OpenOffice.org (
OO.o or
OOo), commonly known as
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. , OpenOffice supports over 110 languages.
OpenOffice.org was originally derived from
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.
The project and software are informally referred to 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, requiring the project to adopt
OpenOffice.org as its formal name.
History
Originally developed as the
proprietary software application suite
StarOffice by the German company
StarDivision, the code was purchased in 1999 by
Sun Microsystems. In August 1999 version 5.2 of StarOffice was made
available free of charge.
OpenOffice.org versions
Version |
Release Date |
Description |
Build 638c |
October 2001 |
The first milestone release |
1.0 |
May 1, 2002 |
|
1.0.3.1 |
May 2, 2003 |
Recommended for Windows 95 |
1.1 |
September 2, 2003 |
|
1.1.1 |
March 30, 2004 |
Bundled with TheOpenCD |
1.1.2 |
June 2004 |
|
1.1.3 |
October 4, 2004 |
|
1.1.4 |
December 22, 2004 |
|
1.1.5 |
September 14, 2005 |
Last release for 1.x product
lineFinal version for
Windows 95It can edit OpenOffice.org 2 files |
1.1.5secpatch |
July 4, 2006 |
Security patch (macros) |
2.0 |
October 20, 2005 |
Milestone, with major enhancements |
2.0.1 |
December 21, 2005 |
|
2.0.2 |
March 8, 2006 |
|
2.0.3 |
June 29, 2006 |
|
2.0.4 |
October 13, 2006 |
|
2.1.0 |
December 12, 2006 |
|
2.2.0 |
March 28, 2007 |
Included a security update;
Reintroduced font kerning |
2.2.1 |
June 12, 2007 |
|
2.3.0 |
September 17, 2007 |
Updated charting component |
2.3.1 |
December 4, 2007 |
Stability and security update |
2.4.0 |
March 27, 2008 |
Bug fixes and new features |
2.4.1 |
June 10, 2008 |
Security fix, minor enhancements, and bug fixes |
2.4.2 |
October 29, 2008 |
Security fix, minor enhancements, and bug fixes |
2.4.3 |
September 1, 2009 |
Bug fixes and minor enhancements |
3.0.0 |
October 13, 2008 |
Milestone, with major enhancements |
3.0.1 |
January 27, 2009 |
Bug fixes |
3.1.0 |
May 7, 2009 |
Overlining and transparent dragging available |
3.1.1 |
August 31, 2009 |
Security fix, bug fixes |
3.2 |
Schedule: January, 2010 |
|
3.3 |
Schedule: May, 2010 |
|
On July 19, 2000, Sun Microsystems announced that it was making 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.
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; a new built-in
SQL database;
and improved
usability. A
beta version was released on March 4,
2005.
On September 2, 2005 Sun announced that it was retiring the SISSL.
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.
On October 20, 2005, OpenOffice.org 2.0 was formally released to
the public. 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. Currently, 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).
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.
Future Developments
OpenOffice.org 3.2
In December 2009, OpenOffice.org will release version 3.2. It will
include several new features, including performance enhancements.
OpenOffice.org 3.3
In future versions, the user interface will be overhauled beginning
with Impress, the presentation application.
StarOffice
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 it was replaced by the ISO/IEC
standard
OpenDocument Format
(ODF).
Sun subsidizes the development of OpenOffice.org in order to use it
as a base for its commercial
proprietary StarOffice application
software. Releases of StarOffice since version 6.0 have been 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 is not 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)
Features
According to its
mission
statement, the OpenOffice.org project aims
OpenOffice.org aims to compete with Microsoft Office and emulate
its look and feel where suitable. It can read and write most of the
file formats found in Microsoft Office,
and many other applications; an essential feature of the suite for
many users. OpenOffice.org has been found to be able to open files
of older versions of Microsoft Office and damaged files that newer
versions of Microsoft Office itself cannot open. However, it cannot
open older Word for Macintosh (MCW) files.
