LibreOffice
LibreOffice [li ː brə ɒfɪs ] (abbreviations: LIBO or LO ) is a free compilation of common software for working in the office ( Office). This includes programs for word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, and to create drawings. A database management system and a formula editor are also included.
LibreOffice is a in September 2010, which emerged from the OpenOffice.org office suite cleavage, which has since been independently developed. The main reason for this operation was the rising discontent within the OpenOffice.org community after the takeover of the project by Oracle. The problem was particularly the declining support of the company and the silence on the future of the project. Not least due to the split in the community, Oracle has withdrawn completely from the OpenOffice.org project and transfer the software to the Apache Software Foundation, which is, furthermore Apache OpenOffice.
Since LibreOffice sees as the legitimate continuation of OpenOffice.org, the project in the award of his version numbers directly to OpenOffice.org builds on. The version number of the first stable release of January 25, 2011, therefore, was 3.3.0 and is considered by the project as a successor to OpenOffice.org 3.2.1. In the summer of 2012, the fourth major release of the project was released with version 3.6. The promotion and coordination of the project is supported by the Foundation The Document Foundation, which in turn was founded by former leading members of the OpenOffice.org community.
The name LibreOffice is a hybrid word, formed from libre, the Spanish and the French word for free that makes a reference to free software, and the word office (office), describes the purpose of the software, assisting with office work.
- 2.1 Supporters and collaborations
- 2.2 Objectives
- 3.1 Functions and Features
- 3.2 dissemination
- 3.3 Supported Platforms
- 3.4 Portable Edition
- 3.5 LibreOffice Box
- 4.1 release cycles and quality management
- 4.2 Versions and History 4.2.1 First version: LibreOffice 3.3
- 4.2.2 Other 3.x versions
- 4.2.3 4.x versions
- 4.2.4 Development Plans
History
The history of LibreOffice and the Document Foundation began with the release of the first beta version of Office package on 28 September 2010. The reasons for the elimination from the OpenOffice.org project and thus, however, the history dates back to the year 1999. LibreOffice sees itself as the legitimate continuation of OpenOffice.org. Since OpenOffice.org his hand an official spin-off of Star Office ( in the meantime Oracle Open Office ) is, their history is understood as part of the LibreOffice project.
Prehistory
After 1999, the original company behind the project, Star Division, had been acquired by Sun Microsystems, the sources of proprietary StarOffice were released the following year - OpenOffice.org originated. As part of this release, Sun Microsystems suggested in 2000 to the establishment of a foundation. The goal behind this project has not changed with the establishment of the Document Foundation: The development of the Office package should be continued regardless of corporate interests and freedoms of both developers and by users to be strengthened.
After Sun Microsystems, the development of OpenOffice.org had gone over their responsibility was taken over in January 2010, Oracle and consequently arose within the OpenOffice.org community dissatisfaction. Was criticized in particular that Oracle left open the future of OpenOffice.org and the support of the project turned out more sparse. In September 2010, eventually leading members of the OpenOffice.org community to create the new Document Foundation decided.
Elimination of Oracle
The cleavage and independent continuation of the Office package was possible because OpenOffice.org has been developed as free software. Unlike the Oracle software itself had the name "OpenOffice.org " However, the exclusive use right. For this reason, a continuation of the project under the name OpenOffice.org would have been possible only with the consent of Oracle. The Document Foundation has invited Oracle when it was founded to take part in the foundation, and asked to hand over the naming rights to this. However, in early October 2010 declared Oracle, as before it would continue OpenOffice.org and retain rights to the name. Oracle looked beyond LibreOffice as a competitor and tried to solve the existing links of both projects. In the absence of the trademark rights to the OpenOffice.org Document Foundation leads consequently the development under the name LibreOffice on.
On 16 February 2011, the Document Foundation published an appeal to set up a foundation under German law can. The goal was to give the Document Foundation the status of a legal person. The required establishing 50,000 euros were achieved eight days after the publication of the call for donations.
