Microsoft Office is an office suite from Microsoft for the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems. Along with core office applications, it includes associated servers and web-based services.... More
The LibreOffice suite of productivity applications is now available for download in version 3.4.2, for Linux, Windows and the Mac. If you've been using a previous version, it's a good idea to upgrade to this one via the download page, as there are a number of bug fixes. This is the third release of the new LibreOffice 3.4 code line.
As PCMag.com notes, the productivity suite application arena, which it dubs "Office clones" is getting more complicated by the minute. The other day, Susan noted that the latest version of the OpenOffice suite, version 3.3, is upon us but she wondered if it might be the last. After all, OpenOffice.org developers are handing in their resignations (just look at some of them here), and many people are unhappy that Oracle now functions as steward of the project. We noted the discord back in August, and expressed concerns about Oracle's intentions all the way back in April. But is PCMag correct that the current situation is just a complicated mess? Perhaps there is a silver lining of the type that one only sees in the world of open source.
In one of the largest enterprise-mandated migrations away from Microsoft's Office suite ever, Linux Magazine and German sources report that 360,000 IBM workers have been ordered to switch from Office to IBM's own Lotus Symphony suite. Symphony isn't open source, but it is free, and is deeply rooted in open source, originally based on OpenOffice code. Apparently, the employees have only ten days to switch, and Open Document Format (ODF) will become the standard file format at IBM, replacing .doc files. The German economic newspaper "Handelsblatt" also reports that 330,000 IBM workers already use Symphony.
If some MS Office software is used as part of my web service backend, will it trigger any licensing problem?