Can LibreOffice be included as a package in a commercial app

A commercial app being developed plans to use LibreOffice to import DOC/XLS/PPT files to images and then import in to the app.

Can LibreOffice be included in the install of such an app?

LibreOffice is Free Software available (as of December 2014) under the terms of the MPLv2:

Any application – proprietary or Free/Open Source – may use the LibreOffice code (in whole or in part) as long as it respect the terms of the MPLv2.

If you can provide some more details about how you app is planning to use LibreOffice and how it will be distributed, we might be able to give you more insight into whether the use is permitted by the MPLv2.

Update: If you’re just calling a vanilla install of LibreOffice on the command-line to convert some documents, that usage sounds like there’s not even linking involved, and is an allowed behavior. Please take a look at this example on stackoverflow for some hints.

Note that if you do distribute LibreOffice in a bundle with your application, please make sure that users are told that it’s being installed, are provided with a copy of our license, and receive a link to the source. If you’re modifying LibreOffice at all, make sure that users get a link to the corresponding source code.

If you make any big changes/improvements to LibreOffice, we’re always happy to review patches for inclusion upstream! :slight_smile:

Thanks. LibreOffice is called via system calls to construct a command line that converts a DOC/XLS/PPT to a PDF, then we convert the PDF to image. LibreOffice avoid the customers having to pre-install MS Office. When he app install we will ask the user if they use MS Office, if not we give them the choice to install LibreOffice and if we deploy LibreOffice to C:\Program Files and refecnce it in our app.

I have read the terms - I am not a lawyer. We’d be distributing LibreOffice in executable form as part of our larger work. We will not be modifying LibreOffice. We can add an acknowledgment to LibreOffice in our About page.