LibreOffice Timeline

Discover the history of LibreOffice and its predecessors! Here’s a quick summary – and then read on for the details…

1985

Star-Writer I, written by Marco Börries, is released - initially for CP/M on the Amstrad CPC, and later ported to DOS

StarDivision is formed in Lüneburg, northern Germany

1991

StarWriter 5.5 is released, including StarWriter Compact 2.0 (shown below)

1992

StarOffice 1.0 is released, combining StarWriter, StarBase and StarDraw

1994

StarWriter 2.0 is released for Windows, OS/2, Mac OS and Solaris (SPARC)

1995

StarOffice 3.0 is released, running on Windows, OS/2, Solaris and Mac OS

1996

StarOffice 3.1 is released, the first version for Linux i386

1999

Sun Microsystems buys StarDivision for $73.5 million

2000

StarOffice 5.2 is released as a free download for personal use

Sun Microsystems open sources StarOffice to create OpenOffice.org

2001

OpenOffice.org XML, the default file format used by the suite, is contributed to the OASIS consortium - this is later developed into the Open Document Format (ODF)

2002

OpenOffice.org 1.0 is released

2003

OpenOffice.org 1.1 is released, with one-click export to PDF, and the ability to export presentations to Flash (SWF). It also allowed third-party add-ons

2005

OpenOffice.org 2.0 is released, using the Open Document Format (ODF) as default. Improvements include better performance, lower memory usage, and greater scripting capabilities

2008

OpenOffice.org 3.0 is released, with a native interface on Mac OS X, OOXML import, and support for ODF 1.2. Also included is a new Start Center

2009

Oracle buys Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion

2010

The Document Foundation is announced by members of the OpenOffice.org community. It is a non-profit, independent, self-governing and democratic foundation to further the development of open source office software (incorporated in Berlin in 2012). The foundation’s main project is LibreOffice, a fork of OpenOffice.org

2011

LibreOffice 3.3 is released, with unique features including SVG image import, new and improved import filters (Microsoft Word, Lotus Word Pro, WordPerfect, PPTX)

Oracle stops development of OpenOffice.org and contributes the trademarks to the Apache Software Foundation.

In Denmark, 13 hospitals in the Copenhagen region decide to move away from a proprietary office suite and switch to LibreOffice on almost 25,000 PCs

LibreOffice 3.4 is released, with memory usage improvements, code cleanups, improved GTK+ theme integration, and reduced Java dependencies

The first LibreOffice Conference is held in Paris, France

2012

MIMO, France’s inter-ministerial working group on free software, starts installing LibreOffice on nearly all 500,000 desktops of France’s ministries, including Energy, Defense, Interior, Education and Finance

LibreOffice 3.5 is released, with a native PostgreSQL driver, import of Microsoft Visio .vsd files, AES encryption support for ODF file encryption, and the ability to install on Microsoft Windows via a .msi file

LibreOffice 3.6 is released, with support for colour scales and data bars in Calc, a word count in the status bar, and 10 new Impress master pages

The second LibreOffice Conference is held in Berlin, Germany

2013

LibreOffice 4.0 is released, with import/export support for native RTF math expressions, import filter for Microsoft Publisher files, improved XLSX loading times, and CMIS support

The administration of the Spanish region of Valencia completed the migration of all 120,000 PCs, including in schools and courts, to LibreOffice

LibreOffice 4.1 is released, with a new sidebar, gradient backgrounds, embedding fonts in documents, export of charts to ODC files, and text layout via Core Text on macOS and HarfBuzz on Linux

The LibreOffice Conference takes place in Milan, Italy

2014

LibreOffice 4.2 is released, with file lists in the Start Center, calc performance improvements (including OpenCL for calculations via graphics cards), and import filters for Apple Keynote and AbiWord files

The Document Foundation announces the Document Liberation Project, which develops libraries to help open source applications handle proprietary file formats

The French city of Toulouse announces that it has saved €1 million by migrating thousands of workstations to LibreOffice

The United Kingdom government formally adopts the Open Document Format (ODF) as the standard for its documents

LibreOffice 4.3 is released, with new drawingML-based DOCX import/export filter for shapes and text frames, improved PDF import, a better default icon set, printable comments in margins, and support for paragraphs of over 65,536 characters in Writer

The LibreOffice Conference is held in Bern, Switzerland

2015

LibreOffice 4.4 is released, with direct connectivity to OneDrive and SharePoint, import of Adobe PageMaker files, digital signing of PDFs, and user interface improvements

LibreOffice 5.0 is released, with style previews in the sidebar, emoji support in 22 languages, the ability to crop images in Writer, Microsoft Word-compatible text highlighting and shading, and a UI for controlling conditional formatting in Calc

The Italian Ministry of Defence announces that it will install LibreOffice on 120,000 PCs

The fifth LibreOffice Conference takes place in Aarhus, Denmark

The administration of the city of Nantes, France, announces that it has switched 5,000 PCs to LibreOffice, lowering the city’s IT costs by EUR 1.6 million

Yi-Lan County in Taiwan migrates 9,000 PCs to LibreOffice

2016

LibreOffice 5.1 is released, with an improved and reorganised user interface, more document import filters, a hide whitespace option in Writer, and the ability to equalise object sizes in Impress

Lithuania’s police department switches to LibreOffice on 8,000 PCs

Certified developers begin combining LibreOffice Online with open source file sharing solutions to offer cloud-based versions of the suite

LibreOffice 5.2 is released, with new drawing tools in Writer and Calc, single toolbar modes, extensive function tooltips in Calc, and import of Microsoft Word for DOS files

The LibreOffice Conference is held in Brno, Czech Republic

2017

LibreOffice 5.3 is released, with table styles in Writer, new options for merging non-empty cells in Calc, improvements to colour and gradient management, better templates in Impress, and an experimental Notebookbar interface option. This is also the first full source code release of LibreOffice Online

LibreOffice 5.4 is released, with better document compatibility, pivot charts in Calc, custom watermarks in Writer, and transparent OpenPGP support for signing documents on Linux

The first LibreOffice certification interview in Asia was held in Taipei

The LibreOffice Conference is held in Rome, Italy with over 200 attendees

2018

LibreOffice 6.0 is released, with major improvements in the desktop, cloud (LibreOffice online) and mobile versions. Document compatibility is improved, the user interface has been refined, and the help system has been updated

LibreOffice 6.1 is released, with new icon themes, improved EPUB export, a revamped image handling engine, sorting of images anchored to Cells in Calc, and updates to LibreOffice Online

The LibreOffice Conference 2018 takes place in Tirana, Albania. Here’s a quick video recap:

The Municipality of Tirana moves to open source software and open standards by migrating to LibreOffice

2019

LibreOffice 6.2 is released, with a new (but optional) user interface design called the NotebookBar, along with performance and compatibility improvements

LibreOffice 6.3 is released - it includes further updates to the NotebookBar, better compatibility, and performance improvements

The LibreOffice Conference 2019 took place in Almeria, Spain - check out this video recap:

2020

LibreOffice 6.4 is released, with many features: the ability to export whole spreadsheets as a single PDF page; text box consolidation in Draw; improved handling of comments; and better Microsoft Office compatibility

LibreOffice 7.0 is released, with many improvements to compatibility, performance and usability - plus plenty of new features to explore!

The joint OpenSUSE + LibreOffice Conference 2020 takes place online this year, due to the pandemic. Check out all the talks and presentations!

2021

LibreOffice 7.1 is released, with physics-based animations in Impress, a Styles Inspector in Writer, ScriptForge macro resources, and more:

That’s the story so far – but there’s so much more to come!