Apache OpenOffice does not "
release early, release often"; it eschews time-based release schedules, releasing only "when it is ready". Apache OpenOffice has lost its initial developer participation. During March 2014 March 2015 it had only sixteen developers; the top four (by changesets) were IBM employees, or security. which was widely covered and echoed by others. The project produced two minor updates in 2017, although there was concern about the potential bugginess of the first of these releases. Patricia Shanahan, the release manager for the previous year's update, noted: "I don't like the idea of changes going out to millions of users having only been seriously examined by one programmer — even if I'm that programmer." Brett Porter, then Apache Software Foundation chairman, asked if the project should "discourage downloads". The next update, released in November 2018, included fixes for regressions introduced in previous releases.
The Register published an article in October 2018 entitled "Apache OpenOffice, the Schrodinger's app: No one knows if it's dead or alive, no one really wants to look inside", which found there were 141 code committers at the time of publication, compared to 140 in 2014; this was a change from the sustained growth experienced prior to 2014. The article concluded: "Reports of AOO's death appear to have been greatly exaggerated; the project just looks that way because it's moving slowly."
Security Between October 2014 and July 2015 the project had no release manager. During this period, in April 2015, a known
remote code execution security
vulnerability in Apache OpenOffice 4.1.1 was announced (), but the project did not have the developers available to release the software fix. Instead, the Apache project published a workaround for users, leaving the vulnerability in the download. Former PMC chair Andrea Pescetti volunteered as release manager in July 2015 It was revealed in October 2016 that 4.1.2 had been distributed with a known security hole () for nearly a year as the project did not have the development resources to fix it. 4.1.3 was known to have security issues The
Apache Software Foundation January 2017 Board minutes were edited after publication to remove mention of the security issue, which
Jim Jagielski of the ASF board claimed would be fixed by May 2017. Fixes were finally released in October 2017. Further unfixed problems showed up in February 2019, with
The Register unable to get a response from the developers, although the existing
proof-of-concept exploit doesn't work with OpenOffice
out-of-the-box. The project had been notified in early May 2021. The security hole had been fixed in LibreOffice since 2014. In October 2024, the Apache Software Foundation reported further problems, describing OpenOffice's security health status as "amber", with "three issues in OpenOffice over 365 days old and a number of other open issues not fully triaged." In July 2025, the Apache Security Team raised OpenOffice's risk status to "red", and in November 2025, OpenOffice 4.1.16 was released fixing a number of security issues, including one () which was already fixed in LibreOffice in May 2023.
Releases Oracle had improved Draw (adding
SVG), Writer (adding
ODF 1.2) and Calc in the OpenOffice.org 3.4
beta release (12 April 2011), though it cancelled the project only a few days later. It differed from the thirteen-month-older OpenOffice.org 3.4 beta mainly in license-related details. Notably, the project removed both code and fonts which were under licenses unacceptable to Apache. Language support was considerably reduced, to 15 languages Java, required for the database application, was no longer bundled with the software. 3.4.1, released 23 August 2012, added five languages back, with a further eight added 30 January 2013. Version 4.0 was released 23 July 2013. Features include merging the Symphony code drop, reimplementing the sidebar-style interface from Symphony, improved install, MS Office interoperability enhancements, and performance improvements. 4.0.1 added nine new languages. Version 4.1 was released in April 2014. Various features lined up for 4.1 include comments on text ranges, IAccessible2, in-place editing of input fields, interactive cropping, importing pictures from files and other improvements. 4.1.1 (released 14 August 2014) fixed critical issues in 4.1. 4.1.2 (released in October 2015) was a bugfix release, with improvements in packaging 4.1.3 (September 2016) had updates to the existing language dictionaries, enhanced build tools for AOO developers, a bug fix for databases on macOS, and a security fix for vulnerability . 4.1.4 contained security fixes. Version 4.1.5 was released in December 2017, containing bug fixes. == Distribution ==