The LibreOffice Project announced beta 5 of the upcoming 3.4 release today. The project is also announcing a change in its announcement strategy — the -announce list will only be used for final and stable releases.
As part of the announcement, Italo Vignoli mentioned that there seems to be some confusion about the LibreOffice scheduling and development process, and selecting the “right” release of LibreOffice. LibreOffice is on a “time based release model” and the project is avoiding schedule slips. He also encouraged users to select the “right release of LibreOffice for each situation.”
Conservative users who want very stable releases are encouraged to choose a commercially supported version, or at least wait for a point release that has all the bugs shaken out. Users who are helping with development, testing, or just want to experience the “bleeding edge,” are encouraged to run 3.4.0 when released or even the betas and nightly releases.
Users that still want to hear about the betas and such should subscribe to the projects and/or development lists.
For the latest beta, see the pre-releases page on the LibreOffice site. Debian packages and RPMs for x86 and AMD64 Linux systems are available, as well as Windows and Mac OS X binaries.