The Document Foundation Clarifies LibreOffice 7.0's "Personal Edition" Branding

Yes, it's true the LibreOffice builds in recent days -- including the new LibreOffice 7.0 RC1 -- have "Personal Edition" branding for the open-source builds. But given user concerns, The Document Foundation board has issued some clarifications to try to ease any immediate rumors, etc.

The LibreOffice builds provided are indeed marked now as "LibreOffice Personal Edition" as part of planned but not yet finalized marketing changes for LibreOffice. These builds of the open-source office suite remain free and available to anyone without restrictions.

But they are now evaluating this "Personal Edition" branding if any LibreOffice ecosystem partners want to begin offering any enterprise versions of the office suite with paid support or the like. Meanwhile the LibreOffice everyone currently knows would be called LibreOffice Personal Edition.

They are looking at this change as part of the LibreOffice vision for the next five years and as part of their marketing efforts. The Document Foundation commits to LibreOffice always being free software.

The brief statement on this new (tentative) branding that starts with LibreOffice 7.0 can be found via DocumentFoundation.org.