The organization The Document Foundation, overseeing the development of the free LibreOffice suite, announced upcoming changes related to the branding and positioning of the project in the market. The anticipated release of LibreOffice 7.0 in early August is currently available for testing as a release candidate, and they plan to distribute it as the 'LibreOffice Personal Edition.' The code and distribution terms will remain unchanged, and the office suite will continue to be available for free without restrictions for all users, including corporate clients.
The addition of the 'Personal Edition' label is intended to simplify the promotion of additional commercial editions that may be offered by third-party suppliers. The essence of the initiative lies in distinguishing the current free LibreOffice, supported by the community, from the enterprise products and additional services created based on it by other participants. Ultimately, the goal is to form an ecosystem of providers offering commercial support services and LTS releases for companies needing such services. Commercial products will be offered under the 'LibreOffice Enterprise' line and will be available on separate sites libreoffice.biz and libreoffice-ecosystem.biz.
The proposal to use the 'Personal Edition' label has been preliminarily approved during discussions for the next five years. This label was added to the recently released candidate for the LibreOffice 7.0 release and caused some confusion in the community. To dispel any possible misconceptions, the governing board issued a statement assuring that LibreOffice will always remain a free product with open source code, an unchanged license, and the ability to use all available functionality. The branding changes are solely related to the marketing of the project. The final decision has not yet been approved and is in draft stage, with suggestions for improvement being accepted on the '«.
Source: opennet.ru