Oracle's retreat
In April 2011, Oracle declared its intention to pass the OpenOffice.org project to the open source community. That initially only that the commercial version of OpenOffice.org, StarOffice, should be set. However, observers expressed in this context, the assumption that the Oracle developers would be deducted from the project. In connection with the fact that the community had already left almost entirely to LibreOffice, this is tantamount to a setting of OpenOffice.org same. Nevertheless, the step was not surprising. The significant co-responsible for the cleavage of the LibreOffice project OpenOffice.org eV Germany declared shortly afterwards to want to rename eV in Free Office Germany. He stressed committed by statute to support all of the free office suites to feel. In the same vein also expressed the Document Foundation and stressed that they at any time receiving new members and a reunion of the projects confront positive.
In June 2011, Oracle finally explained that the OpenOffice.org project to the Apache Software Foundation should be passed. The Document Foundation welcomed the move and again repeated their goal is to combine both projects again. At the same time they regarded this step as not perceived opportunity: The Apache Software Foundation have other expectations from the project and give differing standards regarding licensing and membership. However, the licensing of the OpenOffice.org project under the Apache License opens up new possibilities of sharing code between the two projects. Nevertheless, the Free Software Foundation recommended only a little later, to put on LibreOffice and not OpenOffice.org. Finally, the first stable version of OpenOffice.org Foundation On 8 May 2012 was published after the split in the community and acceptance of the project by the Apache software. The office suite has since called Apache OpenOffice.
The Document Foundation
The authoritative development and maintenance of LibreOffice does the organization founded on September 28, 2010 The Document Foundation (abbreviated TDF). It promotes and coordinates the development of the Office package and participates in the development of open standards OpenDocument file format for the OASIS. The Document Foundation is committed to this free software, and so also advertises no proprietary plug-ins or similar. It is meritocratic organized and committed to total transparency. You want to build on the ten-year history of the OpenOffice.org project in the belief that only an independent foundation both the developers the best possible conditions and the users could provide an excellent product. By 2012, it was at The Document Foundation is not a validly established foundation. Rather, the " Foundation " was born eV to establishing a foundation under German law by members of the Association Free Office Germany.
The fact that Oracle said in April 2011, abandoning any and all commercial interests in the OpenOffice.org project, and the project early June 2011, handed to the Apache Software Foundation, according to statements by the Foundation change anything from their projects. It showed on the contrary rather disappointed that Oracle did not use the opportunity to combine both projects again. She stressed again that the foundation for new members 'm always open and a reunion would take a favorable, yet formal differences between the Document Foundation and the Apache Software Foundation would complicate. A short time later, mid-June 2011, occupied the Document Foundation their Advisory Board ( Advisory Board ). Particular attention was paid to vendor independence, all sponsors are in it but represented regardless of their contribution each with a seat. The members include Google, SUSE, Red Hat, Novell, Canonical, Intel, the clubs Free Office Germany eV and Software in the Public Interest ( SPI ) and the Free Software Foundation.
On February 1, 2012 The Document Foundation announced that it intended to establish a legal foundation under civil law in Berlin. The thus generated legal certainty put the long-term development of the community and the software safe. As CEO of the new foundation acts Florian Effenberger, as the founder of the club Free Office Germany joined eV (formerly OpenOffice.org Germany eV ) on. On 17 February 2012, the Foundation in Berlin was recognized by the Supervisory Board for Foundations.
Supporters and collaborations
The Foundation works closely with other organizations of the former OpenOffice.org community such as the German Free Office Germany eV and the Brazilian BrOffice.org and receives support from projects such as NeoOffice, by organizations such as the Free Software Foundation, the Gnome Foundation and the Open Source Initiative and by companies such as Google. Linux distributors Canonical (Ubuntu), SUSE (openSUSE, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, the time of the announcement even under the umbrella of Novell) and Red Hat (Fedora, Red Hat Enterprise Linux) In addition to their support for the inclusion of LibreOffice in promised the next versions of their operating systems. The governments of various countries, including Brazil, India, China and Russia, have expressed because of their intensive use of OpenDocument for independent of corporate interests development and welcomes the establishment of the Document Foundation. Quick after the foundation of the project, large parts of the OpenOffice.org community have reorganized and facing LibreOffice. The Document Foundation emphasized since its inception repeatedly that they expressly welcome the participation of new members and partners. End of September 2011, one year after the foundation of the project, included the Document Foundation 136 registered members.
