LibreOffice or Apache Open Office?

Wandering into my inbox I found an email with a question:

> in my search I read that LibreOffice is better than OpenOffice...but it is not clear why!!??

• The people at The Document Foundation would like LibreOffice (https://www.libreoffice.org/) to be used;
• The people at The Apache Software Foundation would like Apache Open Office (http://www.openoffice.org/) to be used;
• The people at MultiRáció Ltd. would like EuroOffice (http://www.multiracio.com/index.php) to be used;

So which one should be used?

It all depends upon what you use an office suite for. For the majority of use cases, it does not matter.  The end result is the same.

From a strictly objective POV, the biggest difference between those three programs, is that LibreOffice can read, write, and edit more file formats than the other two can. 

From an extremely subjective POV, the biggest difference is that Apache OpenOffice tolerates more "flakiness" within documents than the other two do.

Straddling the border of subjective, and objective, EuroOffice can handle more languages, and writing systems in a document, than the other two can.  It isn't just that it ships with language tools for half a dozen languages. The dictionary  toolbar provides "instant" translation of the word under the cursor.
It does, however, seem strange to me, that it includes a built-in grammar checker, but not spell checker, for Lithuanian.

Extensions created for the current version of LibreOffice, or Apache OpenOffice usually can be installed, and will work on the other.  These extensions can usually be installed, and will work under EuroOffice.

Extensions created for EuroOffice often rely on an API that currently is exclusive to EuroOffice. In its favour, MultiRáció has converted some of those extensions for LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice.

Going by the A11Y tools on my system, all three are equally inaccessible. More pointedly, it demonstrates a crying need for an office suite that is designed from the ground up, specifically for individuals with accessibility requirements.

Licensing is either the most important, or least important issue.  It all depends upon what else is done with the office suite.

If your organization is going to customize the program, than the Apache License is the easiest to comply with, even if it makes no formal attempt to do so. Thus, Apache Open Office is the ideal choice.

If you want the ability to sue somebody, despite the license saying you can not do so (the standard non-FLOSS license), then MultiRáció and EuroOffice is the way to go.


The most important thing to know, is what the use-case is:

• Do you really need an office suite?
• Would a stand alone program be more suitable?

If your cyberlife consists of:

• Dwelling in spreadsheets, perhaps Gnumeric is more suitable;
• Writing scientific reports, perhaps a TeX solution is more suitable;
• Creating pretty charts, perhaps R is more suitable;
• Drawing pretty pictures, perhaps GIMP is more suitable;
• Databases, then Python and SQLite, PostGres, or MariaDB is more suitable;

For anything more than a general answer, that fails to provide an answer, the only way to know what works best for any specific use case, is by testing the different programs out.