Zdnet.com is talking about the ASF accepting or rejecting a new project - let me mention that this is not exactly how things work.

The only way to create new projects at Apache is through the Incubator, so if project FOO wants to join the Apache Software Foundation, that can only take the form of a proposal for incubation (see examples at http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/).

That proposal is then discussed and sometimes questioned by the Incubator PMC (Project Management Committee), in the open on the general@incubator.apache.org mailing list, until consensus is reached about the proposal and initial committers and mentors team.

A so-called podling is then created to manage the incubating project, and it's only after successful graduation (based mostly on community aspects and "legal cleanliness" of the code and podling releases) that a project becomes a "real" Apache project.

So, becoming an Apache project is not just a decision of the Apache Incubator, it's a process that can take from a few months to much longer, depending on the code base and on the community that forms around it.

Apache Subversion is an example of a project that zoomed through the Incubator, mostly because it was already operating like an Apache project, and its code already fulfilled Apache's legal requirements. There are also many examples of podlings which stay way too long in the Incubator, either because their code or their community isn't developing as it should.

ZdNet is speculating about OpenOffice in this case, so you'd think that such an important project would get a different treatment? I don't think so - the Apache process and governance rules have been proven over time on a few earth-shaking projects already (like the HTTP Server, Apache Lucene, Apache Solr and Apache Hadoop to name a few), so I don't think any project would get a special treatment - our current process works just fine.