When a group of German coders at OpenOffice (belonging to database major, Oracle) finally forked away on Sept28th 2010 there was much for everybody to talk about while Oracle OpenOffice maintained dignified silence. The tussle between a David and Goliath has always been fascinating to watch and the breaking away and regeneration of the minnow LibreOffice against the giant OpenOffice has all the makings of a great epic! 
Both LibreOffice and OpenOffice released their 3.3 versions in the last week of January 2011 and thus began the bout between LibreOffice Vs OpenOffice
Round I of LibreOffice Vs OpenOffice
First round went to LibreOffice as it marched away from the price hungry OpenOffice to create new beginnings for a price insensitive yet forceful, powerful and abundantly feature-rich free office suite. Thus was born the Document Foundation. Today the foundation is the official name under whose aegis the new generations of free open office suites will emerge.
Round II of LibreOffice Vs OpenOffice
There are already millions of webpages being written on the same skeleton and structure that LibreOffice follows, it is but a legacy of its OpenOffice past. The core features, capabilities almost remain the same as OpenOffice but there are substantial changes that are exciting and there are high expectations on such features.
Noticeable improvements common to both include the tabbed print dialog. Earlier versions of printing used the Sub windows and the pull-down lists.
Features on which LibreOffice has an Advantage
Distinctive features on LibreOffice -The thesaurus is simplified with advanced features. LibreOffice has refined the Calc spreadsheet with several tweaks that make it more comfortable and easier to use. Narrow fonts for the Liberation fonts while Times and Helvetica have become embedded fonts for PDF files by both developed. Additionally the local data has increased to twenty and dictionary supports more than dozen languages now.
The import filters in the LibreOffice are a great feature to reckon and was pending due from OpenOffice for years. Hence, it is easier to import Word Pro file as well as the WordPerfect files. A highly controversial feature is the import feature from Microsoft Office 2007 and 2010 as well as saving into them. Saving in the MS Office 2007 or 2010 is sacrilegious to the open source brigade and but is definitely useful to the non-technical user.
LibreOffice offers grater compatible features for Excel. Hence, it is easy to opt for the new Formula dialog and choose from the default syntax for formulas or the OpenOffice default or choose from the double excel-compatible alternatives. You could also choose the separators for elements in the formula.
LibreOffice the face of the future of Open Office suite
LibreOffice is definitely the future of Office Suites. OpenOffice or any price dependent product will have restricted growth. As each new generation of office suites comes into use, the demand is for open office suites. And LibreOffice is positioned rightly to lead that generational growth. The sneak preview into its capabilities of LibreOffice in the 3.3 is proof of its future. The documentation foundation community is the place for all LibreOffice users to be and contribute with healthy terabytes of feedback to build the future of Open Office Suites.
