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LibreOffice Now Available On Apple's Mac App Store
sfcrazy writes: It's an event of historical magnitude: One of the most popular Open Source projects, LibreOffice, is now available directly from Apple's Mac App Store. You can get LibreOffice on OSX with automatic updates, long-term maintenance, and optional professional support, for the first time. There are two editions of LibreOffice available on the Mac App Store: LibreOffice from Collabora and LibreOffice Vanilla. While the Vanilla edition can be downloaded free of cost, LO from Collabora has a price tag of $10.
"Free through the App store" is an implicit endorsement that plain old "free" can't beat, even taking open-source licensing out of the picture.
Seems like Collabra basically ship more or less vanilla open office but you get professional support for your money and they might be more responsive to bugs you file or something. Not 100% sure.
As for free through the App Store, well, I've had that thruogh my "apt" store (ho ho ho) for as long as LO has existed. Yet another leading innovation from the world of Linux :)
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Typical Windoze idiot comment there AC.
Reality Check: You can install all the software you want on a Mac without having to go through the Apple Apps store. But since you've been drinking Windoze Koolaid for so long you probably are not aware of that. The vast majority of the software we use on our Macs did not come via the App store. The App store is just one of many ways to get software on the Mac. Chill out.
If there will be in app purchases.
Thanks for the memories -- it's been a long long time since I've seen that troll.
Here's the earliest version I could find with a zero effort search: http://kottke.org/98/11/my-mac... Maybe there is an earlier one?
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
This is "historic".
I recommend that the people whose Macs I support only purchase software from Apple's Mac Store. This means that a very good office suite can be had through the Apple eco-system.
This is very good news.
(It also saves time for those who never update third-party software because updates will come through Apple Updates.)
HooRay!
Perhaps you meant...EXTRAORDINARY magnitude.
Take it to the limit, everybody to the limit, come on, everybody fhqwhgads.
It's possible that these versions come bundled with less crapware than sourceforge versions
I demand this be corrected immediately for false advertising.
It's actually not called "GratisOffice."
Or, in this case, "Free as in speech, and free as in... well, it costs as much as a couple beers."
I just performed two copy tests on my 2013 MacBook Pro, 2.7 Ghz i7, 16GB RAM. I copied the exact same file (3.78 GB) from one location to a different location on the same disk drive. The test was performed under two operating systems on that machine:
- The latest beta release of Yosemite (10.10.4): 32.69 s
- The latest insider preview of Windows 10 (build 10130): 19.56 s
This isn't a full benchmark suite by any means, but if I can copy a 4GB file orders of magnitude faster than you can copy a 17 MB file on your MacBook Air or on your Windows PC, then you have some very screwed up stuff going on.
I don't want to start a holy war here
Yeah, that is precisely what you were attempting to do.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
I do realize you just forgot the Sarcasm tag here... but in The Freaking Article it says there are two versions. A free one, tagged Vanilla, and the $10 Collabora one has support.
Besides that, Libre is more Free as in Speech than Free as in Beer.
This, right here.
At work, I normally find myself either at the command prompt or a text editor. Outside of the corporate-imposed Lync, Office, and Outlook, I'd have no use for Microsoft's products at all.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Very few people using a Mac probably even care now.
VMS had this 25 years ago.
2 Gigs of RAM
Well, there's your problem, sonny!
Obviously, from my Username, you might guess that I'm no Windows fan; but fair's fair.
How much RAM does your MBA have?
And the IIfx was a BLISTERINGLY-fast machine... in 1990. Quite the impressive architecture.
br> But RAM-starve ANY machine, and it will make you want to claw your brain out, waiting.
Unfortunately some people must use PCs for some tasks.
Fortunately there are Macs available for those who would rather not use PCs.
Even better, you can run Windows software on your Mac if you have Windows software that you must use. There are many solutions for doing this that work very well.
Windows is a limited environment that has a lot of problems. The MacOSX a larger environment that solves those and other problems and sub-sets the Windows environment within it.
Life is good.
...and Linux. Don't forget Linux.
In fact, Macs remain the ONLY PCs that can legally run (I think) ANY OS.
does it still require x? i'm too lazy to look. Yawn.
Regular patching is good for your soul.
Valar aptgetis.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Missing? Don't know about that. My Mac mini came with Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. As did my iPad Air 2. With continuation and hand-off that's hard to beat (in my case). As for LibreOffice/OpenOffice I've always considered a major pain in the neck to use. But that might be very well just me. Most of the stuff I write I do on Emacs in org mode. Mac users who need LibreOffice know someone who can install it for them. Same story as for Windows.
Perl Programmer for hire
That's fine and all. But it doesn't matter since LibreOffice is distributed under the Mozilla Public License 2.0, not GPL. http://www.libreoffice.org/dow...
I don't know offhand if there's a conflict between the App Store and MPL.
End of Line.
Is this App Store version missing functionality? I checked the existing (manually installed) LibreOffice, and the Finder says: "616.2 MB". But the App Store says it's 213 MB.
That's a pretty big difference in size. Can anyone explain?
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
The free LibreOffice Vanilla version on the App Store is "Prerelease" version 4.4.4.2 while the Collabora supported LibreOffice is the "Still" version 4.3.7.
Collabora is not doing LibreOffice any favors by putting a version that is not ready for the mainstream out for public consumption. More likely, they're using the Vanilla as a means to drive people to their $10 version.
Seems a bit underhanded.
