[Solved] Is OpenOffice.org no longer Freeware?

[pauliw25]

Today I received an email from Oracle - trying to sell me Oracle Open Office Standard Edition for $42.46.

Is my presumption correct that OpenOffice is no longer freeware?

[thomasjk]

No its not correct. Its freely available at http://download.openoffice.org/index.html.

[acknak]

OpenOffice.org is still free software--and it always will be. Oracle could stop supporting the project at any time, but they cannot undo OO.org's free software license. You can take a look at the OO.org web site and see that OOo is still downloadable at no cost.

"Oracle Open Office" is Oracle's re-brand of Sun's "Star Office," which has always been under a commercial license because it includes some elements (fonts, etc.) that are proprietary.

[pauliw25]

Whew! . . . I'm glad to hear it. Thanks for the clarification.

[PGAGA]

Thursday, July 22, 2010

"Oracle Open Office" is Oracle's re-brand of Sun's "Star Office," which has always been under a commercial license because it includes some elements (fonts, etc.) that are proprietary.

SO was a commercial license from versions 6 through 8 because of added elements. With SO9, SO became a support branding. All additional commercial products were dropped. Oracle Open Office is a rename of the support branding. The only difference between OOO and OOo is that OOO provides incremental updates, while OOo requires a full installation.

Phil

[acknak]

Thanks for the correction--I didn't realize that had changed.

[PGAGA]

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Thanks for the correction--I didn't realize that had changed.

Most did not and still do not. I find the name change has only made things confusing, especially since the icons are now so similar. OOo has two seagulls with the bottom one tilting left. OOO has changed the botton seagull to a double O top tilting right - both the same colour.

I tested the betas for SO9 and was disappointed at the dropping of the Mastersoft filters, since I still use them regularly. It was the incremental upgrade which convinced me to update to it.

Phil