Apache OpenOffice 4.0 Release Candidate 1 (Build 9702) has been rejected.  It was not good enough. Detlef, in our German-language community, first noted the crash two days ago, which was passed on to the developers by Regina.  We immediately started further testing to narrow down the problem.

Samer, in Canada, independently reported the crash a few hours later.  We then determined that the crash only occurred on Windows 8 64-bit systems.  Rob, in the United States, then worked with Herbert, in Germany, to find out where in the code the problem was.  After a few more emails and chats, we had a proposed fix to test. 

As community members in Germany and North America slept, Yuzhen was testing the fix in Beijing. And now, this morning, the fix is confirmed and we've agreed to produce a new Release Candidate.  If the new Release Candidate is free of serious issues it will be released next week.

This is how a global community of volunteers produce quality open source software.  There are skills required -- technical and social -- to coordinate a fix like this.  But it also requires something much more important:  a dedication to quality.  We know that OpenOffice is more than just another software tool for our users.  It is how you do work, how you write and communicate.  If OpenOffice crashes then your productivity crashes. 

For Apache OpenOffice 4.0, over 20 QA volunteers executed 1,221 regression test cases on 5 operating systems.  495 reported issues are resolved in this release, including many bugs reported in earlier releases.

We hope that you join us in encouraging these priorities.  We look forward to presenting you a high-quality OpenOffice 4.0 really soon.  Apache OpenOffice 4.0 is quality worth waiting for.

If you also have a passion for quality and attention to detail, then you might be interested in volunteering on our QA team.  You can read more about volunteering with the Apache OpenOffice project on our Get Involved page.