Platforms
Platforms for which OO.o is available include
Microsoft Windows,
Linux,
Solaris,
BSD,
OpenVMS,
OS/2 and
IRIX. 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 require the
X Window System component to be installed.
NeoOffice is an independent
fork of OpenOffice, specially
adapted for Mac OS X.
Operating system compatibility
Components
OpenOffice.org is a collection of applications that work together
closely to provide the features expected from a modern office
suite. Many of the components are designed to 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. It 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, templates are
readily available on the Internet. |
 |
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 Access, Base may be used 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 for any
of them to be installed. Raw SQL code can be
entered by those who prefer it, or graphical user interfaces can be
used. |
 |
Draw |
A vector graphics editor
and diagramming tool, similar to Microsoft Visio and 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.
Formulae can be embedded inside other OpenOffice.org documents,
such as those created by Writer. It supports multiple fonts and can export to PDF. |
- 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 was a
common complaint in version 1.0 of the suite. Substantial
improvements were made in this area for version 2.2.
- Is used to 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 on
Windows, though they can be installed separately. Most Linux
distributions break the components into individual packages which
may be downloaded and installed separately.
OpenOffice.org Basic
OpenOffice.org Basic is a programming language similar to Microsoft
Visual Basic for
Applications (VBA) based on
StarOffice Basic. In addition to the
macros, the Novell edition of OpenOffice.org has Microsoft VBA
macros support since version 2.0, 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.
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.
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), most
notably including
Microsoft Office
formats.Since version 3.0 the default format of OpenOffice.org is
based on draft versions for OASIS ODF 1.2.The OpenDocument
specification was "approved for release as an ISO and IEC
International Standard" under the name ISO/IEC 26300:2006.
Microsoft Office interoperability
Microsoft Office 2007 SP2 is the first Microsoft Office version
that allows opening and saving
OpenDocument text files (*.odt).
OpenOffice.org has published extensive documentation from their
analysis of the closed Microsoft Office binary formats.
Sun Microsystems has also developed
an ODF plugin for Microsoft Office which enables users of Microsoft
Office 2000, 2003, XP and 2007/SP1 (Word, Excel and PowerPoint) to
read and write ODF documents.
Development
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. All external formats read by OpenOffice.org are converted
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 provide a
smoother experience for the user. There are projects underway to
further improve this integration on both
GNOME
and
KDE 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 are
derived from OpenOffice.org. Among the more well-known
ones are Sun StarOffice, NeoOffice and IBM's Symphony. The
OpenOffice.org site also lists a large variety of
complementary products including groupware
solutions.
NeoOffice
NeoOffice is an independent
port that 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.
Other projects run alongside the main OpenOffice.org project and
are easier to contribute to. These include documentation,
internationalisation and
localisation and the API.
OpenGroupware.org
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 provide access to other
groupware applications.
There is also an effort to create and share assorted document
templates and other useful additions at OOExtras.
A set of
Perl extensions is available through
the
CPAN in order to allow OpenOffice.org
document processing by external programs. 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.
Portable version
PortableApps.com distributes a
version of OpenOffice.org designed to run the suite from a
USB flash drive.
OxygenOffice Professional
An enhancement of OpenOffice.org, providing:
- Possibility 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 menu, additional User’s Manual, and extended tips
for beginners
It provides free of charge for personal and professional use:
- More than 3,200 graphics, both clip art and photos.
- Several templates and sample documents
- Over 90 fonts.
- Additional tools such as OOoWikipedia
Extensions
Since version 2.0.4, OpenOffice.org has supported extensions in a
similar manner to
Mozilla Firefox.
Extensions make it easy to add new functionality to an existing
OpenOffice.org installation. 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.
OpenOffice.org Bibliographic Project
This aims to incorporate a powerful
reference management software
into the suite. The new major addition was slated for inclusion
with version 3.1 (due April 2009). but the current status is
unclear.
Security
OpenOffice.org includes a security team, and as of June 2008 the
security organization
Secunia reports no
known unpatched security flaws for the software.
Kaspersky Lab has shown a
proof of concept virus for OpenOffice.org.