The Document Foundation is a member of the Open Invention Network and SPI and presented itself in the first year at trade fairs such as CeBIT and FOSDEM. Takes you to the Google Summer of Code and organized, based on the annual OpenOffice.org conferences, in October 2011 a congress that " LibreOffice Conference ". In 2012, the LibreOffice Conference was held in Berlin.
Objectives
" Simply put, the goal of the Foundation is to develop a repertoire of digital productivity and creativity tools in the next generation by promoting sustainable, independent and comprehensive community for the development of Free and Open Source Software [ FOSS ] is based on open standards, promote. "
In their " manifesto for the next decade " defines the Document Foundation 's values and goals of their work is based. So it is committed to taking its contribution to bridging the digital divide by enabling anyone with access to a free office suite. The existing " monopoly supplier of office software," meaning the quasi- monopoly of Microsoft Office, is rejected, since this means " a de facto tax on electronic freedom of expression ". The diversity of native languages should be encouraged by both LibreOffice and the associated documentation must be available in as many languages and the translation is actively promoted in new languages. " The creeping dominance of computer systems in a single language " is to be overcome and be nobody forced to learn another language before using a computer. The Document Foundation shares the objectives of the OpenDocument project and rejects " the control of file formats by proprietary software companies " from. LibreOffice is in " an open, transparent and characterized by peer review software development process, care is taken in the high technical quality," to be developed. All this should be done under the umbrella of a democratic, open to anyone Foundation, the opposite is also the participation of companies and organizations positively.
The Office package
LibreOffice sees itself as the legitimate continuation of the project OpenOffice.org. OpenOffice.org has been, especially in most Linux distributions, successively replaced by LibreOffice. So putting Ubuntu from version 11.04 from version Fedora 15, openSUSE, version 11.4 and Linux Mint Version 11 on LibreOffice. The Debian project goes one step further and replaced existing OpenOffice.org installations in Debian 7.0 automatically in Debian 6.0 with the help of an available for the user backports, by LibreOffice. With Version 6.3 of Oracle Linux and Oracle LibreOffice delivers as an integral part of its own Linux distribution.
The Document Foundation continues to work on improving the support of LibreOffice. Thus, the platform Ask LibreOffice was opened in February 2012, to which users can resolve problems in order to get help from other users. The currently available in English only offer is to be later extended to other languages, including German.
Functions and Features
As LibreOffice is a fork of OpenOffice.org, the functions and characteristics of the office packages were initially substantially identical. At the beginning of the project seemed unlikely due to licensing considerations in connection with the at that time Oracle distributed, commercial version of OpenOffice.org, StarOffice, a recording of developed as part of the LibreOffice project 's new in OpenOffice.org. In turn, a recording of developed as part of the OpenOffice.org project innovations in LibreOffice were no impediment (→ see also: section " Terms "). By passing the OpenOffice.org project to the Apache Software Foundation and the renaming of the Office package in Apache OpenOffice these licensing problems were only partially out of the way. While a code acquisition of Apache OpenOffice to LibreOffice continues to be no royalty legal problem, an opposite assumption is difficult. LibreOffice is licensed under the GNU GPL, a license with copyleft, published, whose concept has no equivalent in the Apache license. Since the GNU GPL but requires a persistence of copyleft, a code acquisition is excluded. As LibreOffice is multiple licensed under the Mozilla Public License (MPL ), a code adoption, at least in binary form would be theoretically possible.
According to studies of paid SUSE LibreOffice developer Michael Meeks, a mutual exchange of code is becoming more difficult and will increasingly unlikely by the progressive development. By now significant differences in the source code of both projects is a quasi- automatic adoption of innovations not possible, instead it was necessary every single innovation that is to be exchanged between projects adapt. Thus, it can be assumed that with the progress of development LibreOffice other functions is included as OpenOffice.org and only changes that justify the expense, are exchanged between the projects. To a lesser extent 3.3 Differences between the two projects already existed at the release of the first stable version ( → see also: Section " LibreOffice 3.3" ). The OpenOffice.org spin-off Go- oo has been merged into LibreOffice.
