19 Sep 2022

The Document Foundation releases LibreOffice on Apple’s Mac App Store

Posted in Announcements, LibreOffice, Press Releases By Italo Vignoli On September 19, 2022

Berlin, September 19, 2022 – The Document Foundation (TDF) announces the release of LibreOffice on Apple’s Mac App Store, to support end users who want to get all of their desktop software from Apple’s proprietary sales channel. So far, LibreOffice on the Mac App Store was released by Collabora. TDF will charge a convenience fee of €8.99, which will be invested to support development of the LibreOffice project.

TDF releasing on the Mac App Store is an evolution over the previous situation, which reflects the project’s new marketing strategy: The Document Foundation is focused on the release of the Community version, while ecosystem companies are focused on a value-added long-term supported versions targeted at enterprises. The distinction has the objective of educating organizations to support the FOSS project by choosing the LibreOffice version which has been optimized for deployments in production and is backed by professional services, and not the Community version generously supported by volunteers.

“We are grateful to Collabora for having supported LibreOffice on Apple’s Mac App Stores for quite a long time”, said Italo Vignoli, LibreOffice Marketing. The objective is to fulfill the needs of individual and enterprise users in a better way, although we know that the positive effects of the change will not be visible for some time. Educating enterprises about FOSS is not a trivial task and we have just started our journey in this direction”.

The Document Foundation will continue to provide LibreOffice for macOS for free from the LibreOffice website, which is the recommended source for all users.

LibreOffice packaged for the Mac App Store is based on the same source code, but does not include Java – because external dependencies are not allowed on the store – and therefore limits the functionalities of LibreOffice Base. The software is also supported by volunteers who donate their time to help users.

Link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/libreoffice/id1630474372

Comments

  1. By Alex

    With regard to LibreOffice from the Apple Store:
    Does it include the python scripting environment ?
    How does one create a database report ?
    Are ODBC connections to datasources supported ?
    Can one install extensions via the Extension Manager ?

    The link on this page appears to be manifestly wrong, and if followed leads to a dead end ?
    https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-from-microsoft-and-mac-app-stores/
    which points to:
    https://apps.apple.com/app/libreoffice-vanilla/id921923693

  2. By Bench Mark

    I hope I will get the most recent version. I cancelled my Collabora order because it installed a fairly outdated LibreOffice package.