OpenOffice 4.0 Arrives

Summary: It may be trailing LibreOffice, but OpenOffice is still alive and kicking -- now with better Microsoft Office Open XML support.

Perhaps OpenOffice should adopt a new slogan from Monty Python and the Holy Grail: "I'm not dead yet!" While LibreOffice has supplanted it as the default office suite for Linux distributions, the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) announced the immediate availability of OpenOffice 4.0 on July 23.

Of course neither OpenOffice nor LibreOffice are Linux only. Both are available on multiple platforms, including Linux, OS X and Windows, with additional third-party ports to other operating systems. Neither, however, have delivered on a long-promised, software-as-a-service (SaaS) cloud version.