Free office suite turned 20 years old — on October 13, 2000, Sun Microsystems released the source code of the StarOffice office suite under a free license, which was created in the early 1990s by Star Division. In 1999, Star Division was acquired by Sun Microsystems, which took one of the most important steps in the history of open-source software — it transitioned StarOffice into the realm of free projects. In 2010, Oracle took OpenOffice into its hands along with other Sun Microsystems projects, but after a year of attempting to develop OpenOffice.org on its own the project was handed over to the Apache Foundation.
The last maintenance release of Apache OpenOffice 4.1.7 was a year ago, and significant releases have not been made for 6 years. The initiative to develop the free office suite was seized by the LibreOffice project, which was created in 2010 due to dissatisfaction with Oracle's strict control over the development of OpenOffice.org, hindering collaboration with interested companies.
LibreOffice developers an open letter urging the developers of Apache OpenOffice to collaborate, as Apache OpenOffice has long been in deep stagnation, and all development in recent years has been focused on LibreOffice. Compared to OpenOffice, LibreOffice offers capabilities such as exporting in OOXML formats (.docx, .xlsx) and EPUB, document signing with a digital signature, significant performance optimizations for Calc, a modernized NotebookBar interface, Pivot Charts, watermarks, and Safe Mode.
Despite stagnation and the practical lack of support, the OpenOffice brand remains strong, and the number of downloads still , and many users are unaware of the existence of LibreOffice. LibreOffice developers have suggested to the OpenOffice project to inform its users about the existence of an actively maintained and more functional product that continues the development of OpenOffice and includes new features needed by modern users.
Source: opennet.ru
