From Linuxwatch.com - OpenOffice extension rivals SharePoint:

Most people think that OpenOffice.org is a strong office-suite in its own right. But, when it came to a back-office document collaboration and management engine, like Microsoft SharePoint to enable OpenOffice users to work together, it was a different story.

The document-centric system makes the process of creating and reviewing documents simpler, by means of built-in document version control plus check-in/check-out capabilities, according to the company. It also includes an integrated Rights Management Services. With this, authors can determine how their documents are distributed and used by others.

The O3OSpaces server is a J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) application, built on top of Apache Tomcat and the PostgreSQL database server. The web client uses AJAX, while the Assistant client program is a Java Web Start application.

O3Spaces B.V. CEO Rob Mentink claims that the "Seamless integration of O3Spaces with OpenOffice.org/StarOffice means that users can perform most of the actions without leaving the office suite. Users can access documents stored in O3Spaces directly from within OpenOffice.org, while O3Spaces takes care of automatically checking the documents in and out as well as creating separate versions for each editing session." The program also has a customizable Web interface. Mentink said, "Users can quickly create workspaces for particular tasks or projects and use them to keep tabs on the related documents. Users can communicate with each other from within the workspace."