Sun shines on Open Office for Mac

ALL GOOD things come to he who waits. He who laughs last, laughs longest. And Aesop famously told of the tortoise that overtook the hare at odds of 250 to one for early bird punters.

So it should come as no surprise to learn that oft-discussed project of creating an up-to-date native version of Open Office for Mac OS X would appear to be finally on its way.

Philipp Lohmann on the GulfOSS bog, covering Sun's Open Office engineering work, spills the beans in a piece where he explains that the Sun men will put their heft behind a native port.

What, you say, Sun, planning work for Apple hardware? But Philipp, and yes, he does spell his name that way, is ahead of you.

"Some may ask: Why is Sun joining the Mac porting project? If you look around at conferences and airport lounges, you will notice that more and more people are using Apple notebooks these days. Apple has a significant market share in the desktop space. We are supporting this port because of the interest and activity of the community wanting this port."

He also notes that "the MacOSX porting history is basically as old as OpenOffice.org itself" and adds hat he isn't up to speed on modern Mac matters so we probably shouldn't expect code just yet but comments on the bog suggest the Mac community is excited nonetheless. µ