LibreOffice · Lablypedia

LibreOffice is available for Windows and macOS, and is the default office suite in many Linux distributions, and there are community builds for other platforms such as OpenIndiana. Ecosystem partner Collabora uses LibreOffice as upstream code to provide a web-based suite branded as Collabora Online, along with apps for platforms not officially supported by LibreOffice, including Android, ChromeOS, iOS and iPadOS.

TDF describes LibreOffice as intended for individual users, and encourages enterprises to obtain the software and technical support services from ecosystem partners like Collabora. TDF states that most development is carried out by these commercial partners in the course of supporting enterprise customers. This arrangement has contributed to a significantly higher level of development activity compared to Apache OpenOffice, another fork of OpenOffice.org, which has struggled since 2015 to attract and retain enough contributors to sustain active development and to provide timely security updates.

LibreOffice was announced on 28 September 2010, with its first stable release in January 2011. It recorded about 7.5 million downloads in its first year, and more than 120 million by 2015, excluding those bundled with Linux distributions. As of 2018, TDF estimated around 200 million active users. The suite is available in 120 languages.

Features

Included applications in LibreOffice

Operating systems and processor architectures

LibreOffice is cross-platform software. The Document Foundation officially supports Linux, macOS and Windows. Additional ports exist for other operating systems and processor architectures, maintained by commercial vendors such as Collabora or by community members, as is the case for BSD (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD) and OpenIndiana.

Earlier versions of LibreOffice and its predecessors, including StarOffice, supported platforms such as Solaris on SPARC hardware, though these are no longer maintained.

LibreOffice development has also expanded to mobile platforms. TDF offers two mobile apps: Impress Remote for Android, iOS and iPadOS, which allows users to control presentations remotely, and a document viewer for Android. Collabora provides officially supported mobile apps with editing capabilities for Android, iOS, and iPadOS.

LibreOffice Online

LibreOffice Online is the web-based version of the LibreOffice office suite, allowing users to view and edit documents through a web browser using the HTML5 <canvas> element. Development began in 2011, with contributions from Collabora and IceWarp. A preview of the software was demonstrated in 2015, and in December 2015, Collabora and ownCloud released a technical preview called Collabora Online Development Edition (CODE). The first source code release of LibreOffice Online occurred alongside LibreOffice version 5.3 in February 2017.

The Document Foundation does not plan to offer a hosted cloud solution similar to commercial offerings like Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, due to the prohibitively high cost of running the platform. Therefore, the task has been left to third-party ecosystem partners and cloud providers, like Collabora and CIB. The first enterprise version, Collabora Online 1.0, was released in July 2016. In the same month, Nextcloud partnered with Collabora to integrate CODE for its users. In 2019, CIB announced that it would offer a version, branded as "LibreOffice Online powered by CIB". TDF has expressed openness to a public LibreOffice Online service provided by a charitable organization.

Supported file formats

LibreOffice uses the OpenDocument Format (ODF) as its default file format, an international standard developed by the ISO and IEC. It can also open and save files in other formats, including those used by Microsoft Office, through a variety of import and export filters. LibreOffice also supports exporting to PDF, including "hybrid PDFs" that embed an editable ODF file within a standard PDF.

User interface and customization

The suite offers several user interface modes, including a traditional menu and toolbar layout as well as a "Tabbed" option that mimics the ribbon interface found in Microsoft Office. LibreOffice includes multiple icon themes to adapt its look and feel to that of its desktop environment, such as Colibre for Windows and Elementary for GNOME, and integrates with native UI frameworks like GTK and Qt (both on Linux), Windows, MacOS for consistent appearance.

LibreOffice supports a range of advanced typographic features through its use of OpenType, Graphite, and Apple Advanced Typography font technologies. Text rendering on Linux systems uses the Cairo graphics library, and complex text layout is handled by the HarfBuzz engine. On Linux, support for multimedia in presentations, such as audio and video playback, is provided via the GStreamer framework.

