Oracle-Sun deal renews calls for OpenOffice.org’s independence

Oracle Corp.’s purchase of Sun Microsystems Inc. announced last week is reviving calls for Sun’s open-source OpenOffice.org suite to be spun out into an independent foundation.

Oracle is one of the top corporate contributors to Linux and many other open-source software projects.

However, that has long been overshadowed by the tens of billions of dollars Oracle reaps annually from proprietary enterprise software, as well as brazen attacks it has made on open-source stalwarts such as Red Hat Inc.