Premium OpenOffice released

A "premium" version of OpenOffice has been released, bundling Version 2.0 of the open source office suite with an extra range of fonts, document templates and clip art.

Available from SourceForge.net, the new package is designed to compete more closely with the experience offered by commercial rivals such as Microsoft Office and Sun's StarOffice, which is itself based on OpenOffice code. It contains 2,800 pieces of clip art and around 90 additional fonts.

Many governments and other organisations around the world have started using the open source suite in a bid to escape the high purchase cost and closed standards of the ubiquitous Microsoft Office, among other reasons.

Although OpenOffice is generally said by the open source community to be more secure than Microsoft's suite, recent research by the French Ministry of Defence suggested it has several similar vulnerabilities.