OpenOffice Gets 'Premium' Edition

OpenOffice, a free alternative to Microsoft Office has just gotten a premium edition. OpenOffice can trace its roots the rather clunky Staroffice, which was a cross-platform suite available in the late 90s. Staroffice was picked up by Sun in 1999 and released as an open source project 2 yrs later in 2001. Since then the project has matured and found increasing acceptance.

Now in a bid to bring it closer to the functionality of Microsoft Office, a group of OpenOffice enthusiasts have rebuilt the bundle and included extras such as clipart, document templates and fonts. With this initiative the team hopes more people will start using Openoffice and it will find greater acceptance in the corporate markets.

Though the word ‘Premium’ has been used in this new install, the software still remains free. ‘Premium’ is used to detonate the increased functionality as compared to the rather stark and bare to bones version that is the normal installer.

Get it here.