With the release of a new version of LibreOffice this month, it’s a good time to look at the two major open source office suites, LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org, to see what advantages each offers, and which is a better bet for end users.
Both products are suites of office applications, comprising word process, spreadsheet, presentation graphics, database, drawing, and math tools. Both also spring from the same code base. OpenOffice.org was created by a German company called Star Division, which Sun Microsystems bought in 1999. Originally the suite was called StarOffice, and it was popular in the European market as an alternative to Microsoft Office. After picking it up, Sun changed the name of the product to OpenOffice.org and released its code as open source. The product retained some popularity in the enterprise, partly because of its cross-platform capabilities and no-cost license.
In 2009, Oracle announced it would be acquiring Sun, and many wondered what would become of OpenOffice.org. When Oracle proved to be less than willing to share its plans for the product, a number of OpenOffice.org community members opted to fork the OpenOffice.org code. In November 2010, they created LibreOffice, to be managed by a new German non-profit called The Document Foundation.
A few months later, Oracle opted to donate the OpenOffice.org project to the Apache Software Foundation, which today maintains OpenOffice.org as a so-called podling project until OpenOffice.org completes the migration process to become fully integrated within the Apache organization.
The Growth of LibreOffice
In the 10 months since LibreOffice split off from OpenOffice.org, the new office suite has maintained a more rapid release cycle than the old 18-month cycle maintained by Sun and Oracle. It is not clear how rapidly OpenOffice.org will update as the suite moves forward within the Apache system, but it’s a fair bet that the development cycle will speed up.
LibreOffice’s development cycle has put its version 3.4.2 ahead of OpenOffice.org’s 3.3.0, in more ways than just version numbers. The LibreOffice team is implementing a lot of fixes that many in that development community felt were needed. For instance, LibreOffice’s ability to import file from Microsoft Office is getting better than that of OpenOffice.org. Opening heavily revised and commented Word files in OpenOffice.org still leads to misrendered comments and loads of font issues, while LibreOffice Writer handles revisions, comments, and fonts nearly perfectly. Other fixes include more ODF-compliant color and line support as well as an improved Print dialog box that is markedly better than its OpenOffice.org counterpart.
Calc improvements are also coming fast in LibreOffice, the best of which currently being a much-improved Pivot Table tool (now actually called “Pivot Table” instead of the old “DataPilot” moniker). Pivot tables and LibreOffice don’t have a pleasant history: the last time I tested it, opening a spreadsheet with a pivot table inside would cause LibreOffice Calc and every other LibreOffice window to crash, where OpenOffice.org would open the same spreadsheet fine. Fortunately, since LibreOffice 3.4.2, those days are gone. LibreOffice Pivot Tables also now allow for named ranges, which is a great addition.
In other areas, Calc in LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org are pretty much on equal footing. Fonts and basic functions in Excel documents are converted perfectly, though many not-really-that-obscure Excel functions don’t come across at all. SUMIF and COUNTIF are there, but not their multi-range/criteria counterparts SUMIFS and COUNTIFS, nor AVERAGEIF and AVERAGEIFS. This makes Calc a bit weak as an Excel replacement in either office suite.
Impress is a better experience all around, and equal in both flavors of the suite. PowerPoint presentations open easily, and fonts and images transfer pretty well. There’s a slight edge in this application for the LibreOffice version, which has put the Presenter’s Console front and center as an easily installed extension.
These three components comprise the bulk of use for most end users. LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org are pretty similar in performance and features in the other office suite applications, with one exception: LibreOffice Draw now has support for scalable vectore graphics, something OpenOffice.org lacks.
Support and Certification
Aside from the code, OpenOffice.org used to have one big advantage over LibreOffice: corporate support. When OpenOffice.org belonged to Oracle and to Sun, enterprises could buy annual support for $90 per seat, which got you support and hooks into Microsoft SharePoint or the Alfresco content management systems. Small businesses could get support alone for $50 per seat.
Unfortunately, that advantage is gone. In April, before Oracle announced its intention to move OpenOffice.org to Apache, it dropped commercial development and support for OpenOffice.org. Now the two office suites have virtually identical support options. Each suite has online forums, newsgroups, and mailing lists. Corporate support is available from some third-party companies, such as the Linux distribution vendors who ship LibreOffice or OpenOffice.org, or any number of consultants that can be found on either project’s website.
