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The Free and Open Productivity Suite
Released: Apache OpenOffice 4.1.15

About Apache OpenOffice

Apache OpenOffice is both a product and an open-source project. Both have been in existence since October 13th, 2000. (see also Birthday Story).

OpenOffice.org 1.0 (the original name, pre-Apache) was released on April 30th, 2002.

OpenOffice.org's mission statement was drafted by the community:

To create, as a community, the leading international office suite that will run on all major platforms and provide access to all functionality and data through open-component based APIs and an XML-based file format.

Since its inception as an open source project. our corporate contributors have included Oracle, RedFlag CH2000, and IBM. Additionally over 500,000 people--unaffiliated individuals, business and government employees, and students from nearly every curve of the globe--have joined the project with the aim of creating the best possible office suite that all can use. Their work as a community is both invaluable and practical: people use what the community does. This is the essence of an open source community.

The remainder of this page summarizes the project and suggests how you can contribute to it.



Historical background

StarDivision, the original author of the StarOffice suite of software, was founded in Germany in the mid-1980s. It was acquired by Sun Microsystems during the summer of 1999 and StarOffice 5.2 was released in June of 2000. Subsequent versions of StarOffice software, beginning with 6.0, were built using the OpenOffice.org source, APIs, file formats, and reference implementation. Sun continued to sponsor development on OpenOffice.org for the next 10 years, a period during which not only did the project grow tremendously and became truly global, but the user base also saw an extraordinary increase, and as of the end of 2010 was estimated to be in excess of 100 Million. With its acquisition of Sun in 2010, Oracle was the principal contributor of code to OpenOffice.org. On June 1, 2011, OpenOffice.org, the project and product, including source code, trademarks, domain names and website, were donated to the Apache Software Foundation.

The source is written in C++ and delivers language-neutral and scriptable functionality, including Java™ APIs. This source technology introduces the next-stage architecture, allowing use of the suite elements as separate applications or as embedded components in other applications. Numerous other features are also present including XML-based file formats based on the vendor-neutral OpenDocument Format (ODF) standard from OASIS and other resources.


Licenses

Apache Openoffice is released under the Apache License Version 2.0. Previous versions, under the OpenOffice.org name, were released under the the LGPL 3.0 license.

About the Websites

This web site, www.openoffice.org, is Apache OpenOffice's primary user portal. The primary developer portal for Apache OpenOffice is Apache OpenOffice


General Participation

There are a variety of ways you can actively participate in the OpenOffice Community. These range from something as easy as donating to the Apache Software Foundation, or participating in mailing lists, to actually contributing code for the product. Please visit the Apache Software Foundation Get Involved page for an overview on what it means to be an Apache contributor/committer.

To contribute to (volunteer with) the Openoffice project (user or developer web sites or product), please subscribe to the Apache Openoffice developer mailing list to get started. Please visit Apache OpenOffice Get Involved for specific information about getting involved in the Apache OpenOffice project.


Mailing Lists

Much of the excitement of an Open Source site takes place in the mailing lists. These are public.

All our major lists are public. What you post to these is on the public Internet. We suggest you do not post private information and keep in mind the public and persistent nature of all that you write to the lists.

For questions having to do with the Apache OpenOffice product, please use our "users" list: users-subscribe@openoffice.apache.org.

Besides that list, we have two general lists: our "announce" list, which is for major announcements and has little traffic, and the "dev" list, which is for general discussions related to the project and is fairly heavily trafficked.

To subscribe to any of these lists, click on the appropriate link below and send the email message. Leave the subject line and body empty.



Logos, Trademark

Together with our product, the OpenOffice brand is spread over the world and we need your cooperation so that it is applied consistently. The OpenOffice logo and the seagulls are well recognized. This section is meant to provide information on using the OpenOffice logos and banners for those interested in linking to us or distributing OpenOffice as CDs, or via a download mirror.

Please review the Apache OpenOffice Trademarks page for further information and to request to use the logo in any form or fashion.


Testimonials

We are constantly collecting testimonials from people and businesses actually using the product. You may read them on our Testimonials page. Send yours to: marketing@openoffice.apache.org.



Awards

OpenOffice wins awards. Our Awards Page lists some of the more recent ones.



Contact

We very much welcome your participation and your comments on all facets of Apache OpenOffice.

Please contact us using the developer mailing list.

If, on the other hand, you have questions regarding how to use OpenOffice, the software, please address your questions to our "users" list. Subscribe using users-subscribe@openoffice.apache.org.



Useful links



Apache Software Foundation

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Apache, OpenOffice, OpenOffice.org and the seagull logo are registered trademarks of The Apache Software Foundation. The Apache feather logo is a trademark of The Apache Software Foundation. Other names appearing on the site may be trademarks of their respective owners.