LibreOffice is, like OpenOffice.org, modular and consists of six individual programs on the user side.
These components are used in each case to assist the user in his office work in a specific field of activity. They can be installed and used independently, following the concept of the overall package. To avoid unnecessary work, various functions, such as the spelling checker and thesaurus, used in several components.
This modular design it is also possible to install third-party templates and use plug-ins and. The possibilities are almost unlimited and range from simple document templates additional clipart to complex extensions of the functionality. Since the installation of additives from untrusted sources is a security and stability risk, opened the Document Foundation in September 2011, two platforms initially marked as a beta version, which are intended to minimize this risk and assist the user in the search. Developers can upload there additives as free software, which are received after an examination by a team of volunteers in the database and published. The database should also include extensions that are compatible with OpenOffice.org. End of October 2011, the platform was marked final and passed a month later, the mark of 100 listed extensions.
LibreOffice is currently offered in 114 languages, including German. The default file format is OpenDocument.
Dissemination
According to the Document Foundation LibreOffice has been downloaded 350,000 times in the first week after the start of the project. Six months after the start of the project the number of downloads increased to 1.3 million, downloads do not count on other websites, and the package management of Linux distributions. For the first birthday in September 2011, the project already has seen over 6 million downloads. Only in September 2011, the Office package has been downloaded 900,000 times, for which 81 mirror servers were available. In addition, an estimated 1.5 million downloads on other websites.
The Document Foundation estimates that worldwide 10 million people are actively using LibreOffice and have obtained through downloads or CDs. There are also an estimated 15 million users, which relate LibreOffice via the package manager of their Linux distribution. The Foundation plans to increase this number by 25 million users to over 200 million users by the end of the decade. Also, the first major companies declared their intention to continue to rely on LibreOffice. So, for example, changed the Copenhagen hospitals and the Danish Ministry of Transport to LibreOffice. The administration of the French region of Ile- de -France was announced in October 2011, 800,000 USB flash drives, which are to include LibreOffice and other free software to want to give to students.
In June 2013 it was announced that South Tyrol will migrate 7,000 jobs in the state administration on LibreOffice, plus several thousand jobs in the communities and in the health sector. The decision for a free office package is merely the first step in a long-term shift to free software.
Supported Platforms
LibreOffice is available for the operating systems Microsoft Windows (from XP), Linux ( kernel 2.6.18 ) and Mac OS X (version 10.4 ) is available. Microsoft Windows 2000 is no longer supported since the 4.0 version of LibreOffice. For the operation of LibreOffice 3.x on Microsoft Windows 2000, the Windows Installer is required in version 3.1 or higher. In addition, the Linux version requires different packages and third-party libraries that are already included in the majority of distributions from Date in early 2007.
According to the manufacturer, the minimum system requirements for Windows and Linux are an Intel Pentium -compatible processor ( Pentium III from Intel ), 256MB of RAM, and 1.55 GB of disk space. The versions for Mac require at least a PowerPC or Intel Pentium processor, 512 MB RAM and 800 MB of hard disk space. The screen resolution should be at least 1024 × 768 pixels.
Since the source code of the Office package is available, an installation on other platforms such as Solaris, FreeBSD, and other Unix variants is possible - in this case, the minimum system requirements for the version of Linux to be met. Also porting to further unspecified platforms are possible.
Portable Edition
LibreOffice requires Windows normally an installation on the target system, which makes the computer overarching use with removable media (eg USB sticks or memory cards). Using a portable edition, it is possible to use the Office package without installing and maintaining the program settings. The official portable output has also been included in the project PortableApps. After unpacking on the removable disk, LibreOffice can be used with the full range of functions; all application data such as program settings are also stored on the removable disk, so no data should remain on the system.
LibreOffice - Box
The first time the LibreOffice - Box was published in autumn 2010. The officially supported by the Document Foundation project comes from the Free Office Germany eV (formerly OpenOffice.org Germany eV ), the comparable OpenOffice.org PrOOo box offered before. The LibreOffice box is a DVD, which - in addition to the Java runtime environment and the current version of LibreOffice for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux - various other features around the project includes, for example, document templates, clipart, and various plug- ins such as Anaphraseus and a dictionary. In addition, various programs are included, which are often needed in everyday office life, such as 7 -Zip, Inkscape, Mozilla Firefox and Ghostscript. For LibreOffice developers, the DVD contains the source code of the program and the software development kit and several other tools for developers.
Development
From the very start of the Document Foundation on 28 September 2010, the first beta version was released 3.2.99.1. While only 20 people worked on the development of the Office package at this time, this number has risen to over 100 in the stable release 3.3. Two months later, the number of developers increased to 150 A year after inception, in September 2011, the project was one of 270 developers and again so many translators. In 2011, the number of developers grew almost linearly increased as of January 2012, 390 developers. The majority of this is volunteer work for the project, but some of the dedicated project company also set up a team of employees, to continue to lead the LibreOffice development.
For the first anniversary of the project in September 2011, the codebase of LibreOffice was analyzed. Thus, only 20 percent of the code at this stage were directly attributed to OpenOffice.org, 25 percent went to volunteer developers and the remaining 55 per cent were contributed by various companies. Here, 25 percent of the code base of SUSE employees and another 20 percent by Red Hat developed.
In the 18 months since the separation of OpenOffice.org developers about 80 per month have worked on over 30,000 code contributions.
Release cycles and quality management
The project plans to meet fixed release cycles of new versions, and want to synchronize with the environment in the free software available, six months from March to September - release cycle. Particularly, since lead times are desired by Linux distributors, the plan provides publications before in February and August of each year. Stability updates which only usually contain bug fixes, shall, if necessary appear in approximately monthly intervals. As a development branch is to be supplied for a year with such updates are thus supported by the project, the current and the previous development branch.
Quality management of the Document Foundation has significantly influence for which user groups which release is recommended as the to use. The versions are divided into the categories of "Developer ", " Bleeding Edge ", " Stable", "Very Stable" and "Rock Solid". Self Compiled versions, nightly builds, preview versions and release candidates generally fall into the "Developer " category and should only by this group of users (software developers) are used. Each of the first version of a new development branch, for example, LibreOffice 3.4.0, is considered " bleeding edge " and only early adopters recommended. For use in the less professional environment, such as for home users is a new development branch from the first stability update, for example, LibreOffice 3.4.1 suitable, and is divided into the "stable " category. The category "Very Stable", which is awarded to the second stability update that is aimed at conservative groups of users, so for example, home users, where high stability is important as well as small and medium enterprises. As the "Rock Solid" are considered versions, which are also suitable for users who rely on the greatest possible stability, such as large enterprises. This status is achieved with the third stability update. According to the plan of the Document Foundation, a new development branch is subsequently published, in which the cycle begins anew. For the user groups for the development of new branches in no versions are still being published, the most recent version of the previous development branch, known as " Rock Solid " will be classified therefore, recommended. Companies should generally consider to seek professional help in the migration to complete. The Document Foundation would like to ask for it in the future a list of certified organizations.
The following table takes into account the originally planned life cycles of LibreOffice 3.5 and 3.6 as well as the beginning of the life cycle of LibreOffice 4.0. The table is intended to illustrate the respective categories of quality of the individual versions of the development branches in addition to the targeted release cycle. The actual publication dates of the versions differ in some cases, such as LibreOffice 3.7 was renamed in 4.0. The development branches 3.3 and 3.4 followed a slightly different time schedule, the quality categories apply since version 3.4.1. In line with the plans of the Document Foundation, to follow the scheme shown all subsequent versions.
Versions and version history
LibreOffice is linked to in the award of his version numbers directly to OpenOffice.org. Therefore, the first stable release was 3.3.0 and is considered by the project as a successor to OpenOffice.org 3.2.1.
