Following in Firefox's footsteps, the next version of OpenOffice.org will support plug-in extensions to attract developers to the open-source productivity suite.

Firefox users can download and install extensions that add new features, and something of a cottage industry developing these has grown up around the open-source Web browser. OpenOffice is hoping for a similar blossoming of a development ecosystem, spurred by an update that people will be able to try in coming days.

"OpenOffice.org is a huge amount of code. It'll be much easier now for somebody who wants to do core development to get working on it," Louis Suarez-Potts, a leader of the project, said in an interview Friday. "All they have to do is create the script that hooks it into OpenOffice.org."

OpenOffice has made some small inroads against the dominant rival, Microsoft Office...

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