LibreOffice claims to be one of the world's best free and open source office suites. Users can download the app for any desktop OS, or it can run on a virtual platform on Chrome OS, Firefox OS and iOS. Additionally, LibreOffice is currently in development for Android.
Even with its wide availability, the company has yet to create its software for the cloud. That changed today when it announced LibreOffice Online.
In order to create LibreOffice Online, the organization collaborated with IceWarp for its synchronization software, and Collabora, a company that has expertise with helping companies take the open source route. According to The Document Foundation, the organization behind LibreOffice, the process of getting LibreOffice online started in 2011 with a running prototype of the online version using HTML5.
With this new product, the organization seeks to challenge other office suites in the market, specifically calling out Google Docs and Office 365. LibreOffice Online will also be the first suite to support the Open Document Format, an XML-based document file format, which makes file conversions easier by "leveraging and reusing existing standards wherever possible."
Considering that the founders of The Document Foundation were former members of OpenOffice.org, one of the earliest open office suites, LibreOffice Online is sure to attract customers. Although Google Docs has a huge number of users, LibreOffice Online has the added advantage of being open source, allowing a large amount of collaboration from developers.
ln any case, it's good to know that there are free, online, and cloud-based alternatives to the likes of Google Docs. Availability for LibreOffice Online has yet to be announced, but this announcement is a sure sign that it's in the final stages and almost ready for launch.
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