Free and paid versions of LibreOffice are available

Jun 19, 2015 02:35 GMT  ·  By

On June 18, Collabora announced that they added two versions of the popular LibreOffice open-source office suite software for Apple's Mac OS X operating systems on the Mac App Store.

While one of the versions, called LibreOffice Vanilla, is available for download for free, the other one is entitled LibreOffice-from-Collabora and is available for purchase for the sum of $9.99 or €9.99, depending on your geographical location, and comes with a 3-year maintenance, optional professional support, and automatic updates.

It would appear that Collabora, an open-source software consultancy company based in UK, has spent the last few months making all the necessary preparations and tweaking the LibreOffice office suite to meet the requirements implied by Apple when submitting apps to the Mac App Store.

“Collabora continues its march into new markets bringing the power and flexibility of Open Source to professional users” said Michael Meeks, Collabora Productivity General Manager. “Simultaneously we’re introducing an easy new way to get LibreOffice Fresh from the Document Foundation, while providing in-app donation links to support their work”.

LibreOffice Vanilla vs. LibreOffice-from-Collabora

Both LibreOffice versions from Collabora are available for download starting June 18, 2015 on the Mac App Store, but it is very important to note here that the popular open-source office suite software was already available for Mac OS X operating system as a standalone installer from the LibreOffice website.

When searching the Mac App Store for LibreOffice, users will be presented with two entries, LibreOffice Vanilla and LibreOffice-from-Collabora. As mentioned, the latter costs money and is a customized version of LibreOffice-from-Collabora, based on the upstream LibreOffice 4.3 and designed for business customers who want to get long-term maintenance updates and optional professional support.

On the other hand, LibreOffice Vanilla is an almost identical build of the latest upstream LibreOffice office suite (version 4.4.4.2 at the moment of writing this article), with the exception of a new welcome screen where you'll find all the necessary information to donate money to the open-source project.

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