.

The project is effectively run by Sun Microsystems, the company that kicked off OpenOffice by donating the StarOffice source code. The company currently has about 50 developers working on the suite. Novell has about 10 developers working on the project, and only 4 community members are actively contributing.

IBM sells the suite through its consulting services, but apparently doesn’t contribute to development.

The problems with OpenOffice will give Microsoft once again a change to argue that you can't rely on open source because no one's responsible for the project.

Since they make a pretty penny from the application, IBM would do good to contribute back to the community, instead of just making money through selling services around the software. The same goes for all the government institutions that have switched to open source in the past years.

But then again, many users embraced OpenOffice because the application is cheaper than Microsoft Office. If we start pressuring them for contributions (either financially or through developer time), we might kill the case for users to switch.

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UPDATE 4-19-05 1:31 PM
Just spoke with Louis Suárez-Potts, Community Manager for OpenOffice.org. Technically there can be no delay because the organisation never set a deadline. The software currently is in beta and the a release date will be set as the feedback is collected and adjustments have been made.

That doesn't mean that he doesn’t want more developers working on the project. But that's about as obvious as me wanting a pay raise.