TDF will charge a convenience fee of €4.59, which will be invested to further support development of the LibreOffice project.
The announcement reflects the project’s new marketing strategy: The Document Foundation is focused on the release of the Community version, while ecosystem companies are focused on value-added long-term supported versions targeted at enterprises. The distinction has the objective of educating organizations to support the FOSS project by choosing the LibreOffice version best suited for their needs instead of the Community version generously supported by volunteers.
"We are grateful to allotropia for having supported LibreOffice on the Microsoft Store so far", said Mike Saunders, LibreOffice Marketing at The Document Foundation. "Our objective is to fulfill the needs of individuals and enterprises in a better way, although we know that the positive effects of the new strategy will be visible only in the long term. Educating enterprises about FOSS is not a trivial task, especially when you want to remain loyal to free software principles".
The Document Foundation will continue to provide LibreOffice for Windows free of charge from the LibreOffice website (https://www.libreoffice.org/…), which is the recommended source for all individual users, while enterprises should look at the following web page: https://www.libreoffice.org/… for the versions best suited to their deployment needs.
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