OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org

Developer(s)	Oracle Corporation and many others[1][2]
Initial release	April 30, 2002 (2002-04-30)[1]
Written in	C++, Java
Operating system	Microsoft Windows Mac OS X Linux BSD Unix
Platform	Cross-platform
Available in	Over 110 languages[3]
Type	Office suite
License	GNU Lesser General Public License v3 [4] (OpenOffice.org 2 Beta 2 and earlier are dual-licensed under the SISSL and LGPL)[5]
Website	http://www.openoffice.org/

OpenOffice.org, commonly known as OOo or OpenOffice, is an open-source software application suite available for a number of different computer operating systems. It is distributed as free software and written using its own GUI toolkit. It supports the ISO/IEC standard OpenDocument Format (ODF) for data interchange as its default file format, as well as Microsoft Office formats among others. As of November 2009^[update], OpenOffice supports over 110 languages.^[3]

OpenOffice.org originated as StarOffice, an office suite developed by StarDivision and acquired by Sun Microsystems in August 1999. The source code of the suite was released in July 2000 with the aim of reducing the dominant market share of Microsoft Office by providing a free and open alternative; later versions of StarOffice are based upon OpenOffice.org with additional proprietary components.^[6] The OpenOffice.org project is primarily sponsored by Oracle Corporation (initially by Sun Microsystems). Other major corporate contributors include Novell, Red Hat, IBM, Google and others.^[1][2]

The project and software are commonly known as OpenOffice, but this term is a trademark held by a company in the Netherlands co-founded by Wouter Hanegraaff and is also in use by Orange UK,^[7] requiring the project to adopt OpenOffice.org as its formal name.^[8] Although branded as OpenOffice.org, the office suite included in most Linux distributions (including Ubuntu, openSUSE and Mandriva Linux) is actually a fork or an unofficial branch called Go-oo.^[9][10][11]

History

Originally the German company StarDivision developed the application as the proprietary software suite StarOffice. In 1999 Sun Microsystems purchased the code. In August 1999 version 5.2 of StarOffice was made available free of charge.

OpenOffice.org 1.0

On July 19, 2000, Sun Microsystems announced that it would make the source code of StarOffice available for download under both the LGPL and the Sun Industry Standards Source License (SISSL) with the intention of building an open-source development community around the software. The new project was known as OpenOffice.org, and its website went live on October 13, 2000. The OpenOffice.org 1.0 was released on May 1, 2002 for MS Windows, Linux and Solaris.^[18][19][20] OpenOffice.org 1.0 for MacOS X (X11) was released on June 23, 2003.^[21][22]

OpenOffice.org 1.1

This version introduced One-click Export to PDF and can Export presentations to Flash (.SWF). It also added the 3rd Party Add-ons ability.^[23]

OpenOffice.org 2.0

Work on version 2.0 began in early 2003 with the following goals: better interoperability with Microsoft Office; better performance, with improved speed and lower memory usage; greater scripting capabilities; better integration, particularly with GNOME; an easier-to-find and use database front-end for creating reports, forms and queries; digital signatures (only in ODF format; this feature is not defined in ODF 1.1 specification); a new built-in SQL database; and improved usability. Sun released a beta version on March 4, 2005.

On September 2, 2005 Sun announced that it was retiring the SISSL.^[24] As a consequence, the OpenOffice.org Community Council announced that it would no longer dual-license the office suite, and future versions would use only the LGPL.^[25]

On October 20, 2005, Sun formally released OpenOffice.org 2.0 to the public.^[26] Eight weeks after the release of Version 2.0, an update, OpenOffice.org 2.0.1, was released. It fixed minor bugs and introduced new features.

As of the 2.0.3 release, OpenOffice.org changed its release cycle from 18 months to releasing updates, feature enhancements and bug fixes every three months.^[27] As of 2010^[update], new versions (including new features) are released every six months (so-called "feature releases") alternating with so-called "bug fix releases" which are being released between two feature releases (every three months).

OpenOffice.org 3.0

The Sun Start Center for versions between 3.0 and 3.2.0

In October 2008, version 3.0 was released, featuring the ability to import, but not export, Office Open XML documents, support for the new ODF 1.2 document format, improved support for VBA macros, and a native port for Mac OS X. It also introduces the new Start Center.^[28]

OpenOffice.org 3.2

Version 3.2 included support for PostScript-based OpenType fonts.

