Document Foundation declares LibreOffice 3.4.3 enterprise ready

The Document Foundation has announced that LibreOffice 3.4.3 has been released, signalling the latest version of its open-source office application is now suitable for wide deployment on an enterprise scale.

LibreOffice is based on the better known, but now practically defunct OpenOffice suite. It features a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool, database, equation editor and drawing tool, and is completely open source, making it an attractive alternative to expensive products such as Microsoft Office.

The release of LibreOffice 3.4.3 sees TDF feels confident enough in its stability to recommend it to enterprise users for the first time. Version 3.4.3 follows one month after the previous (3.4.2) release that saw an expanded feature set combined with streamlined code for better performance.

Version 3.4.3 consists largely of a relatively small number of minor bug fixes and tweaks to render the program stable enough for a large-scale corporate deployment. TDF has also announced that the LibreOffice community will be co-hosting this year’s HackFest in Munich, Germany, this weekend with the objective of improving collaboration between the community and corporate users of LibreOffice in order to improve the timescale of future corporate-safe releases of the software.

A similar release schedule -- with version 3.4.6 planned for release 14 days after version 3.5.0 makes its first appearance in early February 2012 -- is currently planned, although TDF hopes in the future to be able to streamline the process to help speed up future development of LibreOffice.

LibreOffice 3.4.3 is available now as a free open-source download for Windows, Mac and Linux.