Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

I would like to enquire if open office can be used for our small business users?

Kind Regards
Francois

1. I am not a lawyer.

2. Yes, Apache OpenOffice can be used for business purposes.

OpenOffice is distributed under the Apache License Version 2.0. This grants a lot of freedom to distribute and even modify the product.

Being open-source has allowed other versions of the software to be created. A lot of people, including Linux users, prefer it over Apache Open Office. But you can’t argue with Apache Open Office’s 100 million downloads. So this version is clearly the leader among open sourced options. There are quite a few benefits in the open software’s favor. First is the price. Apache Open Office is free compared with the price for the latest version of Microsoft Office. Second, you can open and edit all Microsoft Office documents with Open Office. There are no compatibility problems. In fact, the only problem you might encounter is a missing font from Microsoft. It’s one for which Open Office will provide a simple replacement. But apart from that, documents open and are edited smoothly.

Lowe
Clouddesktoponline.

There are no compatibility problems.

Unfortunately there ARE compatibility problems. Never was and never will 100% compatibility between the different fileformats. Mainly because Microsoft does not want it.

In fact, the only problem you might encounter is a missing font from Microsoft.

There are Open source fonts and there are Free fonts, what available for every user for free. (For example: the DejaVu font family, or the Liberation font family, or the Linux Libertine font family or the Open Symbol font, etc...)

The LibreOffice can embed the fonts into an ODF standard documents (depended on the licence of the used fonts). This feature can eliminate the "missing font" problem, when you send a document to others.

And the AOO and LO can embed fonts into the PDF export format.

Your signature is:

Open Office 2016 on Windows 10

There is not softvare or version named "Open Office 2016". Do you have MS Office? If yes, then it is an irrelevant information in this forum. The useful information for users of this forum: what version of the Apache OpenOffice and/or LibreOffice are you using now. Because there are version related issues.) Please, update your signature!