The software will now warn users when ODF 1.2 Extended features have been used. An improvement to the document integrity check will determine if an ODF document conforms to the ODF specification and offer a repair if necessary.

OpenOffice.org 3.2 Calc and Writer both have a reduced "cold start" time by 46% compared to version 3.0^[29]

The about screen in this version now reads, in part, "Copyright © 2000, 2010 Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved."

Future developments

OpenOffice.org 3.3

In future versions, the user interface will receive incremental improvements^[30][31] beginning with Impress,^[32] the presentation application. New features in version 3.3 should include an updated print form, a FindBar in Writer and Base being upgraded to hsqldb 2.0 from version 1.8.^[17]

An OpenOffice.org Impress Prototype written in Java

Oracle Open Office

OpenOffice.org inherited many features from the original StarOffice upon which it was based, including the OpenOffice.org XML file format which it retained until version 2, when the ISO/IEC standard OpenDocument Format (ODF) replaced it.

Sun subsidized the development of OpenOffice.org in order to use it as a base for its commercial proprietary StarOffice application software. Releases of StarOffice from version 6.0 were based on the OpenOffice.org source code, with some additional proprietary components, including the following:

• additional bundled fonts (especially East Asian language fonts)
• Adabas D database. (The OpenOffice database module does not use Adabas)
• additional document templates
• clip art
• sorting functionality for Asian versions
• additional file filters
• migration assessment tool (Enterprise Edition)
• macro migration tool (Enterprise Edition)
• configuration management tool (Enterprise Edition)

Following the acquisition of Sun by Oracle, StarOffice and StarSuite became known as Oracle Open Office and the Oracle ODF Plug-In for Microsoft Office, which was free (and slightly differently named) under Sun, now costs US$90 per user.^[33] A minimum purchase quantity of 100 now puts the minimum purchase price for the previously free plug-in at US$9000.^[34] (The plug-in allows Microsoft Office 2007 (SP1 or Gold), 2003, XP (aka 2002) and 2000 to open ODF files (specifically: files with .ODP, .ODS and .ODT extensions), and to provide Office 2007 with SP2 and 2010 "better ODF support than [either provide natively]". Office 2007 with SP2 and 2010 are both capable of opening and saving ODF files natively, though only to some degree of formatting accuracy).

Features

OpenOffice.org 1.0 was launched under the following mission statement:

To create, as a community, the leading international office suite that will run on all major platforms and provide access to all functionality and data through open-component based APIs and an XML-based file format.^[35]

OpenOffice.org 3 is promoted as being available in many languages, working on all common computers, storing data in an international open standard format and being able to read and write files from other common office software packages, as well as being available for download and use completely free of charge for any purpose.^[36]

In particular, the publishers of the office suite stress that it is the result of over twenty years' software engineering, it is easy to use, and it is free, released under the LGPL licence.^[36]

Platforms

Platforms on which OO.o runs include Microsoft Windows, Linux, Solaris, BSD, OpenVMS, OS/2 and IRIX.^[37] The current primary development platforms are Microsoft Windows, Linux and Solaris.

Support for Mac OS X exists for OS X's native Aqua user interface, as of version 3.0. Previous versions required installing the X Window System component.^[38] NeoOffice is an independent fork of OpenOffice, specially adapted for Mac OS X.

Operating system compatibility

Components

OpenOffice.org comprises a collection of applications that work together closely to provide the features commonly included in modern office suites. Many of the components mirror those available in Microsoft Office. The components available include:

