IBM has published an update to the 3.0.x branch of its free Lotus Symphony office suite. The maintenance update, version 3.0.1, includes fixes for 37 bugs and adds support for 1 million rows in spreadsheets. This release also brings new chart types, such as bubble charts, and a new design for the home page, as well as support for opening password protected Microsoft Office 2007 documents.

According to a blog posting by IBM executive Ed Brill, Lotus Symphony 3.0.1 is likely to be the last release of the company's productivity tool suite, which is based on the 3.x branch of the open source OpenOffice.org office suite. Brill says that the developers will now focus on the Apache OpenOffice project and that they "expect to distribute an 'IBM edition' of Apache OpenOffice in the future"; in July 2011, IBM announced that it would donate the standalone version of Lotus Symphony to the Apache OpenOffice project under an Apache 2.0 licence.

In a comment on Brill's post, Eric Otchet, the product manager for Symphony and the upcoming Apache OpenOffice IBM Edition, notes that Symphony 3.0.1 will be included in Lotus Notes 8.5.4, and added that the company will continue to offer support for Notes customers if they wish to switch to the IBM Edition of Apache OpenOffice when it becomes available. IBM plans to extend its Symphony LotusScript support to the Apache OpenOffice code.

A full list of changes in 3.0.1, as well as bug fixes and known issues, is provided in the release notes. Lotus Symphony 3.0.1 is available to download for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux; an installation guide is provided.

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(crve)