Leading Open Source office application and personal productivity suite under development as a community-led Apache® Project for the past 8 years

Wakefield, MA —14 October 2020— The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the all-volunteer developers, stewards, and incubators of more than 350 Open Source projects and initiatives, announced today the twenty-year anniversary of OpenOffice®, the last eight of which as an Apache® Top-Level Project.

"It’s inspiring to see so many dedicated people from around the world volunteer their time to mentor, contribute code, test issues, moderate mailing lists, help on forums, translations, marketing and more to keep making this great product better and available for millions of users," said Carl Marcum, Vice President of Apache OpenOffice. "OpenOffice is more than just software. It’s a great community that I’m glad to be a part of."

With more than 300 million downloads, Apache OpenOffice is used by countless individuals, organizations, and institutions around the world who are seeking a reliable, robust, and freely-available Open Source office document productivity suite. Apache OpenOffice features the following applications for Windows, macOS and Linux:

  • "Writer" word processor;
  • "Calc" spreadsheet tool;
  • "Impress" presentation editor;
  • "Draw" vector graphics editor; 
  • "Math" mathematical formula editor; and 
  • "Base" database management program. 

Apache OpenOffice supports more than 120 languages, 41 of which are officially maintained and released by the Project. Apache OpenOffice is the productivity suite of choice for governments seeking to meet mandates for using ISO/IEC standard Open Document Format (ODF) files.

Originally created as "StarOffice" in 1985 by StarDivision, who was acquired by Sun Microsystems in 1999. The project was open-sourced under the name "OpenOffice.org", and continued development after Oracle Corporation acquired Sun Microsystems in 2010. OpenOffice entered the Apache Incubator in 2011 and graduated as an Apache Top-level Project in October 2012.

"At Apache OpenOffice we are very excited about 20 years of OpenOffice," said Marcus Lange, ASF Member and Apache OpenOffice Committer since the project first arrived at the ASF. "Countless users, developers and friends have made it possible that we can today celebrate this incredible anniversary. Their commitment makes me believe that we will see many more years of this great Open Source productivity suite."

"The need and, in fact, the demand, for a permissively licensed Open Source office suite, available to the masses and not just the privileged few fortunate enough to have the latest hardware and software, has never been greater within the last two decades," said Jim Jagielski, ASF co-Founder and Apache OpenOffice incubating mentor. "Apache OpenOffice exists to provide essential functionality, with as few licensing restrictions as possible, to the world at large. It is truly a noble mission, and I am honored to be a small part of it."

"As a long-term user, I joined the project in 2016 to give something back," said Matthias Seidel, Committer and member of the Apache OpenOffice Project Management Committee. "After a steep learning curve, I am proud to be part of the community that provides this great software for the public good and benefits millions worldwide."

Apache OpenOffice is available as a free download to all users at 100% no cost, charge, or fees of any kind. OpenOffice source code is readily available for anyone who wishes to enhance the applications. The Project welcomes contributions back to the project, its code, and its community. Those interested in participating with Apache OpenOffice can find out more at https://openoffice.apache.org/get-involved.html .

Availability and Oversight
As with all Apache projects, OpenOffice software is released under the Apache License v2.0 and is overseen by a self-selected team of active contributors to the project. A Project Management Committee (PMC) guides the Project's day-to-day operations, including community development and product releases. For project data, documentation, and more information on Apache OpenOffice, visit https://openoffice.apache.org/ and https://twitter.com/ApacheOO .

12 releases have been made under the auspices of the ASF. The project strongly recommends that users download OpenOffice only from the official site https://www.openoffice.org/download/ to ensure that they receive the original software in the correct and most recent version.

About The Apache Software Foundation (ASF)
Established in 1999, The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) is the world’s largest Open Source foundation, stewarding 227M+ lines of code and providing more than $20B+ worth of software to the public at 100% no cost. The ASF’s all-volunteer community grew from 21 original founders overseeing the Apache HTTP Server to 813 individual Members and 206 Project Management Committees who successfully lead 350+ Apache projects and initiatives in collaboration with 7,900+ Committers through the ASF’s meritocratic process known as "The Apache Way". Apache software is integral to nearly every end user computing device, from laptops to tablets to mobile devices across enterprises and mission-critical applications. Apache projects power most of the Internet, manage exabytes of data, execute teraflops of operations, and store billions of objects in virtually every industry. The commercially-friendly and permissive Apache License v2 is an Open Source industry standard, helping launch billion dollar corporations and benefiting countless users worldwide. The ASF is a US 501(c)(3) not-for-profit charitable organization funded by individual donations and corporate sponsors including Aetna, Alibaba Cloud Computing, Amazon Web Services, Anonymous, Baidu, Bloomberg, Budget Direct, Capital One, Cerner, Cloudera, Comcast, Facebook, Google, Handshake, Huawei, IBM, Inspur, Pineapple Fund, Red Hat, Target, Tencent, Union Investment, Verizon Media, and Workday. For more information, visit http://apache.org/ and https://twitter.com/TheASF  

© The Apache Software Foundation. "Apache", "OpenOffice", "OpenOffice.org", "Apache OpenOffice", and "ApacheCon" are registered trademarks or trademarks of the Apache Software Foundation in the United States and/or other countries. All other brands and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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