Module		Notes
	Writer	A word processor similar to Microsoft Word and WordPerfect. It can export Portable Document Format (PDF) files with no additional software, and can function as a basic WYSIWYG editor for creating and editing web pages.
	Calc	A spreadsheet similar to Microsoft Excel and Lotus 1-2-3. Calc provides a number of features not present in Excel, including a system which automatically defines series for graphing, based on the layout of the user’s data. Calc can also export spreadsheets to the PDF format. (See ooWriter entry, above, for details of PDF).
	Impress	A presentation program similar to Microsoft PowerPoint and Apple Keynote. Impress can export presentations to Adobe Flash (SWF) files, allowing them to be played on any computer with a Flash player installed. It also includes the ability to create PDF files, and the ability to read Microsoft PowerPoint's .ppt format. Impress lacks ready-made presentation designs. However, this can be overcome by downloading the Sun_ODF_Template_Pack2_en-US from the Openoffice.org Extensions website..[42][43]
	Base	A database management program similar to Microsoft Access. Base allows the creation and manipulation of databases, and the building of forms and reports to provide easy access to data for end-users. As with MS Access, Base can function as a front-end to a number of different database systems, including Access databases (JET), ODBC data sources and MySQL/PostgreSQL. Base became part of the suite starting with version 2.0. Native to the OpenOffice.org suite is an adaptation of HSQL. While Base can be a front-end for any of the databases listed, there is no need to install any of them. Raw SQL code can be entered by those who prefer it, or graphical user interfaces can be used.
	Draw	A vector graphics editor comparable in features to early versions of CorelDRAW. It features versatile "connectors" between shapes, which are available in a range of line styles and facilitate building drawings such as flowcharts. It has similar features to desktop-publishing software such as Scribus and Microsoft Publisher. Draw can also export its creations to the PDF format. (See ooWriter entry, above, for details of PDF).
	Math	A tool for creating and editing mathematical formulae, similar to Microsoft Equation Editor. OOo users can embed formulae inside other OpenOffice.org documents, such as those created by Writer. It supports multiple fonts and can export to PDF.

• QuickStarter

A small program for Windows and Linux that runs when the computer starts for the first time. It loads the core files and libraries for OpenOffice.org during computer startup and allows the suite applications to start more quickly when selected later. The amount of time it takes to open OpenOffice.org applications occasioned complaints at version 1.0 of the suite. Substantial improvements were made in this area for version 2.2.

• The macro recorder

Can record user actions and replay them later to help with automating tasks, using OpenOffice.org Basic (see below).

It is not possible to download these components individually for Microsoft Windows environments, though they can be installed separately. Most Linux distributions break the components into individual packages which may be downloaded and installed separately.

• Fonts

OpenOffice.org includes DejaVu fonts and OpenSymbol font in its installation packages.^[44][45] Installation packages for different operating systems may also contain Liberation fonts (starting with OpenOffice.org 2.4) or Gentium fonts (since OpenOffice.org 3.2).^[46][47][48] Older versions of OpenOffice.org (up to versions 2.3.x) included Bitstream Vera fonts.^{[45][49][50][51][52]} OpenOffice.org applications use the default fonts of the running operating system. For example, as of 2010^[update], recent versions of GNU/Linux distributions (Mandriva Linux, Ubuntu and OpenSUSE) use the Liberation fonts or DejaVu fonts as default fonts for new documents (when a new document is created).^[53][54][55]

OpenOffice.org Basic

OpenOffice.org Basic is a programming language similar to Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) but based on StarOffice Basic. In addition to the macros, the Novell edition of OpenOffice.org has Microsoft VBA macros support from version 2.0,^[56] a feature partly incorporated into the mainstream version with version 3.0.

OpenOffice.org Basic is available in the Writer and Calc applications. It is written in functions called subroutines or macros, with each macro performing a different task, such as counting the words in a paragraph. OpenOffice.org Basic is especially useful in doing repetitive tasks that have not been integrated in the program.^[57]

As the OpenOffice.org database, called "Base", uses documents created under the Writer application for reports and forms, one could say that Base can also be programmed with OpenOffice.org Basic.

Connectivity

OOo can interact with databases (local or remote) using:

• ODBC: Open Database Connectivity
• JDBC: Java Database Connectivity
• SDBC: StarOffice Database Connectivity^[58]

File formats

OpenOffice.org pioneered the ISO/IEC standard OpenDocument file formats (ODF), which it uses natively, by default. It also supports reading (and in some cases writing) many legacy and current proprietary file formats (e.g.: WordPerfect through libwpd, StarOffice, Lotus Software, MS Works through libwps, Rich Text Format, Hangul WP 97 format, etc.^[59][60]), most notably including Microsoft Office formats.^[61] Since version 3.0 the default format of OpenOffice.org is based on draft versions for OASIS ODF 1.2 (but this setting can be changed to ODF 1.0/1.1 in application settings). Versions 2.0–2.3.0 of OpenOffice.org default to the ODF 1.0 file format; OpenOffice.org versions 2.3.1–2.4.3 default to ODF 1.1. The OpenDocument 1.0 specification was approved for release as an ISO and IEC International Standard under the name ISO/IEC 26300:2006.^[62]

