When checking out the latest version of Ubuntu Linux, I discovered that they are no longer bundling it with Open Office. Instead, it now comes with a program called Libre Office. What is going on, I wondered? After a bit of detective work, I found out that Libre Office is a actually a fork of Open Office.It was initiated after Oracle bought Sun and many of the OO developers bolted to start this new project. In the meantime, the Open Office code base was donated by Oracle to Apache, and it became part of the Apache Foundation Incubator project. So now, users have a choice. Either use Open Office or Libre Office.
I installed Libre Office on my Thinkpad running Windows XP and, as you would expect, it looks just like Open Office. It also runs just like OO. All of the functionality that you have come to know and love is there. As the two projects continue to evolve, the feature sets will eventually diverge.
The good news is that there are now two free options for those looking for an office suite with much of the same functionality of MS Office.
http://www.libreoffice.org/
http://www.openoffice.org/
