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More than 70% of the world population are poor or have a low income. For many, software is often seen as is  a luxury good. End-user facing open-source software, like Apache OpenOffice, brings bring high-quality software to those who would otherwise have no other options.

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There are over 6,000 languages in the world, but unless the language is associated with a G20 economic superpower, commercial vendors tend to ignore it. The OpenOffice community has a long-standing tradition of supporting numerous languages, including ones used by smaller populations, minority languages and endangered languages.  By supporting these languages that would not otherwise be supported, we help reduce “digital exclusion” and promote development, local education and administration. It is not easy difficult to keep the translation up-to-date for all languages, but with enough volunteers, we can reach this goal.

Accessibility

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We believe a consistent user experience is more important than a constantly changing user interface. We Likewise, we respect that our users want to spend their time with software being productive, not re-learning how to perform the same functions. We strive to avoid changing the user interface unless it's necessary and improves the user experience.

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