OpenOffice.org used the OpenOffice.org XML file format in its 1.x versions as the native file format and default format for saving files. OpenOffice.org developers contributed the OpenOffice.org XML File Format to OASIS. On the basis of OpenOffice.org XML file format, the OASIS developed the OpenDocument format, which became native file format of OpenOffice.org.^[63][64] OpenOffice.org XML file format is supported in all future versions of OpenOffice.org.

OpenOffice.org also supports Unified Office Format since version 3, DocBook since versioin 1.1, Data Interchange Format, TXT, Comma-separated values and many others.^[65][66][67]

Development

Governance

The OpenOffice.org project is governed by the Community Council, comprising members from the OpenOffice.org community, which created the charter establishing the Community Council. The Community Council suggests OpenOffice.org project goals, coordinate with Sun Microsystems on StarOffice, with producers of other derivative commercial products and with Open Source projects on long-term development planning issues, represents the project, gathers and allocates funds, adjudicates conflicts, offers a forum for community members, etc..^[68][69][70]

The Council have no power over intellectual-property ownership of OpenOffice.org, licenses under which OpenOffice.org is released, resources controlled by Sun Microsystems, sponsors or the contributing individuals. The Council also may not sign contracts or enter into binding legal agreements. The Council will not attempt to directly manage individual projects, except where strictly necessary in pursuing other Council's duties.^[68]

Overview

The OpenOffice.org API is based on a component technology known as Universal Network Objects (UNO). It consists of a wide range of interfaces defined in a CORBA-like interface description language.

The document file format used is based on XML and several export and import filters. OpenOffice.org converts all external formats which it reads - back and forth from an internal XML representation. By using compression when saving XML to disk, files are generally smaller than the equivalent binary Microsoft Office documents. The native file format for storing documents in version 1.0 was used as the basis of the OASIS OpenDocument file format standard, which became the default file format in version 2.0.

Development versions of the suite are released every few weeks on the developer zone of the OpenOffice.org website. The releases are meant for those who wish to test new features or are simply curious about forthcoming changes; they are not suitable for production use.

Native desktop integration

OpenOffice.org 1.0 was criticized for not having the look and feel of applications developed natively for the platforms on which it runs. Starting with version 2.0, OpenOffice.org uses native widget toolkit, icons, and font-rendering libraries across a variety of platforms, to better match native applications and to provide a smoother experience for the user. Projects have started to further improve this integration on both GNOME^[71] and KDE^[72][73] desktop environments.

This issue has been particularly pronounced on Mac OS X, whose standard user interface looks noticeably different from either Windows or X11-based desktop environments and requires the use of programming toolkits initially unfamiliar to most OpenOffice.org developers. Early versions of OpenOffice.org required the installation of X11.app or XDarwin. Version 3.0 runs natively using Apple's Aqua GUI.

Other projects

A number of products derive from OpenOffice.org.^[74] The more well-known ones include Sun StarOffice, NeoOffice and IBM's Symphony. The OpenOffice.org site also lists a large variety of complementary products, including groupware systems.^[75]

• OOo4Kids, An Open Office.org Education Project designed for 7-12 year-old age range with specific adaptations to the world of education such as a simpler to learn interface, less highly complex math, word-formatting and other functions such as standard deviations, cosine functions... in spreadsheets disabled and group collaboration.^[76][77]
• NeoOffice, an independent port, offered a native OS X’s Aqua user interface even before such integration was available in OpenOffice.org. Its releases lag behind the official releases, due to its small development team and the concurrent development of the technology used to port the user interface.^[78]
• OpenGroupware.org is a set of extension programs to allow the sharing of OpenOffice.org documents, calendars, address books, e-mails, instant messaging and blackboards, and to provide access to other groupware applications.
• A set of Perl extensions (available through the CPAN) allows external programs to process OpenOffice.org documents.^[79] These libraries do not use the OpenOffice.org API. They directly read or write the OpenOffice.org files using Perl standard file compression/decompression, XML access and UTF-8 encoding modules.
• PortableApps.com and LiberKey distribute versions of OpenOffice.org designed to run the suite under Microsoft Windows from a USB flash drive.^[80]
• OxygenOffice Professional extends OpenOffice.org, adding the ability to run Visual Basic for Application (VBA) macros in Calc (for testing), improved Calc HTML export, enhanced Access support for Base, enhanced color-palette, enhanced help and documentation, additional clip art, several templates and sample documents and over 90 fonts.^[81]

