If you have deep a conviction in either direction, it's unlikely we will change your mind. For the rest of you, each model has tangible advantages and disadvantages that we'll look at in closer detail.įirst, the cost.
The flip side is that some consumers are more comfortable with a for-profit model that, they feel, rewards ingenuity and innovation. The open source philosophy is not just limited to software and often attracts loyal adherents who believe that information should be shared. In contrast, open source software is developed collaboratively, often by volunteers, and distributed freely for anyone to use, redistribute, adapt, or improve the code. Both open source suites offer a tool called "Base" that's similar to Microsoft Access, a tool called Draw similar to Microsoft Visio, and an equation editor called Math, while Microsoft Office includes the desktop publishing application Publisher, but for the purposes of this article we’ll look at the word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation tools.īefore we look at specific features of the competing suites, it may be helpful to take a step back and compare the philosophical differences between the three packages and how they might affect how you purchase and use the suites.Ĭommercially licensed software like Microsoft Office is developed by a single vendor - sales help fund product-testing and development, marketing and sales, and salaries and shareholder dividends. The dominant market offering, Office eventually yielded some popularity when a viable open source competitor, OpenOffice, emerged, followed by another open source option, LibreOffice. How do these open source suites differ from Microsoft Office? Should your office consider one of them, and will they make sense for your users and infrastructure? To help you decide, we compared key features of the latest version of Microsoft’s suite, the Office 2013 Professional edition, to Apache OpenOffice 4.0 and LibreOffice 4.1, both released in July 2013. For a long time, nonprofit organizations had a choice of two office productivity suites: Microsoft Office and Microsoft Office.
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