Support vendors must be certified, so you know you’re not hiring some schmoe off the street. Here, OpenOffice.org has the slight edge. LibreOffice, according to Italo Vignoli from the Document Foundation, is “planning a certification program to make it easier for providers of services to be recognized and for corporate users to select a competent partner.” OpenOffice.org, though, already has a certification program in place, though it is not clear how or if that program will undergo alterations within the Apache umbrella.
Which One Wins?
With its rapid development cycle, LibreOffice has already pushed its feature set ahead of OpenOffice.org’s. OpenOffice.org may catch up, but the licensing differences between the two projects may hold it back. When OpenOffice.org was moved into the Apache Software Foundation, it was placed under the Apache Software License (ASL) v2. LibreOffice is dual-licensed under the Mozilla Public License and the Lesser General Public License (LGPL) 3.0. That means that while LibreOffice developers are free to incorporate OpenOffice.org code into their project, the reverse is not true. LibreOffice’s licenses are incompatible with the Apache license, so OpenOffice.org developers will be unable to directly capitalize on the progress made by the LibreOffice team.
The outlook is not completely dismal for OpenOffice.org. With IBM heavily invested in OpenOffice.org development (its proprietary Lotus Symphony office suite is based on OpenOffice.org), there’s a fair chance that some improvements made in Lotus development could find their way into OpenOffice.org.
That’s looking ahead, however. For now, it appears that LibreOffice offers a better feature set, and with support options being equal, it’s the features that currently make all the difference.
Related posts:
- Pros Tips for Extending LibreOffice
- Open Source Alternatives for the Office
- More Open Source Alternatives for the Office
- How To Create an Ebook with OpenOffice.org
- What Does Oracle’s Buyout of Sun Mean to Open Source?
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| OpenOffice: | See all OpenOffice Articles » | Get OpenOffice Support at OLEX » |
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Nice summary but I just wanted to clarify OpenOffice.org’s origins. When Sun bought StarOffice from StarDivision in 1999, it was a year or so later when they released an Open Source version, OpenOffice.org. Sun supported both concurrently, with StarOffice being a pay-for version that included tech support and targeted primarily for the corporate/small business sector, and OpenOffice.org being a free, community supported option. I remember using StarOffice as my primary Office suite on a Slackware 7.1 box, later moving to OpenOffice.org, and now using LibreOffice. I find it to be very reliable and functional.
Just my opinion but I think OpenOffice.org is going to fade away into the ether. The steady growth of developer and community support behind LibreOffice is quite active and engaging. In typical fashion the tech news media hasn’t done a very good job catching on to this.
[...] LibreOffice vs. OpenOffice.org: Showdown for Best Open Source Office Suite | Wazi If LibreOffice maintains the pace of improvement Brian describes here, by the time work on OpenOffice resumes next year (yes, I really think it will take that long) the gap will be huge. (tags: OpenOffice.org LibreOffice ODF) [...]
Thanks for a nice informative description. This article exactly has what I was looking for. Thanks.
[...] LibreOffice vs. OpenOffice.org: Showdown for Best Open Source Office Suite With the release of a new version of LibreOffice this month, it’s a good time to look at the two major open source office suites, LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org, to see what advantages each offers, and which is a better bet for end users. [...]
Does it matter – really? Neither have the productivity of Microsoft Word. I have LibreOffice 3.3, but use Office 97 under VMWare Player. Why? Because I can:
* Use split screen to view two parts of the document at the same time. Very useful feature.
* Can have different sections of a document with different margins, etc. LO has this feature, but it doesn’t work.
* Can print envelopes correctly. LO can print envelopes, but it is a crazy system that never gets the addresses placed correctly.
* grammar checker
* Helpful help system
Bottom line – stop trying to re-invent the wheel and make it like Word.
Dave,
LibreOffice is now the default office suite in versions 11+ of the Ubuntu operating system, so that will also add many more users and acceptance to LibreOffice giving them a leg up.
I was using StarOffice on Linux in 1998, I followed the developement of OOo and started to use it at it’s debut.
As a poweruser, knowing OOo, LO or MSOffice (at work), I find LO superior to the competition but you have to know HOW TO USE IT!
LO uses styles, intensively, not the childish way Word tries to use it. If you don’t use styles correctly in LO (or OOo) you’re missing the boat and you don’t know what you are talking about when saying MSOffice is better…
Calc=Excel: both have their weaknesses. Excel can’t cope with it’s 8192 limit of discontinuities since allways, has troubles with rounding numbers, invents date such as 1900-02-29…
Writer exceeds Word in performance, stability and power but you have to know how to use styles, sections, frames… Word is a toy for kids (Word allways decides for you) when you need to do real work.