Extensions

Since version 2.0.4, OpenOffice.org has supported extensions in a similar manner to Mozilla Firefox.^[82] Extensions make it easy to add new functionality to an existing OpenOffice.org installation. As of September 2009^[update] the OpenOffice.org Extension Repository lists more than 390 extensions. Developers can easily build new extensions for OpenOffice.org, for example by using the OpenOffice.org API Plugin for NetBeans.

Security

The OpenOffice.org project includes a security team,^[83] and as of June 2008 the security organization Secunia reports no known unpatched security flaws for the software.^[84] Kaspersky Lab has shown a proof of concept virus for OpenOffice.org.^[85] This shows OOo viruses are possible, but there is no known virus "in the wild".

In a private meeting of the French Ministry of Defense, macro-related security issues were raised.^[86] OpenOffice.org developers have responded and noted that the supposed vulnerability had not been announced through "well defined procedures" for disclosure and that the Ministry had revealed nothing specific. However, the developers have had discussions with the researcher concerning the supposed vulnerability.^[87]

Ownership

The project and software are informally referred to as OpenOffice, but report that this term is a trademark held by another party, requiring them to adopt OpenOffice.org as its formal name.^[8] Due to a similar trademark issue, the Brazilian Portuguese version of the suite is distributed under the name BrOffice.org.^[88] Staff members of StarOffice manage the development of OpenOffice.org. Some delay and difficulty in implementing external contributions to the core codebase (even those from the project's corporate sponsors) has been noted.^[89] Another potential turnoff is that third-party developers are required to sign an agreement (Sun Microsystems, Inc. Contributor Agreement) that effectively transfers copyright of their code to Sun Microsystems Inc.^[90][91][92]

As of 2010^[update] several derived and/or proprietary works exist based on OOo, including:

• Sun Microsystems' StarOffice, with various complementary add-ons.
• IBM's Lotus Symphony, with a new interface based on Eclipse (based on OO.o 1.x).
• OpenOffice.org Novell edition, integrated with Evolution and with an OOXML filter.
• Beijing Redflag Chinese 2000's RedOffice, fully localized in Chinese characters and with support for English.
• Planamesa's NeoOffice for Mac OS X with Aqua support via Java.
• Go-oo, a branch of OpenOffice.org.^[93][94]

On May 23, 2007, the OpenOffice.org community and Redflag Chinese 2000 Software Co, Ltd. announced a joint development effort focused on integrating the new features that have been added in the RedOffice localization of OpenOffice.org, as well as quality assurance and work on the core applications. Additionally, Redflag Chinese 2000 made public its commitment to the global OO.o community stating it would "strengthen its support of the development of the world's leading free and open source productivity suite", adding around 50 engineers (who have been working on RedOffice since 2006) to the project.^[95]

In September 10, 2007, the OO.o community announced that IBM had joined to support the development of OpenOffice.org.^[96] "IBM will be making initial code contributions that it has been developing as part of its Lotus Notes product, including accessibility enhancements, and will be making ongoing contributions to the feature richness and code quality of OpenOffice.org. Besides working with the community on the free productivity suite's software, IBM will also leverage OpenOffice.org technology in its products" as seen with Lotus Symphony. Sean Poulley, the vice president of business and strategy in IBM's Lotus Software division, said that IBM plans to take a leadership role in the OpenOffice.org community together with other companies such as Sun Microsystems. IBM will work within the leadership structure that exists.^[97]

Go-oo

On October 2, 2007, Michael Meeks announced^[98] (and generated an answer by Sun's Simon Phipps^[99] and Mathias Bauer^[100]) a derived OpenOffice.org work, under the wing of his employer Novell, with the purpose of including new features and fixes that do not get easily integrated in the OOo-build up-stream core. The work is called Go-OO a name under which a set of patches for OO.o software has been available for five years. The new features, shared with Novell's edition of OOo, include:

• VBA macros support
• faster start-up time
• improved GTK theme handling (especially dark-coloured)
• "A linear optimization solver to optimize a cell value based on arbitrary constraints built into Calc".^[101]
• multimedia content support in documents, using the gstreamer multimedia framework
• support for Microsoft Works formats, WordPerfect graphics (WPG format) and T602 files imports
• export for Office Open XML files such as docx, xlsx, pptx by using Novell OpenXML Converter^[56]

Details about the patch handling (including metrics) appear on the OpenOffice.org site.^[102]

Reviews

In September 2005 Federal Computer Week listed OpenOffice.org as one of the "5 stars of open-source products."^[103] In contrast, OpenOffice.org was used in 2005 by The Guardian newspaper to illustrate what it sees as the limitations of open-source software, although the article does finish by stating that the software may be better than MS Word for books.^[104] OpenOffice.org was featured by eWeek several times,^{[105][106][107][108]} version 2.0 was reviewed by Linux Magazine^[109] and previewed by other media.^{[110][111][112]} A PC Pro review awarded OOo Version 2.0 6 stars out of 6 and stated: "Our pick of the low-cost office suites has had a much-needed overhaul, and now battles Microsoft in terms of features, not just price." The reviewer also concluded:^[113]

For personal use, there are even fewer reasons to choose Microsoft. OpenOffice certainly doesn't lack features compared to the market leader, and most of its ease-of-use issues stem from people's familiarity with Microsoft Office rather than an inherent problem with the program itself. As such, you should certainly try OpenOffice's offering before donating another £100 or more to Microsoft's coffers. After all, it's free.

In early October 2005, ComputerWorld of IDG reported that for large government departments, migration to OpenOffice.org 2.0 cost one tenth of the price of upgrading to Microsoft Office 12.^[114] The Computerworld story quoted Con Zymaris of Cybersource,^[115] who in turn referred to the Massachusetts' Secretary of Administration and Finance Eric Kriss, who presented the estimate of costs in a meeting hosted by the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council on September 16, 2005.^[116]

The above information dates from January 2006 or earlier. Links to reviews of the October 2008 version 3 and earlier releases appear on the Oo.o website.

Market share

Problems arise in estimating the market share of OpenOffice.org because OpenOffice.org can be freely distributed via download sites (including mirrors), peer-to-peer networks, CDs, Linux distributions and so forth. Nevertheless, the OpenOffice.org tries to capture key adoption data in a market-share analysis.^[117]

A weekly updated report from exo.performance.network shows a market share among Windows users of between 13% and 14% as October 2009.

According to Valve Corporation, 14.63% of Steam users have OpenOffice.org installed on their machines as of July 2010^[118].

A market-share analysis conducted by a web analytics service in 2010, based on over 200,000 Internet users, showed a wide range of adoption in different countries:^[119] between 0.2% in China, 9% in the US and the UK and over 20% in Poland, the Czech Republic and Germany.

Although Microsoft Office retained 95% of the general market as measured by revenue as of August 2007,^[120] OpenOffice.org and StarOffice had secured 15-20% of the business market as of 2004.^[121][122] The OpenOffice.org web site reported more than 98 million downloads as of September 2007.^[123] OpenOffice.org 3.x reached one hundred million downloads, just over a year since its release.^[124]

On October 4, 2005, Sun and Google announced a strategic partnership. As part of this agreement, Sun will add a Google search bar to OpenOffice.org, Sun and Google will engage in joint marketing activities as well as joint research and development, and Google will help distribute OpenOffice.org.^[125] StarOffice was formerly distributed with the Google Pack.

Besides StarOffice, a number of other commercial products derive from OpenOffice.org. Most of them are developed under SISSL license (which is valid up to OpenOffice.org 2.0 Beta 2). In general they are targeted at local or niche markets, with proprietary add-ons such as speech recognition module, automatic database connection, or better CJK support.^[126]

In July 2007 Everex, a division of First International Computer and the 9th-largest PC supplier in the U.S., began shipping systems preloaded with OpenOffice.org 2.2 into Wal-Mart and Sam's Club outlets in North America.

