OpenOffice.org has released version 1.1.1, the latest version of its open source office software suite. The software, which is the foundation of Sun’s StarOffice product set, is an open source alternative to commercial software packages and runs on Linux, Windows and Mac.

Louis Suarez-Potts, community manager of the OpenOffice.org project, told DesktopLinux.com that the latest version incorporates plenty of bug fixes, and should be much cleaner than RC1. It also features the OOoDic Autopilot which lets users download automatically any one of 87 spelling, hyphenation and thesaurus dictionaries and supplies better support for languages that use a comma instead of a full stop as a decimal point.

According to Forrester Research, over eight per cent of large US companies have installed the free software package. A Forrester survey of 140 companies found 69 were using some form of open source software; 12 had already installed OpenOffice and eight more were planning to do so.

OpenOffice has also caught the attention of Microsoft. It has issued sales guidelines to resellers explaining how to sell against OpenOffice. It advises dealers to "Question the ‘free’ argument, question the ‘good enough’ argument and to show the total value delivered by Microsoft".

OpenOffice 1.1.1 can be downloaded from the OpenOffice site, and any issues with the code should be reported here. ®