What we know about Oracle Cloud Office, OpenOffice.org

Vegesna is more specific. "I'm thinking 4-5 years out," he said. "Microsoft took some time [with Office Web], I think it will also be the same with Oracle."

5. What happens to OpenOffice.org

In the short term, nothing changes. OpenOffice.org 3.0 was released 15 months ago. Downloads from the OpenOffice.org Web site have numbered 123 million copies, with tens of millions more downloaded through mirror and partner sites.

OpenOffice.org 3.2 is due for final release this month. The release schedule, which stretches out to version 3.4.1 due in March 2011, does not mention any cloud versions of OpenOffice.org.

In the long term, Oracle looks like it will maintain the tight grip on OpenOffice.org's development that Sun was heavily criticized for. That includes not spinning off OpenOffice.org into an independent foundation, as some community members called for last year.