The Apache Software Foundation
Rutba Office vs Apache OpenOffice
The original open-source suite, from which LibreOffice was forked in 2010. Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Base and Math, under the Apache 2.0 licence, native to OpenDocument.
Ours is the free one, so read this knowing whose page you are on. What follows starts with where Apache OpenOffice beats us, because on this page that is the part you cannot get from them.
First, honestly
Where Apache OpenOffice wins
Not a courtesy paragraph. Each of these is a real reason to choose them over us.
A permissive licence, which matters to some people a great deal
Apache 2.0 rather than a copyleft one. If your organisation ships modified software and will not publish the changes, that difference is the whole decision — and it is an advantage over LibreOffice as much as over us.
Familiar to a very large installed base
Two decades of users, documentation and books. Somebody who learned OpenOffice in 2006 opens it and knows where everything is.
Undemanding on old hardware
It runs comfortably on machines that struggle with newer suites, which is a real reason it is still deployed.
And ours
Where Rutba Office wins
Microsoft formats are the native ones here
OpenOffice writes OpenDocument and treats .docx as an export — and its .docx handling in particular is the reason most people who left it, left it. We write the Microsoft formats as the primary format and preserve the parts we did not edit.
Mail, and the archives
No mail client in OpenOffice, so no .pst or .ost. That is the gap this suite was built around.
Actively developed
The awkward one to say politely, and it decides the comparison: OpenOffice releases have been rare for years while LibreOffice — the fork of the same code — ships several times a year. Choosing between the two ODF suites today, that is the fact that matters.
Side by side
The seven structural questions
Asked of desktop office suites. A component and a desktop suite are not decided on the same seven, so each group has its own.
| Question | Rutba Office | Apache OpenOffice |
|---|---|---|
| FreeUsable in full, at work, without paying | Yes | Yes |
| Works offlineEverything functions with the network off | Yes | Yes |
| No accountUsable without signing in to anything | Yes | Yes |
| Microsoft formatsReads and writes .docx, .xlsx and .pptx | Yes | Partly |
| Mail includedA mail client in the same suite, not a separate download | Yes | No |
| Outlook archivesOpens .pst and .ost files | Yes | No |
| Source publishedYou can read and change the code | Yes | Yes |
These seven are the questions this project was built to answer, so of course it answers them. Feature depth, maturity, collaboration and support contracts are not on this table, and Apache OpenOffice beats us on at least one of those.
Verdict
Who should choose which
If you are running it happily, nothing here is urgent. If you are choosing today, LibreOffice is the same lineage under active development and is the better choice for almost everybody — including over us, unless the Outlook archives or the Microsoft-native round trip are what you are missing. The one real case for OpenOffice over LibreOffice is the Apache licence.
Model-level descriptions from The Apache Software Foundation’s published licensing and product structure, as of 8 September 2026. No prices are reproduced here — check openoffice.org for those.
Also worth reading
Compared with each other, not with us
We are not in these. They are the same two questions asked without our thumb on the scale.
It costs nothing to find out
Install it beside whatever you use now — a normal per-user install, a normal uninstall.