While it’s clearly understood that the paid version is aimed at enterprise customers and comes with support, I was left wondering what the differences are between the Vanilla LO and the one available directly from TDF? Meeks explained: “This is similar to the difference between a RHEL kernel and an upstream Linux kernel: it’s a matter of taste, base version, cumulative fixes and of course the availability of long term support. There are now three versions of LibreOffice out there: LibreOffice that’s offered by TDF for direct download, LibreOffice by Collabora, and LibreOffice Vanilla. LibreOffice-from-Collabora is based on the LibreOffice ‘stable’ code branch with some featured back-ports, and is maintained long-term (3 years vs 6 months for Vanilla).” There are many differences between the two versions, Michael Meeks, the vice-president of productivity at Collabora and a board member of The Document Format explained to me: “Vanilla is the latest ‘fresh’ code branch produced by volunteers at TDF. The paid version is targeted at the business and public sector and comes with three years of maintenance updates. While the Vanilla edition can be downloaded free of cost, LO from Collabora has a price tag of $10. There are two editions of LibreOffice available on the Mac App Store: LibreOffice from Collabora and LibreOffice Vanilla. The company behind this move is Collabora, an open source consultancy firm from the UK that also offers LibreOffice for enterprise customers. You can get LibreOffice on OSX with automatic updates, long-term maintenance, and optional professional support, for the first time. It’s an event of historical magnitude: One of the most popular Open Source projects, LibreOffice, is now available directly from Apple’s Mac App Store.

Libreoffice free download for mac