First Stable Version of LibreOffice Released

This past fall, members of the development team for OpenOffice.org left their posts and moved on over to a group called “The Document Foundation” to create a similar project, called LibreOffice. The move happened as a result of Oracle Corporation’s buyout of Sun Microsystems, and since Oracle tends to kill off projects it doesn’t find value with, the developers of OpenOffice.org wanted to make sure people were never without a 100% free office suite.

Though LibreOffice looks quite similar to OpenOffice.org, its goals are stringent to make sure that it remains 100% free of copyright requirements. That’s quite appropriate, as “Libre” descends from a Latin word meaning “having freedom”. So, when and where is it? Well, as the title suggests, the first stable release was just unveiled to the masses.

As our good friend Susan Linton points out, the program gets out of the gate with full SVG support (something OpenOffice.org doesn’t even yet have), which is huge (full SVG support application and Web-wide would be great). In addition, there’s an easy way to format title pages and add their numbering, a helpful navigator tool, better ergonomics in Calc for sheet and cell management and import filters for Microsoft Works and Lotus Word Pro files, among other things.

I’ve been a long-time user of OpenOffice.org, but with this stable launch, LibreOffice will be replacing it soon after this post is published!

The Internet, January 25, 2011 – The Document Foundation launches LibreOffice 3.3, the first stable release of the free office suite developed by the community. In less than four months, the number of developers hacking LibreOffice has grown from less than twenty in late September 2010, to well over one hundred today. This has allowed us to release ahead of the aggressive schedule set by the project.