Press Release - OpenOffice.org 2.0

OpenOffice.org 2.0 Announcement

20 October, 2005

OpenOffice.org 2.0 is the productivity suite that individuals, governments, and corporations around the world have been expecting for the last two years. Easy to use and fluidly interoperable with every major office suite, OpenOffice.org 2.0 realises the potential of open source. Besides a powerful new database module and advanced XML capabilities, OpenOffice.org natively supports the internationally standardised OpenDocument format, which several countries, as well as the U.S. state of Massachusetts, have established as the default for office documents. More than any other suite, OpenOffice.org 2.0 gives users around the globe the tools to be engaged and productive members of their society.

Available in 36 languages, with more on the way, and able to run natively on Windows, GNU/Linux, Sun Solaris, Mac OS X (X11) and several other platforms, OpenOffice.org banishes software segregation and isolation and dramatically levels the playing field. And, with its support for the OASIS Standard OpenDocument format, OpenOffice.org eliminates the fear of vendor lock in or format obsolescence. The OpenDocument format can be used by any office application, ensuring that documents can be viewed, edited and printed for generations to come. OpenOffice.org 2.0 is a breath of hope for small economies that can now have a local language office suite well adapted to their needs and to their economical possibilities, reducing their dependency on the interests of proprietary software vendors.

"OpenOffice.org is on a path toward being the most popular office suite the world has ever seen; providing users with safety, choice, and an opportunity to participate in one of the broadest community efforts the Internet has ever seen. As a member of that community, I'd like to offer my heartiest congratulations." - Jonathan Schwartz - President and COO of Sun Microsystems.

Built by a community including Sun Microsystems, its primary sponsor and contributor, Novell, Red Hat, Debian, Propylon, Intel, as well as independent programmers, translators, writers, and marketers; OpenOffice.org 2.0 demonstrates the success, dedication and proficiency of the open source software community.

That community now includes the City of Vienna, which recently started deploying OpenOffice.org throughout. "We are very happy about the functionality and quality of the OpenOffice.org software. We are confident that OpenOffice.org will be made available to all of our 18,000 workstation users." - Brigitte Lutz, City of Vienna.

Louis Suárez-Potts, OpenOffice.org Community Manager, commented that "OpenOffice.org 2.0 is the culmination of a collaborative process involving thousands working in dozens of languages everywhere in the world. It shows that open source can produce software of the highest quality and assure the robustness, usability and security that users expect in their office suite."

In addition to the OpenDocument format, the redesigned user interface and a new database module, OpenOffice.org 2.0 also adds improved PDF support, a superior spreadsheet module, enhanced desktop integration and several other features that take advantage of its advanced XML capabilities, such as the ability to easily create, edit and use XForms.

For more detailed information regarding OpenOffice.org 2.0, please refer to the Press Kit at //press/2.0/index.html .

The OpenOffice.org Project is an international community of volunteers and sponsors including founding sponsor and primary contributor, Sun Microsystems. OpenOffice.org develops, supports, and promotes the open-source office productivity suite, OpenOffice.org. The project can be found at //. OpenOffice.org supports the Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) OASIS Standard and is available on major computing platforms in over 60 languages. OpenOffice.org is provided under the GNU Lesser General Public Licence (LGPL).

Jacqueline McNally (UTC +08h00)
OpenOffice.org Marketing Project Lead
jacqueline@decisions-and-designs.com.au
+61 (8) 9474-3021

John McCreesh (UTC +00h00)
OpenOffice.org Marketing Project Co-Lead
jpmcc@openoffice.org
+44 7 810 278 540

Louis Suarez-Potts (UTC -04h00)
OpenOffice.org Community Manager
louis@collab.net
+1 (416) 625 3843

http://marketing.openoffice.org/contacts.html