Each component in LO (and OOo) ownes 90% of the code, Writer and Calc differs only by 10% for example. That’s why there is consistency accross the entire suite.
Thanks for the article Brian!
wanted to try last (3.4) libreOffice but it hanged every time when i launched it on my pc, so i installed gnome office.
abiword is much better because:
- majority of users don’t need all the features found it microsoft word, or libreOffice writer
- it is much faster
- it is much simpler
- it is much smaller
- it is easier to use
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@Dave: Microsoft(R) Office(TM) is yet another reinvention of the wheel. You think Microsoft came up with all pieces that make their Office suite by themselves? Do not be so naive… It is absolutely normal to have competing products & teams. They all “borrow” ideas from each other and both improve.
So, what is your point exactly???
i like WP 5.1
[...] I have created already about a vital differences between these dual suites. The brief version: there are no vital differences. On Linux, we have found that LibreOffice edges usually rather forward of OpenOffice.org, and that’s also loyal on OS X Lion. [...]
I’m just a humble translator/localizer and from my perspective, there’s one crucial difference that you haven’t mentioned. OpenOffice are dismal at communicating with the community, LibreOffice aren’t. I joined OO for my (small) locale and was primarily interested in getting a release so all this trouble stewing went straight over my head. But when the localisation platform on OO was switched off from one day to the next without even the tiniest headsup to the localisers, they lost my support period. Months on, they still haven’t bothered to tell us anything. LO seems to be much better at comminicating and engaging with the community out there and I feel that’s going to be key.
I agree with:
akerbeltz says:
September 29, 2011
But also component intergration is also key, i.e. write a document in Writer with intent to move to Base or Calc works well and is an easy UI. Love it!
Paul_T
[...] I have created already about a vital differences between these twin suites. The brief version: there are no vital differences. On Linux, we have found that LibreOffice edges usually somewhat forward of OpenOffice.org, and that’s also loyal on OS X Lion. [...]
[...] I have written already about the major differences between these two suites. The short version: there are no major differences. On Linux, I have found that LibreOffice edges just slightly ahead of OpenOffice.org, and that’s also true on OS X Lion. [...]
My 2 cents on office suite comparison.
I like Excel interface better than Calc. In particular, filter feature in Excel is unsurpassed. Also, why can’t Calc remember the last chosen cell background color? When I review my spreadsheet and highlight a bunch of cells with yellow, Calc makes me to select yellow each time from the color palette. Excel and Gnumeric just remember my last choice. Same for cell frames.
I also found many Excel spreadsheets have incorrect formatting in Calc. Surprisingly, Gnumeric displays these spreadsheets correctly.
The reasons I use Calc/Gnumeric and not Excel? M$ Office suite costs hundreds $$ and does not work on Linux. Oh, well.
Microsoft Office simply looks better. I think that is a big reason why Open Office or Libre Office isn’t the number one office suite. It’s silly, but people notice these things.
Microsoft Office is better and with very rich functions but may not be used by many users ever, and the cost is a consideration as well.
I’m with mistril — I like WP 5.1 for DOS. They got it right on that one and the telephone help was great. Too bad it’s gone.
I’ve been teaching Office for ten years (yes, that one–they pay me) and get my copy free. Yes, it’s nice. However, with my boss’ grudging approval, I give an assignment in LO Writer just to show the students there are some other options. When I had a student who wanted to use LO for his homework, I was quite happy to approve and went up the food chain to make sure they would approve. They weren’t happy, but they agreed.
If someone asks what she or he should get, for years I’ve been saying to look for a copy of Office 97 on eBay, because it does everything a normal person would want to do and the file formats work. (If you need Access compatibility, you have to go to Office 2000.) Now I’m retiring and working on switching myself over to LO. Hoping I can get to the point of recommending LO for real people.
Word looks much better than Writer but just isn’t as apt at doing what I want it to. Excel still beats Calc by miles, especially in conditional formating and Pivot tables.
[...] is the best open source office suite available today. In a recent Wazi article comparing it with the venerable OpenOffice.org, LibreOffice was the clear winner. The free, [...]
LibreOffice 3.5.2 is much more SLOW and HEAVY than OpenOffice 3.2.1. If you have a low powered computer you will notice that, so stay with OpenOffice.
OpenOffice 3.4 was just released today. W00t!