OpenOffice.org is an open-source office software suite, similar to Microsoft Office, available for Windows, OS X, and Linux. It was originally named simply "OpenOffice", however, the ".org" was appended as the result of a copyright dispute. It is compatible with Microsoft Office document formats, however it provides its own format as well, called OpenDocument.[Citation Needed]
Included applications
- Writer: A word processor
- Calc: A spreadsheet program
- Impress: A presentation editor
- Draw: A drawing program which allows to edit vector images to be used in other components; unlike MS Office, this is a separate program.
- Base: A database program
- Math: An equation editor which allows to display and edit equations; unlike MS Office's equation editor, this is a separate program.
Writer supports many legacy document formats better than Microsoft Word does. OpenOffice.org applications can also export to PDF documents.[1]
LibreOffice
For a more detailed treatment, see LibreOffice.
After Sun Microsystems was purchased by Oracle, concerns appeared that the development of OpenOffice.org might stop completely. To ensure the office suite's continued development, The Document Foundation was founded in September 2010 by OpenOffice.org community members, and the project was forked as LibreOffice. The project quickly attracted most of the original developers. Unsurprisingly, the expectations of Oracle stopping the development turned out to be true, as, in April 2011, Oracle transferred the development to the Apache Foundation, where development slowed down to a crawl.[Citation Needed]
Currently, as both projects are being actively developed, LibreOffice stands as the more functional one, while Apache OpenOffice.org is considered more stable.
Marketing
Sun Microsystems helps distribute OpenOffice.org primarily as advertisements in Java Updates. In 2011, Sun and Google announced a partnership, in which OpenOffice.org searches through Google and Google helps distribute OpenOffice.org. Most tech rating groups reviewed it favourably.[2]