OpenOffice for High Schools

[pkonecny]

Hello Everyone,
I work in a School District and want to use open office on all my computers. I can't see paying Microsoft all this money every year. Our Technology department says this: "What license are you going to use for open office? You still need an activation key. Even for open office it requires a key/license". Is this true and if so, where can we get an activation key?

Thank you,

Paul Konecny

[FJCC]

OpenOffice is under the Apache Software License version 2. It can be downloaded for no cost and there is no activation key. You should download it from www.openoffice.org. That process will redirect you to SourceForge where the download is automatic and you shouldn't need to do anything but wait. Once you have the installation file, you can make as many copies as you want.

[LastUnicorn]

No, you don't need an activation key for OpenOffice. You can throughout your School District use OpenOffice quite freely, no charge at all. However, you should be aware that OpenOffice is pretty much a dead project now and it would be much smarter for your School District to use LibreOffice instead of OpenOffice. There are several good reasons for preferring LibreOffice over OpenOffice, some of those reasons are given here: [Tutorial] Considering a Switch from OpenOffice to LibreOffice? Some Useful Information

For LibreOffice the same situation exists over licences and you are completely free to use LibreOffice anywhere you like without charge. Likewise activation keys are not supplied because they just are not needed.

[pkonecny]

Thank you so much for your replies. I really needed this verification!

[RoryOF]

The one thing you do need is a better informed Technology Department. They could have found this out n a matter of minutes if anyone there had any brains - why am I thinking of the Straw Man in the Wizard of Oz?

[Hagar Delest]

The one thing you do need is a better informed Technology Department. They could have found this out n a matter of minutes if anyone there had any brains

+1.
What kind of IT have you got???

[keme]

The folks at your tech department may have a faint recollection of historical issues with the OpenOffice brand licensing. At one time the use of just "OpenOffice" as the marketing name of "our" office suite was blocked by commercial initiatives. After StarDivision released the StarOffice source code to the public, the product name of the main open-source development branch became "OpenOffice.org", then "Apache OpenOffice".

At least two other enterprises have claimed the OpenOffice brand name internationally, one in the office space rental business and one providing information mining/document search services for "office data". Looks like both of those claims are now considered "abandoned". I believe there was also an "Office integration" enterprise (offering soft- and hardware interfacing services) which actually used the brand name, but cannot find any references to that today.

For a short while StarOffice existed as a commercially supported suite alongside OpenOffice.org. This StarOffice suite required separate licensing.

AFAIK there was never any license code for installing and using the OpenOffice software suite. As already stated, this is certainly not a requirement today.

Good luck in implementing FOSS in your organization. Note that there are also enterprises which integrate forked OpenOffice development with cloud services, quite similar to the Microsoft platform (M365). For this there will be a licensing fee, per seat/user/storage unit/etc. Cloud integration facilitates collaboration, which is particularly important in a school setting. If this is not streamlined into a dedicated LMS or solved through a separate cloud platform, you may want to look at the likes of Collabora Office.

Note also that the set of tools and the user interface are significantly different, so make sure that teaching staff is motivated. If they are moved from M365 to e.g. Collabora Office, something is lost and something is gained. You don't want them to see it as a "step backward". Be honest about the learning curve (not very long or steep) and functionality lost, but focus on the advantages.

[esperantisto]

Our Technology department says this: "What license are you going to use for open office?…

If the license is a real issue, perhaps, LibreOffice is a better option, its license is Mozilla Public License Version 2.0. However, I’m not a lawyer, I just read FSF’s explanations

[FJCC]

Why would MPLv2 be better than Apache License v2? From a user's point of view, the license differences seem irrelevant.

[Hagar Delest]

I guess that "license" for those IT guys were meant for the product key associated to the use of the application.

License as the right to use the application makes little sense for end users indeed.

Paul, let us know where your discussion with your IT went.

Please add [Solved] at the beginning of the title in your first post (top of the topic) with the 🖉 button if your issue has been fixed.

[esperantisto]

Why would MPLv2 be better than Apache License v2? From a user's point of view, the license differences seem irrelevant.

Isn't the Apache license rather permissive, while the Mozilla license is freer? It might matter for the IT department.

[Hagar Delest]

I doubt they were intending to make any change to the code and thus worry about the license.

[John_Ha]

I work in a School District and want to use open office on all my computers.

Excellent idea.

However you are far better to choose LibreOffice than Apache Open Office because AOO is walking dead. LO is far more actively developed than AOO. AOO has been gradually dying for many years now and one day will just cease to work, forcing AOO users to change to LO.

See LastUnicorn's Tutorial for many other reasons. LO has the same "no licence is required" to use the software as AOO has.

LibreOffice is a powerful and free office suite, a successor to OpenOffice(.org) [AOO is also a successor to OpenOffice(.org)], used by millions of people around the world. Its clean interface and feature-rich tools help you unleash your creativity and enhance your productivity. LibreOffice includes several applications that make it the most versatile Free and Open Source office suite on the market: Writer (word processing), Calc (spreadsheets), Impress (presentations), Draw (vector graphics and flowcharts), Base (databases), and Math (formula editing).

Free ... means you don't pay anything for the software or using the software.

Open Source ... means the program code is freely available for anyone to see.

See [Tutorial] Differences between Microsoft and AOO/LO files for a description of differences and for why you should always work in, and save Writer files as .odt, Calc files as .ods, Impress files as .odp, etc. It discusses some of the minor problems you may experience when exchanging files with Microsoft Word etc.

[bailliemccreight92]

I work in a School District and want to use open office on all my computers.

Excellent idea.

However you are far better to choose LibreOffice than Apache Open Office because AOO is walking dead. LO is far more actively developed than AOO. AOO has been gradually dying for many years now and one day will just cease to work, forcing AOO users to change to LO.

See LastUnicorn's Tutorial for many other reasons. LO has the same "no licence is required" to use the software as AOO has.

LibreOffice is a powerful and free office suite, a successor to OpenOffice(.org) [AOO is also a successor to OpenOffice(.org)], used by millions of people around the world. Its clean interface and feature-rich tools help you unleash your creativity and enhance your productivity. LibreOffice includes several applications that make it the most versatile Free and Open Source office suite on the market: Writer (word processing), Calc (spreadsheets), Impress (presentations), Draw (vector graphics and flowcharts), Base (databases), and Math (formula editing).

Free ... means you don't pay anything for the software or using the software.

Open Source ... means the program code is freely available for anyone to see.

See [Tutorial] Differences between Microsoft and AOO/LO files for a description of differences and for why you should always work in, and save Writer files as .odt, Calc files as .ods, Impress files as .odp, etc. It discusses some of the minor problems you may experience when exchanging files with Microsoft Word etc.

Maybe I wasn't paying attention, but I didn't find this answer, I want to know if I for example have another version installed, something like libre office, but not exactly this one, could I install another one? I mean won't these two conflict? Because I want to use this for college - to do writing using continue; but for this I need OpenOffice, thanks for the reply!

[John_Ha]

LO and AOO can both be installed at the same time. I have them both.

[RoryOF]

In addition to John_Ha's reply, the last installed will become the default for opening documents, unless one changes the File Associations to point to he earlier installation.