Companies want to run LibreOffice Online in browser

The companies Collabora and IceWarp will work together on a version of LibreOffice that can be run in the browser. The open source office suite should thus become an alternative to proprietary web applications such as Google Apps and Office 365 from Microsoft.

Collabora, which provides support for LibreOffice on a commercial basis, has announced that it is working with software company IceWarp to develop a ‘cloud version’ of LibreOffice. The companies do this in collaboration with the development community behind the open source office suite, united in The Document Foundation. The parties will work on the source code of LibreOffice on the server side, while code will be developed for the browser side to provide an HTML5-written web interface. It should offer full formatting and editing capabilities without the end user having to install any software.

With the initiative, LibreOffice should become a freely available alternative for providers of proprietary office suites that run as a cloud service in the browser, such as Google Apps and Microsoft Office 365. An important condition will be that LibreOffice Online with the various variants of the Open Document Format- file format can handle.

The developers have not yet specified a timeline for the development of LibreOffice Online. Incidentally, The Document Foundation is also developing a version for Android.