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> That is really what needs to be done, both office suites are still almost identical.

Except for licensing. LGPL prevents proprietary forks. IIRC Apache allows them. I wonder why Oracle would want to change the license (or not donate OOo directly to the Document Foundation)

grant to Apache Software Foundation usually means a grant of any patents covering the code, so that is a reason to be happy they went Apache.

Wouldn't moving to LGPLv3 be a more natural transition?

Not really... As far as I can tell, the licences are compatible in a way that LibreOffice can use the Apache licensed code in their LGPL licenced project, so it will continue to be the stronger fork.

With distros having put their support behind LibreOffice, I don't think that there will be much competition. I think they will either continue to be very similar, or LibreOffice will steam ahead...

"a new division in the Open Source community"

The open source community can't be divided. Or do you equate a 'division' with a fork, like emacs/xemacs, openbsd/netbsd, joomla/mambo?