Page History

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Previous edition is here:  https://blogs.apache.org/OOo/entry/apache_openoffice_weekly_news_2

Major Discussions

 Juergen, our Release Manager, announced the release of Apache OpenOffice 4.1.

OpenOffice in the News

"The Apache OpenOffice project announce the release of Apache OpenOffice 4.1" in the official Apache OpenOffice Blog.  "Improvements to graphics, charts, forms, text annotations and accessibility feature in this 23rd release of the 14-year old community-run open source project."

"Apache OpenOffice 4.1 improves support for visually impaired users" is the headline of an article by Nick Peers in PC & Tech Authority (Australia).

Use Cases, Questions and Answers

We received another report on the users mailing list from someone who had downloaded what he thought was OpenOffice, but instead got a bunch of malware.  That wasn't us, obviously.   Apache OpenOffice does not bundle any other programs in its package.  Absolutely none.  Our downloads are carefully scanned for viruses and are accompanied by digital signatures and cryptographic hashes to allow users to verify their integrity.

However, there are third parties that sometimes take OpenOffice and bundle it with objectionable and intrusive applications.  In some cases they put up fake websites, or purchase advertisements in search engine search results, to lure people to their website.

It is unfortunate that such sites often come top of the hit list on search engines; inexperienced users download from them and their computers become infected with adware/viruses/trojans. When we know the exact URL of any such sites we do our best to have these removed or flagged, but it is an uphill battle.

We recommend to download only from www.openoffice.org/download which will redirect to SourceForge, whose secure content distribution network we use.  A download from there will usually start within five seconds.

Typically an OpenOffice download is about 145 MB; we do not use downloader applications, so any site offering a much smaller download should immediately be suspect. If in any doubt about a download it is best to check its integrity using MD5Sum; details are given at  http://www.openoffice.org/download/checksums.html

OpenOffice is a complex and powerful software. If you have difficulties, our User Forums at  https://forum.openoffice.org/ in several languages will do their best to help.

New Committers and PMC Members

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