IBM gets behind OpenOffice

The OpenOffice open-source productivity suite has long stood as a challenger to Microsoft Office in the enterprise arena. There's been but one thing holding it back: the lack of an Outlook-style integrated email client. That could all change, however, with IBM's announcement that it will contribute code from the codebase of perennial enterprise favorite Lotus Notes to the OpenOffice project. This news comes as a bit of a surprise given how fiercely IBM and OpenOffice creator Sun compete in the server space. Nonetheless, the Lotus Notes code could help grow a competitive email client and groupware application for OpenOffice, though it remains to be seen exactly how much code IBM will contribute to the project. Sun is expected to release OpenOffice.org version 3.0 next September, thought it is not expected to ship with an email client at that time.

For more on the announcement:
- see this ZDnet article