First version: LibreOffice 3.3
LibreOffice 3.3 is based on OpenOffice.org 3.3, the code base was seen and revised. The import, open and save functions have been improved, such as opening and saving documents as a single XML document is available in all programs of the Office package. The Print dialog box has been redesigned and is intended to provide the user with a clearer and faster access to essential functions. On Linux systems, the Java Media Framework is no longer necessary for playing music and movies.
The import of PDF documents is now possible. These are opened in Draw and can be edited and saved again. An integration into documents is possible as an OLE object in each program of the Office package. For standard were added several useful plug -ins that extend the functionality of LibreOffice. The graphical user interface has received detail improvements and is available in 19 additional languages.
With the publication of the first stability updates, LibreOffice 3.3.1, the Office package also received new documents icons.
Writer has received a revised function for auto-correction and title pages can be managed with the help of a new dialogue easier. The Navigator, by means of which the structure of larger documents can be traced faster and easier has been revised. The search and statistics functions have been improved in detail. In Microsoft Word documents can insert forms and documents created in Lotus Word Pro and Microsoft Works can be imported. Importing created in WordPerfect documents has been improved as well as the export to Rich Text Format significantly.
In Calc, the possibility has been revised to use keyboard shortcuts. For example, the navigation is possible in formulas with certain key combinations. The opening of spreadsheets was generally accelerated. Creating new worksheets has been simplified, the corresponding tabs can be dyed. The number of usable in a spreadsheet cell was increased from 65,536 to 1,048,576. In several diagrams, hierarchical axis labels can be displayed. Draw can edit graphics in SVG format; import into other programs of the Office suite is also possible. Opening of Microsoft PowerPoint documents in Impress was accelerated and improved the handling of sheets layouts.
In addition, all new features of OpenOffice.org 3.3 and LibreOffice 3.3 are included. This is also true for the developed as part of Go - oo improvements.
More 3.x versions
The following versions of LibreOffice are not conducive to large changes but small incremental improvements in terms of speed, reduced consumption of system resources, stability, accuracy, compatibility and new functionality. Another important goal was to work up the code to see if these make for new programmers easily understandable and workable. In the course of this investigation, a lot of unused code was removed and promoted the implementation of automated tests. In addition, dependency on other programs, in particular Java reduced.
In the development of LibreOffice 3.4, the main focus was placed on stability. So there are even numerous innovations in this new major release ( "major release" ), the large number of changes but omitted on improvements to the stability and speed. So LibreOffice works faster under Linux and improved the text representation, was purified and takes on all platforms less of memory. The Graphite engine has been rewritten, so it should also work ten times faster in addition to a higher stability. Support for specific international fonts, including right-to -left fonts has been improved. In addition to the well-known search was a search bar, as known from modern web browsers added. The compatibility with the OpenDocument and OOXML formats to have been improved.
Libre Office 3.5 focuses, as LibreOffice 3.4, primarily on bug fixes and further revision of the source code. LibreOffice 3.5 is newly added, among other things an online update feature that updates the software automatically einspielt on Windows and Mac and the Windows installation file is located as an MSI package before. For the AES encryption is used instead of Blowfish. The user interface has been revised and simplified in particular in the treatment of headers and footers and page breaks as well as the processing of graphics. Support for ODF OpenFormula specifications has been improved, added a native driver for PostgreSQL databases, importing Microsoft Visio Graphics in Draw was the first time allows and the import of RTF text documents has been improved.
As with previous versions, the LibreOffice project focused also on the fourth major version 3.6 rather many minor improvements and bug fixes rather than individual, extensive upgrades. Besides additional options for formatting in Writer and Calc documents can be added to the PDF export watermarks. The surface of the Office suite has been cleaned up and got some improvements, such statistics are the number of words of the opened Writer document in the status bar as, and the design of the Home screen "Start Center" and info screen has been unified. Several dialogs have been redesigned and existing restrictions removed, especially in the context menu has been extended in some places, which functions can be achieved more quickly. The import of "Smart Arts" from Microsoft Office documents and graphics from CorelDraw has been enhanced to support the ODF OpenFormula specification has been improved and Linux support for GTK themes and Trinity has been improved.
