The OpenOffice.org development team has released the second beta of the forthcoming OpenOffice.org 3.0 office suite. The latest beta includes a number of new features that will make the wait for 3.0 worth it. The final version of OpenOffice.org 3.0 is expected to be released in September.

It has been almost three years since the release of OpenOffice.org 2.0. During that time we've seen community fragmentation and frustration resulting from Sun's heavy involvement with the office suite's development, and even a third-party online version that provides editing and collaboration features.

Easy PDF editing is coming to OpenOffice.org, but you'll have to be patient for a few months. Recently posted to the OpenOffice.org Extensions site, the Sun PDF Import extension (SPI) is only in beta, and only works with recent developer builds of OpenOffice.org 3.0, which is scheduled for September release.

OpenOffice 2.4.x will be the last release of OpenOffice that requires the X11 system to run on a Mac. The conversion of the OpenOffice system to a native Mac OS X application has been in progress for many years and has been hampered by occasional politics, funding and manpower issues. Users have long been waiting for a native Mac version that doesn't require X11, and now it's on the way.

OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta 2 is available in preparation for an official September release. Here are some quick first impressions of the Writer word-processor program.

Like it or not, one of the most important features of any Microsoft Office alternative is being able to read Microsoft Office files.

A new beta of the open-source office suite brings a new Start Centre and some added features

A beta version of OpenOffice.org 3.0 has been released for evaluation by the public.

With the final release two months away and an alpha version available, it's time to look at OpenOffice.org 3.1's new features: eye candy, better charts, replying to notes in the margin, overlining, macros in Base, RTL improvements for Arabic and Hebrew, and (believe it or not) better sorting. Download and report any bugs you find.