My manually installed LibreOffice has a file size of 616.2 MB, or so Finder reports. I check out its page in the App Store, and it says "213 MB". Then I install that one, and on disk it now says 868.8 MB. Anybody knows why there are such large differences?
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
A year from now, nobody will remember or care when this was added to the app store. I've ripped farts that people have remembered for longer.
Very few people using a Mac probably even care now.
Sorry, I'm confused. You mean they don't care about his farts or about LibreOffice? Be clear, man! How are we supposed to have an intelligent conversation otherwise??!
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
The free LibreOffice Vanilla is the "Prerelease" version 4.4.4.2 while the $10 LibreOffice-from-Collabora is "Still" version 4.3.7.
Collabora isn't doing LibreOffice any favors by putting a prerelease version that is not ready for prime time out for public consumption. More likely, they are introducing the public to a buggy experience, and then offering to fix the experience using a non-prerelease version that costs $10.
Seems a bit underhanded.
Even the free one would require that you be on the Mac App store to get it, which requires you to be tracked by having an Apple ID. Far better to bypass the store entirely and get libre office directly.
Yep. Android for x86, or indeed any other version that someone wishes to build for the Mac hardware.
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
Even the free one would require that you be on the Mac App store to get it, which requires you to be tracked by having an Apple ID. Far better to bypass the store entirely and get libre office directly.
Which you have always been able to do on OS X and still are able to do.
What this does is open up LibreOffice to a whole new demographic who wouldn't have done that before.
I'm not seeing a downside here, other than "apple bad, lolz". More exposure for large open source projects is a good thing, surely.
Why would it be a GPL violation? LibreOffice isn't distributed under the GPL.
Not to mention the fact that the iOS app store has been compatible with the GPL (V2 and earlier) for some time now, after complaints about this very issue - Apple changed the terms in response some time ago.
Plus, the App Store on OS X is not like the iOS one - it downloads a bundle that you can run that can contain anything you like, including the full source code if you really want.
The fact that this is just happening now illustrates the fact that the app store model just doesn't work to bring you reasonable content. A walled garden is always still a walled garden.
VLC was kicked out of the AppStore due to GPL violation (not Apple, but he publisher pulled it). What's to prevent the same from happening here?
Wrong. Apple did not kick anything out because of the GPL. GPL zealots sued Apple despite the fact that users could get the source and do whatever they wanted. It was this lawsuit that caused VLC to be remove. GPL zealots had it removed. What was the "crime"? The binary could not be used on multiple devices, the binary had DRM that restricted it to one account. It didn't matter that source was available and anyone who cared could build their own or have one built for them by someone technically inclined.
LOL. Of all people, someone named "macs4all" ought to recognize a variation on this ancient Mac troll post. As a couple others have commented in this subthread, I'm amazed and how many people it's hooked.
You attempt to berate me; but at least I had the balls to hang my Karma out, MR. AC.
Yep. Android for x86, or indeed any other version that someone wishes to build for the Mac hardware.
Who on God's green earth would want to run THAT OS on ANYthing but a mobile device?
You must have one of those Windows systems that's so slow, even the malware crashes.
"Even better, you can run Windows software on your Mac "
In this more enlightened era, most Mac fans no longer consider running Windows on a Mac a stoning offense. You just have to be stoned to want to do it.
How times have changed. Someone posts and old copypasta troll and gets dozens of serious responses. If any post deserves a +5 Troll mod, it's this one. Beautifully done sir, though perhaps a sad reflection on what's left of this community.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
It's distributed under the LGPL according to the Libre Office web site which is presumably the licence under which the version of OO from which was forked was distributed. The same issues should apply as with the GLP though.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
or even the GPL.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
Well played, sir, well played.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
There will always be some situations where a reboot is required after patching. If it's the kernel that gets updated there is no way around it that I know of. A weakness of Windows is that it often requires a reboot for updates that DON'T involve the kernel such as updates to Windows services; on other OSes, including anything Unix-based like OS X or Linux, you can just restart the service.
An Android developer. I also know of some video player appliances that use Android. Not much point otherwise for now. I believe that Chrome OS and Android will eventually unify, at which point there might be more reason to run the combined OS on a laptop or desktop.
Even the free one would require that you be on the Mac App store to get it, which requires you to be tracked by having an Apple ID. Far better to bypass the store entirely and get libre office directly.
Paranoid much?
Apple doesn't sell, or give, personal information to anyone.
And seriously, why in the fuck would the NSA be interested in which Office Suite you run?
GPL zealots have filed suit against Apple causing GPL'd apps to be removed. They are upset that the binary downloaded form the Apple App Store can not be redistributed, that it is DRM'd to an account. Having the source code available so anyone could have the app built for their device is not enough for them. They are paying a political game and misrepresenting things as if it is Apple's fault. And if GPL-based app users get hurt that is too bad according to the FSF.
Software wants to be FREEEEEEE!!!!*
*...so long as it's our concept of "free".
has been on the Mac App Store for years. It trails OpenOffice development a bit, but incorporates lots of Mac specific tech, eg. it was Retina friendly first.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Macintosh...
Isn't the real GPL violation that the sources don't include the keys that are needed to obtain the binary? The sources are essentially intentionally crippled, and are not the full source necessary to obtain the binary as distributed through the app store. IIRC, mac app store doesn't do DRM of any sort.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Context is everything. I'd be interesting to see how you patch a windows 2000 server without needing reboots.