MAC OS X PORT OF OPENOFFICE.ORG FOR X11 IS NOW OFFICIALLY GOLDEN MASTER

The community-built port of OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X (X11) is now officially Golden Master (GM).

June 2003 - The Openoffice.org community (www.openoffice.org) today announced the Mac OS X port of OpenOffice.org 1.0.3 for X11. The release is ready for immediate download by all Mac OS X users from OpenOffice.org (www.openoffice.org).

The code for this port has been in development by the community since April 2001, when the code base was released to the open-source community by Sun Microsystems, Inc. This release uses the X Windows System, common to Unix and Unix-like machines; X Windows from the open-source project XFree86.org (www.xfree86.org) is included in the installation set. Users may also download the free beta X11 for Mac OS from Apple (www.apple.com/macosx/x11/). OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X (X11) takes advantage of the popularity of X11 in the open-source world and incorporates FreeType's font engine, producing clean, smooth, anti-aliased fonts (see www.freetype.org). The result is a sophisticated integration with the Mac OS X, making this release suitable for all.

Dan Williams, who along with Ed Peterlin is a key developer of the build, points out that, "Anti-aliasing is more than an aesthetic convenience. It makes presentations and all other documents look highly professional. This is one feature that now makes OpenOffice.org look exceptional on Mac OS X."

OpenOffice.org can open and save as Microsoft Office documents, allowing for heterogeneous office environments (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X), and runs stably and natively on multiple platforms, including Linux, PPC Linux, Solaris, Windows and other flavors of Unix. The Mac OS X developer release uses a ZeroG installer (www.ZeroG.com. The OpenOffice.org community wishes to thank ZeroG in this key contribution to delivering this port).

"This release is a triumph not only for Ed Peterlin, Dan Williams, and other contributors with the Mac OS X porting team, but for the collaboration between the open-source community and enterprises such as Sun and Apple," said OpenOffice.org Community Manager Louis Suarez-Potts. "OpenOffice.org 1.0 is the best open-source office suite there is. It does everything you need and frees you from lock-in and licensing fees. With this release, all Mac OS X users can now enjoy the freedom of OpenOffice.org 1.0."

Developers interested in contributing to OpenOffice.org can find the tools and resources on the OpenOffice.org Mac site (http://mac.openoffice.org/). Work is continuing both to track future releases of OpenOffice, as well as to integrate better with Apple's native Aqua environment.

OpenOffice.org is the home of the open source project and its community of developers and users. It is sponsored by Sun Microsystems and hosted by CollbaNet, which created the collaborative environment making OpenOffice.org possible. The mission of OpenOffice.org is to create, as a community, the leading international office suite that will run on all major platforms and provide access to all functionality and data through open-component based APIs and an XML-based file format. OpenOffice.org 1.0 is written in C++ and has documented API's licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) and Sun Industry Standards Source License (SISSL) open source licenses.

OpenOffice.org is the largest open source project with over 7.5 million lines of code and a community numbering 100,000 and growing. To date, more than 16 million downloads of OpenOffice.org have taken place.