OpenOffice, the open-source alternative to Microsoft's Office productivity suite got a boost on Wednesday when Ulteo, a company staffed by Linux veterans, launched a service that lets people run the OpenOffice.org suite in a browser.

The company's chairman and chief technology officer is Gael Duval -- who founded Linux distributor Mandriva but was ousted last year. Thierry Koehrlen is Ulteo's chief executive officer.

The company's service is designed to let people collaborate with OpenOffice documents online and use the open-source application suite without having to download it.

People can also exchange documents in Microsoft's Office format or PDF. The service also supports the OpenDocument Format standard.

There are already several companies offering online versions of traditional desktop applications, including Google, Zoho, and others.

Microsoft on Monday released Office Live Workspace, which lets people share Office documents on a hosted Web server.

Ulteo, Mandriva, Linux, Open-source, OpenSource, OpenOffice, Application, Productivity, Office Suite, Browser, OSS

Source:→ ZDNet Blog