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LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

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Re: LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

#32

Companies are totally blind to the fact that A.I. is a complete turn-off to many customers. Not having / using A.I. may even become a unique selling point in the future.

Conversely, a no-AI ethos is one that will very likely need to be walked back at some point in the future for tech products. AI isn't going anywhere, so finding ways to use it constructively with your product is going to be a far better long term strategy. For now while it's new and scary and there's a lack of regulation and governance and ethical considerations - I can see why an anti-AI stance is popular, but it's not durable long term.

Re: LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

#33
post #16

Could also be due to the fact that every codex install includes a copy of libreoffice

Bundling in codex isn’t going to increase the download count on their website. Unless you’re assuming that every codex install downloads a fresh non-cached copy.

Re: LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

#34

Are you sure it wasn't Microsoft doing a rug-pull October 13 on offline Office 2021 pro lifetime license installations for MacOS. A lot of people are not happy about that stunt. =3

Or people outside the US distrusting US technology? There is a confluence of trends pointing away from US based tech. It will take a crazy amount of work to restore trust.

Re: LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

#36
post #8
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. One entity embedding the software into another will only account for at most a handful of downloads.

Unless Codex is vibe coded and it downloads it directly on every installation…

Didn't people find it bundled with a bunch of other things in a single runtime? Downloaded as part of a whole runtime would suggest it wasn't downloaded directly from the source.

Re: LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

#37
post #6

The number of weekly downloads has simply been increasing over time, due to growing popularity. Calling each new high "record-breaking" is a bit meaningless. Unix timestamp counter breaks record after writing this comment.

What? A Unix timestamp literally cannot ever be lower. Its a completely assinine comparison isn't it? This is comparative.

False, in January 2038 at least some systems will go back in time

Re: LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

#38
post #31
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what? why?

https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/1/codex-libreoffice/ To better parse office file formats

They have absolutely zero regard for system resources. I understand why, but such things were once considered unfeasible - and very recently were also considered undesirable.

I still use a laptop with a 100 GiB hard drive - only 80 of which are allocated to the /home/ directory. This would cut into the useable space significantly on that machine. How about Chromebooks?

Re: LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

#39
post #33
post #16

Could also be due to the fact that every codex install includes a copy of libreoffice

Bundling in codex isn’t going to increase the download count on their website. Unless you’re assuming that every codex install downloads a fresh non-cached copy.

GH copilot installed it for me when trying to read some docs lol

Re: LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

#40

Companies are totally blind to the fact that A.I. is a complete turn-off to many customers. Not having / using A.I. may even become a unique selling point in the future.

Conversely, a no-AI ethos is one that will very likely need to be walked back at some point in the future for tech products. AI isn't going anywhere, so finding ways to use it constructively with your product is going to be a far better long term strategy. For now while it's new and scary and there's a lack of regulation and governance and ethical considerations - I can see why an anti-AI stance is popular, but it's…

> finding ways to use it constructively with your product is going to be a far better long term strategy

It's worth pointing out that the original Document Foundation blog post (https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/09/03/yes-no-a...) seems to be doing exactly this:

> The criteria we have listed do not amount to a definitive rejection. The AI sector is evolving rapidly; on-premises inference is becoming manageable on standard hardware; and open models are improving much faster than most of us had anticipated. Should an approach emerge that meets all the conditions, we will evaluate it very carefully.

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