They’re both free and open-source, so you can always download both to compare - you probably won’t notice too much of a difference. The vast majority of people will have trouble noticing the difference between LibreOffice and OpenOffice. We could go on looking for more differences, but this really just feels like nitpicking. Embedding a font in a document ensures that document will look the same on any system, even if the computer doesn’t have the font installed. This can be activated from File > Properties, under the Font tab. LibreOffice also has support for font embedding in documents. On OpenOffice, you still have to select Tools > Word Count to view the word count at any given time - it won’t update and show itself automatically. Look at LibreOffice’s status bar at the bottom of the window and you’ll see a live-updating word count for the current document. They have similar interfaces and features. These two projects share the vast majority of their code. Both office suites include the same applications for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and databases.

You can download LibreOffice or OpenOffice for free for Windows, Linux, or Mac. Apache released the beta version of OpenOffice 4.1 in March, 2014. LibreOffice has been developing more quickly and releasing new versions more frequently, but the Apache OpenOffice project isn’t dead. The project known as OpenOffice today is actually Apache OpenOffice and is being developed under Apache’s umbrella under the Apache license. In 2011, Oracle gave the trademarks and code to the Apache Software Foundation. Most Linux distributions, including Ubuntu, switched their bundled office suite from to LibreOffice. LibreOffice was a fork of and is built on the original code base.

Most outside volunteers - including the contributors to Go-oo, who contributed a set of enhancements used by many Linux distributions - left the project and formed LibreOffice. They renamed the proprietary StarOffice office suite to “Oracle Open Office,” as if they wanted to cause confusion, and then discontinued it. In 2011, Sun Microsystems was acquired by Oracle. The project continued with help from Sun employees and volunteers, offering the free office suite to everyone - including Linux users. In 2000, Sun open-sourced the StarOffice software - this free, open-source office suite was known as. Sun Microsystems acquired the StarOffice office suite in 1999.

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