LibreOffice supports several scripting and programming languages, including LibreOffice Basic, Python, Java, and C++, which can be used to create macros or integrate with external applications. LibreOffice Basic, which is similar to Microsoft's Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), is used primarily for automating tasks within Writer, Calc, and Base.

Licensing

LibreOffice is licensed under a dual LGPLv3 (or later) and MPL 2.0 model, which allows flexibility for future license upgrades. The project continues efforts to rebase legacy code inherited from OpenOffice.org to ensure licensing compatibility.

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History

Background

LibreOffice traces its origins to OpenOffice.org, an open-source office suite that itself was based on StarOffice, a proprietary productivity software suite developed by German company Star Division beginning in 1985. In August 1999, Star Division was acquired by Sun Microsystems for US$59.5 million (equivalent to US$115 million in 2025), reportedly because the acquisition was less expensive than licensing Microsoft Office for Sun's 42,000 employees. In July 2000, Sun announced it would release the source code of StarOffice as an open-source project, which became known as OpenOffice.org (styled with a ".org" to avoid trademark conflicts). The code was made available in October 2000, a public preview was released in October 2001, and OpenOffice.org 1.0 was officially released in May 2002.

From the outset, Sun stated that OpenOffice.org would eventually be governed by an independent foundation. However, community members expressed concerns about Sun's continued control of the project, especially as the company's involvement diminished over time, and was slow to accept patches or external contributions.

To address some of these concerns, in 2003 the Linux software company Ximian began maintaining a patch set known as ooo-build, led by Michael Meeks. The project aimed to simplify building OpenOffice.org on Linux and incorporate community-submitted enhancements that had not been accepted by Sun. In 2007, Novell, which had acquired Ximian, launched a fork of OpenOffice.org called Go-oo, which integrated the ooo-build patches, added additional features, and adopted more permissive policies toward external contributions. Many of these changes foreshadowed those later implemented in LibreOffice. However, many free software advocates remained concerned that the Go-oo project was being controlled by another for-profit corporation.

In early 2010, Sun was acquired by Oracle Corporation, prompting increased concern among contributors due to Oracle's handling of other open-source projects, including a lawsuit against Google over its use of Java in the open-source Android operating system, and the close-sourcing of the OpenSolaris operating system. These concerns, combined with a withdrawal of Oracle developers from OpenOffice.org, led to increased discussion about forking the project.

The Document Foundation and LibreOffice

On 28 September 2010, members of the OpenOffice.org community announced the formation of The Document Foundation (TDF), an independent organization to continue the development of OpenOffice.org under a more open and inclusive governance model. Alongside the announcement, TDF introduced a fork of OpenOffice.org named LibreOffice.

TDF invited Oracle Corporation, then the steward of OpenOffice.org, to participate in the new foundation and donate the OpenOffice.org trademark. Oracle declined, leading TDF to adopt the LibreOffice name permanently. Major contributors to OpenOffice.org, including Novell, Red Hat, Canonical, and Google, shifted their support to the new project.

In April 2011, Oracle announced it would discontinue commercial development of OpenOffice.org and transition the project to a community-based model. Two months later, Oracle donated the codebase and trademarks to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), where the project was renamed Apache OpenOffice.

Meanwhile, LibreOffice continued to develop rapidly under the stewardship of TDF. It incorporated features from Go-oo and other community-maintained patches, and became the default office suite in many Linux distributions, while also expanding its presence on Windows and macOS. LibreOffice receives regular updates, including new features and security fixes. According to TDF, most development is performed by ecosystem partners such as Collabora, who provide enterprise support and services around LibreOffice.

This commercial support model has contributed to higher development activity compared to Apache OpenOffice, which has struggled since 2015 to attract and retain contributors, and to issue timely security updates.

In a 2011 interview with LWN.net, Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth expressed criticism of TDF, asserting that its refusal to adopt Oracle's Contributor License Agreement had undermined the OpenOffice.org project. In response, former Sun Microsystems executive Simon Phipps argued that Oracle's decision to end development was a business move unrelated to LibreOffice's creation. LibreOffice is now widely regarded as the most actively maintained and widely used successor to OpenOffice.org.

