OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org is an open-source office software suite, similarly to Microsoft Office, available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. It was originally named simply "OpenOffice", however, the ".org" was appended as the result of a copyright dispute. It is compatible with Microsoft Office document formats, however it provides its own format as well, called OpenDocument.
It contains:
- Writer: A word processor
- Calc: A spreadsheet program
- Impress: A presentation editor
- Draw: A drawing program which allows to edit vector images to be used in other components; unlike MS Office, this is a separate program.
- Base: A database program
- Math: An equation editor which allows to display and edit equations; unlike MS Office's equation editor, this is a separate program.
Writer supports many legacy document formats better than Microsoft Word does.
LibreOffice
After Sun Microsystems was purchased by Oracle, concerns appeared that the development of OpenOffice.org might stop completely. To ensure the office suite's continued development, in September 2010, The Document Foundation was founded by OpenOffice.org community members, and the project was forked as LibreOffice. The project quickly attracted most of the original developers. Unsurprisingly, the expectations of Oracle stopping the development turned out to be true, as, in April 2011, Oracle transferred the development to the Apache Foundation, where development slowed down to a crawl.
Currently, as both projects are being actively developed, LibreOffice stands as the more functional one, while Apache OpenOffice.org is considered more stable.