Love LibreOffice for Four Special Reasons

LibreOffice comes as good news for those worried about Oracle’s recent decision to unplug OpenSolaris. OpenOffice.org users who have been worried could finally breathe a sigh of relief after a community of independent developers gave birth to their latest open source project named LibreOffice. Known as The Document Foundation, the independent OpenOffice.org community declared the first release candidate of LibreOffice which could well be the beginning of a brand new open source productivity suite.

A few weeks after having released the third beta version of the software the first candidate of LibreOffice can now be downloaded by users for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. Since it is the first release candidate, it is not yet certified to be used for production systems. As soon as the final release is out in the market we can be rest assured that several Linux distributors shall be replacing OpenOffice with LibreOffice. This is the perfect time for all open source users to try the latest productivity office suite - LibreOffice and get a hang of it. LibreOffice comes with improvements and updates made to the previous version of OpenOffice.org and here are 4 reasons why users should like it:

1. Immense Power

A term that is used generally for hardware items and alike, is ironically used for an open source software product - Powerful. LibreOffice is believed to be very powerful in terms of the improvements and updates made which personifies the new office productivity suite very useful for business users. There has been consistent and relentless work that has gone towards code optimization on the part of the developers. In particular their focus has been on improving the quality and stability of the legacy code which has been adopted from the earlier OpenOffice.org version. Also, all the modules are going through a renovation process whereby there shall be addition of new features enabling better compatibility with Microsoft Office. This should attract the attention of many business users.

2. It is free of Oracle

In the recent present, there have been several cases wherein Oracle has tried to play spoilsport especially for the open source users. What Oracle tends to do is, it tries to buyout or add the ‘Oracle tag’ to an open source project therefore making it an Oracle property. It’s recent unplugging of OpenSolaris, suing Google for using its Java in Android, and the most recent news story covering Oracle’s claim on Hudson, another open source project. Now, its profit-minded intention could want to take in LibreOffice as well. However, the latest open office productivity suite seems to have gotten enough support from another fraternity that includes Google, Novell, Red Hat, Canonical, the Open Source Initiative, the GNOME Foundation and NeoOffice. LibreOffice is one that will put its users’ needs first, before tying up with a proprietary corporate sponsor that is motivated by profits.

3. Free

All that the second reasoning (bullet point) wants to say is that LibreOffice is absolutely free of cost and not pressurised by any corporate organization to make money from selling itself. It is available for download.

4. Announces the beginning of a new era

This could sound as though I might be pushing it too much, but it does look like the beginning of a new Office Suite era in the Open Source arena. LibreOffice 3.3 is all set to be released for business and commercial use, and since its announcement 3 months ago there seems to have been considerable improvement in the productivity suite. This should be a preview of what is expected post its release. The Document Foundation said, “Along with the extensive rewrites being performed on each of the software’s major modules, in fact, there’s going to be a significant refocusing of the project back onto usability.”

LibreOffice is going to be a default application in all Linux distributions. And to summarize the development of this latest open source office product, let us just say there is a lot more to be expected yet, with promises of a more stable, open, powerful, compatible and usable office productivity package than its competition.