Open source software OpenOffice

OpenOffice.org (OOo) is a suite of productivity applications crated in Open Source, and expressly intended to end Microsoft’s domination of the field with their Microsoft Office suite of applications.  Because the name Open Office was already owned, the “.org” was appended to the name.  As Open Source software, OOo is highly configurable, with numerous add-ons, languages, and it runs on several OS platforms.  Another feature of OOo is that it has the ability to save files in many formats, and is one of the very few applications on the Windows market that utilizes the the industry standard format of ODF (Open Document Format).  This article is written with Writer, the word processing application of OOo, and then saved in Microsoft Word “.DOC”, and plaint text “.TXT” formats.

OOo contains equivalent versions of the applications found in MS Office.  Word, Excel, and Powerpoint are represented, as well as drawing and database applications. In fact, it has been pointed out that OOo will even correctly open documents that are mildly corrupted which were originally saved in MS Office, that Office itself is not able to to open.  From a competitive standpoint, OOo is the only product which actively competes with the MS Office suite on every level, and in performance tests it has been found to load and run faster.  It is described as being more flexible, and has the further distinction of having versions available for several operating systems, including Windows, Linux, Solaris/Open Solaris, and OS X.  It is free to download and use (even in commercial settings), requires no licensing, and has no limits on the number of computers a single copy may be installed on.  It is Open source, and released under the LGPL Open Source Software license.  In addition, all users are encouraged to report and bugs, request new features to be added, or even modify the software to meet their own needs.

OOo is a descendant of Sun Microsystems’ StarOffice.  But where Sun continues to develop StarOffice under protected licensing, OOo has been released as Open Source, which has opened many avenues of collaboration and improvement.  It currently consists of 5 modules Base (database), Draw (graphic design), Impress (presentation creator, like Powerpoint), Calc (spreadsheet), and Writer (word processor).  It also includes features that are not available in other packages, such as the ability to crate .PDF files directly, without having to convert from a different format.  OOo is another excellent example of what can be done through Open Source, and is poised to become a world leader in document production in much the same way that Mozilla Firefox has become a leader in web browsers.  If you aren’t using OOo yet, it might be worth your time to investigate further at http://openoffice.org/.

Article written by MyComputerAid.com