IBM will contribute to the development of OpenOffice.org software with accessibility enhancements, features and code quality.

IBM is joining the OpenOffice community now because of the recent acceleration in uptake of the Open Document Format (ODF) as the open file format of choice among governments, and as an ISO standard, said Adam Jollans, open source strategy manager for IBM.

“We would rather co-operate on development standards and then compete on the implementation,” Jollans added.

Laurent Lachal, senior analyst at Ovum, said although IBM should have joined the community earlier, the move is “better late than never.”

“It will be interesting to see whether IBM just tries to make the OpenOffice tools better or if it tries to find ways to improve OpenOffice, and integrate the software with back-end systems,” Lachal added.