2000–2011 · Open source

OpenOffice.org: the free office suite that challenged Microsoft Office

Last reviewed 5 October 2026

Sun Microsystems bought StarOffice, released its code as OpenOffice.org and gave the world a free alternative to Microsoft Office, then lost it to a fork after Oracle took over.

From StarOffice to open source

StarOffice began in the 1980s at Star Division, a German company founded by Marco Börries. It grew into a full suite with a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation and drawing programs, and it was popular in Germany and on Linux and Solaris, where Microsoft Office was not available.

Sun Microsystems bought Star Division in 1999. It gave StarOffice away free and, in 2000, released most of its source code as a new open-source project called OpenOffice.org. Sun kept selling StarOffice as a supported commercial version built from the same code.

Growing up

OpenOffice.org 1.0 arrived in 2002. It ran on Windows, Linux and other systems, could open and save Microsoft Office files, and cost nothing. Linux distributions shipped it by default, and it became the standard example of desktop open source alongside Firefox.

Early versions were criticised as slow to start and imperfect with complex Word documents, and reviews often said the project was lagging behind Microsoft. Version 2.0 in 2005 brought a database program and made the OpenDocument Format its default. OpenDocument was approved as an international standard, ISO/IEC 26300, in 2006.

Governments and the format wars

OpenOffice.org mattered beyond its own users because it made open document formats practical. Public bodies in Europe and elsewhere, including the city of Munich and the French Gendarmerie, adopted it, and several governments set policies favouring open formats. Microsoft responded by taking its own Office Open XML format through standardisation, and the 2007–2008 ISO vote on it was one of the most bitterly fought in the standards body’s history.

Oracle, LibreOffice and Apache

Oracle acquired Sun in 2010. Many long-time contributors, worried about Oracle’s plans, formed The Document Foundation that September and forked the code as LibreOffice. Most Linux distributions switched to it within a year.

In 2011 Oracle gave the OpenOffice.org trademark and code to the Apache Software Foundation, where it continues as Apache OpenOffice. LibreOffice became the more actively developed of the two. Both still descend from the StarOffice code Sun opened up in 2000.