22. December 2009: A few weeks before the upcoming release of OpenOffice.org 3.2, the OpenOffice.org Community is formally announcing
"End-Of-Life" (EOL) status for the legacy version 2.x series of its productivity suite.
With each new release, users are strongly encouraged to upgrade, to benefit from new features, bug fixes and security improvements.
After a new major release, the Community supports legacy releases for a period of time to help users with upgrading and migrating.
With version 3.x being available for more than 15 months now, the Community has decided it is time to cease maintaining the 2.x software.
As a consequence, OpenOffice.org 2.4.3 will be the last release of the legacy 2.x series and no subsequent bugfixes or security releases will be made
available.
This EOL policy only applies for the Community version of OpenOffice.org obtained via the
download website. Linux distributors and service companies often have their own
product lifecycle policies and might support the productivity suite for a shorter or longer period of time.
Oracle commercial software support
plans also to continue to support OpenOffice.org version 2.x.
Q: What does EOL status mean? Is the software unusable now?
A: The EOL status means that support with patches, bugfixes and security updates is no longer available from the Community.
Of course, the software is still usable, and you may still be able to obtain product support from Community members via email, mailing lists and forums.
Please have a look for the OpenOffice.org Support offerings.
Q: So, can I go on using the old version?
A: Technically, yes. However, due to important bugfixes and security improvements found in newer releases of the software, the Community strongly
encourages every user to upgrade to the latest release.
Q: I'm a Linux user, and my copy of OpenOffice.org comes from my distributor's repository. Am I affected?
A: Linux distributors often have their own product lifecycle policy and may support their versions of OpenOffice.org 2.x for a shorter or longer
period of time by integrating updates and bugfixes from newer versions (aka "backporting"). Please check with your distributor.
Q: Why can't the Community support older releases for a longer period of time?
A: Releasing bugfixes, patches and security improvements for older releases takes a lot of resources. Releasing legacy versions is as much effort as
releasing current versions, with localization and QA being involved. As most users upgrade to a new version in a short period of time, and as rollout cycles
in companies usually last from 3 to 12 months, the Community needs to concentrate its resources where they are most effective, in new versions.
There is also a number of independent
service companies providing long-term support, who may support EOL'ed releases.