4.x versions
LibreOffice 4.0 brings a number of small improvements and some improvements in compatibility with multiple formats, especially the docx format as the previous versions. Some of these improvements have been imported from the Lotus Suite, whose source code IBM has donated to Apache OpenOffice. The most significant changes that are relied on to support the version jump, but are not obvious to users. Thus, the relicensing of the source code was completed, the now fully under the GPL 3 and subsequent versions of the LGPL 3 and subsequent versions as well as the MPL is licensed. In addition, the official support for some very old format has been set and removes obsolete functionality of UN programming. This is the first time a difference between the programming interface of LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice, so that expansions for one of the programs are not automatically compatible with the other program in the future. The function of Java has been further reduced, but not completely eliminated.
Development plans
The future focus of the project is the revision of Calc that a new engine (codename Ixion ) is obtained, which work faster and to provide support for VBA macros and databases. Thus, by Monty Program AB, developer of the MySQL elimination MariaDB, announced an interface with the LibreOffice should be able to access MariaDB and MySQL databases. In Writer more attention should paid to document layouts and Impress new slideshow elements are expanded. In addition, the compatibility is improved with Microsoft Office and the dependence of Java are reduced. Like the renaissance project of OpenOffice.org LibreOffice also plans to revise the user interface of the Office package profound. This development should focus on Impress yourself first.
The project strives to publish a pure 64- bit version for Windows. Although after to the developers porting currently not necessary, but would also create compatibility help clean up the source code and generally to prepare the project for the future. Similarly, there is a version for tablet computers, especially for the Apple iPad and Android tablets, in development. As part of the Broadway project of GTK , based on various surfaces such as GNOME desktop, also arises Libre Office Online, a customized version of the Office suite that can be run entirely in a web browser.
Terms of Use
LibreOffice is, like OpenOffice.org, free software. Prior to the transfer of the OpenOffice.org project to the Apache Software Foundation OpenOffice.org is released under the GNU Lesser General Public License ( LGPL) version 3. The user often granted opportunity to use a newer version of the license, did not exist. The first task was therefore also for LibreOffice. The transfer of OpenOffice.org to the Apache Software Foundation, the program code is also under our own license, the Apache License, available. This allows both an almost unconditional re-use as well as a re-release under completely different conditions. Since the Document Foundation free software licenses preferably with copyleft and the Apache license allows such a licensing model, LibreOffice is licensed under the LGPL version 3 or later and the Mozilla Public License ( MPL) multiple licensed in version 1.1 or later.
Both LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org with the user be granted the benefits arising from such licensing freedoms fully. Prior to the transfer of the OpenOffice.org project to the Apache Software Foundation were involved developers, unlike LibreOffice, faced with regulations that restrict their rights. Oracle pursuing how to get even Sun Microsystems since the inception of the project, in the development of OpenOffice.org the goal of copyright exploitation rights. To realize this, any developer who wanted to bring an improvement to Sun Microsystems, Inc. Contributor Agreement had to sign. The effect of this agreement was, among other things, that Oracle was awarded the right to choose the license under which the introduced improvements to be published. Only in this way it was possible Oracle to pour in OpenOffice.org introduced change back to their paid, proprietary office suite StarOffice.
However, the agreement went further and said all copyright rights of the Developer and Oracle - it was a "joint authorship ". The agreement was especially been criticized because this joint authorship was extinguished as soon as a change was made to the introduced improvement. Specifically, this meant that a joint authorship was only as long as the introduced improvement remained unchanged - it has been modified, the original developer lost his rights. The agreement in this case was a transfer of any copyrights synonymous. Oracle has also been awarded with this agreement, the right to register industrial property rights (patents, utility models, industrial designs, trademarks, etc. ), and to take advantage and make the requisite property law.
Unlike OpenOffice.org needed developers who want to make their improvements LibreOffice available, never to sign such agreements. They remained thus sole owner of the copyright. Since the transfer of the OpenOffice.org project to the Apache Software Foundation that applies accordingly in OpenOffice.org. According to the Document Foundation Still, these are just legal aspects have been decisive that quickly after the establishment of the project far more developers LibreOffice turned towards, as it had ever been before in OpenOffice.org the case.