After midnight selling extras. There were many young boys selling very late these nights. Washington, D.C, April 1912

We get many emails, several per week, of individuals and companies wanting to "do business" with us.    Some of it is obviously spam, but some of it is quite serious.   The proposals do not have bad intentions, though they are often incompatible with our status as a non-profit organization.  We try to respond to these notes and in a respectful manner.

In general, if you are offering us money in return for a favor, we're not interested. The Apache OpenOffice project operates as part of the non-profit Apache Software Foundation.  We're publishing open source code for the public benefit.  We must operate fairly, without giving special advantage (or disadvantage) to any 3rd party. 

Some specific things we're not interested in:

  • We're not interested in bundling your application with our install in return for money.  But the Apache License permits you to make and distribute your own bundle.
  • We're not interested in endorsing your product.
  • We're not interested in adding a link to your website in return for you adding a link to ours.
  • We're not interested in taking your money in return for a special "advisory" role in the project.  We're a meritocracy.  Membership is not for sale.

But make no mistake -- we're not antagonistic to businesses or commercial use of OpenOffice.  In fact our license, the permissive Apache License, is one of the most business-friendly licenses around.  We want you to use our code.   But we cannot have "partners" in the same way that a for-profit corporation can.

Our lack of commercial entanglements with 3rd parties means that
you can operate commercially without fear that your competitor has a "special
relationship" with the project, giving them an unfair advantage.

On the other hand, we do encourage things like:

  • Contributions to the Apache Software Foundation, which benefit the ASF as a whole.  Dozens of companies that sponsor the ASF are acknowledged on the Thanks Page.
  • Contributions of code to the OpenOffice project, that helps us extend its capabilities.
  • Send us links to articles, news stories, tutorials, extensions, or other materials, related to OpenOffice.  If it is good, relevant and non-spammy, then we might link to it.  But we're never going to link to something purely for the sake of a link exchange.
  • If you offer services related to OpenOffice, then we welcome your profile submission for our consultants listings.
  • If you are doing something really interesting related to OpenOffice, maybe we'll interview you for an article on this blog.  Stories related to what the broader ecosystem is doing are interesting to our readers.