OpenOffice.org is an open-source office productivity software suite. It originated from the proprietary StarOffice, developed by Star Division, which was acquired by Sun Microsystems in 1999. Sun open-sourced the software in July 2000 as a free alternative to Microsoft Office, and released OpenOffice.org version 1.0 on 1 May 2002.
Following Sun's acquisition by Oracle Corporation, development of OpenOffice.org slowed and eventually ended. In 2011, Oracle donated the project to the Apache Software Foundation, which continues it as Apache OpenOffice,, with the most-recent version being 4.1.16, released on November 10, 2025. A fork of OpenOffice, LibreOffice, was created in 2010 by members of the OpenOffice.org community.
OpenOffice includes applications for word processing (Writer), spreadsheets (Calc), presentations (Impress), vector graphics (Draw), database management (Base), and formula editing (Math). Its default file format is the OpenDocument Format (ODF), which it originated. It can also read a wide variety of other file formats, with particular attention to those from Microsoft Office. OpenOffice.org was primarily developed for Linux, Microsoft Windows and Solaris, and later for Mac OS X, with ports to other operating systems. It is distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License version 3 (LGPL); early versions are also available under the Sun Industry Standards Source License (SISSL).
History
OpenOffice.org originated from StarOffice, a proprietary office productivity software suite developed by German company Star Division beginning in 1985. In August 1999, Star Division was acquired by Sun Microsystems for (equivalent to US$million in ), reportedly because the acquisition was less expensive than licensing Microsoft Office for Sun's 42,000 employees.
On 19 July 2000, at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, Sun announced that it would release the StarOffice source code to encourage the development of a free and open-source office suite. The project, officially named OpenOffice.org, with the ".org" added to avoid trademark conflicts, officially released its source code on 13 October 2000. The first public preview, Milestone Build 638c, followed in October 2001 and quickly surpassed one million downloads. OpenOffice.org 1.0 was officially released on 1 May 2002.
OpenOffice.org became the default office suite on many Linux distributions and quickly emerged as a significant competitor to Microsoft Office, reportedly achieving 14% penetration in the large enterprise market by 2004. Sun designed the suite's OpenOffice.org XML file format, compressed in a ZIP archive, for easier data interchange and machine processing, intending it to replace proprietary binary formats. In 2002, Sun submitted the format to the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards leading to the creation of the OpenDocument file format standard in 2005, which was ratified as ISO/IEC 26300 in 2006. OpenDocument became OpenOffice's default format beginning with version 2.0 and other organizations would adopt the OpenDocument format.
Development of OpenOffice.org was led by Sun, which continued to use the codebase as the upstream source for StarOffice, which it continued to sell commercially. Sun also licensed the codebase to third parties, including IBM, which used it as the foundation for IBM Lotus Symphony (originally IBM Workplace). This dual role led to criticism that Sun prioritized commercial interests over community collaboration. For example, building OpenOffice.org on many Linux distributions proved difficult, prompting the creation of projects like ooo-build to improve compatibility and incorporate unaccepted community patches. Sun was also criticized for being slow to accept outside contributions and controversially required contributors to sign a Contributor Agreement granting joint ownership of submitted code, enabling the company to continue selling proprietary versions of the software.
Following Sun's acquisition by Oracle Corporation in January 2010, development continued under the new brand, Oracle Open Office. However, Oracle significantly reduced the number of developers assigned to the project, and its commitment to the project was widely questioned. In September 2010, the majority of community OpenOffice contributors left the project, and formed The Document Foundation (TDF), citing concerns over Oracle's management of the project and its broader approach to open-source software. TDF launched a fork called LibreOffice in January 2011, which was quickly adopted by most Linux distributions.
In April 2011, Oracle ceased development of OpenOffice and laid off the remaining team. While Oracle did not publicly state its reasons, speculation ranged from the project's declining community support to commercial considerations. In June 2011, Oracle donated the OpenOffice.org trademarks and codebase to the Apache Software Foundation.; Oracle blog version The code was relicensed under the Apache License at the request of IBM, with existing contractual interests in the code and preferred a permissive license. This donation became the foundation for the ongoing Apache OpenOffice project.
Governance During Sun's sponsorship, the OpenOffice.org project was governed by the Community Council, comprising OpenOffice.org community members. The Community Council suggested project goals and coordinated with producers of derivatives on long-term development planning issues.
Both Sun and Oracle are claimed to have made decisions without consulting the Council or in contravention to the council's recommendations, leading to the majority of outside developers leaving for LibreOffice. Oracle demanded in October 2010 that all Council members involved with The Document Foundation step down, leaving the Community Council composed only of Oracle employees.
