"The task is therefore left to large deployers, ISPs and providers of open source cloud solutions, and several options are already available on the market. The Document Foundation has developed a browser-based version of the suite but decided not to advance it to become a full competitor to Office or Workspaces.ĭoing so "would require selection and integration of the other technologies needed for deployment – file sharing, authentication, load balancing and so on – a significant growth of scope and not in line with the original mission of the project," states the foundation’s page describing its browser-based efforts.īut the foundation is open to others creating such a service. LibreOfice is a very decent suite, but lacks the cloudy tie-ins offered by Microsoft and Google. Just 4.75 million were for the Linux version of the suite – well behind the 298 million Windows downloads. Of those, 55 million downloads were made within the US, followed by 44 million from France and another 34 million from Germany. OpenOffice celebrates download milestone In research for this article, The Register spotted a recent post from the Apache Foundation celebrating OpenOffice passing 333 million downloads. The foundation's marketing officer Italo Vignoli thanked Collabora for its past efforts and explained the change as a "new marketing strategy." The version now sold in the App Store supersedes a previous offering provided by open source support outfit Collabora, which charged $10 for a "Vanilla" version of the suite and threw in three years of support. The foundation argued that Apple does not permit dependencies in its store, so it cannot include Java in the €8.99 offering. LibreOffice improves Microsoft compatibility with version 7.4įree downloads of LibreOffice for macOS from the foundation's site will remain available and arguably be superior to the App Store offering, because that version will include Java.Open source databases: What are they and why do they matter?.PanWriter: Cross-platform writing tool runs on anything and outputs to anything.
The foundation suggests paying up in the Mac App Store is ideal for "end users who want to get all of their desktop software from Apple's proprietary sales channel."