You may use these packages free of charge permanently. You are even entitled to free tech support and to future upgrades at reduced prices. I use Softmaker office since years and prefer it to openoffice
Since Load and Help from SoftMaker has been mentioned in this thread...
The Load and Help campaign runs again this year until December 31, 2010. You can download SoftMaker Office 2008 and a nice font package for free and SoftMaker donates 10 cents to charity for every download.