Versions

Since version 4.2.2, released in March 2014, LibreOffice has offered two concurrently maintained major versions in addition to development versions (such as release candidates and nightly builds). These versions are intended to accommodate different user needs:

Fresh – the most recent major version, which includes the latest features and improvements. It may contain bugs that have not yet been addressed.
Still – the previous major version, which has received additional bug fixes and is recommended for users prioritizing stability. Was previously called the Stable version.

Since January 2024, beginning with version 24.2.0, LibreOffice adopted a calendar-based versioning scheme. Version numbers follow a three-part format (year.month.patch), with the year and month reflection the initial or future launch date.

Release schedule

LibreOffice follows a time-based release schedule, with major versions released approximately every six months, typically in February and August. These release months are synchronized with other free software projects (such as GNOME) and are scheduled at least one month ahead of major Linux distribution releases.

Minor "patch" updates are issued regularly for both the Fresh and Still versions to address bugs and security vulnerabilities. The Fresh version receives updates every four to six weeks until it transitions to the Still version with the release of a new Fresh version. Once designated as Still, it continues to receive updates every six to seven weeks. A version reaches its end of life roughly nine months after its initial release.

Enterprise and derivative versions

Commercial distributions of LibreOffice with service-level agreements are provided by partner organizations, the most significant of which is Collabora. Since version 7.1, the standard open-source release has stated that it is intended for "home users, students and non-profits," to distinguish it from enterprise-targeted versions. The Document Foundation recommends that organizations use commercially supported versions to help sustain development and has expressed concern that enterprise use of the community edition can divert volunteer resources and limit project funding.

Several derivative or enterprise-focused versions of LibreOffice have been developed, including:

Collabora Office and Collabora Online are enterprise-focussed editions of LibreOffice supporting online, mobile and desktop devices. And providing long-term support, technical support, custom features, and Service Level Agreements (SLA)s.
EuroOffice – developed by MultiRacio, provides Hungarian language support and localized extensions.
NDC ODF Application Tools – provided by Taiwan's National Development Council (NDC), and used by government agencies to promote OpenDocument format (ODF) standards.
NeoOffice – macOS-focused derivative that incorporated LibreOffice code starting in 2017, having previously been based on OpenOffice.org. NeoOffice was discontinued in 2024.
OxOffice – developed to enhance support for the Chinese language and originally based on OpenOffice.org before transitioning to LibreOffice.
OffiDocs – developed by OffiDocs Group in Estonia, provides LibreOffice-based applications in a browser and as mobile apps.
ZetaOffice – developed by Allotropia, is a paid enterprise version offered as both a desktop application with long-term support and a web-based version using WebAssembly.

In the 2020s, the number of commercial partner organizations decreased. In June 2023, Red Hat announced it would no longer maintain LibreOffice packages in future releases of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Maintenance of LibreOffice packages for the related Fedora Linux was transitioned to the Fedora LibreOffice Special Interest Group. In 2021, CIB spun off its LibreOffice development and support services into a new company, Allotropia. In May 2025, Collabora announced the acquisition of Allotropia, intending to combine Allotropia's ZetaOffice and WebAssembly with its own Collabora Office and Collabora Online products.

Release history

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Users and deployments

From 2011 to 2018, the estimated number of LibreOffice users grew from 25 million to 200 million. In 2011, The Document Foundation estimated that 10 million users had obtained the software via downloads or CD-ROMs, mostly on Windows, with an additional 15 million users on Linux based on new or updated installations. By 2013, the user base was estimated at 75 million, increasing to 100 million in 2015, and 120 million in 2016. In 2018, The Document Foundation reported 200 million active users, with approximately 25% being students and 10% using Linux systems. For comparison, Microsoft Office had an estimated 1.2 billion users in 2018. By the 2020s, multiple European jurisdictions have adopted LibreOffice.