IBM and OpenOffice.org: An Interview with IBM's Doug Heintzman

Yesterday, OpenOffice.org announced that IBM would become a formal – and substantial - contributor to that organization. But press release was brief, as was an FAQ that was only available at the OpenOffice site for a few hours. As a result, I got in touch with IBM to see if I could interview someone to learn more, and was able to spend a half an hour on the phone with Doug Heintzman, the Director of Strategy for the Lotus division at IBM, someone who knows how the decision was made, and what the future may hold.

As I noted yesterday, IBM's joining OpenOffice.org is significant news, because it boosts ODF's credibility as a serious competitor to Microsoft's Office. That leads to the logical question of why IBM has only been an informal supporter of this project in the past, why it has decided to come inside the tent now, and what its participation may portend for the future.

I posed, and Doug answered, these and other questions in the interview. Please note that while the interview is presented below as questions and answers, this is not a word for word record (I can't type quite that fast). What I show as Doug's responses are therefore close to verbatim some of the time, and paraphrases in others. Since Doug has not corrected the final result, these answers should therefore not be considered to be direct quotes.

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