This is Chapter 1 of Getting Started with OpenOffice.org 3.x, produced by the OOoAuthors group. A PDF of this chapter is available from Documentation at OpenOffice.org.

What is OpenOffice.org?

OpenOffice.org (OOo) is both a software product and a community of volunteers that produces and supports the software.

Because someone else owns the trademark OpenOffice, the correct name for both the open-source project and its software is OpenOffice.org.

The OpenOffice.org software is a freely available, full-featured office suite.

OOo 3.0 is a major upgrade of an already feature-rich office suite. If you have used previous versions of OOo, please look over the new features list on the OOo wiki.

OOo’s native file format is OpenDocument, an open standard format that is being adopted by governments worldwide as a required file format for publishing and accepting documents. OOo can also open and save documents in many other formats, including those used by several versions of Microsoft Office.

OOo includes the following components.