Naming Although the project was commonly called OpenOffice, the official name was OpenOffice.org because "OpenOffice" was already a registered trademark in the Benelux region, owned by the company Open Office Automatisering since 1999. A similar trademark conflict in Brazil led to the suite being distributed there as BrOffice.org starting in 2004. The name was also adopted by a supporting nonprofit organization founded in 2006. The BrOffice.org nonprofit transitioned to supporting LibreOffice in December 2010.
Features OpenOffice.org 1.0 was launched under the following mission statement:
Components Icon Title Description Writer A word processor analogous to Microsoft Word or WordPerfect. Calc A spreadsheet analogous to Microsoft Excel or Lotus 1-2-3. Impress A presentation program analogous to Microsoft PowerPoint or Apple Keynote. Impress could export presentations to Adobe Flash (SWF) files, allowing them to be played on any computer with a Flash player installed. Presentation templates were available on the OpenOffice.org website. Draw A vector graphics editor comparable in features to the drawing functions in Microsoft Office. Math A tool for creating and editing mathematical formulas, analogous to Microsoft Equation Editor. Formulas could be embedded inside other OpenOffice.org documents, such as those created by Writer. Base A database management program analogous to Microsoft Access. Base could function as a front-end to a number of different database systems, including Access databases (JET), ODBC data sources, MySQL and PostgreSQL. Base became part of the suite starting with version 2.0. HSQL was the included database engine. From version 2.3, Base offered report generation via Pentaho.
The suite contained no personal information manager, email client or calendar application analogous to Microsoft Outlook, despite one having been present in StarOffice 5.2. Such functionality was frequently requested. The OpenOffice.org Groupware project, intended to replace Outlook and Microsoft Exchange Server, spun off in 2003 as OpenGroupware.org, which is now SOGo. The project considered bundling Mozilla Thunderbird and Mozilla Lightning for OpenOffice.org 3.0.
Supported operating systems The latest version, 3.4 Beta 1, was available for IA-32 versions of Windows 2000 Service Pack 2 or later, Linux (IA-32 and x64), Solaris and Mac OS X 10.4 or later, and the SPARC version of Solaris.
The latest versions of OpenOffice.org on other operating systems were:System Requirements for OpenOffice.org 1.0.xSystem Requirements for OpenOffice.org 1.1.xSystem Requirements for OpenOffice.org 2System Requirements for OpenOffice.org 3.0 – 3.3System Requirements for Apache OpenOffice 3.4 IRIX (MIPS IV): v1.0.3 Linux 2.2: v2.x Linux 2.4: v3.3.x Mac OS X v10.2: v1.1.2 Mac OS X v10.3: v2.1 Mac OS X v10.4-Mac OS X v10.6: v4.0 Windows 95: v1.1.5 Windows NT 4.0 SP6: v1.1.x Windows 98 and Windows ME: v2.4.3 Windows 2000 Service Pack 2 or later: v3.3.x Solaris 7: 1.0.x Solaris 8, Solaris 9: v2.x Solaris 10: v3.4 Beta 1
Fonts OpenOffice.org included OpenSymbol, DejaVu, the Liberation fonts (from 2.4) and the Gentium fonts (from 3.2). Versions up to 2.3 included the Bitstream Vera fonts. OpenOffice.org also used the default fonts of the running operating system.
Fontwork is a feature that allows users to create stylized text with special effects differing from ordinary text with the added features of gradient colour fills, shaping, letter height, and character spacing. It is similar to WordArt used by Microsoft Word. When OpenOffice.org saved documents in Microsoft Office file format, all Fontwork was converted into WordArt.
Extensions From version 2.0.4, OpenOffice.org supported third-party extensions. As of April 2011, the OpenOffice Extension Repository listed more than 650 extensions. Another list was maintained by the Free Software Foundation.
OpenOffice Basic
OpenOffice.org included OpenOffice Basic, a programming language similar to Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). OpenOffice Basic was available in Writer, Calc and Base. OpenOffice.org also had some Microsoft VBA macro support.
Connectivity OpenOffice.org could interact with databases (local or remote) using ODBC (Open Database Connectivity), JDBC (Java Database Connectivity) or SDBC (StarOffice Database Connectivity).
File formats From Version 2.0 onward, OpenOffice.org used ISO/IEC 26300:2006 OpenDocument as its native format. Versions 2.0–2.3.0 default to the ODF 1.0 file format; versions 2.3.1–2.4.3 default to ODF 1.1; versions 3.0 onward default to ODF 1.2.
OpenOffice.org 1 used OpenOffice.org XML as its native format. This was contributed to OASIS and OpenDocument was developed from it.
OpenOffice.org also claimed support for the following formats: