The LibreOffice office suite has been competing with online suites like Microsoft Office and Google Docs for years. Among its virtues was undoubtedly a package that could be downloaded, installed and used for free, but that is now changing, at least in one of its versions.

What happened?. This Monday, The Document Foundation (TDF), which manages this development, announced that it will begin charging €8.99 for software in the version distributed on the App Store. This institution ensures that this money “represents a convenience fee of €8.99 to be invested to support the development of the LibreOffice project”. Convenience, of course, because it is convenient and convenient for macOS users to distribute this software through the App Store as well.

you better throw it away. The curious thing is that LibreOffice is still Open Source and as free as any other script. In fact, macOS users will be able to continue downloading the software for their Mac, and indeed in these cases the downloaded version is even better as it contains Java components that cannot be included in the App Store version. On Windows or Linux, the versions are available as before and will continue to be free to use.

this is marketing. At The Document Foundation they assure that this is “an evolution from the previous situation, reflecting the project’s new marketing strategy.” Organizations like Collabora offered LibreOffice for a fee and $10 with three years of support, but TDF decided to offer this version to train organizations to support the FOSS project, choosing the “optimized version of LibreOffice for production deployments. The community version generously supported by volunteers.” not supported by professional services.”

They know they will be criticized.. The move has aroused suspicion, but the truth is that just because this software is licensed under the Mozilla Public License Version 2.0 doesn’t mean they can’t sell it and charge money for it. However, this move can be criticized by many, something TDF is prepared for saying “we know it will take some time before the positive effects of change become visible”.

Still no LibreOffice in the cloud. This office suite is still a very good alternative for working locally, but still can’t compete with cloud alternatives like Office 365 or of course Google Docs. They tried to start a Collabora-led project at TDF that aimed to offer this option, but the effort was eventually abandoned. Without this part, the competition is tough, but the truth is that the update to the local version of the package is stable, and in fact everything is among its latest improvements: for example, Klingon support.