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. OpenOffice.org
developers have responded and noted that the supposed vulnerability
had not been announced through "well definedprocedures" for
disclosure and that the ministry had revealed nothing specific.
However, the developers have been in talks with the researcher
concerning the supposed vulnerability.
Ownership
The project and software are informally referred to as
OpenOffice, but project organizers report that this term
is a
trademark held by another party,
requiring them to adopt
OpenOffice.org as its formal name.
(Due to a similar trademark issue, the
Brazilian Portuguese version of the
suite is distributed under the name
BrOffice.org.)
Development is managed by staff members of StarOffice. Some delay
and difficulty in implementing external contributions to the core
codebase (even those from the project's corporate sponsors) has
been noted. Another potential turnoff is that third-party
developers are required to sign an agreement that effectively
transfers copyright of their code to Sun Microsystems Inc.
Currently, there are
several derived and/or proprietary works based on OOo,
with some of them being:
- Sun Microsystems' StarOffice, with
various complementary add-ons.
- IBM's IBM 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.
In 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.
In September 10, 2007, the OO.o community announced that
IBM had joined to support the development of
OpenOffice.org. "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 has been 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.
Go-oo
As of October 2, 2007,
Michael
Meeks announced (and generated an answer by Sun's
Simon Phipps and Mathias Bauer) 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 alternative OO.o software has been available for five years.
The new features are shared with Novell's edition of OOo and
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".
- Multimedia content supports into 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.
Details about the patch handling including metrics can be found on
the OpenOffice.org site.
Reviews
In September 2005 Federal Computer Week issue listed OpenOffice.org
as one of the "5 stars of open-source products." In contrast,
OpenOffice.org was used in 2005 by
The
Guardian newspaper to illustrate what it claims are the
limitations of open-source software, although the article does
finish by stating that the software may be better than MS Word for
books. OpenOffice.org was featured by
eWeek
several times, version 2.0 was reviewed by
Linux Magazine and previewed by other media.
Version 2.0
PC Pro review verdict was 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
following:
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. The
Computerworld story quoted Con Zymaris of Cybersource, 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.
The above information dates from January 2006 or earlier. Links to
reviews of the October 2008 version 3 and earlier releases are to
be found
on the Oo.o website.
Market share
It is extremely difficult to estimate 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
A weekly updated report from
exo.performance.network shows the Market Share between
Windows users between 13% and 14% as October 2009.
Although Microsoft Office retained 95% of the general market as
measured by revenue as of August 2007, OpenOffice.org and
StarOffice had secured 15-20% of the business market as of 2004 The
OpenOffice.org web site reported more than 98 million downloads as
of September 2007.. OpenOffice.org 3.x reached one hundred million
downloads, just over a year since its release .
Other
large scale users of OpenOffice.org include Singapore’s
Ministry of Defence
, and Bristol
City Council
in the UK. 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. It is now the official office suite
for the
French Gendarmerie.
Several
government organizations in India, such as IIT Bombay
(a renowned technical institute), the Supreme Court of
India
, the Allahabad High Court
, 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.
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.
StarOffice was formerly distributed with the
Google Pack.
Besides StarOffice, there are still a number of OpenOffice.org
derived commercial products. 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.
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
throughout North America.
In September 2007 IBM announced that it would supply and support
OpenOffice.org branded as
Lotus
Symphony, and integrated into Lotus Notes. 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.
Use of Java
In the past OpenOffice.org was criticized 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.
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 be run on
free implementations of Java and fixed the issues which previously
prevented OpenOffice.org 2.0 from using free software Java
implementations.
On November 13, 2006, Sun
committed to release
Java under the
GNU
General Public License in the near future. 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 on the JRE being
present:
A common point of confusion is that
mail
merge to generate emails requires the Java API
JavaMail in
StarOffice;
however, as of version 2.0.1, OpenOffice.org uses a
Python-component
instead.
Retail
The
free software license
under which OpenOffice.org is distributed allows unlimited use of
the software for both home and business use, including unlimited
redistribution of the software. 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.
See also
References
Further reading
External links