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Open source advent calendar: the Libreoffice office suite – Market Research Telecast

This is an advent calendar for techies. In the fully commercialized digital world, almost everything belongs to a large Internet corporation. Their software is neither open nor free. As an alternative, there is this small island of the open source world: software whose code is publicly visible and can be independently checked for possible security gaps and backdoors. Software that can be freely used, distributed and improved. Often the drive for work is simply the joy of providing something useful to society.

Short portraits of open source projects will be published on heise online from December 1st to December 24th. These are about the functions of the respective software, the pitfalls, the history, the background and the financing. Some projects are backed by an individual, others by a loosely organized community, a tightly managed foundation with full-time employees or a consortium. The work is entirely voluntary, or it is financed through donations, cooperation with Internet companies, government funding or an open source business model. Regardless of whether it is a single application or a complex ecosystem, whether a PC program, app or operating system – the diversity of open source is overwhelming.

December 1st: Firefox
December 2nd: F-Droid

December 3: LibreOffice

As with the Firefox browser, the predecessor of LibreOffice started commercially. The most important German open source project then emerged over several development steps.

That contains six applications Office software package Libre Office: a writing program (LibreOffice Writer), a spreadsheet program (Calc), a presentation program (Impress), a graphics program (Draw), a database application (Base) and a formula editor (Math). Approximately 2,000 extensions are available.

LibreOffice is primarily developed for the PC. The software came up on average over the past year 2.7 million monthly downloads. The Document Foundation estimates the number of users at around 200 million.

There are also own apps LibreOffice Viewer just a rudimentary Android application for viewing texts as well Impress Remote for remote control of presentations. As a full-fledged smartphone application, LibreOffice recommends the one developed in the ecosystem Collaborate Office-App.