The software, sponsored by Sun Microsystems Inc. as an attempt to develop an open-source competitor to Microsoft Office, is available for Windows, GNU/Linux, FreeBSD and Sun's Solaris platform.

Other platforms are said to be in the works by the project's team, according to a statement by the vendor.

OpenOffice.org is an open-source productivity suite available as a free download for major computing platforms. Information is stored in an XML file format, standardized for office documents by the international body OASIS.

OpenOffice.org is supported by a community of volunteers, with its main sponsor and primary contributor being Sun.

The software is available in a number of languages, including Portuguese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Spanish.

"This second public beta release is the result of many months' work improving upon the first public beta announced in March 2005," said a statement from OpenOffice.org.

The software features a new database module and the OASIS OpenDocument XML file format, as well as a myriad of other new features and capabilities.

Read more here about OASIS' approval of the OpenOffice 2.0 file format.

According to the statement, the new interface and document filters make the application even more interoperable with other office suites, as well as easier to use and learn, regardless of operating system.

This beta release has been made available in order to allow a broad user base to test and evaluate the next major version of OpenOffice.org, but is not recommended for production deployment at this time. The beta version and its source code can be downloaded here.

Read the full story on eweek.com: OpenOffice Beta Isn't Ready for Business

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