In September 2007 IBM announced that it would supply and support OpenOffice.org branded as Lotus Symphony, and integrated into Lotus Notes.^[96] IBM also announced 35 developers would be assigned to work on OpenOffice.org, and that it would join the OpenOffice.org foundation. Commentators noted parallels between IBM's 2000 support of Linux and this announcement.^[127]

Notable users

Large-scale users of OpenOffice.org include Singapore’s Ministry of Defence,^[128] Bristol City Council in the UK and Banco do Brasil.^[129] In France, OpenOffice.org has attracted the attention of both local and national government administrations who wish to rationalize their software procurement, as well as have stable, standard file formats for archival purposes. As of 2006^[update] OOo is the official office suite for the French Gendarmerie.^[130] Several government organizations in India, such as IIT Bombay, National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development, the Supreme Court of India, the Allahabad High Court,^[131] which use Linux, completely rely on OpenOffice.org for their administration. In 2008 Grafton Fraser Inc, a Canadian Men's Wear company, dropped Microsoft Office for its store computers and now run OpenOffice.org exclusively.

Use of Java

In the past OpenOffice.org was criticized by the Free Software Foundation ^[132] for an increasing dependency on the Java Runtime Environment which was not free software. Because Sun Microsystems was both the creator of Java and the chief supporter of OpenOffice.org, the software maker drew accusations of ulterior motives.

Version 1 depended on the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) being present on the user’s computer for some auxiliary functions, but version 2 increased the suite’s use of Java requiring a JRE. In response, Red Hat increased their efforts to improve free Java implementations. Red Hat’s Fedora Core 4 (released on June 13, 2005) included a beta version of OpenOffice.org version 2, running on GCJ and GNU Classpath.

The issue of OpenOffice.org’s use of Java came to the fore in May 2005, when Richard Stallman appeared to call for a fork of the application in a posting on the Free Software Foundation website.^[132] This led to discussions within the OpenOffice.org community and between Sun staff and developers involved in GNU Classpath, a free replacement for Sun’s Java implementation. Later that year, the OpenOffice.org developers also placed into their development guidelines various requirements to ensure that future versions of OpenOffice.org could run on free implementations of Java and fixed the issues which previously prevented OpenOffice.org 2.0 from using free-software Java implementations.^[133]

On November 13, 2006, Sun committed to release Java under the GNU General Public License in the near future.^[134] This process would end OpenOffice.org's dependence on non-free software.

Between November 2006 and May 2007, Sun Microsystems made available most of their Java technologies under the GNU General Public License, in compliance with the specifications of the Java Community Process, thus making almost all of Sun's Java also free software.

The following areas of OpenOffice.org 2.0 depend^[135] on JRE installation:

• the media player on Unix-like systems
• all document wizards in Writer
• accessibility tools
• Report Autopilot
• JDBC driver support
• HSQL database engine (used in OpenOffice.org Base)
• XSLT filters
• BeanShell, the NetBeans scripting language and the Java UNO bridge
• export filters to the Aportis.doc (.pdb) format for the Palm OS or Pocket Word (.psw) format for the Pocket PC
• export filter to LaTeX
• export filter to MediaWiki's wikitext

A common point of confusion focuses on the need for the Java API JavaMail in mail merge to generate emails in StarOffice; however, as of version 2.0.1, OpenOffice.org uses a Python-component instead.^[136]

Retail

The free software license (under which Sun distributes OpenOffice.org) allows unlimited use of the software for both home and business use, including unlimited redistribution of the software.^[137] Several businesses sell the OpenOffice.org suite on auction websites such as eBay, offering value-added services such as 24/7 technical support, download mirrors, and CD mailing. One retail site, Open Office Anywhere, also offers the ability to run the suite using just a web browser.^[138]

See also

• List of office suites
• Comparison of office suites
• Open format
• Universal Network Objects

References

Further reading

External links

• OpenOffice.org home page
• Education OpenOfice.org home page
• OpenOffice.org at the Open Directory Project
• Media Coverage (Videos, interviews, etc.) of last three OpenOffice.org Conferences (by Kiberpipa)
• OxygenOffice Professional (Homepage)
• Sun ODF Plugin for Microsoft Office

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