Small revolution for LibreOfficethe free and open-source alternative productivity suite to Microsoft’s: now officially arrives on the Mac App Store, but … for a fee. It costs € 8.99, and as if that were not enough it could have some lack of functionality, because due to the rules of Apple itself it is not possible to include Java.
But don’t worry: the suite can still be used for free on your Mac – just go to The Document Foundation’s official website and download it from there. In this way, some features, which are very comfortable, typical of any app downloaded from the App Store are lost, i.e. simplified account management and automatic updates. In short, everyone will have to choose according to their priorities.
The LibreOffice adventure on Mac has always been a little bit anomalous. The suite has actually been on the App Store for some time, but it was an initiative of a third party company called Collabora: the app, which was called (has now been removed) LibreOffice Vanilla, also cost a similar amount, and allowed Collabora to cover software development and maintenance costs.
In the announcement post on its official blog, TDF clearly states that the choice to impose a price on the software is dictated by the same needs mentioned by Collabora, and guarantees that all proceeds will go towards the development and maintenance of LibreOffice. It is worth mentioning that the suite is run by volunteers, but there are still expenses to be faced – Apple asks for € 100 a year from developers to publish on the App Store, with no discounts or exceptions for non-profit associations or free software, and withholds 30% commissions from each sale, among other things.
- LibreOffice | macOS | Apple App Store, Free